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.
A recent exchange on social media about the prospects of marine (aka tidal or wave) electricity brought some reality into energy magical thinking, the belief that what is technologically possible is a โgreenโ solution to thermal power generation. Either now or about to be โฆ.
โToo many moving parts in a corrosive environment, requiring too much routine maintenance of large moving components. This is wildly unrealistic, fails the KISS Principle!โ ( โ Ed Thiel)
โ[Stephen] Salter invented the โduckโ [system that converts into electricity some of the natural energy contained in waves] in 1974, wave energy has been just round the corner ever since. Tell me when and if it ever happens.โ ( โ Chris Wagstaffe)
A recent exchange on social media about the prospects of marine (aka tidal or wave) electricity brought some reality into energy magical thinking, the belief that what is technologically possible is a โgreenโ solution to thermal power generation. Either now or about to be โฆ.
An Optimistic Take
Russ Bates, founder of NXTGEN Clean Energy, excitedly announced: โAnother step towards a sustainable future and another blow to #fossilfuels!โ He continued:
The Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change has found that #waveenergy converters could harvest 29,500 terawatt-hours of renewable electricity from the ocean every year. In the US alone, the technically recoverable amount of wave power has been estimated at 1,170 TWh, which is about 30% of the nationโs annual electricity consumption. This is great news for coastal communities, including #military facilities, as additional #cleanenergy solutions.
If youโre guessing that a gigantic โฌ9 million wave energy project under the wing of the firm Pelamis was the major disappointment, it sure was. In September of 2008 Pleamis launched an ambitious plan to float 25 wave energy converters into the Atlantic Ocean off the northern coast of Portugal, at Aguรงadoura in the Porto district. The project started with the installation of three converters, and thatโs where it ended. By December of 2008 all three devices were hauled into port after they sprouted leaks. The whole project ran out of funding in 2009, and Pelamis itself was shuttered in 2014.
BUT, a new generation of wave technology is ready for deployment! (it is always โฆ always โฆ coming)
Criticisms Float In
LinkedIn is populated by on-the-spot experts working in the different energy industries. So criticisms quickly followed. Stated Doug Houseman:
โI have worked on more than 20 wave power projects. Here are the issues to overcome to be successful:
1) the materials need to be immune to corrosion, including from sea water, bird poop, and seals.
2) mechanisms need to be immune to barnacles, sea weed and small sea life.
3) the systems need to not anger fisherman and be immune from drift nets and other fishing gear.
4) The system needs to work with just the force of gravity.
5) The system needs to make power from sea state one to sea state six, and survive sea state six with no damage
6) floating logs and other floating debris needs to not damage the system.
7) The system needs minimal cost for monitoring and communications, but it needs to have some monitoring
8) It needs to be clear of shipping channels and highly visible to any boats at sea.
9) It cannot leak any fluids, nor can it flake off toxic metals.
10) it needs to not interfere with swimming or other activities (surfing), nor can it be seen from the shore.
If you can solve these problems and have the system have a life of at least 20 years, you have a chance of making money with it.โ
The bird poop alone is a major issue just for other technologies like floating solar. One of the last posts I recall on LinkedIn showcasing floating solar had a hard time getting a picture of the panels without any bird poop. I wonder what the solar output degradation is per year simply because of bird poop? Nature has a funny way of abusing anything artificial imposed on its environment.
The more complex and exotic these technologies get to make renewable energy, the more expensive they become, and the more they jump the proverbial shark. Green energy proponents seem to think that โhappy daysโ are just around the corner, but there is still a lot of work to do just to keep energy costs down and the lights on.
Until numbers are posted on the upfront CAPEX, operational maintenance, and capacity factors to calculate MWh, an accurate comparison canโt be made. Technologies with posted information like the โBlowholeโ operated at a 20% capacity factor, cost millions, and produce small amounts of electricity (40 kw average) for a cost of $12 million. At a sell price of $0.25/kwh, itโs only 136 years to pay off the CAPEX at zero interest and O&M. Shore based system will take a km to produce 1MW with massive armoring, structure, and maintenance budgets.
Chris Bright, electrical system specialist living in Nottingham, England, added to Houseman (above) with gusto:
Wave power remains uncompetitive with other sources of power. The main reasons are:
1. The cost of building and maintaining devices that can withstand the full fury of storms. 2. Corrosion and bio-fouling. 3. The difficulty of converting the slow frequency low amplitude oscillatory motion to the high rotational speeds necessary to generate electricity, that being the most suitable vector for transmission ashore and beyond.
Possibly, the economics could be improved by combining wave power with coastal erosion defence, where the costs of the wave power devices could be defrayed by savings in conventional defences.
Anyone wishing to develop wave power should study the findings of R&D in the UK and Ireland. That would avoid much futile work.
We enjoy some of the better wave resource in the world. We have studied wave power since the Yom Kippur Arab-Israeli war in 1973 โฆ. Wave power devices developed at that time included the Salter โnodding duckโ, the oscillating water column, and the Cockerell contouring raft.
Too many moving parts in a corrosive environment, requiring too much routine maintenance of large moving components. This is wildly unrealistic, fails the KISS Principle!
Enough, another dead horse. But to the magical thinkers there is always hope. โEvery technology will have some role in energy transition,โย statedย Mansoor Khan. โConsidering the urgency to transition, newer technologies will need support to bring them to project deployment stage.โ And Russ Batesย thanked him.
Matt Burgess, assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, wrote the Conversation piece, and is also one of the authors on the study being referred to. Right away, he admits that American votersโ top priorities are economics, inflation, crime, health care, education, and immigration.
In a recent post by The Conversation, โClimate change matters to more and more people โ and could be a deciding factor in the 2024 election,โ one of the authors of a recent study looking at polling and Americansโ attitudes towards climate change claims that despite being low on most peopleโs list of concerns, it actually plays a potentially deciding role in elections. This is unsubstantiated, and not only can the results can be manipulated based on what polling you select, but the researchers appear to have -at best- some major blind spots when it comes to interpreting their data.
Matt Burgess, assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, wrote the Conversation piece, and is also one of the authors on the study being referred to. Right away, he admits that American votersโ top priorities are economics, inflation, crime, health care, education, and immigration. This is consistently shown to be true, as Climate Realism has pointed out numeroustimes. Not only do Americans rank other issues higher than climate change, but it is actually ranked last or tied for last for the majority of people when compared to other issues, even other environmental issues.
Still, Burgess insists that actually climate change has influenced presidential elections, writing โ[d]espite this, research that I conducted with my colleages suggests that concern about climate change has had a significant effect on votersโ choices in the past two presidential elections.โ
The authors used 2016 and 2020 survey data from โVoter Study Group,โ a subsidiary of โDemocracy Fundโ which is described as nonpartisan, although they seem to lean decidedly left. The study analyzed โrelationships between thousands of votersโ presidential picks in the past two elections with their demographics and their opinions on 22 different issues, including climate change.โ
The survey data they used was one where they asked voters to rate climate change as โunimportant,โ โnot very important,โ โsomewhat importantโ or โvery important.โ Unsurprisingly, they found that 67% of those polled rated climate change as โsomewhatโ or โveryโ important, which was an increase from previous polling from 2016. They also report that 77% of those rating climate change as important expressed support for Biden in 2020, and 69% of them supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. Burgess says this suggests โthat climate change opinion has been providing the Democrats with a growing electoral advantage,โ but this is obviously ignoring another fundamental criterion, which is candidate likeability.
Even among Democrats, Clinton was unpopular. Remembering, for example, that many Bernie Sanders supporters were miffed when Clinton was given the nomination, polling data from the time showed that 12% of Sanders supporters ended up voting for Trump in the general election.
This is a pretty egregious oversight on the part of Burgess, and in the Conversation article, he admits that โ[o]ur analysis could not answerโ the question of how climate change opinion may have โtippedโ the 2020 presidential election, but he offers โeducated guesses.โ
First, that because recent elections have been very close, โclimate change opinion would not need to have a very large effect on voting to change election outcomes.โ Number two was that โcandidates who deny that climate change is real or a problem might turn off some moderate swing voters,โ and third was that โsome voters may be starting to see the connections between climate change and the kitchen-table issues that they consider to be higher priorities than climate change.โ
None of this is evidenced by the data, and outside research calls it into question. The Pew Research Center tried the same thing in 2020, as covered by Climate Realism at the time, claiming that โa majority of registered voters in the United States say climate change will be a very (42 percent) or somewhat (26 percent) important issue in making their decision about whom to vote for in the presidential election[.]โ However, once again, the same poll found that out of 12 policy issues, it was at the bottom of the ranking. The question โHow important, if at all, are each of the following issues in making your decision about who to vote for in the 2020 presidential election?โ was asked of surveyed voters, and even in that line of questioning, the economy, health care, supreme court appointments, corona virus, economic inequality, foreign policy, gun policy, immigration, racial and ethnic inequality, and violent crime all ranked higher.
Burgess admits towards the end of the article that Democrats โrisk losing voters when their policies impose economic costs, or when they are framed as anti-capitalist, racial, or overly pessimistic.โ This is a death blow to the idea that climate change gives Democrats a significant benefit in elections, because climate policy is consistently economically costly, especially when discussing banning fossil fuels, and polls show that voters are unwilling to spend very much money at all on climate issues. Additionally, the climate narrative is completely pessimistic with constant alarmist claims of impending doom.
In the end, the article about Burgessโ study reads more like wishful thinking than science. It is transparently an effort to use polling in order to influence people into believing that the climate issue is more important in their peersโ minds, so that social pressure will make it a priority for them too. If past polling and the reporting on it are anything to go by, this attempt will likely not succeed either, especially as energy costs rise amid the application of climate policy.
All humans and animals require oxygen to live. So, to evoke public fear, headlines often claimed global warming will cause ocean life to suffocate. They evoke the true but misleading factoid that warmer water holds less oxygen. Thus, rising CO2 will cause the ocean to hold less oxygen leading to suffocation. Dishonestly, they ignore more important dynamics controlling oxygen.
All humans and animals require oxygen to live. So, to evoke public fear, headlines often claimed global warming will cause ocean life to suffocate. They evoke the true but misleading factoid that warmer water holds less oxygen. Thus, rising CO2 will cause the ocean to hold less oxygen leading to suffocation. Dishonestly, they ignore more important dynamics controlling oxygen.
As illustrated (graphic A), ocean surface temperatures reach 25ยฐC to 30ยฐC (red) and rapidly cool to just 5ยฐC (blue) at 1000-meter depths. Yet in contrast to climate crisis narratives, oxygen levels (graphic B) are highest in the warm surface layers and then become severely depleted to their lowest levels at cold 1000-meter depths. Temperature is simply not the oxygen control knob.
The high concentrations of oxygen in the upper ocean layers are produced when photosynthesizing phytoplankton split water molecules. In fact, most scientists have determined that not only do phytoplankton provide oxygen for ocean life, but 50% of all the oxygen we breathe is produced by ocean phytoplankton thatโs then released into the atmosphere.
The organic matter produced in the oceanโs sunlit surface layers gradually sinks. As the organic matter is consumed, oxygen is consumed and CO2 is released. Virtually all that organic matter is consumed by the 1000-meter depths, explaining why oxygen reaches its lowest levels by 1000 meters. All that sinking matter feeds the abundant marine life in what is known as the twilight zone, the 200 to 1000-meters depths that lack of light for photosynthesis. Scientists now estimate that 90% of the oceansโ biomass lives and feeds in the twilight zone, fed by organic matter produced by photosynthesis in the warmest surface layer.
It has been proven that the increase in CO2 concentrations has increased photosynthesis, which benefits all marine life in the twilight zone. All photosynthesizing plants and algae depend on one key enzyme known as RUBISCO (graphic C). RUBISCO evolved during the earthโs earliest history when the atmosphere consisted over 6000 ppm CO2 and less than 2% oxygen. Thus, RUBISCO has the ability to incorporate either oxygen, which causes detrimental photorespiration, or incorporate carbon dioxide, which makes the sugars that are the building blocks for all organic tissue. The ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide determines photosynthesis efficiency. More oxygen or less carbon dioxide depresses photosynthesis.
During the late Carboniferous and Permian periods 250 to 300 million years ago, oxygen reached its highest concentrations and carbon dioxide reached its lowest. As a result, Tropical Rainforests collapsed and there was a phytoplankton blackout driving the greatest extinctions in earthโs history.
So, the truth is: more CO2 enables more ocean photosynthesis, increases organic matter to feed marine life, while producing more oxygen that all animals need to live. But that is not the science the climate crisis grifters want you to understand.
There is indeed observed increases in oceans oxygen minimum zones. The decrease in oxygen is driven by the increase in primary production due to increased upwelling since the end of the Little Ice Age. Upwelling raises oxygen depleted and nutrient enriched deep to the surface triggering increased photosynthesis and organic matter production in the warm surface layers. That further depletes oxygen when increasing organic matter is digested as it sinks back to lower levels. Attached are two illustrations. The top illustrates the oxygen minimum zones are located where upwelling is greatest from the 2015 paper by Moffitt Paleoceanographic Insights on Recent Oxygen Minimum Zone Expansion: Lessons for Modern OceanographyThe bottom illlustration shows how upwelling and productivity has increased since the Little ICe Age from Chavez (2011) Marine Primary Production in Relation to Climate Variability and Change
During the past six months, research scientist David Ovens and I have worked intensively on the meteorology of the August 2023 Maui wildfires and have completed a paper that was accepted in an American Meteorological Society journal with a few revisions.
This blog will describe our results, some of which provide different conclusions than those discussed in many media accounts.
The City of Lahaina with the West Maui Mountains to the east before the fire.
To start, it is important to note that there were multiple fires on August 8-9, 2023 (see map below). On Maui, Lahaina was destroyed by one fire and there were large fires in the generally rural area of central Maui. Substantial fires also occurred over the Kohala area of northwest Hawaii.
The August 2023 wildfires were associated with strong, dry downslope winds gusting to 60-80 mph.
But why did it happen?
An unusually strong high-pressure area developed to the north of Hawaii (see map below), which resulted in very strong northeasterly trade winds approaching the West Maui (and other) mountains.ย ย
Importantly, the subtropical inversion, a stable layer often evident over Hawaii, was unusually low (because of the high pressure).
The strong trade winds and inversion were optimally positioned to produce aย high amplitude mountain waveย downstream of the West Maui mountains, a wave that resulted in intense and very dry downslope winds on the west slopes of the terrain (see cross section of winds and temperature for northwest Maui, below).ย
The winds that descended into Lahaina and initiated and spread the fire.
Look closely at the above figure and you can see a hydraulic jump structure, not unlike the situation accompanying water descending a dam ( see below).
This structure was even evident in the clouds and smoke the day of the Lahaina fire (see below)
Top picture taken byย Robert Markwardt
One of the most amazing aspects of this event was that it was forecast nearly perfectly DAYS before by operational models and certainly by the research model I am using (WRF).
ย Below are the predicted surface winds on Maui for a short (17-h) forecast, as well as predictions 41, 89, and 137 hours in advance.ย ย All are similar and very accurate.ย The star shows the position of Lahaina; red and brown show the strongest winds.
The National Weather Service HRRR model was similarly accurate. There was no excuse for not warning the population of a terrible threat.
There was a lot of talk about the role of Hurricane Dora, which passed about 800 miles to the south of Hawaii (see satellite imagery below). Many media outlets and some politicians blamed the strong winds on Dora.
But is this true?ย The wind circulation of the storm was not large in scale, so the direct winds of Dora would not be a factor, but what about indirect effects?
David Ovens and I came up with a way to determine Dora’s impact with some confidence.
We started with an excellent 6.5-day forecast of the Maui winds and the hurricane. Then we weakened the storm by slightly cooling the surface around the storm. Hurricanes are VERY sensitive to the temperature of the sea surface and require sea surface temperatures of at least 80F.
The result was a profoundly weakened storm (see the difference below for the flow around 5000 ft (850 hPa)
And now the exciting part.ย The winds with the weakened (attenuated) storm were essentially the same as the full throttle beastย (see below).
Hurricane Dora played little role in the Maui wildfire disaster.
Finally, there was a lot of talk about the Maui fires being the result ofย drought and climate change,ย particularly from Hawaiian politicians, the power company whose lines failed and some advocacy groups.
So we checked out the conditions before the fire. Turned out that precipitation around Lahaina wasย above normalย BOTH for the summer and the previous year (see below)
And temperatures were near normal (not shown here, but in the paper). Ironically, the heavy rain contributed to the fires by increasing the amount of grass upwind of Lahaina.
In short, climate change or drought had little to do with this event.
The Bottom Line
Lahaina was a disaster ready to happen. A human-caused disaster. Large areas of highly flammable invasive grasses were just east of Lahaina. Grasses growing in abandoned farmland.
The power infrastructure was poor and prone to wind damage.
The National Weather Service and local agencies did not make the best use of greatly improved weather forecast models.
Warnings were inadequate, and roads were blocked by powerline crews and fallen poles/lines.
But the weather forecasts were stunningly good.ย We have come a long, long way
Hopefully, our paper and future work will contribute to ensuring this terrible tragedy never happens again.
As the U.S. worked to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of scientists signed the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for โfocused protectionโ for older adults, people with medical conditions, and other high-risk populations rather than near-total lockdowns.
That rankled Dr. Anthony Fauci and then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins so much that they colluded with news outlets to engineer โa quick and devastating published takedown of its premises.โ The mainstream media helped ensure that the declaration was primarily ignored. Businesses went bankrupt, millions of students fell years behind in their studies, and thousands suffered unnecessarily.
Today, scientists and other experts are showing that fears about a man-made climate crisis are exaggerated and that โcleanโ energy โsolutionsโ would be far more harmful than any alleged temperature increases, climate โdisruptionsโ or โunprecedented extreme weather.โ
People are listening. In Europe, farmers, workers, and citizens demand that green energy policies be scrapped because families are jobless and entire industries are closing down or moving overseas as energy prices skyrocket.
Americaโs โclimate crisisโ profiteers have also seen rising doubts and opposition โ and are determined to protect their advantages, reputations, and control over public perception.
They believe desperate circumstances require desperate measures โ including censorship campaigns that look like the Barrington takedown on steroids. No one can be permitted to challenge their โscience.โ
A few years ago, Facebook and other social media platforms recruited third-party โfact-checkersโ to approve or reject climate information and silence anyone who questioned apocalyptic climate claims. When people began raising questions about the utility of wind, solar, and battery power, censorship efforts swiftly targeted those doubting Thomases.
Then-White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy called on news media and tech companies to help silence โinsidious and widespread misinformationโ that might be โseeding doubtโ about the feasibility and costs of the Biden administrationโs โenergy transition,โ whether wind and solar can provide reliable, affordable electricity for modern industrial societies, and whether we can just stop using fossil fuels.
But this is exactly what we must discuss before activists, bureaucrats and politicians make energy decisions that could destroy our economy, standard of living, freedoms, and environment. We need to know:
โข How many wind turbines and solar panels do we need to replace the electricity we now depend on โ and to generate even more electricity to replace gasoline for vehicles and natural gas for heating and cooking?
โข How many trillions of dollars will those wind, solar, and transmission installations cost?
โข How much will our electricity rates go up, and how many millions of acres of wildlife, scenic, agricultural, and ocean areas the facilities will cover? How much private land will be seized through eminent domain?
โข If we shut down natural gas, coal, nuclear, or hydroelectric power plants and donโt have sufficient wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries to replace them, how often will widespread blackouts occur?
โข How many millions of tons of nonrenewable steel, aluminum, copper, cobalt, concrete, and other materials will be required to manufacture all this equipment, and how much toxic pollution and carbon emissions will all those activities cause?
โข How many of those activities will take place in the United States โ and how many in China, Russia, and Africa, with monumental amounts of coal but few pollution controls, child and slave labor regulations, or consideration for U.S. national security risks?
These are fundamental, commonsense concerns. Europeans are revolting against net-zero and clean energy policies because politicians refused to listen.
Yet the concerns rarely get raised in the U.S. because climate crisis and renewable energy allies donโt seem to want people to realize how costly, risky, and harmful this Green New Deal transition would be. In fact, theyโre ramping up information control, โfact-checkingโ and censorship.
Print, electronic, and social media use government and foundation grants to generate more articles asserting that man-made climate change causes species losses, human health issues, domestic violence, and other far-fetched problems. Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration trains journalists worldwide to produce dramatic and rigorous coverage of climate change, to engage audiences, and to create โthe political will needed to tackle the crisis.โ
Media outlets often refuse to cover studies or statements that suggest climate change is not driven by fossil fuels or is not a crisis.
A Swiss billionaire funded Climate Power, whose website describes it as โa strategic communications organization focused on winning the politics of climate,โ to pressure broadcasters to stop airing ads criticizing President Bidenโs electric vehicle mandate. โFact-checkersโ insisted itโs not a ban or mandate, but merely regulations that make it impossible for manufacturers to produce anything but EVs. Other billionaires are prodding Hollywood to promote climate Armageddon in movies.
These โesteemed arbiters of climate truthโ are making progress โ but are far from achieving their โmasters of the universeโ goals.
Nevertheless, their bias and censorship are impacting our lives. They need to be resisted and called to account before they transition our energy infrastructure into one that leaves us freezing in the dark.
What is it about fossil fuels and the people who produce them that brings forth such uncontrolled hatred, anger, and vengefulness in a very large segment of the population?
What is it about fossil fuels and the people who produce them that brings forth such uncontrolled hatred, anger, and vengefulness in a very large segment of the population?
Iโve been trying to figure out the answer to that question for many years, but Iโm no closer today than when I started. I look at the use of fossil fuels in the world, and somehow I see enormous benefits to mankind โ reliable electricity, transportation of people locally and at long distances, and of freight to enable worldwide trade, comfortable heating and cooling of homes, refrigeration to preserve food, computers, and so much more, all at remarkably low cost and remarkably small environmental impact. Most uses of fossil fuels either have no good substitutes (e.g., air travel, ocean shipping, steel-making), or only substitutes that have both higher cost, plus inferior functionality and/or their own environmental problems (e.g., wind, solar, or nuclear for electricity).
With almost no exceptions (e.g., the Unabomber) everybody who has access to fossil fuels or their energy output uses them in large quantities, precisely because they provide great benefits at low cost and low environmental impact, in ways that nothing else can. Even the most virtue signaling of climate fanatics, with almost no exceptions, wonโt give up air travel, or buildings made with steel and concrete, or full-time life-saving electricity at the hospital, or plenty of other things that come only from fossil fuels.
The image that I canโt get out of my mind is the spectacle of the witnesses speaking at a public hearing I attended in May 2022 on the subject of the โScoping Planโ then proposed for New York State to banish fossil fuels from its energy system. (That Scoping Plan has since been adopted, with essentially no significant changes.). As I reported in this post on May 3, 2022, I observed about 60 people testifying at this hearing, of whom only three spoke critically about the idea of banishing fossil fuels โ and those three were myself plus two representatives from local utilities (whose criticisms were understandably mild and hedged, to say the least, given the political environment that they face).
At that hearing, a large number of supporters of banning fossil fuels gave impassioned and emotional pleas to speed up the process. What had aroused these strong emotions? The witness whose testimony I remember most vividly was a thirty-ish woman who stated that her young son had severe asthma, which she blamed on the fumes emitted by her gas-powered kitchen stove. Speaking of the health problems of her son, this woman broke down in tears and deep sobs, which definitely seemed genuine, and blamed the sonโs problems on the uncaring gas utility. And yet for some reason she continued to use the gas stove. Had it never occurred to her that it was completely within her agency to go out and buy an electric stove? I was hoping to get a chance to ask her that question, but she disappeared before I could track her down.
In the years that Iโve been following this subject, the efforts to impose punishments and revenge on fossil fuel producers in this country have only proliferated and become more impassioned and more intense and more angry. Here are a few markers along the way:
In this post on January 24, 2018 I reported on lawsuits that had just been brought by certain cities in California, and by New York City, both against a group of five major oil companies, blaming them for the โnuisanceโ of CO2 emission, and asking for some large and unspecified amount of damages plus some equally unspecified injunctive relief. I nominated those cases for the prestigious title of โstupidest litigation in the country,โ based on the proposition that I couldnโt figure out what they were really trying to accomplish. I asked, if itโs money they want, why donโt they impose a tax on fossil fuel purchases; but then I answered my own question: โOh, wait a minute, they already have that. ย Well, they could double it!โ Ultimately, the cases could only be understood as vengeful political acts against irrationally hated adversaries.
The New York case from January 2018 ended up getting dismissed in the District Court, and that decision was affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, while the California case that I had discussed continues to this day to kick around the courts after a convoluted procedural history. So would this long stint in purgatory be the death of this type of effort to exact revenge on large oil companies for the sin of producing fossil fuels? The opposite. Such cases have proliferated like mushrooms in the years since. Here is a May 2023 post from a Columbia Law School blog with some extensive history of cases taking the same or very similar form. According to author Korey Silverman-Roati, โIn total, at least 25 [similar] cases have been filed in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaiโi, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Vermont.โ
Nearly all of these cases were brought in state rather than federal courts. (The exception was the New York City case โ the one that ended up getting dismissed.). The occasion for the May 2023 Columbia blog post was that the Supreme Court had just denied a certiorari petition that had been filed in several of the cases seeking to get them removed into the federal courts. With that Supreme Court action, there are now somewhere around two dozen of these cases moving forward in one state court system or another. The plan is to exact massive financial revenge against these evil oil companies.
And how about another line of attack seeking to destroy these fossil fuel producers? It now comes to my attention that there is a campaign to introduce bills in state legislatures (all in blue states, to the extent I have learned so far) seeking to impose on fossil fuel producers an obligation to fund a type of โsuperfundโ mechanism to pay the states large amounts to โmitigateโ supposed climate damage. Here is the text of such a bill recently introduced in the Vermont legislature in 2024, and here is another one from my own New York from 2023. Iโm given to understand that comparable bills are somewhere in the works in other states, including Massachusetts and Maryland. I have the same question that I had about the โnuisanceโ lawsuits: Why not just impose a tax? The only answer I can think of is that a mere tax does not give a sufficient demonstration of anger and revenge.
And now for the most recent escalation, to yet another whole new level. Yesterday, there appeared in the left-wing magazine The New Republic an article with the headline: โThe Case for Prosecuting Fossil Fuel Companies for Homicide.โ Iโm not making this up. Brief excerpt (from a long article): โClimate change is not a tragedy, itโs a crime.โ This refrain, increasingly common among climate activists, encapsulates rising moral outrage at major fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP as more information has come to light about their knowledge and conduct regarding global warming.โ You might think that this is completely unhinged, but believe me, the authors (and the โclimate activistsโ that they refer to in the quote) are completely serious. Their anger is intense, and their goal is revenge.
And yet at the same time, all of the people engaged in these campaigns of anger and vengeance are major users themselves of the fossil fuels. If these products and their producers are so evil, wouldnโt a better strategy be to go out and produce substitutes that are better and cheaper and lack the environmental downside? Ah, but those better substitutes donโt exist. The world is investing trillions in the effort to come up with such substitutes, but so far nobody has succeeded. And by the way, nobody is going to succeed at this during my lifetime.
So far, the overall strategy of the major energy companies has been to lie as low as possible and hope that before long these people will come to their senses and this will all blow over. That may have made sense when this started. Ten years ago, I would not have believed that this insanity could possibly have gone as far as it has. However, given where we are today, I think that the time for lying low has passed.
Hereโs my proposal for the next phase of this game. The fossil fuel producers, either individually or through trade associations, should pick a state, logically a relatively small one (Vermont might be a good place to start), and go to the legislature with this proposition: Ban us! Make the sale or use of fossil fuels in your state illegal, starting at some early date, like for example tomorrow. We will then withdraw. And your citizens will then find out whether they prefer life with fossil fuels, or without them.
In other words, stop being such pansies. Itโs time to call their bluff.
The sameย Tribuneย which reported fifty years ago (2024-50=1974) that the changes in the climate caused by the burning of fossil fuelsย was globalย cooling.
A climate changing to a cooler one in 1974. A climate changing to a hotter one in 2024. You canโt have it both ways. So much for elemental fact-checking / investigative journalism in 2024. And of course, neither newspaper could be bothered to check the veracity of accusations presented in this โ yes it is โ latest boilerplate copy filing straight out of Sher Edlingโs San Francisco offices. How do I know itโs another boilerplate copy where Chicagoโs own city lawyers very likely had little or no input to offer? Letโs dive into Chicago v BP PLC et al.: (my own PDF download file here, if that link ceases to function)
First, however, I was thinking Sher Edling would not be able to come up with any new way to hand its head on a silver platter to the defendant companies in any new lawsuit they wished to add to their boilerplate copy pile. I was wrong. They did โ hold that thought until my checklist item about their citation source switch for their accusation against astrophysicist Dr Willie Soon.
โ Chicago v BP claims Exxon et al. โknewโ (hence, the โExxonKnewโ lawsuits label) as far back as the 1970s that they were harming the planet. Same basic accusation back in the 2017 start for Sher Edling with their San Mateo County v Chevron filing. In two places, identical words shared between this latest one and their first filing. Want to see an even closer matchup? Try Sher Edlingโs Dec 2023 twin Indian Tribes lawsuits. That pair just left out the bit in Chicago about โin the minds of โฆโ and instead had three other extra words. Want to see where all of those words were previously included? Try Sher Edlingโs Honolulu v Sunoco. No need for your own municipalityโs lawyers to get in the way, just bring in the San Fran law firm.
Exxon knew use of their products caused climate change as far back as the โ70s? Right. Climate change โฆ to what?? And who is it thatโs actually deceiving the public in this situation today?
What also proves Chicago here is just the latest boilerplate copy traveling circus act?
A small minority of text writers use those kinds of brackets who want to reproduce quoted phrases so deadly accurately that they canโt bring themselves to put an uppercase letter in the middle of a sentence. Kert Davies, operator of the Climate Investigations Center / Climate Files sites, doesnโt use brackets for the โreposition global warmingโ memos (e.g. at this page, showing a deceptively cropped, never-published newspaper advertorial) โฆ. except for the brackets seen in his 2018 page here. Sher Edling, donโt forget, says they source documents, such as the โChicken Littleโ advertorial, from ClimateFiles.
โ โAdvertorialsโ attributed (falsely, in 2 of the 3 on Chicagoโs PDF file page 84) to the Western Fuels Association โICEโ-acronym public relations campaign. The same ads which the head of Sher Edling cannot describe accurately.
She is on retainer with Sher Edling, an even bigger problem for them as I detail at length here, and in my dissections of her Friends of the Court filings she filed for the plaintiffs in these โExxonKnewโ lawsuits (her especially inept enslavement in those to the โreposition global warmingโ memos is an acute embarrassment).
Naomi Oreskes isnโt missing โ in this filing, however. Just like in the Indian Tribes lawsuits, Sher Edling features her in Chicagoas an extraneous citation source surrounding a controversial IPCC topic. The potentially fatal problem for Sher Edling is Oreskesโ ties to a 1992-era Senate staffer, said to be associated (more than once) with Al Gore, over the โreposition global warmingโ memos. This could sink the entire accusation around those worthless memos. Investigators might want to explore whether one of the โmunicipality partner government attorneysโ advised Sher Edling that the Richard Lawson memo / Oreskes My Facts book chapter was something they didnโt want to draw attention to.
By this point, just like in the other Sher Edling boilerplate copy lawsuits, readers may see how Sher Edling isnโt merely brought into the local municipalities to offer random advice, they have every appearance of running the show. But letโs now examine what I mentioned up at the top โ the firmโs latest ill-advised maneuver:
โ โBankrollโ / โpaidโ / โfunded scientistsโ โ Sher Edling was very consistent from San Mateo County v Chevron in 2017 to October 2022 in Platkin v Exxon, regarding the use of the word โbankrollโ to accuse skeptic climate scientist, Dr Willie Soon, of being industry-corrupted. When it came time for Sher Edling to file their September 2020 Delaware v BP lawsuit, however, they needed to switch their Smithsonian Institution press release citation source for the accusation to an Internet Archive version because the Smithsonian had taken their page about Dr Soon offline โ Sher Edling continued using the Archive link through to their Platkin filing, and while their Dec 2023 Indian Tribes twin filings swapped the word โpaidโ for โbankroll,โ the archive Smithsonian press release page citation remained. The Smithsonian Institution never said he was โpaidโ or โbankrolledโ by any fossil fuel company, they simply stated they were beginning to look into whether there was a problem with his funding disclosures.
I thought it was hugely suspicious that the supposedly unrelated law firm of Milberg Coleman seemingly plagiarized Sher Edlingโs collection of โbankrollโ paragraphs for their Nov 2022 Puerto Rico v Exxon filing โ albeit with an alternative weblink to the Smithsonian press release page. I thought it was significantly more suspicious when the also-supposedly unrelated Attorney General of Californiaโs office apparently plagiarized the โbankrollโ paragraph out of Platkinnearly word-for word โฆ.. but rather than cite the Smithsonian press release page as all the others do, CA v Exxoncited something different out-of-the-blue: A Smithsonian Magazine article written by William Allman who cited widespread news about Dr Soonโs โcorruptionโ revealed by Greenpeaceโs / Climate Investigation Centerโs Kert Davies.
Want to see whatโs in the โ again โ supposedly unrelated CA AGโsย CA v Exxonย repeated word-for-word identically, including the citation switch to the William Allman article source? Itโs easier here to just drop in a translucent blue rectangle at the point where the identical wordingย stops.
Chicago v BP. Sher Edling now has every appearance in the world of plagiarizing from CA AG Rob Bontaโs CA v Exxon โฆ. who had apparently previously plagiarized from Sher Edlingโs boilerplate pile.
If this latest wrinkle in the climate issue law fare is not one more huge gift on a silver platter to the defendant companies, piled on top of what I detailed above, I donโt what can be better. Dr Soon pointed out that the Smithsonian Institution didnโt tell anyone how their 5-year investigation concluded that he had not failed to disclose his funding properly. If he had, Kert Davies would have broadcasted the results from the mountaintops โ the report would be in all of the Sher Edling lawsuits post-2020.
Enviro-activists are brimming with confidence that this โfloodโ โExxonKnewโ lawsuits and the handlers pouring them out are all above reproach. What could possibly go wrong? If the case can be made that each โ in domino fashion โ should be dismissed due to a total lack of evidence for the claims about โindustry-paid shill climate scientists,โ and that the core people behind these lawsuits should be investigated and prosecuted, those enviros will never see this coming.
America is aggressively pursuing โgreenโ electricity and actively phasing out crude oil to reduce emissions generated in America by deliberately increasing worldwide exploitations of humanity, environmental degradation, and increased emissions.
America is aggressively pursuing โgreenโ electricity and actively phasing out crude oil to reduce emissions generated in America by deliberately increasing worldwide exploitations of humanity, environmental degradation, and increased emissions.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, President Joe Biden, and world leaders are not cognizant enough to know that wind turbines and solar panels only generate occasional electricity and cannot manufacture tires, cable insulation, asphalt, medicines, and the more than 6,000 productsnow made from the petrochemical derivatives manufactured from crude oil.
Without a replacement for the petrochemical derivatives manufactured from crude oil, phasing out oil would also phase out the medical, military, transportation, communications, and electrical power industries, none of which existed before the 1800s.
Climate change may impact millions, but without fossil fuels and the infrastructures and products we have today that did not exist before the 1800s, we may lose billions from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths.
Eradicating the world of crude oil usage would ground the 20,000 commercial aircraft, and more than 50,000 military aircraft worldwide, leave the 50,000 merchant shipstied up at docks, and discontinue the military and space programs! Without a backup plan to replace crude oil, the 8 billion on this planet will face the greatest threat to humanity without jets, merchant ships, and space programs.
Americaโs climate policies being introduced are particularly harmful to developing countries. America is probably the most environmentally controlled country in the world, but by deliberately relying on poorer developing countries for our fuels and products, we are โleakingโ to other countries:
Leakage of emissions to countries with minuscule environmental laws.
Leakage of the exploitations of people with yellow, brown, and black skin to counties with minuscule labor laws.r
Leakage of environmental degradation to landscapes in developing countries where there are minuscule environmental laws.
California is home to 9 International airports, 41 Military airports, and 3 of the largest shipping ports in America. Californiaโs growing dependency on other nations is a serious national security risk for America!
Itโs a no-brainer that an attack on the ports at San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Long Beach could paralyze the American economy, causing huge reductions in fuels for Californiaโs in-state infrastructures and stagnating the supply chain of products for the entire country.
Meanwhile, California continues to constantly reduce its in-state refining capacity, which refines fuels and petrochemicals for societyโs materialistic demands, and continues to grow its dependency on foreign oil.
A few notes about ELECTRICITY:
Everything that needs electricity, such as the basic light bulb, computers, iPhones and iPads, televisions, washing machines, and X-ray equipment, is made with oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.
Every method of generating electricity, such as wind turbines, solar panels, hydroelectric, nuclear, coal, and natural gas power plants, exists only because the parts and components of the generation system are made with crude oil derivatives.
Renewables, like wind turbines and solar panels, only generate occasional electricity from inconsistent breezes and sunshine but manufacture no products for society.
Fossil fuels, on the other hand, manufacture everything for the 8 billion living on this planet, i.e., products and transportation fuels.
Most importantly, today, there is a lost reality that the primary usage of crude oil is NOT for generating electricity but to manufacture derivatives and fuels, which are the ingredients of everything needed by economies and lifestyles to exist and prosper. Energy realism requires that the legislators, policymakers, and media that demonstrate pervasive ignorance about crude oil usage understand the staggering scale of the decarbonization movement.
The ruling class and powerful elite have yet to identify the replacement for the oil derivatives that are the basis of more than 6,000 productsand all the fuels for the merchant ships, aircraft, military, and space programs that support the 8 billion living on this planet.
The American government provides incentives and tax deductions to transition society to EVs, but those incentives are financial incentives for the continuation of Child Labor and Ecological Destruction โElsewhere.โ Is it ethical and moral to provide financial support to developing countries that are mining for exotic minerals and metals to build EV batteries for Americans?
Weโve become a very materialistic society over the last 200 years, and the world has populated from 1 to 8 billion because of all the products and different fuels for planes, ships, trucks, cars, military, and the space program that did not exist before the 1800s. Until a crude oil replacement is identified, the world needs a backup plan that replaces crude oil that will support the manufacturing of the products of our materialistic society.
Todayโs materialistic world cannot survive without crude oil!Conversations are needed to discuss the difference between just ELECTRICITYโ from renewables and the โPRODUCTSโ that are the basis of societyโs materialistic world. Wind turbines and solar panels are themselves MADE from oil derivatives and only generate occasional electricity but manufacture NOTHING for society.
How dare the ruling class, powerful elite, and media avoid energy literacy conversations about the โElephant in the Roomโ? The end of crude oil, which is manufactured into all the products and transportation fuels that built the world to eight billion people, would be the end of civilization, as โunreliable electricityโ from breezes and sunshine cannot manufacture anything.
In other words, WGIII explicitly equates CO2ย emissions, or the CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions, with dangerous global warming. We have seen that equating CO2ย emissions with warming is a poorly supported assumption contained in an inaccurate climate model that runs hot compared to observations, not a fact.
In the previous report, part 6 of this series, I discussed the bias in AR6 WGII. The major bias in the report stemmed from ignoring the benefits of a warmer world with more CO2 and only considering the possible problems. They also assumed, against nearly all evidence, that extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and impact, and at least part of the increase is likely due to humans.
AR6 WGIII, Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change, is intended to assess what is required to achieve net zero CO2 emissions globally. Given that WG1 and WGII have not established the following, this seems premature:
WGI did not show that human emissions of greenhouse gases are causing significant or dangerous warming.
WGII did not consider the well-documented benefits of global warming and additional atmospheric CO2.
The WGIII justification for net zero is as follows:
โReaching net zero CO2 emissions globally along with reductions in other GHG emissions is necessary to halt global warming at any level. At the point of net zero, the amount of CO2 human activity is putting into the atmosphere equals the amount of CO2 human activity is removing from the atmosphere. Reaching and sustaining net zero CO2 emissions globally would stabilise CO2-induced warming.โ[1]IPCC AR6 WGIII, page 86
In other words, WGIII explicitly equates CO2 emissions, or the CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions, with dangerous global warming. We have seen that equating CO2 emissions with warming is a poorly supported assumption contained in an inaccurate climate model that runs hot compared to observations, not a fact. We have also seen that assuming a warmer world is more dangerous than a cooler world is highly questionable, after all the baseline temperature used is from the end of the Little Ice Age, the coldest and most miserable period in the past 12,000 years.[2] Further, as discussed in part 5, statistical studies of weather variability, in the sense of extreme weather, since the 19th century show it has been decreasing, not increasing.[3] The bottom line is all the benefits of warming and additional CO2 have not been considered in any of the AR6 reports, so how can they equate greenhouse gas emissions with dangerous warming? They canโt. Thus, without establishing a need to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, the IPCC produced a 2,000-page report on how to do it. They define mitigation as follows:
โClimate change mitigation refers to actions or activities that limit emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from entering the atmosphere and/or reduce their levels in the atmosphere. Mitigation includes reducing the GHGs emitted from energy production and use (e.g., that reduces use of fossil fuels), and land use, and methods to mitigate warming, for example, by carbon sinks which remove emissions from the atmosphere through land-use or other (including artificial) mechanisms.โ[4]IPCC AR6 WGIII, page 194
The report doesnโt explain why, they simply assume that reducing emissions and total greenhouse gases is necessary. They presume that WGI and WGII have made the case that these emissions are causing dangerous climate change. This presumption is very controversial.[5]
The report discusses greenhouse gas emissions in units of โGtCO2-equivalentโ and reports that 2019 emissions were about 59 GtCO2-equivalent.[6] Methods of reducing these emissions are listed in the report and they are quite expensive. For example, to install enough wind and solar energy generation to reduce emissions by 4 GtCO2-eq per year each would cost US$50-100 per tonne. [7] That is spending US$100 to 200 billion to reduce emissions by 8 GtCO2-eq or about 14% per year.
Since 2000 CO2 emissions have been increasing about 0.5 GtCO2-eq per year for a total of 10 GtCO2.[8] Will this rate of increase, which is 91% linear, change significantly? Doubtful, it has flattened in the past few years, but that is probably due to the Covid shutdowns and the economic downturn in China.
The cost of mitigation
WGIII estimates that the cost of mitigation in Agriculture, Forestry, and other land uses, which they abbreviate as โAFOLUโ is US$178 billion/year.[9] If there is an estimated cost to reduce emissions in the transportation sector in WGIII, I missed it. Especially the cost of replacing air travel, if it is even possible, is not mentioned. According to WGIII, โAviation is widely recognized as a โhard to decarbonizeโ sector.โ[10] The costs associated with decarbonizing transportation, some 24% of all delivered energy, are probably astronomical, they may have been afraid to calculate the cost. Instead, they created an impenetrable metric called โIAM,โ which stands for โIntegrated Assessment Model,โ that supposedly includes cost as one of its variables.[11] The IAM also includes the poorly defined, and widely criticized โsocial cost of carbonโ factor.[12] The social cost of carbon is criticized because it is too easily manipulated to achieve whatever answer you like.[13]
WGIII seems to think that traditional cost-benefit analysis is not very useful. They write:
โ[There are] multiple difficulties in assessing an objective, globally acceptable single estimate of climate change damages, with some arguing that agreement on a specific value can never be expected. A new generation of cost-benefits analysis, based on projections of actual observed damages, results in stronger mitigation efforts as optimal.โ[14]IPCC AR6 WGIII, page 181
It appears that their obscure IAM model was chosen because it supports their โstronger mitigation efforts.โ Why do they not do a proper cost-benefit analysis so we can compare it to their IAM model? That would seem very logical. John Pezzey, for example, prefers using marginal abatement costs to evaluate climate mitigation costs, versus benefits, as they are less uncertain than using the social cost of carbon.[15]
In WGIII, they write:
โThere are few obvious solutions to decarbonising heavy vehicles like international ships and planes. The main focus has been increased efficiency, which so far has not prevented these large vehicles from becoming the fastest-growing source of GHG globally.โ[16]IPCC AR6 WGIII, page 1120
Increasing efficiency lowers costs, which increases demand, a principle known as โJevonsโ Paradox.โ[17] WGIII wants to limit emissions to the point where temperature increases will not exceed 2ยฐC according to the WGI climate models. Accomplishing this will supposedly reduce global GDP by 1.3 to 2.7% in 2050.[18] We will remember from part 6 that the cost of climate change is estimated to be 1.3% of global GDP after 2.5ยฐC of warming (about 2100 using SSP2-4.5) according to Richard Tol,[19] so this does not seem like a very good deal. Why not just put up with or adapt to climate change? It is projected to be cheaper, and the potential damage due to climate change is highly questionable in any case.[20]
The costs of implementing wind and solar, while high, are minor compared to other industrial costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Only about 18% of the total energy consumed in the world is in the form of electricity according to Exxonโs Outlook.[21] Compare this to the 24% of consumed energy used for transportation. Industry accounts for 50% of the worldโs consumed energy.[22]
Replacing fossil fuels in electricity generation is relatively easy compared to making plastic, steel, ammonia (fertilizer), and cement without fossil fuels. Perhaps methods of making these critical industrial materials without fossil fuels are technically possible, but the costs are high. According to WGIII, industry overall is a major emitter of greenhouse gases, accounting for 34% of global emissions in 2019.[23]
Plastic, for example, currently relies on fossil feedstock for 99% of its raw materials.[24] Some technologies to reduce GHG emissions while producing steel, aluminum, and other materials are listed in table 11.3 of WGIII,[25] along with the cost when known. All are expensive. Unlike transportation, WGIII does provide estimates of the cost of some decarbonized industrial materials:
โMaterial Economics (2019) shows that with deep decarbonisation, depending on the pathway, steel costs grow by 20โ30%; plastics by 20โ45%; ammonia by 15โ60%; and cement (not concrete) by 70โ115%.โ[26]IPCC AR6 WGIII, page 1196
These are four of the most critical components of our modern civilization, and doing without them would change our lives drastically, and not for the better. These WGIII estimates of cost increases are large. Since these products are the basis of nearly everything we use, as these increases percolate through the global economy, they will reduce the standard of living of everyone.
WGIII Assessment
WGIII is a comprehensive assessment of greenhouse gas emissions and various methods to reduce them. As I read the report, I kept looking for a proper aggregate cost/benefit analysis chapter or section. If it is there, I missed it. As a member of the public, I am purchasing this United Nations IPCC mitigation product. Is it too much to ask what the costs are and how much I benefit from buying it? I donโt think so.
When they do estimate costs, and some of their mentions are noted above, they are never aggregated for an entire section, for example transportation or industry. The values given appear cherry picked and often the method of cost calculation is obscure.
Some independent writers and economists, like Bjorn Lomborg, have estimated aggregate costs. Lomborg, using IPCC data, has estimated that if the Paris climate change agreement[27] were fully implemented, each dollar spent would return 11โต of benefit.[28] This is the sort of summary of costs versus benefits that the IPCC should provide. Although Bjorn Lomborg is a well-known expert in this sort of policy analysis, I notice that searching WGIII for his name turns up nothing. Another indication of bias.
William Nordhaus pioneered cost/benefit analysis of climate change impacts in 1992[29] and won the Nobel Prize[30] for Economic Sciences, yet WGIII seems quite dismissive of his work. They write:
โFor at least 10 to 15 years after the first computed global cost-benefit estimate (Nordhaus 1992), the dominant conclusions from these different approaches seemed to yield very different recommendations, with cost-benefit studies suggesting lenient mitigation compared to the climate targets typically recommended from scientific risk assessments.โ[31]IPCC AR6 WGIII, page 180
We notice that their given reason for rejecting Nordhausโ work is that it suggests less mitigation than the climate targets suggested by the IPCC. Yet, it is well known that there is no scientific basis for either the 2ยฐ or the 1.5ยฐC limits, they are arbitrary.[32] This is classic confirmation bias, selecting methods, models, and studies to reach desired conclusions. That they imply the Nobel Prize winning Willam Nordhaus is less โscientificโ than they are, is a sure sign of bias and it betrays unseemly hubris (aka the Dunning-Kruger effect).
The main problem with WGIII is no properly supported reason is given to reduce emissions, either in WGIII or in the first two volumes of AR6. The report has not established a need for the solutions they propose.
Further, their IAM model for computing the cost of climate change, relative to the cost of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, is unbelievable and disputed.[33] It is premature to write a volume on methods of reducing emissions, until the emissions are shown to cause problems. So far additional emissions have done little except to make winters, nights, and higher latitudes warmer; and increase plant growth.[34]
Summary and Conclusions
We have reviewed the models used in the AR6 report and find that all suffer from a biased selection of sources and models. We have found numerous examples of reporting and confirmation bias in all three volumes of the report. WGI completely ignores entire areas of research, such as the effects of solar variability and meridional transport on climate. Their focus is only on their preferred climate change variable: greenhouse gases. We would benefit from their consideration of alternative views and concur with the recommendation of the InterAcademy Council on this point.[35]
WGII focusses only on the negative effects of climate change and ignores abundant evidence of positive effects. We would benefit, and their report would have much more value and credibility if they considered both.
WGIII has chosen a very questionable method of cost/benefit analysis, the โsocial cost of carbon,โ or IAM analysis for their assessment of the costs and benefits of mitigating greenhouse gases. They ignore the more conventional cost/benefit analysis done by Nobel Prize winning William Nordhaus and by Bjorn Lomborg, because their analyses suggest โmore lenient mitigation compared to the climate targets typically recommended.โ[36] Perhaps more lenient mitigation is the best choice, perhaps no mitigation is best? This report does not help us make that decision.
In every volume we see that the selection of papers cited, model input, and models chosen was guided not by a desire to uncover the truth, but by how best to reach their pre-determined conclusions. The three volumes, total 7,519 pages and most of content is made useless by obvious reporting and confirmation bias. In summary, we see that the hundreds, maybe thousands of authors were given the answer, and told to find the data and analysis to support it. What a useless waste of time and money.
This is part 7 of a series of posts, all the post titles begin with โClimate Model Biasโ to make searching for the series easier.
(May, Are fossil-fuel CO2 emissions good or bad?, 2022g) and (Behringer, 2010). The last 12,000 years are known as the Holocene. See also: (May, The IPCC AR6 Report Erases the Holocene, 2023d) and (Liu, et al., 2014)ย โ
(Lomborg, The Alarming Thing About Climate Alarmism, 2015), (Lomborg, Weโre Safer From Climate Disasters Than Ever Before, 2021), and (Lomborg, Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies,, 2020)ย โ
(Lomborg, Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies,, 2020)ย โ
A right-of-center pundit is appealing a February ruling that found him liable for defaming a prominent climate scientist, and legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that he may have a good chance at a successful appeal.
A right-of-center pundit is appealing a February ruling that found him liable for defaming a prominent climate scientist, and legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that he may have a good chance at a successful appeal.
A Washington, D.C., juryย concludedย that Mark Steyn โ a right-of-center political pundit who referenced a separate blog post comparing climate scientist Michael Mann to serial pedophile Jerry Sandusky for the formerโs purported data manipulation in his signature 1998 โhockey stickโ climate model โ liable for defaming Mann. Steyn isย appealingย the courtโs decision that he must pay Mann $1 million in punitive damages on top of $1 in compensatory damages, and legal experts told the DCNF that his case may be strong enough to win on appeal.
โMichael Mannโs counsel did something youโre not supposed to do. He invited the jury to send a message that these attacks on scientists have to stop and the jury, being a D.C. jury, decided they were going to send that message. Now, thatโs explicitly forbidden, both in the District of Columbia and in the United States at large,โ Steyn told the DCNF. โYouโre supposed to be trying โFred Smith.โ Heโs the guy in the dock. Youโre not sending a message to millions of other potential โFred Smithsโ out there. But thatโs what they did.โ (RELATED: Mark Steynโs Case Against Climategate Scientist Is Taking So Long A Key Witness Died)
Beyond Steynโs contention that Mannโs counsel โinvited the jury to send a messageโ to critics of consensus positions on hot-button issues like climate change, legal experts told the DCNF that the ratio of compensatory and punitive damages could open the door for a favorable outcome for Steynโs appeal.
โIt appears to me that Steyn has strong arguments that the punitive damages awarded are excessive under current law, particularly under Supreme Court decisions invalidating exorbitant punitive damage awards that are disproportionate to the actual damages suffered by the plaintiff,โ Jonathan Adler, the director of Case Western Reserve University School of Lawโs environmental law center, told the DCNF. โBy this standard, a one-million-to-one ratio between punitive and compensatory damages would appear to be quite problematic.โ
โThat said, there are some complicating factors. On the one hand, punitive damages will always appear disproportionate in which compensatory damages are nominal. On the other hand, the arguments against disproportionate punitive damages would seem to be augmented by the First Amendment concerns,โ Adler continued. โIf, as the jury concluded, Mann suffered no measurable harm from what Steyn wrote, the primary function of the punitive damage award is to discourage potentially inflammatory commentary about matters of public concern, and that raises serious First Amendment problems.โ
Anthony Fargo, the director of the Center for International Media Law and Policy Studies at Indiana University, agreed with Adlerโs assessment of the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages.
โThe appellate court is likely to look at this thing that jumps out at me here is the punitive damage award. I think an appellate court would be reluctant to second guess the jury as far as its findings of fact,โ Fargo told the DCNF. โWhat they will probably raise an eyebrow at is the disproportionate amount of the punitive damage award as compared to the compensatory damage award.โย (RELATED: Climate Activists Want Michael Mooreโs Doc Panning Green Energy Banned, Say Itโs Chock Full Of Misinformation)
Usually one hope to make money from a book. Steynโs probably cost him a million dollars: https://t.co/ZQMIl774zx
The โhockey stickโ model was the result of combining several climate proxies into one model, purportedly demonstrating that global temperatures have increased drastically in the past several decades compared to the preceding centuries. Critics, including Steyn and Rand Simberg, have gone after the โhockey stickโ model for many years, contending that it should not be considered credible because of its purported flaws.
โThe fact that a verdict was rendered against [Steyn] when you had a statistics expert like Abraham Wyner of the University of Pennsylvania testifying that Mann engaged in โimproper manipulationโ of data that made his signature climate model โmisleadingโ demonstrates that the jury ignored the legal principle that the truth is a defense to any defamation claim,โ Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow for the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF. โFrom a legal standpoint, Steyn should have the ability to appeal on the basis that the jury ignored his defense that his criticisms that Mann had manipulated data were the truth, and therefore the jury committed a grievous legal error when it found against him.โ
National Reviewโs editorsย wroteย Wednesday that the outlet โ which Mann also sued before a court order led to the outlet being dropped from the suit โย is looking to โrecover more than a million of the dollars that we have lost defending [its] unalienable right to free speechโ from Mann. Before National Review was dropped from the suit, Mann wrote in emails that the outlet is a โfilthy organizationโ and a โthreat to our children,โย accordingย to the outlet.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporterโs byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contactย licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
You must be logged in to post a comment.