Day: April 18, 2024

They Were Catastrophising the Climate in the 17th Century

A long time ago I became fascinated by the obsession people have that the time they live in is of epic, overwhelming significance. I hunted around for a word that would sum this up. There isn’t one, so I invented my own: chronocentricity. It’s a form of egocentricity, a solipsistic fixation with the notion of one’s own implicit importance by living in a time of importance.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE

A long time ago I became fascinated by the obsession people have that the time they live in is of epic, overwhelming significance. I hunted around for a word that would sum this up. There isn’t one, so I invented my own: chronocentricity. It’s a form of egocentricity, a solipsistic fixation with the notion of one’s own implicit importance by living in a time of importance.

One of the curiosities of chronocentricity is that it is almost always predicated on the belief that the present is self-evidently of especial badness, replete with disasters and an imminent catastrophe of some sort, while what went before was much better.

The present is the worst of times, the past was the best of times. Nothing could sum up today’s climate catastrophising better since, as we all know, apparently the 1830s were paradise when the world was in a perfect state of equilibrium (but see the quote that ends this piece below).

Climate catastrophising is part of the human condition. It’s always been there because it’s a mechanism we use to distinguish one day from another and because it can have a dramatic impact on our survival. One can go back to Roman times and even earlier for various accounts and explanations, but they are scattered and don’t admit the creation of an organised list.

In the year AD 16, for example, the Roman General Germanicus had his fleet scattered and wrecked by a massive storm that left the survivors claiming they had seen whirlwinds and fantastic beasts (Tacitus, Annals 2.22–24, see here). The Roman natural historian Pliny the Elder supplied the invaluable information that hailstorms and whirlwinds are driven away by exposing menstrual fluid to lightning flashes, along with some other bizarre claims that a menstruating woman walking round a cornfield would lead to pests like caterpillars, worms and beetles dying (Natural History 28.76–8, see here).

Proper, coordinated climate catastrophising kicked off when early modern records and diary-keeping began, and that wasn’t really until the 17th century.

In 2023 I wrote a piece for this site about the weather described by the diarist John Evelyn (1620–1706). He was not alone.

In the Companion volume to their 1970 edition of Samuel Pepys’s diary (written 1660-9), the editors Robert Latham and William Matthews included a section about weather, providing an excellent resource for anyone wishing to find out about conditions in 17th-century England, which, as any modern sceptic knows, comes before ‘modern records began’ (The Diary of Samuel Pepys vol. X, p. 470ff).

I thought I’d take a look, because in the half century since that edition of Pepys’s Diary was published some of the texts of the time to which Latham and Matthews refer have become easily available online.

Interestingly, Latham and Matthews added an observation about those 17th-century records that resonates very well today: “As always, phenomena such as storms are amply reported, if sufficiently disastrous, in pamphlets and newspapers.” (ibid. p. 471)

These extracts are from the Diary of Ralph Josselin (1616-83), Vicar of Earl’s Colne, Essex, which featured sporadic entries from 1644-82. I’ve modernised the spelling. You’ll see right from the start that Josselin was clear the weather was a divine punishment for the sins of humanity. None of these people thought of suing the Government for breaching their human rights by failing to protect them:

1647: Among all the several judgements on this nation, God this spring, rye in the latter end of April, when rye was earing and eared, sent such blasted, terrible frosts, that the ear was frozen and so died, and cometh unto nothing: young ashes also leaved were nipped, and blacked, and those shoots died, as if the Lord would continue our want, and penury, we continuing our sins.

June 28th. Summer: Lord goeth out against us in the season, which was wonderful wet; floods every week, hay rotted abroad, much was carried away with the floods, much inned but very dirty, and dangerous for cattle; corn laid, pulled down with weeds; we never had the like in my memory, and that for the greatest part of the summer ; it continued to August 14th when it rained that it made a little flood, and commonly we had one or two floods weekly, or indeed in the meadows there was as it were a continual flood.

August 16th. A very great flood with the great rains last day and night. The season sad and threatening. Daily rains, but especially this morning, we found it exceeding August 24th wet; it caused a very great flood, abundance of hay rotten, much corn cut and not cut groweth, and yet men repent not, to give glory unto God.

September 1st, it was very wet and hindered men in the harvesting; we feared it would cause a flood.

August 31st 1649. The summer past… great inundations in Flanders, and of the Seine by Paris doing great hurt; these signs portend something.

Note Josselin’s “we never had the like in my memory”. This is a common type of phrase deployed in these older descriptions. It purports to be a factual description of how the writer personally could not recall anything similarly disastrous.

However, the real function of the phrase and others like it is to be metaphorical and suggest that nothing so catastrophic had ever happened before since the dawn of time. On June 25th 1652 Evelyn had described a storm so ghastly “as no man alive had seen the like in this age”.

Today, in our supposedly scientific age the phrase ‘since records began’ serves the same purpose. Purportedly factual, it is no more than a piece of melodrama. Neatly obscuring exactly when that was, the underlying implication is that whatever-it-was is totally unprecedented – ever – thereby ensuring the observation is worth making.

The General History of the Air by the early scientist, friend of Evelyn and co-member of the Royal Society, Robert Boyle (1627-91) was published posthumously in 1692. It included a transcript of the Register of Weather kept at Oxford by the philosopher and physician John Locke (1632-1704) between 1666 and 1683, the first serious attempt at making a statistical record, which included some of these memorable observations:

March 8th 1667: Very hard frost, Thames frozen, carts went over.

July 1673: Memorand. That from the beginning of May, till the middle of July, there was scarce one dry day, but so great rains, that produced greater floods than in the memory of man.

May 20th 1681: Cloudy, no rain from hence. till June 20th, the driest spring that hath been known, there having been no rain from the end of March to the end of June.

May 1682. Memorand. That fitting my new barometer, here the mercury was raised by addition of more in the receiver about 2/10 inch, which is almost two of my degrees, which are eight(h)s, though I suspect it still by reason of included air, a degree or two too low.

This is a particularly fascinating observation since it shows that Locke was aware his instruments were prone to error.

Boyle included other disaster stories. Here’s a letter from Fort St. George in Madras, dated January 23rd 1668, describing a storm that took place on November 22nd 1667:

The like hath not been known here in any man’s memory. The tempest of wind and rain was so exceeding violent, that nothing could stand before it; men and beasts carried into the sea by the violence of the winds and floods: the generality of the houses in this and the neighbour towns were ruined: scarce any trees left standing in gardens or elsewhere: the wall of this town laid flat in several places… no place in the fort where we could keep our persons, books or papers free from the wind or rain: nor scarcely any doors could stand against the violence of it: and we hourly feared the falling of the fort down upon us, it was so exceedingly rocked: and yet abroad we could have no shelter, nor were able to stand against it. The repairing of the damage will necessarily require a great charge.

As for Pepys himself, he threw in occasional weather reports. On May 20th 1660 he was in Holland, a member of the fleet that had sailed across to bring Charles II home:

But through badness of weather we were in great danger, and a great while before we could get to the ship, so that of all the company not one but myself that was not sick. I keeping myself in the open air, though I was soundly wet for it. This hath not been known four days together such weather at this time of year, a great while.

The following year, on June 2nd 1661, Pepys mentioned:

It began to rain (as it has done of late, so much that we begin to doubt [i.e., suspect] a famine).

Two years later it was worse. On June 26th 1663, Pepys and his cousin Roger:

walked into the King’s Bench Court, where I never was before, and there stayed an hour almost, till it had done raining, which is a sad season, that it is said there hath not been one fair day these three months, and I think it is true.

Which reminded me of a BBC News story the other day about the effect of our current endless rain on crops. I don’t doubt that farmers in this country are under considerable duress right now, but the plain fact is that such circumstances are not new – as both Josselin and Pepys demonstrate.

Two years later, though, on June 7th 1665:

…it being the hottest day that ever I felt in my life, and it is confessed so by all other people the hottest they ever knew in England in the beginning of June.

It got worse. By July 11th 1665 it was “very hot beyond bearing”, which was odd because six months earlier on February 6th it had been “one of the coldest days, all say, they ever felt in England”. And then the night of July 7th-8th 1666 “proved the hottest night that ever I was in in my life, and thundered and lightened all night long and rained hard”.

Like an endless parade of modern tabloid headlines, the weather catastrophising of the 17th century provided content for diaries, pamphlets and newspapers and an excuse to point the finger at the evils of mankind.

The main effect of all this catastrophising is to obscure the truth, whatever that truth really is, and make it more likely whatever the problems are the panicked solutions either do no good or make things worse. At least back in the 17th century no-one was foolhardy enough to think the state had an obligation to protect them from the weather, and could be sued if it didn’t, or that anyone was able to change it. By 1710 John Gadbury had come up with astrological explanations for disasters in his Nauticum Astrologicum.

One thing is for certain though. Change, and adapting to it, is what we have always had to do:

“My dear Louisa must be careful of that cough,” remarked Miss Tox.

“It’s nothing,” returned Mrs Chick. “It’s merely change of weather. We must expect change.”

“Of weather?” asked Miss Tox, in her simplicity.

“Of everything,” returned Mrs Chick. “Of course we must. It’s a world of change. Anyone would surprise me very much, Lucretia, and would greatly alter my opinion of their understanding, if they attempted to contradict or evade what is so perfectly evident. Change!” exclaimed Mrs Chick, with severe philosophy. “Why, my gracious me, what is there that does not change!”Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son (1848)

Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and writer with numerous books to his credit, among them several on the correspondence and writings of John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys.

Is Biden’s War on LNG the New Anti-Nuclearism?

In the aftermath of the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident, then-Senator Joe Biden voted for a “temporary pause” on reactor permitting, despite no credible evidence of public harm from radiation. Although the measure failed, the nuclear industry never recovered from this political overreaction based on exaggerated fears. Forty-five years later, President Biden has unilaterally ordered a “temporary pause” on the permitting of liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminals – a move the Washington Post editorial board aptly labeled “a win for political symbolism, not the climate.”

From Watts Up With That?

By Patrick Hynes

April 08, 2024

In the aftermath of the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident, then-Senator Joe Biden voted for a “temporary pause” on reactor permitting, despite no credible evidence of public harm from radiation. Although the measure failed, the nuclear industry never recovered from this political overreaction based on exaggerated fears. Forty-five years later, President Biden has unilaterally ordered a “temporary pause” on the permitting of liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminals – a move the Washington Post editorial board aptly labeled “a win for political symbolism, not the climate.”

So, why are Biden’s usual allies, including some Congressional Democrats, taking the gas industry’s side? Mainly, because the decision harms the U.S. geopolitical and economic security – and climate efforts. With anti-nuclearism in our rearview, the president should know better than to listen to degrowth-oriented environmentalists who cheered the pause.

Long before LNG met resistance from mainstream green groups, nuclear energy was their primary target. They amplified fears about radiation and leveraged celebrity influence to communicate these supposed risks to young people. For example, Jane Fonda’s movie The China Syndrome, which depicts a reactor meltdown burning through the earth’s core, was released just days before Three Mile Island,  fueling public confusion. Despite no evidence of public radiation harm, the reputational damage slowed the industry’s growth. Over the next few decades, coal replaced reactors that would have been built, and emissions accelerated until peaking in the mid-2000s when plentiful natural gas led to significant decarbonization.

Biden’s LNG export terminal pause resulted from a similar campaign including many of the same organizations recycling the same tactics. Fonda was even involved, this time utilizing TikTok to reach Gen Z audiences. Because they have significant White House access and political capital in an election year, Biden took their bait and went to war with fossil fuels to appease young, progressive voters.

Part of the reason for the widespread skepticism of the pause is that it relies on highly dubious findings in one non-peer-reviewed study by a highly controversial professor with a history of publishing discredited reports on methane. It suggests that other analyses, including the Department of Energy’s, underreport methane leakage by such a large margin that LNG is actually worse than coal for the climate. It’s oddly similar to arguments that anti-nuclear activists made in the 1970s, like when a Sierra Club executive claimed: “Unlike nuclear, which risks long-term genetic damage, coal’s impacts won’t be felt generations from now.” In both cases, coal was the preferred resource for these activists.

In reality, the U.S. oil and gas sector already has the world’s lowest methane leakage rates and is leading efforts to track, capture, and monetize fugitive methane innovatively. Leakage declined by 28% between 2019 and 2021 alone. As Freeport LNG’s Chairman Michael Smith emphasized at CERA Week, “Every single one of us makes our money selling methane. We don’t want to release it.”

Conversely, Russia, the world’s second largest producer of natural gas, has little concern over methane leaks. The Department of Energy study Howarth claims to debunk found Russia’s methane emissions rate 4-5 times higher than U.S. LNG’s 1% level, though still cleaner than coal. The Kremlin’s lax standards also played a major role in the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. At Three Mile Island, higher standards and risk aversion protocols inherent in a capitalist system prevented the accident from turning into a catastrophe – though hysteria still caused investment flight to coal.

If idealistic politicians succeed in removing U.S. LNG from the global market, it will lead to the double whammy of increased coal and dirtier natural gas from emissions-agnostic countries like Russia. Like nuclear, the LNG export sector is highly vulnerable to political disruptions. A rejected export terminal, much like a failed reactor, can erode investor confidence enough to reverse the industry’s momentum. A German state-owned gas importer, SEFE, has already turned to Russia in response to the pause, and other committed buyers like Malaysia are reportedly getting cold feet. These developments are neither good for global security nor the climate.

While it may seem far-fetched that this pause could pose an existential threat to U.S. LNG exports, one need only look back to 1979 when few could have foreseen that only two new nuclear reactors would be built in the subsequent 45 years. Now that we realize how regressive that was in the fight against climate change, the president has no excuse to repeat the same mistakes.

Patrick Hynes is a fellow with ConservAmerica.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

The 2023 Hurricane Season Review

The Global Warming Policy Foundation has today published its periodic review of global hurricane activity. The author, climate researcher Paul Homewood, says that official data is absolutely clear: hurricanes are neither increasing in number nor in intensity.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

London, 16 April – The Global Warming Policy Foundation has today published its periodic review of global hurricane activity. The author, climate researcher Paul Homewood, says that official data is absolutely clear: hurricanes are neither increasing in number nor in intensity.

Homewood says:
“The observational data published by meteorological agencies in 2023 has confirmed once again that there are no upward trends in global hurricane activity since reliable records began in the 1970s.”
And Homewood calls on journalists to start reporting these undisputed facts to the public:
“While scientists are quite clear that we are not seeing any increase in hurricanes, the public have been scared into thinking that tropical storms are getting worse. Unless the mainstream media starts reporting empirical facts rather than misleading spin, it will continue to haemorrhage credibility and public trust.”

Homewood-Hurricanes-2023Herunterladen

Still Surplus Arctic Ice Mid April 2024

The animation shows Arctic ice melting season picking up first half of April 2024. Typically, the Pacific side goes to water first, this year Okhotsk (top left) is ahead of schedule. Also Baffin Bay (bottom right) is opening up early. Elsewhere Arctic drift ice remains, and Barents Sea ice (top center) is well above average for mid April.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

The animation shows  Arctic ice melting season picking up first half of April 2024.  Typically, the Pacific side goes to water first, this year Okhotsk (top left) is ahead of schedule.  Also Baffin Bay (bottom right) is opening up early. Elsewhere Arctic drift ice remains, and Barents Sea ice (top center) is well above average for mid April.

The graph below shows mid-March to mid-April daily ice extents for 2024 compared to 18 year averages, and some years of note.

The black line shows on average Arctic ice extents decline from a maximum near 14.9M km2 on day 76 down to ~14.1M Km2 by day 105. Exceptionally 2024 started with 15.1M km2 and exceeded the 18-year average throughout.  SII was somewhat lower than MASIE in most of April until ending nearly the same. Both 2021 melted faster than average, while 2006 ice started and ended much in deficit.

Why is this important?  All the claims of global climate emergency depend on dangerously higher temperatures, lower sea ice, and rising sea levels.  The lack of additional warming prior to 2023 El Nino is documented in a post UAH February 2024: SH Saves Global Warming.

The lack of acceleration in sea levels along coastlines has been discussed also.  See USCS Warnings of Coastal Flooding

Also, a longer term perspective is informative:

The table below shows the distribution of Sea Ice on day 105 across the Arctic Regions, on average, this year and 2006.

Region2024105Day 105 Ave2024-Ave.20061052024-2006
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere142440411411973312430913589226654815
 (1) Beaufort_Sea10709831069820116310686832301
 (2) Chukchi_Sea9660069646811325965591415
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea10871371085571156710835913546
 (4) Laptev_Sea89784589352843168965281317
 (5) Kara_Sea9350239229571206691237922645
 (6) Barents_Sea856908608844248064495112361796
 (7) Greenland_Sea802111653203148908599062203049
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence11794431279861-1004181042266137178
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago85486085295119098510563804
 (10) Hudson_Bay12317011247129-154281235951-4250
 (11) Central_Arctic3247180323330313877316893078250
 (12) Bering_Sea639179647219-8040667951-28772
 (13) Baltic_Sea3110744493-1338684568-53461
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk442660610735-168075507143-64483

The overall surplus to average is 124k km2, (1%).  The only major deficits are in Baffin Bay and in Sea of Okhotsk, the latter going to open water quite early.  Those are more than offset by surpluses everywhere, especially in Barents and Greenland seas.  In fact, Barents is 120% of  its 2023 maximum.

Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring Arctic ice extents.

The 2024 Solar Eclipse: What’s All the Fuss About?

It’s also cool to hear people around you respond to what they are witnessing. The air temperature becomes noticeably cooler. Scattered low clouds that might have threatened to get in the way mostly disappear, just as they do after sunset.

From Roy Spencer, PhD

April 17th, 2024 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

I feel fortunate to have witnessed two total solar eclipses in my lifetime. The first was at Center Hill Lake in central Tennessee in 2017, then this year’s (April 8) eclipse from Paducah, Kentucky. Given my age (68), I doubt I will see another.

For those who have not witnessed one, many look at the resulting photos and say, “So what?”. When I look at most of the photos (including the ones I’ve taken) I can tell you that those photos do not fully reflect the visual experience. More on that in a minute.

Having daytime transition into night in a matter of seconds is one part of the experience, with the sounds of nature swiftly changing as birds and frogs suddenly realize, “Night sure came quickly today!”

It’s also cool to hear people around you respond to what they are witnessing. The air temperature becomes noticeably cooler. Scattered low clouds that might have threatened to get in the way mostly disappear, just as they do after sunset.

But why are so many photos of the event… well… underwhelming? After thinking about this over the past week, I believe the answer lies in the extreme range of brightness a solar eclipse produces that cameras (even good ones) have difficulty capturing. This is why individual photos you see will often look different from one another. Depending upon camera exposure settings, you will see different features.

This was made very apparent to me during this year’s eclipse. Due to terrible eclipse traffic, we had to stop short of our intended destination, and I had only 10 minutes to set up a telescope and two cameras, so some of my advance planning went out the window. I was watching the “diamond” of the diamond ring phase of totality, as the last little bit of direct sunlight disappears behind the moon. At that point, it is (in my opinion) possible with the naked eye to perceive a dynamic range greater than any other scene in nature: from direct sunlight of the tiny “diamond” to the adjacent night sky with stars. I took the following photo with a Canon 6D MkII camera with 560 mm of stacked Canon lenses, which (barely) shows this extreme range of brightness.

In order to pull out the faint Earthshine on the moon’s dark side in this photo, and the stars to the left and upper-left, I had to stretch this exposure by quite a lot.

From what I have read (and experienced) the human eye/brain combination can perceive a greater dynamic range of brightness than a camera can. This is why photographers have to fool so much with camera settings to capture what their eyes see. In this case, I perceived the “diamond” of direct sunlight was (of course) blindingly bright, while the sun’s corona extending 2 to 3 solar diameters away from the sun was much less bright (in fact, the solar corona is not even as bright as a full moon). But in this single photo, both the diamond and the corona were basically at the maximum brightness the camera could capture at this exposure setting (0.5 sec, ISO400, f/5.6), even though visually they had very different brightnesses.

Many of the better photos you will find are composites of multiple photos taken over a very wide range of camera settings, which more closely approximate what the eye sees. I found this one that seems closer to what I witnessed (photo by Mark Goodman):

So, if you have never experienced a total solar eclipse, and are underwhelmed by the photos you see, I submit that the actual experience is much more dramatic than the photos indicate.

Here’s some unedited real-time video I took with my Sony A7SII camera mounted on a Skywatcher Esprit ED80 refractor telescope. We were in a Pilot Travel Center parking lot with about a dozen other cars that also didn’t make it o their destinations due to the traffic. I used a solar filter until just before totality, then removed the filter. The camera is on an automatic exposure setting. I’ve done no color grading of the video. Skip ahead to the 3 minute mark to catch the transition to totality:

Observation of the Earth shows that deforestation and urbanization cause three times more warming than CO2

Forget approximate climate models, whose simulations are increasingly removed from reality. There’s a far more scientific way of understanding the climate, and that involves observing the actual climate system directly from space or in situ. A multitude of satellites and a worldwide network of land, air and sea sensors make millions of observations every day, creating detailed, faithful images of the Earth.

From Watts Up With That?

By Robert Girouard

Forget approximate climate models, whose simulations are increasingly removed from reality. There’s a far more scientific way of understanding the climate, and that involves observing the actual climate system directly from space or in situ. A multitude of satellites and a worldwide network of land, air and sea sensors make millions of observations every day, creating detailed, faithful images of the Earth. In particular, satellites transmit huge volumes of data on the upper atmosphere and the Earth’s surface, enabling us to measure the system’s energy balance and attribute infrared emissions to particular atmospheric components. This high-quality space and in-situ data is freely available to all thanks to Copernicus, but the problem is that we don’t use it… 

Forget proxies and old data that are constantly being “adjusted”. We have proven, measured information that allows us to go back in time to 1960.  It’s a happy coincidence that January 1, 1960 is the reference 0 for the temperature series commonly used. The IPCC has arbitrarily ruled that climate change began with industrialization, i.e. around 1850 or 1880, since it assumes that GHG emissions are the cause. But data from the world’s oceans, which drive climate, show that their temperature began to diverge from its natural cycle around 1980. So let’s focus on the last sixty years, using the real-world observations available to objectively identify the true culprits of anthropogenic warming. 

This heterodox but oh-so-interesting point of view is supported by space engineer Michel Vieillefosse, a pioneer in satellite auscultation of the Earth. At CNES, he produced the first maps of thermal variations measured from space. His recent book ” Réchauffement climatique”  is a mine of information on the climate, how it works and its recent evolution. Based on real data and calculations, rather than model projections, he concludes that there’s no point in demonizing fossil fuels, and that the real causes of global warming – deforestation of tropical forests, urban heat islands and methane leakage – should be tackled first. Let’s see how he arrives at this astonishing conclusion. 

Warming is heterogeneous and multi-causal

Since 1960, the global average temperature has risen by 0.9 oC. However, this parameter cannot account for climate change, as it masks the significant disparities in local temperatures over time and space. At best, the average temperature indicates a trend.

Contrary to the impression created by the term “global warming”, climate change is far from uniform. The warming picture looks more like a patchwork quilt than a blanket. It is therefore essential to look at each region individually, and see what is really happening there, if we are to understand the climate scientifically. All these heterogeneities that blend into the average have a specific explanation. 

The Arctic is warming by 2, 3 or even 4 times more than the rest of the globe. This amplification observed since 1990 is mainly due to the influx of warmer waters from the tropics via the great oceanic heat conveyor, replacing the cold waters carried towards the Equator, and to the virtual absence of evaporation and lower albedo. It’s worth noting that an initial warming attested in 1938, 1943 and 1944 was followed by a cooling period. 

No such increase is observed in Antarctica, isolated by a circumpolar current. It does not change as a whole. The fact that Antarctica has hardly warmed at all since 1960 is a pebble in the shoes of the carbocentrists who blame everything on CO2 (being a well-mixed gas, its effect should be felt everywhere).

The obsession with GHGs has made us forget how the climate system really works. While the sun is the only real source of heat, the Earth cools not only through infrared radiation to space, but also through convection, evaporation and plant transpiration. Let’s understand that these mechanisms act as heat elevators; they cool the lower atmosphere; infrared radiation then takes over to evacuate the heat into the void; ironically, it’s mainly CO2 that takes on this task in the absence of high-altitude water vapour. Consequently, human activities that interfere with these mechanisms, such as deforestation and urbanization, cause marked local warming… but this is overlooked by the IPCC and climate models.

Three case studies are presented in M. Vieillefosse’s book to illustrate the impact of these interferences on climate: Hawaii, Beijing and Manaus, with respective temperature anomalies of 0.4°C, 1.9°C and 1.5°C since 1960. Such large discrepancies, in contradiction with atmospheric mixing, must lead us to investigate their specific causes: little human intervention for Hawaii, a vast urban footprint for Beijing and reduced vaporization of the Amazon rainforest for Manaus.  

Let’s not lose sight of the fact that excess local heat that is not evacuated into the vacuum of space is eventually absorbed by the global ocean, whose thermal storage capacity is 1,000 times greater than that of the atmosphere. Basic physics says that oceans warm the atmosphere, not the other way around. The warming ocean enigma is thus solved. 

The contribution of CO2 is secondary

CO2 levels have risen by some 140 ppm to 418 ppm over the past 60 years. According to ERBE satellite data, this increase has blocked 1.42 W/m2 of energy, which translates into a 0.21°C rise in the temperature of the lower atmosphere. Compared with the total CO2 contribution of 48 W/m2, this represents only 3% more. CO2 emissions resulting from human activities are therefore not the primary cause of climate change. On the other hand, they are clearly responsible for the greening of the Earth revealed by NASA satellites, a huge benefit for the planet, but this not recognized for its true value.

Similarly, methane has risen from 1.36 ppm to 1.86 ppm, for a forcing of 0.46 W/m2 ; this blocking of infrared radiation has led to a temperature rise of 0.06°C, which is therefore minimal. But with the increasing use of shale gas and the proliferation of landfill sites, methane emissions are on the rise.  

Both tropospheric and stratospheric ozone also play a part in blocking infrared radiation emitted into space, but the latter also plays an indispensable role in blocking harmful UV rays. 

Of course, water vapour is primarily responsible for the greenhouse effect, but it is also the main vector of cooling, of an order of magnitude incommensurate with infrared radiation. Its importance for the climate of our “blue planet” is immense but ignored. Man’s activities have reduced natural evaporation in the tropics; heat accumulates in the oceans and is transported to the North Pole, where it can only be evacuated with difficulty, hence the overheating of the Arctic. Contrary to what the models and those whose livelihoods depend on them imply, we have not observed any significant increase in water vapour in the atmosphere (prior to the Hunga Tonga eruption). 

Tropical forests, the Earth’s radiator

Satellite measurements show that tropical rainforests (6.25 million square kilometers, or around a third of the world’s forests) have an average cooling effect of – 2.4°C on the ground, compared with cultivated areas. At mid-latitudes, the effect is much less marked, if not non-existent. By contrast, boreal forests above 50° latitude have a local warming effect of +0.8°C. 

Concentrated in South America, Asia and Africa, tropical forests act as the Earth’s radiator, absorbing solar radiation, cooling it through evapotranspiration and providing water vapour for cloud formation. 

The Amazon represents the heart of our planet’s transpiration system. Because of its dark color, the forest captures more solar radiation than other soils. But this energy is returned by evapotranspiration, then rises into the upper layers of the atmosphere by convection, and finally radiates out into space. The air above the canopy contributes to cooling the whole Earth. The Amazon pumps and releases around 20 billion tonnes of water a day into the atmosphere. The Amazon creates 75 % of its own rain. 

Deforestation reduces emissivity by 10%, or 36 W/m2. For the globe as a whole, the figure is 0.17 W/m2. But what’s more serious is the suppression of evapotranspiration, in the absence of trees. Latent heat loss rises to 0.78 W/m2, spread across the globe. We lack 480 million hectares of forest to evacuate around 1,000 mm of water a year, along with the heat required for evaporation. This disrupts the precipitation cycle.

Some 240 million hectares of forest were cleared between 1990 and 2015. Roughly the same amount of woodland is likely to disappear by 2030, equivalent to 1/200 of the earth’s surface. As we are constantly told, this has the effect of releasing the carbon dioxide stored in trees and forest soils. But carbo-centrists forget that the main impact of deforestation is to deprive the Earth of a powerful cooling mechanism. 

In total, deforestation has caused half of the temperature rise since 1960, or 0.46°C, twice as much as CO2. Although never mentioned in the media, it is the main cause of climate change. And things aren’t getting any better. 

Rapid urbanization: a significant factor

Today, 56% of the world’s population, or 4.4 billion people, live in cities. This trend is set to continue: by 2050, with the current number of city dwellers doubling, almost seven out of every ten people in the world will be living in urban areas.   While it’s true that cities account for only a tiny fraction of the Earth’s surface – 1/1000 – land artificialisation and other urban interference create heat islands, with temperatures up to 10°C higher than in the surrounding countryside. These are concentrates of climate change!

Increasingly mineralized urban areas use dense building materials, eager to absorb the sun’s energy. With less vegetation, they provide less shade and do little to cool spaces, notably through evapotranspiration. Depending on their morphology, buildings can also prevent the wind from circulating and cooling the streets. In addition, waste heat from car engines, air conditioners and other energy-guzzling appliances adds to the overall rise in air temperature.

Urbanization increases the absorption of solar radiation, but above all it weakens the infrared radiation emitted by surfaces; emissivity can drop to 50%. This drop in emissivity results in more heat being retained at ground level, in excess of 180 watts per square metre, hence the famous “heat islands”. Black tar roads absorb even more solar heat. Rapid urbanization blocks soil transpiration. We see as much less cooling of the planet; the impermeabilization of surfaces immediately washes rain into watercourses via stormwater networks.

All in all, urbanization generates warming of the same order of magnitude as that created by CO2. It is also responsible for flooding. 

Action to counter global warming

Following the Kyoto and Paris Agreements, the fight against climate change is almost exclusively focused on reducing CO2 emissions. Unfortunately, we’ve got the wrong target. If we reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions to zero, its concentration will fall by just 2.5% per year. In other words, nothing. Let’s not forget that the drastic reduction in carbon emissions during the 2020 confinements did nothing to slow the rise in CO2 levels, or in temperatures, and this was due to concomitant phenomena. What’s the point of cancelling CO2 emissions at a huge cost if temperatures continue to rise?

In the case of methane, on the other hand, it would be relatively easy to plug the main leaks, which are easily identifiable. The fight against methane involves controlling open-air landfills and gas installations, which are responsible for 40% and 26% of emissions respectively. Dairies and composts emit 26%. Doing without milk seems difficult. We need to act first on the first two, less natural causes. So let’s introduce a methane tax… instead of this ineffective carbon tax! 

But above all, let’s stop focusing on CO2 and tackle the human activities that cause most of the warming. Priority should therefore be given to preserving tropical forests, especially the Amazon. If the entire Amazon rainforest were to be chainsawed, it would be a global ecological disaster, both in terms of climate and biodiversity. The Amazon would become nothing less than a desert, which is all the more plausible given its location in the “right” band of latitudes. Putting an end to deforestation now would make a tangible contribution to mitigating global warming. Why not set up a global fund for the conservation of tropical forests… instead of financing anti-oil activists?  Therein lies the urgency of action to save the planet. 

We can’t stop urbanization, but we can start to think differently about cities and buildings. Interesting experiments are being conducted here and there, notably to combat those pesky heat islands.  It’s in cities’ own interests to take action, because it’s first and foremost they themselves who will reap the rewards of their actions. 

We also need to adopt a more rational, non-ideological approach to energy transition, especially in Europe. Haste is also a bad advisor. So-called renewable energies have reached their limit in Germany. Sun and wind alone cannot replace fossil fuels. Innovation will be key in the future, as it has always been in the history of mankind.  

Mr Vieillefosse’s book concludes as follows: Isn’t it time we looked at the problem from a scientific rather than a political angle, and took rational, effective measures rather than acquiescing to sad demagoguery? May this book open the fight against global warming to a plurality of possible solutions.

May his wish come true. At any rate, it’s worth saving the Amazon and reducing urban heat islands. 

-30-

Source : Vieillefosse, Michel. Réchauffement climatique. Editions L’Harmattan.

Israel innovating for a water-starved planet

More than 3,400 years ago, Joshua led the Hebrew people across the Jordan River into the land that is now Israel. It would become “a land flowing with milk and honey.”

At least the central, northern, and Galilee (Kineret) regions would; they generally received enough rainfall to sustain ancient nomadic and agricultural communities. In the south, the Negev Desert around and below Be’er Sheva and Abraham’s famous well was too parched for much more than camel stops. In 1900, Be’er Sheva was home to just 300 hardy souls, and even today, most of the Negev gets a fraction of Arizona’s annual rainfall.

From CFACT

By Paul Driessen

More than 3,400 years ago, Joshua led the Hebrew people across the Jordan River into the land that is now Israel.  It would become “a land flowing with milk and honey.”

At least the central, northern, and Galilee (Kineret) regions would; they generally received enough rainfall to sustain ancient nomadic and agricultural communities. In the south, the Negev Desert around and below Be’er Sheva and Abraham’s famous well was too parched for much more than camel stops. In 1900, Be’er Sheva was home to just 300 hardy souls, and even today, most of the Negev gets a fraction of Arizona’s annual rainfall.

Nevertheless, national founder and first prime minister David Ben Gurion envisioned milk, honey, and much more in a prosperous Negev. Today, time-traveling Israelites would be astounded to see a lake and 660,000 people in the bustling modern city of Be’er Sheva – and crops, livestock, and small towns transforming the vast desert.

I recently joined other volunteers in the area. We were overcome by emotion at memorials to victims of Hamas’s barbaric massacres last October 7. But we also visited hospitals and schools and met with grateful, passionate, resolute, resilient people. We painted and spruced up several less devastated kibbutzim and marveled at how fruitful the desert has become.

Endless acres boast fields of wheat, flowers, and vegetables; lemon, orange, date, olive, apple, and avocado orchards; and huge “hothouses” that actually keep temperatures from getting too hot while controlling sunshine and insects. These hothouses enable farmers to grow tomatoes, eggplants, berries, bananas, and other bumper crops to feed Israel and send abroad.

We got dirty, weeding and pruning tomatoes, planting herbs, and picking lemons. Scratches on my forearms still remind me that lemon trees have dastardly thorns. Who knew?

Israeli commitments to inspiration, innovation, and especially perspiration continue to pay dividends. They’ve fostered new technologies and techniques that turn dry wastelands into bountiful farmlands, using desalination, water recycling, drip irrigation, and constant refinements.

Some Israelis worry that manmade climate change will make the country’s water and agricultural challenges even more daunting. Others point out that abundant rains in recent winters have helped raise Sea of Gallilee water levels to their maximum levels for the first time in decades and that more atmospheric carbon dioxide spurs crop and natural plant growth.

Hebrew University astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv says the sun (not CO2) is the control knob for planetary temperatures, anyway. When the sun is more active, he explains, it sends out stronger solar winds, reducing galactic cosmic rays streaming into Earth’s atmosphere. That causes clouds to be less white, less dense, and less reflective of sunlight, resulting in a warmer Earth. When solar activity decreases, Earth cools. Graphs of solar activity and ocean temperatures over thousands of years confirm this.

The climate debate matters less and less, of course, when people do what our ancestors did: adapt to climate changes, natural or manmade, by employing our creative talents to devise new tactics and technologies for living and farming in cold, wet, dry, and changing climates.

Rely less on nature’s unreliable beneficence and goodwill, become less at the mercy of the elements – and be more self-reliant, resourceful, and innovative in housing designs, heating and cooling systems, more sustainable manufacturing, and beyond. Israel has set a good example in water use and conservation.

Desalination plants use ultra-filtration and reverse-osmosis to remove salts and minerals from seawater and brackish groundwater deposits. The leftover brine goes to the Mediterranean and Red Seas.

Israel’s eight desal plants annually produce 835 million cubic meters of expensive yet affordable safe drinking water for Israelis, Bedouins, and West Bank and Gaza Palestinians. (That’s 835 billion liters; 221 billion gallons.) Over 90% of Israel’s drinking water is desalinated, freeing up Sea of Galilee water that Jordanians can then purchase from Israel.

A vast water recycling system further aids in conquering deserts and droughts. Israel reuses over 85% of its water (with a goal of 95%). Treatment plants purify “graywater” from homes, hospitals, schools, and businesses so that farms can irrigate crops and polluted water stays out of rivers, streams, and groundwater. The Shafdan wastewater treatment facility alone provides nearly 140 million cubic meters of clean, recycled irrigation water to Negev Desert farms every year.

Over half of Israel’s farm irrigation water is recycled graywater. Much of it is combined with urban and highway stormwater runoff and stored in hundreds of underground reservoirs, which local and regional communities also utilize.

Recurring droughts, growing populations, and expanding agricultural needs underscore the imperative to build more desalination plants, treatment facilities, and reservoirs in Israel and neighboring countries.

Drip irrigation delivers water slowly and directly to plant roots via a revolutionary network of hoses, valves, and drip nozzles. That’s a monumental improvement over systems that spray water onto plant leaves and stems, resulting in significant loss through evaporation, especially in arid regions. Simcha and Yeshayahu Blass began developing the water-saving technology 65 years ago and established the Netafim irrigation products and services company to market their technologies and educate people worldwide.

Today, drip irrigation waters over three-fourths of Israel’s crops. However, only 5% of farms globally use the technology due to a reluctance to change longstanding practices and the costs of replacing existing systems with initially expensive drip technologies.

Cutting-edge research continues apace in these and other water-related arenas to further improve technologies, reduce their costs, decrease recycled water sediments that can eventually clog irrigated soils, optimize equipment efficiencies and crops’ water uptake, and promote the use of water-saving technologies in the United States and around the world.

Israel’s Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in the eastern Negev’s Kibbutz Ketura conducts research and teaches Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, African, and Asian students how to utilize water and agricultural technologies and best practices. Led by Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed, it also teaches them to live and work together with other future scientists, farmers, and leaders of different cultures, ethnicities, and religions.

The institute understands that “in the hyper-arid, drought-stricken Middle East, one resource is more precious than water: Trust.” Since 1996, it has brought together more than 2,000 students to do research and engage in university-accredited programs. I’ve met some of them.

In a further testament to how far back these agricultural challenges go, Ketura is also home to a date tree called Methuselah because it was grown from a 2,000-year-old seed found in King Herod the Great’s palace and fortress at Masada, near the Dead Sea.

Perhaps instead of spending countless trillions of dollars trying to replace fossil fuels with wind, solar, and battery technologies, we should focus on adapting to whatever climates we live in or encounter — especially since China is building hundreds of coal-fired power plants to manufacture wind turbines, solar panels, EVs, grid-scale batteries and transformers to sell to Western nations for that “energy transition.”