05/07/2024 – Climate- Science.press

“Powerless in the storm” Climate Industry Misdirection

Roger Caiazza

I came across a paper that concludes “The US power grid is proven to be highly reliable in general; however, the resilient and reliable grid operation is increasingly challenged by severe weather events–events that are increasing in frequency and magnitude due to climate change.” I have many issues with this paper, but I am only going to discuss one. Apparently peer reviewed papers today require marginal support for claiming increasing severity because everyone knows that climate change affects the frequency and magnitude of severe weather events

The paper in question is “Powerless in the storm: Severe weather driven power outages in New York State, 2017–2020” (Flores NM, Northrop AJ, Do V, Gordon M, Jiang Y, Rudolph KE, et al. (2024) Powerless in the storm: Severe weather-driven power outages in New York State, 2017–2020. PLOS Clim 3(5): e0000364. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000364)

The only proof cited to “support climate change is increasing weather variability” is the reference to this sentence: “The power grid’s vulnerability to severe weather events becomes even more critical in the context of climate change, which is expected to increase weather variability and prevalence of extreme events (e.g., storms, wildfires, heatwaves, floods)”. The reference included cites the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report: IPCC, 2022: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Portner H.-O., Roberts D.C., Tignor M., Poloczanska E.S., Mintenbeck K., Alegrı´a A., Craig M., Langsdorf S., Lo¨schke S., Mo¨ ller V., Okem A., Rama B. (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, 3056 pp., https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009325844

The Other Side of the Story

However, if the authors were to look at the actual IPCC report rather than what they assumed it would say about the example weather events (storms, wildfires, heatwaves, floods) the narrative falls apart.

The CO2 Coalition published a paper prepared by Richard Lindzen, William Happer, Steven Koonin on April 16, 2024 titled Fossil Fuels and Greenhouse Gases Climate Science. Richard Lindzen, Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Emeritus Massachusetts Institute of Technology; William Happer Professor of Physics, Emeritus Princeton University; and Steven Koonin University Professor, New York University, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution reviewed what the IPCC documents actually said about these extreme weather events. The paper explains:

Hurricanes. A deep analysis of the facts reveals that “the data and research literature are starkly at odds with this message” — “hurricanes and tornadoes show no changes attributable to human influences.” Id. pp. 111-12. Further, “There has been no significant trend in the global number of tropical cyclones nor has any trend been identified in the number of U.S. land-falling hurricanes.” U.S. Global Climate Research Program, 3rd National Climate Assessment, Appendix 3, p. 769 (footnotes omitted).

Wildfires. There is a powerful new source of data on wildfires, “Sophisticated satellite sensors first began monitoring wildfires globally in 1993.” Id. p. 142.

The result of this new source of data is totally contrary to what is in the news. Unsettled cites NASA data and others that show the global area burned by fires declined each year from 1998 to 2015:

“Unexpectedly, this analysis of the images shows that the area burned annually declined by about 25% from 1998 to 2015.” Further, “Despite the very destructive wildfires in 2020, that year was among the least active globally since 2003.” Id. p. 142.

Heat Waves. On extreme temperatures in the U.S., we all agree: “The annual number of high temperature records set shows no significant trend over the past century, nor over the past 40 years.” Koonin, supra, p. 110.

Flooding: US data shows “modest changes in US rainfall during the past century haven’t changed the average incidence of floods.” Globally, data from the IPCC shows that there is “low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale.” We all agree with the summary in Unsettled: “we don’t know whether floods globally are increasing, decreasing, or doing nothing at all.” Id. p. 137.

Discussion

I have nothing to add to the main point that the authors of this paper just assumed that the IPCC found that extreme weather events were increasing despite evidence in the latest report to the contrary. The peer review process did not call them out on this.

For the record the authors, their roles and affiliations follow:

Nina M. Flores

ROLES Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

AFFILIATION Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America

Alexander J. Northrop

ROLES Conceptualization, Data curation, Writing – review & editing

AFFILIATIONS Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America

Vivian Do

ROLES Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing

AFFILIATION Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America

Milo Gordon

ROLES Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing

AFFILIATION Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America

Yazhou Jiang

ROLES Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing

AFFILIATION Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York, United States of America

Kara E. Rudolph

ROLES Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

AFFILIATION Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America

Diana Hernández

ROLES Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing

AFFILIATION Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America

Joan A. Casey

ROLES Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

AFFILIATIONS Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

One final point is that my impression of the analysis is that the authors had pre-conceived conclusions in mind and tortured the data to get the results desired.

Conclusion

I have to assume that this is an example of the Climate Industry’ Misdirection Campaign described recently by Kip Hansen. All of the authors are associated in some way with public health departments at universities. I doubt that any of them has any background in climatology or meteorology beyond a possibly a class or two in introduction to Climate Change – The Existential Threat. Today it is sufficient to just note that extreme weather is getting worse due to climate change to hype the results claimed because the peer reviewers know that is “true”.

Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.

BBC Uses Corrupted Airport Data to Circulate Scares About “Extreme Heat” and Climate Change

From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

Last week saw a dramatic illustration of how far parts of the mainstream media has departed from the scientific process in its aim to catastrophise the climate and push society to accept the global Net Zero collectivisation. “London seeing more days above 30°C, experts say”, ran a BBC headline, with a reported suggestion that London must adapt to the “new reality”. But it turns out that the ‘experts’ have used “airport data for consistency across worldwide cities, including City Airport in London”. It is difficult to think of a more unsuitable dataset to promote notions of “extreme heat”, other than perhaps to take measurements next to the door of a blast furnace.

Similar versions of the story appeared in numerous mainstream outlets including Sky and the Independent suggesting the material was subbed from a circulated release. It originated from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED,) a green activist think tank that collects funding from a wide variety of governmental and private sources. The analysis is said to be part of a larger project to look at how “climate change” is affecting the world’s most populated cities. Sky said the IIAD report was just one in a raft of warnings in the last year, “about the pressing need to adapt the country to climate change”. IIED researcher Tucker Landesman claimed it was clear that the “extreme heat is here to stay and London must adapt soon to remain liveable for everyone”.

Landesman is an urban studies graduate from the LSE and he appears big on woke woo-woo. ‘Connecting decarbonisation and social justice’ and ‘Towards queer-centred urban development’, are two of his recent publications. Tucker is said to be “particularly interested in intersectional approaches to urban poverty and inequality”. No doubt these are his areas of expertise, but in collating measurements next to the exhausts of multiple jet aircraft for the purpose of making predictions of Thermogeddon, he would appear to be operating outside his comfort zone. Given what scientists have discovered about the urban heat effect, and its dramatic short-term effect on temperature measurements, it is difficult to understand why the BBC is giving house room to this ‘new analysis’. Having to pass through airports that are noticeably hotter than surrounding areas in air-conditioned buildings is hardly front page news – unless, of course, there is some pseudoscientific agenda at work.

The use of data from unsuitable sites has bedevilled the recent collection of accurate temperature measurements in most meteorological operations around the world. Earlier this year, the Daily Sceptic revealed that nearly eight out of ten of the U.K. Met Office’s measuring sites had huge scientifically-designated ‘uncertainties’ that effectively disqualified them from providing accurate data. Despite such large potential corruptions, the Met Office was able to claim to a hundredth of a degree that last year in the U.K. was only 0.06°C cooler than the year before.

The World Meteorological Organisation rates weather sites from class 1 to 5 based on the amount of human-caused heat corruption that is likely to occur next to the measuring devise. Class 4 comes with ‘uncertainties’ of 2°C and these accounted for 48.7% of the Met Office’s 380 recording stations. Class 5 comes with ‘uncertainties’ of 5°C and these applied to 29.2% of the total, with many of the stations set down the runways at local airports. For instance, frequent reference is made to high readings at the class 5 military airport at Northolt.

The BBC report claims that “really extreme temperatures” have become more frequent with seven days above 35°C in the past three decades, five of which occurred within the last five years, statistics from 1994-2023 show. Statistics also show that passenger numbers at the enlarged City Airport tripled over that period, although numbers are still well down on the years before Covid.

According to the official Met Office figures, which as we have seen need taking with plenty of salt, there has been a small rise in the average summer maximum temperature since the mid 1990s. It is about 0.8°C, but the recent rise is only 1.2°C higher than the averaged maximums recorded in the less urban heat corrupted records from around 90 years ago. Given that the global temperature has been gently warming over the last 150 years as a recovery from the Little Ice Age, this is not surprising. What would have been considered a ‘nice’ summer in the mid 1930s is now, one degree centigrade later, promoted in politicised alarmist terms with weather maps painted in hellish reds and purples.

In 2022, an insight into the heat corruptions at airports was provided by two former NASA scientists working out of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Dr. Roy Spencer and Professor John Christy found massive human-caused heat distortions in the temperature record across the United States. Airports were found to be particularly prone to higher temperatures compared with those recorded in surrounding less urbanised areas.

The most dramatic finding occurred at Orlando airport where decadal warming since 1973 of 0.3°C is slashed to just 0.07°C after the data has been ‘de-urbanised’. The number of passengers has soared in recent years with over 50 million people passing through the ever-growing airport, the gateway to Mickey Mouse and the Magic Kingdom. Interestingly, the divergence between the two temperature datasets becomes more pronounced from the turn of the century.

Unsurprisingly, many of the Met Office’s heat ‘records’ have been recorded since the turn of the century. Almost all of them are from ‘junk’ class 5 and ‘near junk’ class 4 sites. Class 5 maximum temperature records, with their ‘uncertainties of 5°C, have been declared in Northern Ireland and three U.K. areas. The record in Central S was measured in St. James’s Park in London, site of one of the five 40°C plus recordings of July 19th, 2022. Class 4 record holders are even more numerous with the highest Scottish record set at Charterhall. Hawarden Airport is home to the highest Welsh recording. No less than five U.K. areas have records attributed to this class which comes with ’uncertainties’ of 2°C.

And, of course, who can forget the national joke record of 40.3°C declared on July 19th, 2022 at Coningsby – or more accurately, RAF Coningsby. Blink and you might have missed it since the 60-second record was caused by a 0.6°C spike either side of 3.12pm. As it happened, it appears that no less than three typhoon fighter jets were landing at or near that time.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor

Study: Venomous snakes likely to migrate en masse amid global heating

In venomous snake filled Australia, we’ve developed a very simple solution to the snake threat: Buy a cat.
Greens complain about house cats decimating the local wildlife, and this complaint is largely true.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Sell your automobile or the snakes will get you?

Venomous snakes likely to migrate en masse amid global heating, says study

Researchers find many countries unprepared for influx of new species and will be vulnerable to bites

Neelima Vallangi Fri 3 May 2024 19.35 AEST

Climate breakdown is likely to lead to the large-scale migration of venomous snake species into new regions and unprepared countries, according to a study.

The researchers forecast that Nepal, Niger, Namibia, China, and Myanmar will gain the most venomous snake species from neighbouring countries under a heating climate.

Low-income countries in south and south-east Asia, as well as parts of Africa, will be highly vulnerable to increased numbers of snake bites, according to the findings published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health.

The study modelled the geographical distribution of 209 venomous snake species that are known to cause medical emergencies in humans to understand where different snake species might find favourable climatic conditions by 2070.

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/03/venomous-snakes-migrate-global-heating-study

The abstract of the study;

Climate change-related distributional range shifts of venomous snakes: a predictive modelling study of effects on public health and biodiversity

Prof Pablo Ariel Martinez, PhD

Irene Barbosa da Fonseca Teixeira, MSc

Tuany Siqueira-Silva

Franciely Fernanda Barbosa da Silva, BSc

Luiz Antônio Gonzaga Lima

Jonatas Chaves-Silveira

Prof Miguel Ångel Olalla-Tárraga, PhD

Prof José María Gutiérrez, PhD

Talita Ferreira Amado, PhD

Summary

Background

Climate change is expected to have profound effects on the distribution of venomous snake species, including reductions in biodiversity and changes in patterns of envenomation of humans and domestic animals. We estimated the effect of future climate change on the distribution of venomous snake species and potential knock-on effects on biodiversity and public health.

Methods

We built species distribution models based on the geographical distribution of 209 medically relevant venomous snake species (WHO categories 1 and 2) and present climatic variables, and used these models to project the potential distribution of species in 2070. We incorporated different future climatic scenarios into the model, which we used to estimate the loss and gain of areas potentially suitable for each species. We also assessed which countries were likely to gain new species in the future as a result of species crossing national borders. We integrated the species distribution models with different socioeconomic scenarios to estimate which countries would become more vulnerable to snakebites in 2070.

Findings

Our results suggest that substantial losses of potentially suitable areas for the survival of most venomous snake species will occur by 2070. However, some species of high risk to public health could gain climatically suitable areas for habitation. Countries such as Niger, Namibia, China, Nepal, and Myanmar could potentially gain several venomous snake species from neighbouring countries. Furthermore, the combination of an increase in climatically suitable areas and socioeconomic factors (including low-income and high rural populations) means that southeast Asia and Africa (and countries including Uganda, Kenya, Bangladesh, India, and Thailand in particular) could have increased vulnerability to snakebites in the future, with potential effects on public human and veterinary health.

Interpretation

Loss of venomous snake biodiversity in low-income countries will affect ecosystem functioning and result in the loss of valuable genetic resources. Additionally, climate change will create new challenges to public health in several low-income countries, particularly in southeast Asia and Africa. The international community needs to increase its efforts to counter the effects of climate change in the coming decades.

Funding

German Research Foundation, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación de España, European Regional Development Fund.Read more: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(24)00005-6/fulltext

Models all the way down.

In venomous snake filled Australia, we’ve developed a very simple solution to the snake threat: Buy a cat.

Greens complain about house cats decimating the local wildlife, and this complaint is largely true.

But one of the forms of wildlife cats are really keen on killing is venomous snakes. They like the taste. So most of us tolerate the occasional endangered bird being dragged through the cat door, in return for almost total protection from animals which could kill us or our kids.

Did I mention cats are really popular in my part of Australia? My cat got plenty of treats and fuss a few years ago when it saved me from a snake.

The snake unexpectedly fell off the rafters of an outdoor patio area onto my table, landing just behind my laptop.

The snake didn’t hang about, it was much too worried about getting away from the cat. Though to be fair it probably climbed into the rafters in the first place because my cat was stalking it. The snake got away on that occasion, though the snake was badly wounded – the cat clawed and bit it, but the snake managed to slip through a crack in a fence where the cat couldn’t follow.

Of course, encounters between snakes and cats are less common in an urban environment, my snake encounter occurred when I was living on an acreage property. Snakes aren’t the smartest animals, but they know what cats smell like, and usually stay well away from anywhere heavily frequented by their ancient enemy.

I’m not sure how popular house cats are in the nations named in the study, but I bet they will become a lot more popular if a venomous snake threat emerges, whatever the cause.

How AI is outsmarting Green energy, zero carbon fantasies

Big, artificial intelligence-related companies are soon coming to realize that net-zero emissions plans to kill and replace fossil energy with wind and solar is a dumb notion that will leave them and American power consumers competing in the dark.

From CFACT

By Larry Bell

3385524 – human head emerging from a water and binary code surface. digital illustration.

As noted by Wall Street Journal writers Jennifer Hiller and Scott Patterson, giant data centers providing computing power needed for artificial intelligence are setting off a four-way battle among electric utilities trying to keep the lights on, tech companies that like to tout their climate credentials, consumers angry at rising electricity prices, and regulators overseeing investments in the grid and trying to turn it green.

Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon, three of the largest AI data center users, have previously criticized a proposal by utility company Georgia Power to expand natural gas use at the expense of hurting their renewable energy programs.

The problem is that those centers require huge amounts of reliable electricity to operate, and no nearly adequate hydrocarbon replacement exists.

The rise of ChatGPT and similar large-language AI models require huge amounts of computing power, which has turbocharged data-center demand.

As former Microsoft vice president Brian Janous observes, whereas “No data center wants to be tied to the need for new fossil resources, that’s the problem… You can’t throw this much [data-center] capacity at the system and not have some degree of fossil resources to support it.”

An explosion of new hyperscale data centers in Northern Virginia will consume enormous amounts of power, some using as much as currently used to supply the city of Seattle.

Referred to as “Data Center Alley,” the area is home to about 150 data warehouses, which support about 70% of global internet traffic through a spider web of crisscrossing power lines.

Amazon Web Services, Amazon.com’s cloud-computing business, has previously invested $52 billion in the region with plans to add another $35 billion by 2040.

Amazon has reportedly enabled 19 solar farms in Virginia and is the world’s largest corporate renewable energy buyer.

Nevertheless, the company also struck a $650 million deal to buy a data center in Pennsylvania powered by a 2.5-gigawatt nuclear plant.

Dominion Energy, which supplies electricity to most of the Virginia data centers, projects its power requirements to quadruple over the next 15 years, representing 40% of the utility’s demand in the entire state.

Dominion CEO Robert Blue said: “We’re going to continue to be a big builder of renewables. We’re building a big offshore wind farm. We’re building a lot of solar. We’re adding a lot of storage. … But we also recognize that we’re going to need some more natural gas in order to keep the lights on.”

In addition to developing more natural gas plants to balance power grids from expansions of intermittent renewables, rising demands are also delaying some retirement of coal plants.

Duke Energy has told Carolina regulators it will need either three new gas-fired plants or keep existing coal plants open longer than planned.

Dominion wants to build a 1,000-megawatt natural gas plant in Chesterfield County, where a coal plant closed last year, stating that the addition is critically important for reliability.

Significant costs for these increased power demands — including transmission infrastructures — will be passed on to household and business consumers.

Dominion projects that grid investments, plus the new projects, will raise average utility bills for Virginia customers from around $133 a month to $174 over 15 years.

Meanwhile, electricity demand by power data centers is projected to increase by 13% to 15%, compounded annually through 2030, a shortage that is already delaying new centers by two to six years.

As Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Mark Christie warned last month, “The problem is that utilities are rapidly retiring fossil-fuel and nuclear plants. We are subtracting dispatchable [fossil fuel] resources at a pace that’s not sustainable, and we can’t build dispatchable resources to replace the dispatchable resources we’re shutting down.”

We don’t have to rely on supersmart AI to warn us that this is really dumb policy.

Power Political Monopoly: Bottom Lines

The author has been in the trenches as a consumer and free market advocate against the monopoly utilities in natural gas and particularly electricity. His “bottom lines” follow.

From Master Resource

By Jim Clarkson

Ed. Note: The author has been in the trenches as a consumer and free market advocate against the monopoly utilities in natural gas and particularly electricity. His “bottom lines” follow.

“It is time to end this marriage of vested privilege and authoritarian ideology and abolish the monopoly-regulator system.”

There is no such thing as a natural monopoly; government creates all monopolies. There was never any real justification for the regulation of the utility business. The existence of utility regulation is a triumph of political entrepreneurship by the incumbent utility companies to use the power of state government to gain dominance over their customers, to eliminate their more efficient competitors and to obtain recovery on their bad investments.

The system of politicized energy distribution consumes more resources than necessary to provide service. The excess revenues flowing into the system have provided profits above what could be obtained in a competitive market. The money has been further dissipated by inefficient operations, provided recovery on unproductive and inflated investments, been shifted to unregulated affiliates, passed through to satisfy uneconomic fuel contracts and consumed in efforts to preserve monopoly status rather than to satisfy consumer demand.

The monopoly-regulatory regime has created politically focused but ineffective management, weakened the work ethic, created accounting systems that do not report costs properly and obscured market feedback from consumers. Sheltered from market forces, utilities operate to satisfy political whims. The practice of cross-subsidy has distorted management information, and consequently, management behavior. Cost-plus, rate-of-return regulation has corrupted operating practices as well as investment standards. Utility affiliates that prosper do so by shifting costs to regulated sister companies; those affiliates that get into truly competitive situations fail.

Politically fashionable regulatory policies have prevailed over economic reality. Government policy in the 1960s was anti-gas and pro-nuclear, and then reversed in the 1970s, causing mal-investment in its wake each time. Politically directed conservation was a costly disaster that threatens to be repeated. Mandated “green” power is downright foolish and joint resource planning by regulators and utilities is a waste of time. Certification of energy marketers by state regulatory commissions is another example of the political economy of bureaucratic imperialism.

There is absolutely no consumer benefit from recovery of past bad investments; any stranded cost recovery is just arbitrary political redistribution of wealth. The general economy suffers as capital is shifted from productive enterprises to the managerially challenged utilities. The taxpayer-funded consumer advocates have sold out their alleged constituency by supporting regulation for regulation’s sake instead of free competitive markets with their lower costs and better service. The profits of the energy utilities are largely dependent on the abilities of their lawyers and lobbyists to manipulate state regulators and legislators. If these utilities just happen to provide decent service at fair prices, well that is just a nice secondary coincidence.

“Deregulation” is a sham. The current state programs designed to engender competition in the energy commodity are largely written by the utilities themselves, just as was the case back when state regulation was created. Letting a monopoly utility write the law for competition is akin to letting the fox design the security system for the hen house.

The most successful energy marketers are not entrepreneurs who are adept at meeting consumer demand; rather they are companies who are very comfortable with regulation and meeting political demands. Competitive restructuring is done in a way that guarantees utilities endless profits regardless of performance and gives regulators vast new powers over energy marketing companies. There will be no real competition until the incumbent utilities have the recovery of their overpriced infrastructure at risk. Without regulatory protection, the nation’s utilities would have to cut costs, be frugal with investments and reduce prices. Furthermore, they would have to treat their customers like, well, customers.

Under regulation, customers are forced to tolerate inflated energy prices, lack of real choice and arrogant take-it-or-leave-it attitudes from utilities. If the whole economy were run this way, it would collapse just as the economies of Eastern Europe did. The only reason we still have utility regulation in this country is that the rest of the economy is free and productive enough to support this drag on prosperity.

It is time to end this marriage of vested privilege and authoritarian ideology and abolish the monopoly-regulator system.

Forbes Calls BS on the latest Climate Economics Doomsday Prediction

Why would the next 0.5C of warming be so much worse than the previous 0.5C of warming?

From ClimateRealism

Guest Essay by Eric Worrall

”… While I am not an economist, in my opinion the data seems flawed. …”

New Study: Climate Change Could Reduce The World Economy 19% By 2049

Jon McGowan
Contributor

I am an attorney who writes about ESG policy, laws, and regulations.

A new study claims that loss of productivity because of climate change could result in a 19% reduction in the world economy by 2049. Despite the number being significantly higher than previous studies, the authors claim their numbers are conservative and could be as high 29% of the global GDP. Climate activists were quick to latch onto the study, calling for more aggressive measures to prevent climate change and fund mitigation efforts.

The study, The economic commitment of climate change, was published in Nature on April 17 by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, also known as PIK, a non-profit organization funded by the German government.

…

While I am not an economist, in my opinion the data seems flawed. According to a study published by NOAA in January 2024, the average temperature has risen 2° F since 1850. In that same period, the global GDP increased from $1.73 trillion to $134.08 trillion. If we accept the climate projection models used in the study, it dismisses the resiliency of human nature and our ability to overcome economic challenges.

…

Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmcgowan/2024/04/29/new-study-climate-change-could-reduce-the-world-economy-19-by-2049/?sh=7c99ce5440b8

The abstract of the study;

The economic commitment of climate change

Maximilian Kotz, Anders Levermann & Leonie Wenz

Abstract

Global projections of macroeconomic climate-change damages typically consider impacts from average annual and national temperatures over long time horizons^1,2,3,4,5,6. Here we use recent empirical findings from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years to project sub-national damages from temperature and precipitation, including daily variability and extremes^7,8. Using an empirical approach that provides a robust lower bound on the persistence of impacts on economic growth, we find that the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices (relative to a baseline without climate impacts, likely range of 11–29% accounting for physical climate and empirical uncertainty). These damages already outweigh the mitigation costs required to limit global warming to 2 °C by sixfold over this near-term time frame and thereafter diverge strongly dependent on emission choices. Committed damages arise predominantly through changes in average temperature, but accounting for further climatic components raises estimates by approximately 50% and leads to stronger regional heterogeneity. Committed losses are projected for all regions except those at very high latitudes, at which reductions in temperature variability bring benefits. The largest losses are committed at lower latitudes in regions with lower cumulative historical emissions and lower present-day income.

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07219-0

Spot on Jon McGowan – it’s near impossible to produce a scary projection without making some pretty questionable assumptions. From the study above;

… Following a well-developed literature^2,3,19, these projections do not aim to provide a prediction of future economic growth. Instead, they are a projection of the exogenous impact of future climate conditions on the economy relative to the baselines specified by socio-economic projections, based on the plausibly causal relationships inferred by the empirical models and assuming ceteris paribus. Other exogenous factors relevant for the prediction of economic output are purposefully assumed constant. …

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07219-0

Holding as many variables as possible static, while changing only those variables you want to study, is a time honoured method of analysing complex systems.

But as the authors admit, their study is not realistic. My understanding of the study is they are attempting to abstract the impact say more extreme weather would have on the economy, if nobody attempted to mitigate these problems, say by building better drainage and water management systems to manage floods, and bigger reservoirs to maintain agricultural output during severe droughts.

As Forbes author Jon McGowan rightly points out, there are good reasons to doubt the real world applicability of the predictions of the study, even if we pretend their admittedly unrealistic assumptions are realistic.

Why would the next 0.5C of warming be so much worse than the previous 0.5C of warming?

There is no historical evidence which suggests the next 0.5C of warming, if it occurs, would be any worse than what we have already experienced. There is no evidence extreme weather is getting worse, despite the predictions of climate models which were used as the basis of the study quoted above.

In fact there are good reasons to believe additional warming might produce a better climate for humans.

Global warming is not evenly distributed across the world. Polar amplification is the observed strong tendency for global warming to be pushed away from the equator to where it is actually needed.

If global warming continues, by 2049 there is a very good chance there will be more viable agricultural land available for our use, not less. Canadian Geographic admitted in 2020 that global warming is opening millions of square kilometres of new agricultural land, and will continue to do so if the world continues to warm.

I’m personally pleased Jon McGowan and Forbes published this rare criticism of alarmist global warming tropes. Let’s hope more news outlets and authors find the courage in future to question the steady stream of increasingly exaggerated and implausible claims of how doomed we all are.

Climate Ideology Ignores Science, Threatens Humanity

Climate scientists would be less likely to issue dire warnings of planetary doom if they gave more credence to the geological history of the past several million years. Instead, they rely on computer models that are biased by the preconceptions of their manipulators and incapable of accounting for the myriad factors influencing global temperatures.

From Watts Up With That?

By Lee Gerhard

Minuscule recent warming, whatever the cause, is inconsequential in light of the long record of data found in Antarctica ice cores that go back 800,000 years. The bottom line is that Earth is colder by nearly 3 degrees Celsius than it was 3,000 years ago and is just now climbing out of its longest cold spell of the last 10,000 years. Blaring headlines about record heat waves of the past 100 years are meaningless, hysterical blather.

A deeper dive into geologic history — based partly on the record stored over millions of years in deep-ocean sediments — shows that today’s carbon dioxide concentrations of 420 parts per million are a fraction of past levels that reached 5,000 ppm and more. Carbon dioxide is nearly at its lowest level ever since plant life began so many millions of years ago and well below the optimum amount for the health of most vegetation.

In fact, the 280-ppm concentration of the mid-19th century is uncomfortably close to the point at which plant life dies — below 150 ppm. Given that all life depends on adequate amounts of this gas, proposals to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide are nothing less than reckless.

Any global increase in carbon dioxide will be beneficial and have nearly no impact on future temperature. In contrast, demonstrated in the “bible” of human history and climate change compiled by the late professor Hubert Lamb at the University of East Anglia, cold kills.

During the Little Ice Age in parts of England, the “yearly number of burials exceeded the births from the 1660’s until about 1730,” he reported.

Why, then, are so many demonizing fossil fuels? The wealth enabled by coal, oil and natural gas has provided the leisure — and funding — for numerous researchers to focus on climate change instead of struggling to stay alive. Global society is absolutely dependent upon cheap and plentiful energy for its survival. Why would some demand that civilization retreat from useful energy sources to bring back mass starvation, poverty and horse-drawn buggies?

To dream of a utopian world is perhaps admirable, but to inflict suffering upon society through ignorance of science is deplorable.

Humanity is deprived of precious learning when so many favor the ideology and fearmongering of climate alarmists over the meticulous research of eminent physical scientists such as Richard Alley, professor of geoscience at Pennsylvania State University, who pioneered studies of ice cores, and Richard Lindzen, professor emeritus of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who explored the incredible complexity of atmospheric physics.

We could easily name dozens of others similarly credentialed, who are largely unknown outside the scientific community.

The public is “protected” from empirical data by legacy and social media censors who eagerly broadcast the supposed need to restrict global warming to 1.5 or 2.0 degrees Celsius — artificial constructs with no scientific basis.

We thus suffer the consequences of unwarranted regulatory intrusions into daily life, be they restrictions on heating, air conditioning, dishwashers and stoves or the increased price and reduced availability of electricity. The effects of these range from annoying to life-threatening.

There is no global climate emergency. There is, however, a widespread knowledge crisis.

This commentary was first published at The Washington Times on May 1, 2024.

Lee Gerhard is a senior scientist emeritus at the University of Kansas, past director of the Kansas Geological Survey, member of the CO2 Coalition, retired Getty Professor of Geological Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, and co-author of “Geological Perspectives of Global Climate Change.” He has a doctorate in geology.

Newly Discovered 90,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Reveal How Much Higher Sea Levels Used To Be

Human footprints embedded into rock that used to be a sand beach at the limit of the seashore’s “swash flow” and high tide lie 20 to 30 meters above the present sea level. The footprints are dated to ~90,000 years ago.

From NoTricksZone

By Kenneth Richard

It is estimated that sea levels were globally about 6 to 9 meters higher than today during the last interglacial (~130,000 to 115,000 years ago), when CO2 supposedly peaked at 275 ppm (Sommers et al., 2022).

Evidence along the coasts of North Africa (Morocco) suggests sea levels were “20 m above the present level” about 95,000 years ago (MIS 5c).

This is consistent with a new study that reports human footprints embedded and preserved in a rocky beach “20 to 30 m above sea level” can be dated to 90.3 ±7.6 thousand years ago.

The water limit, or shoreline, very likely reached this elevation at that time, as the requisite conditions for “salt-crusting,” the preservation of footprints, involve a location at “the landward limits of the spring high tidal zone” and at the “limits of swash flow”.

Interestingly, this same Moroccan region’s shoreline has, in recent decades, been stable to advancing seaward at a rate of +0.89 m per year (Amara Zenati et al., 2024). This is inconsistent with the viewpoint that sea level rise is poised to flood the Earth’s coasts and shrink her shorelines.

Image Source: **Amara Zenati et al., 2024**

And coastal expansion isn’t just a local phenomenon. Globally, shorelines have been advancing seaward at a rate of +0.26 m per year since the 1980s, as, despite sea level rise, the “global coastline is prograding” (Mao et al., 2021).

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Australian “Local Manufacturing” Solar Subsidies to Go to China?

What did we do wrong, to be cursed with such a parade of economically incompetent politicians? The government’s own productivity commission is warning it’s a bad idea, but politicians would rather listen to an Australian trained Chinese scientist who has already made billions of dollars off Australia’s economic incompetence, and stands to make billions more if this plan goes ahead.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

“I think you definitely need collaboration [with China]”.

The ‘Future Made in Australia’ plan for solar panels relies on a crucial ingredient: Help from China

By James Purtill May 6, 2024

Twenty-three years ago, a Chinese-Australian solar scientist moved from Sydney to Wuxi to build China’s solar panel manufacturing industry from scratch, using technology developed in Australian universities.

Shi Zhengrong became the world’s first clean energy billionaire, nicknamed “The Sun King”. China went on to dominate global solar panel manufacturing and, thanks to a mix of innovation and cut-throat competition, made solar the cheapest source of electricity in history.

Australian science graduates filled the top technology roles at the biggest Chinese solar companies. And a solar cell design developed in Australia became the global standard.

Meanwhile, Australia mostly stopped building its own solar panels.

Now, with the federal government preparing to ramp up Australia’s own tiny solar manufacturing industry, Dr Shi sees the story coming full circle.

“It’s an exciting opportunity for Australia,” he said, speaking to the ABC from China.

“I think you definitely need collaboration [with China], but I think Australia is in a better position compared to 20 years ago in China.”

…

The public reaction in the weeks since has been mixed. Many energy experts welcomed the plan as a way to ensure supply of a critical energy resource (solar will soon generate most of Australia’s electricity) and carve out a slice of a growing global industry.

But some economists and the federal government’s own Productivity Commission warned it could lead to the government wasting money by subsidising the production of panels that China can make more cheaply.

…Read more: https://johnmenadue.com/the-future-made-in-australia-plan-for-solar-panels-relies-on-a-crucial-ingredient-help-from-china/

The following article is from 2006 – why Shi Zhengrong, the Sun King, chose China over Australia;

Arise the Sun King

September 12, 2006 — 10.00am

…

Many factors, including China’s determination to attract its brightest minds back from overseas to help create new high-tech businesses, have contributed to Shi’s good fortune. His company’s rapid expansion has also been fuelled by rising global demand for solar cells, as governments in countries such as Germany and Japan, unlike here, have embraced clean energy.

“He was the right person at the right spot at the right time to move in both Chinese and Western cultures,” says Professor Martin Green, of the University of NSW, about his former student. “He was successful because of his own personal skills as a technologist and his ability to handle the managerial and political aspects of setting up and manufacturing in China.”

…

Content with his comfortable life in Sydney, he took Australian citizenship, but his homeland kept a close eye on this rising solar expert. At Chinese New Year and other festive occasions Shi was invited to celebrations at the Chinese embassy. “It was the policy of the Government to attract people like me – overseas scholars – to come back,” he says. In 2000 representatives of the Wuxi region approached him with an offer of $US6 million to establish a conventional photovoltaic solar cell manufacturing plant. Shi was sceptical that he could turn a profit in China. “The system was corrupted. I didn’t have any confidence [in returning],” he says.

He was also reluctant to give up his work on thin films – the technology of the future. But a two-week visit to China changed his mind. The infrastructure had improved and he could see that the handful of solar cell manufacturers there were losing money because of a lack of good technology.

With his experience and plentiful ideas for how to set up a plant, he realised the business could be a winner. “There was already a great demand for solar panels.”

…Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/national/arise-the-sun-king-20060912-gdoddr.html

I’m not criticising Shi Zhengrong’s choices or actions. In Shi’s place, if I had his skills and background, I might have made similar choices. He is undoubtably a brilliant scientist and a Chinese patriot who made a good decision for himself personally and for China, which made lots of Chinese people, including Shi, very rich – “the right person at the right spot at the right time”.

What I am criticising is the economic incompetence of Australia’s politicians. Shi had sound economic reasons, in addition to the subsidy cash, to relocate to China. But what is the competitive advantage which suddenly makes solar in Australia a good idea?

China dominates solar manufacturing because they have cheap coal energy. Low wages helped their competitive advantage, but the real key advantage is their low cost energy.

But Australia still has higher wages, higher energy costs, more environmental regulations and higher taxes than China. None of the economic advantages which convinced Shi to move to China have changed – China is still the more cost effective location to manufacture solar panels.

Even if you believe Australia is the better place to deploy solar panels, and there are arguments for and against this position, this doesn’t change whether China is the best place to manufacture solar panels.

If there was a real economic opportunity to manufacture solar panels in Australia, Australian businesses would be jumping all over it, leaping to fill the gap in the market. No government subsidy would be required to convince Aussie businesses to take advantage of a big profit opportunity.

The only competitive advantage Australia is publicly offering right now is lots of free money. But free government money is not enough to build a sustainable business, because solar manufacturing in Australia will dry up the moment the money stops. Giving away subsidy money with every sale of subsidised Australian manufactured goods would impoverish Australia, not give us a competitive advantage.

Surprise! The World’s biggest bankers are suddenly energy pragmatists

In February three of the four largest financial houses in the world, left the giant financial cabal called“Climate 100+” (the fourth one left a year ago). BlackRock, JP Morgan and State Street all parted ways with the billionaire-club of philanthropists trying to bully the world into buying their own renewables. In the two months since then, two of their CEO’s have put out “letters to shareholders” predicting how the transition is going to be slower and harder and how we still need fossil fuels.

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

JP Morgan, BlackRock drop out of climate banker cabal, and admit the Net Zero transition is “delayed”

Suddenly everyone sounds like an energy skeptic.

There are lots of reasons for this shift:

1: US Republican States are pointing the “AntiTrust” gun at the billionaire banker club because it looks exactly like a monopolistic cabal doing its best to collude to reduce competition. The States are also firing up the fiduciary duty canon. Hence the bankers not only want to back away from the cabal, they want to sound like bankers that care about investing their clients funds.

2. The renewables bubble is deflating fast, and the CEO’s can see what’s coming. Think of their renewable energy passion a few years ago as a pump-n-dump scheme and it all makes more sense. Right now smart bankers are smoothing the exit ramp out of the bubble they created and hoping no one notices how wrong all their previous statements were.

3. Maybe there’s a point where smart banker billionaires realize they don’t want their own homeland to hit the skids. They’ve all made a fortune in the last four years, but who wants that fifth private jet if there is no homeland to come home too? Jamie Dimon astonished people when came out in January saying Trump’s policies were “kinda right”. Billionaires might want to visit China, but they don’t want to live there. And as I said at the time, maybe the wake up call was when the paratroopers-of-death dropped into a democracy and the Ivy league started cheering them on.

4. And besides, Trump might even win.

How times have changed

A year ago the CEO of the JP Morgan was calling for forced property seizure in a climate emergency:

Wall Street titan Jamie Dimon says seize private land for wind and solar builds

6 April 2023 10:29 GMT, Recharge

By Andrew Lee

One of the world’s highest-profile bankers – JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon – said the US government should consider seizing private property to boost the number of green energy projects coming through the pipeline. Dimon told the bank’s shareholders that availability of wind and solar projects needs to be accelerated urgently as “the window for action to avert the costliest impacts of global climate change is closing”.

This year we need a reality check:

JP Morgan Warns of Delay to Global Energy Transition

By Irina Slav, OilPrice, April 19th, 2024

Inflation, interest rates, and wars may well delay the energy transition by quite a long time, JP Morgan has warned in a call for “a reality check” on its shift from hydrocarbons to alternatives.

…the bank’s head of global energy strategy, Christyan Malek, … forecasts that governments will dial down the push to transition from oil and gas to wind and solar as their financial resources dwindle.

Jamie Dimon’s Letter to Shareholders in 2024, is a 30,000 word 70 page letter. Despite being a small book it mentions “climate” just 13 times. He’s now more concerned about China (18 mentions) and uses the word military 24 times. He criticizes the Inflation Reduction Act because it angered all the allies of the US and he argues the US should dig up gas and sell it for political gain as well as the money:

Trade is realpolitik, and the recent cancellation of future liquified natural gas (LNG) projects is a good example of this fact. The projects were delayed mainly for political reasons — to pacify those who believe that gas is bad and that oil and gas projects should simply be stopped. This is not only wrong but also enormously naïve. One of the best ways to reduce CO2 for the next few decades is to use gas to replace coal. When oil and gas prices skyrocketed last winter, nations around the world — wealthy and very climate-conscious nations like France, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as lower-income nations like Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam that could not afford the higher cost — started to turn back to their coal plants. This highlights the importance of safe, secure and affordable energy. Second, the export of LNG is a great economic boon for the United States. But most important is the realpolitik goal: Our allied nations that need secure and affordable energy resources, including critical nations like Japan, Korea and most of our European allies, would like to be able to depend on the United States for energy. This now puts them in a difficult position — they may have to look elsewhere for such supplies, turning to Iran, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates or maybe even Russia. We need to minimize anything that can tear at our economic bonds with our allies.

The strength of our domestic production of energy gives us a “power advantage” — cheaper and more reliable energy, which creates economic and geopolitical advantages.

Meanwhile Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the largest asset fund in the world, has undergone a very similar transformation. In 2021, he was raving how the existential crisis and how this was the beginning of a long and rapidly accelerating transition:

Larry Fink’s letter to CEO’s 2021

I believe that the pandemic has presented such an existential crisis – such a stark reminder of our fragility – that it has driven us to confront the global threat of climate change more forcefully and to consider how, like the pandemic, it will alter our lives. It has reminded us how the biggest crises, whether medical or environmental, demand a global and ambitious response.

…I believe that this is the beginning of a long but rapidly accelerating transition – one that will unfold over many years and reshape asset prices of every type. We know that climate risk is investment risk.

But now, after the bubble came and went, now he’s telling us energy security is just as important as the climate crisis:

Oil, gas needed for years: BlackRock’s Larry Fink says in annual [2024] letter

By Eric Johnston, March 27, 2024, The Australian Business Review

One of the world’s most influential investors has said the switch is on to “energy pragmatism” that recognises energy security is just as important in the move to net zero. Larry Fink of the $US10 trillion ($15.3 trillion) BlackRock has acknowledged the world will need to rely on oil and gas “for years to come” through the uneven energy transition.

… his letter … which runs to almost 30 pages, only mentions climate change in passing and the discussion is limited to strategies under way in the energy transition.

Larry Fink’s letter to investors in 2024 didn’t even mention ESG.

These are the levers of power you see shifting. BlackRock manages $10 trillion dollars in assets, and according to Jamie Dimon’s letter, JP Morgan was managing assets of $7.6 trillion. When these men write long letters, Wall Street studies them.

A lot of people have suddenly started to say in April that “we always knew the transition would be expensive” — the phase change is following the bankers.

Day: May 7, 2024

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Surprise! The World’s biggest bankers are suddenly energy pragmatists

JP Morgan, BlackRock drop out of climate banker cabal, and admit the Net Zero transition is “delayed”

How times have changed

Wall Street titan Jamie Dimon says seize private land for wind and solar builds

JP Morgan Warns of Delay to Global Energy Transition

Larry Fink’s letter to CEO’s 2021

Oil, gas needed for years: BlackRock’s Larry Fink says in annual [2024] letter

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