Day: May 12, 2024

A Note to The Guardian – Opinion Is NOT Science

A recent article in the newspaper The Guardian reports that some of the ”world’s top climate scientists” believe that disaster is soon to occur due to what they claim will be an additional degree of warming on the planet. This is a false narrative. The earth has experienced similar temperatures in the past without disastrous consequences. In addition, one should note that opinion when it comes to climate science has had a terrible track record.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

A recent article in the newspaper The Guardian reports that some of the ”world’s top climate scientists” believe that disaster is soon to occur due to what they claim will be an additional degree of warming on the planet. This is a false narrative. The earth has experienced similar temperatures in the past without disastrous consequences. In addition, one should note that opinion when it comes to climate science has had a terrible track record.

The opinion piece, titled “World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target,” starts off with gloom and doom in the first couple of paragraphs:

Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit would be met.

Many of the scientists envisage a “semi-dystopian” future, with famines, conflicts, and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods, and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck.

First, as Climate Realism has previously discussed, here, for instance, the 1.5°C so-called limit is an arbitrarily made-up threshold. There is no scientific evidence that surpassing the 1.5℃ politically established amount of warming will result in worsening extreme weather events. What’s true of the 1.5℃ threshold is equally true of the 2°C limit, as Roger Pielke Jr., Ph.D. explains in his article, The Two Degree Temperature Target is Arbitrary and Untethered.

In The Guardian article, the opinion of “climate experts” suggests that disasters are afoot, with experts telling the paper that “massive preparations to protect people from the worst of the coming climate disasters were now critical.”

Leticia Cotrim da Cunha, at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, said: “I am extremely worried about the costs in human lives.”

“I am convinced that we have all the solutions needed for a 1.5C path and that we will implement them in the coming 20 years,” said Henry Neufeldt, at the U.N.’s Copenhagen Climate Centre. “But I fear that our actions might come too late and we cross one or several tipping points.”

What’s ironic, is that both The Guardian and those “climate experts” have missed the fact that in Europe, both the 1.5° and 2°C “limits” have already been surpassed, with no deleterious effects.

Below in Figure 1 is the Berkeley Earth average surface temperature record for Europe since about 1780. Europe is a good location to analyze, because some of the longest continuous temperature records are from Europe. It shows that not just 1.5°C, but 2.0°C of warming has already occurred.

Figure 1. (click to enlarge) Berkeley Earth average European temperature showing a 2.0°C rise since about 1820. Source: http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/regions/europe Annotated by Anthony Watts

Claims that reaching such temperatures supposedly driven by increased carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere are causing or will cause disasters, such as climate tipping points, have been repeatedly debunked at Climate Realism, not a single one of those predictions has come true.

Also, Cotrim da Cunha’s stated worry that warming will result in more humans dying is belied by the fact that research shows that 10 to 17 time more people die of cold than heat, and that as the Earth has warmed the number of people dying from temperature related illnesses has fallen dramatically. 

Given that track record, it hardly seems likely that some additional warming will result in disasters. According to a 2023 study by the University of California Santa Cruz, Earth has experienced higher CO2 levels and warmer temperature in the past, as seen in Figure 2 below:

Figure 2. Temperatures and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide over the past 66 million years. Bottom numbers indicate millions of years in the past; right-hand numbers, carbon dioxide in parts per million. Hotter colors indicate distinct periods of higher temperatures; deeper blues, lower ones. The solid zigzagging line charts contemporaneous carbon dioxide levels; shaded area around it reflects uncertainty in the curve. (Adapted from CenCO2PIP, Science 2023)

Earth survived, and history shows that humans are highly adaptable, thus the alarm over missing some arbitrary climate target temperatures we’ve already reached is both unjustified and moot.

What we have here is nothing more than an opinion poll of people whose entire careers are built upon hyping climate catastrophe, whose and reputations will be destroyed if the climate crisis narrative is untrue.

Scientific thinking and practice involves forming testable hypotheses, deciding how to test those hypotheses, doing the tests and analyzing the results to formulate proof and test theory. The claims of climate catastrophes, when they have been tested by experience and time, have proven false. And the future disastrous climate scenarios the experts are forecasting can’t be confirmed outside of the climate models that the self-same experts reference and rely upon to for their opinions. Opinion about science is not science at all but a belief.

This Guardian article is not news, but rather simply gives voice to so-called “experts,” whose past claims about the future are one long train of failed predictions. The Guardian has proven time and again that when it comes to “reporting” on climate change, it and its writers are shameless promoters of the climate crisis narrative which has no basis in evidence or data.

A Nuanced Argument for The Benefits of Global Warming

The discussion of climate has become muddied due to conflicts of interest. We can’t trust the coal miner or the conservative politician when they say “Global warming is a non-issue,” nor can we trust the left-wing or solar startup that global warming is the biggest threat to humanity.

From Watts Up With That?

Kyle Schutter

For an audio discussion of the pros/cons of global warming, listen to this podcast with Kyle, Partner @Grant&Co fundraising consultant in Africa, and Amo Rebecca, Behavioral Scientist.

People often ask me, “Do you believe in global warming?” as if it’s a religion. But “belief” is not how reality works. More useful questions could be: What’s the probability that the

  1. climate is changing?
  2. change is bad?
  3. change is worse than the alternative?

It’s worth thinking about to see if we understand the world properly. I researched this topic for strategic reasons for our business—is climate something we want to invest in? Anyone who has a more accurate prediction of the future has an advantage.

The discussion of climate has become muddied due to conflicts of interest. We can’t trust the coal miner or the conservative politician when they say “Global warming is a non-issue,” nor can we trust the left-wing or solar startup that global warming is the biggest threat to humanity.

“You cannot get a man to understand something that his salary depends upon him not understanding.”

Meanwhile, we sit somewhere in the middle: environmentalists in the traditional sense and we do raise funding from climate-related groups.

Is the climate changing?

Climate activists say 99% of scientists agree that the climate is warming and humans are responsible for it. But that disguises the consensus. Are all of those scientists 100% convinced? Or are they 51% convinced? If they are truly 100% convinced, then I’ll happily make a 100:0 bet with them as I would have no downside. No one so far has taken me up on this offer.

Is it bad?

The Dutch have built dykes since the 1300s. 40% of the Netherlands was reclaimed from the sea, and even today, some of their land is still as much as 7 meters below sea level. Can we, with 21st-century technology, also build dykes to protect land that is 1 meter below sea level?

But, people say, what about places like Africa, which are most affected? Yes, but a well and irrigation would make people resilient to decreased or unreliable rains. These are known, albeit costly, solutions, and thus, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

We can handle the immediate effects of a warmer climate, but, people argue, global warming can spiral out of control: the warm weather melts more ice, less ice means less sunlight reflected and a positive feedback loop that makes the planet warmer ad infinitum until the whole planet is drier than the Sahara.

But there are also negative feedback loops; more carbon dioxide and warmer weather means more plant growth. Plants sequester carbon and reduce temperatures. In fact, the world has become greener over the last few decades with increased forestation in Europe, North America and China, and more greening (think tree crops+forest) in Brazil and Southeast Asia.

Forests in China, Scotland, France, Costa Rica and the US bounced back. Brazil, Peru, and DRC forests are still in steep decline. The world’s net forest cover is in decline, but the decline is slowing with every decade; at this rate, there will be a net increasing forest cover by 2050.

So climate change is possibly neutral to possibly very bad. But good and bad don’t exist in isolation. There are pros and cons of every choice…

Was there a better alternative?

We did pump a lot of carbon into the atmosphere, but carbon-based fuels have saved billions of lives in the last 2 centuries through advances in medicine and sanitation, not to mention improved quality of life for billions more. There wasn’t a viable alternative to carbon-based fuels to have saved those lives at that time. So would we rather have a 1-3°C temperature increase or 1-5 billion dead?

People often say climate change could kill millions of people. But what if it’s more complicated than that. What if modern technology, made possible by fossil fuels, saves millions of people. Just look at the data.

It’s almost as if the same thing that increases CO2 levels also decreases climate disasters. Based on 1920s Climate-related Death Rate of ~0.25% and considering there are 8b people on earth now, 20m people each year are saved compared to 1920s levels. EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain (2023)

This is not just a question of the past—billions still remain in energy poverty. Is it fair to prevent them from saving perhaps a billion more lives?

Let’s look at the environmental alternative. Is global warming better than global cooling? This is not an idle remark. In the 1950s, climate scientists noticed there was global cooling. In fact, due to the predictable changes in the earth’s orbit and axis of rotation, we can (very roughly) predict when we would possibly have had an ice age. The period of ice ages is about 21,000 years. The last ice age started about 21,000 years ago. Did we just narrowly miss having another ice age? We can never know for sure. But would we rather have 1-3°C warming than an ice age where the average global temperature dropped by 14°C and glaciers came all the way down to New York?

I just read Why the West Rules…For Now, detailing human development from 14,000BCE to present and a shocking number of times civilization collapsed right as we had a mini ice age. A worthwhile read.

Maybe we don’t want the world to get 1-3°C warmer. But we definitely don’t want it to get 14°C colder. If we could modulate the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to stay somewhere around what we have now AND relieve energy poverty around the world, that would be great. If only there was a way to maintain our current lifestyle AND carbon dioxide concentration…

When will we get this magical zero-carbon energy?

We already have it! Nuclear power is abundant, reliable, safe and cheap (if the government just allows a plant to be built). Climate change is a solved problem (technically). Politically, there are still roadblocks. But politics is just made up of people like you and me. If you say let’s use nuclear and I do too and a billion other people do, then we could maintain slightly elevated levels of carbon dioxide to stave off an ice age. I have little sympathy for environmentalists against nuclear power; We can have our cake and eat it, too. At COP28, 22 countries committed to increasing Nuclear Power 3x by 2050.

What should we actually worry about?

I’m concerned that by 2100, we will have moved from a Military-Industrial Complex to a Carbon-Industrial Complex; we will have created an entrenched group of lobbyists and special interests that incentivize removing carbon from the atmosphere even though doing so is no longer needed. This could create a bullwhip effect that overcompensates and pushes us back towards too little carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, causing low plant growth and another ice age. I have not heard anyone talk about a Carbon-Industrial Complex before, and hopefully, people a century from now will laugh at my wrong-headed theory. But maybe not… History rhymes—if there’s one thing I’m 100% sure of, it’s that humans have proven repeatedly successful at overcompensating.

Closer to home than 2100, consider the parable of the Baptists and the Bootleggers. The religious baptists wanted to ban alcohol in the US in the 1910s to 1920s. Who could blame them? Less alcohol abuse seems like a good thing. But whenever there is someone with good intentions there is someone else who hides under good intentions. Who else wanted alcohol to be banned? The bootleggers! Originally environmentalists had good intentions. Hell, I’m an environmentalist who previously ran a biogas company and attempts permaculture farming when I can. But then the “bootleggers” (*ahem* power-hungry statists) saw the opportunity to centralize power by applying a moral purity test under the guise of environmentalism. It’s too soon to really sort out who are baptists and who are bootleggers but people who conveniently became concerned about the climate right when it benefitted them are suspect. Just like communism, “we need to control people for their own good.” How many climate bootleggers are there? We don’t know. But we know there are power hungry people who would do anything to get what they want so there are certainly some.

I try to be pragmatic. If carbon credits can raise capital for entrepreneurs who can replant trees or provide funding for rural solar projects, I’m all for it—for better or worse, such projects are a drop in the bucket for global carbon. However, I have not heard the unintended consequences of carbon credits discussed. Like giving away free clothes in Africa, thereby destroying nascent textile businesses, there are always unintended consequences.

What do you think?

Just Stop Oil Nutcases Glue Themselves To Magna Carta Case

Two Just Stop Oil protesters have been arrested after damaging the case around the Magna Carta at the British Library.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

I think these two must be in the early stages of dementia:

Two Just Stop Oil protesters have been arrested after damaging the case around the Magna Carta at the British Library.

Reverend Sue Parfitt, 82, and Judy Bruce, 85, a retired biology teacher, targeted the glass enclosure around the historic document on Friday.

The pair then held up a sign reading “The Government is breaking the law” before gluing themselves to the display, footage posted online shows.

The British Library said security had “intervened to prevent further damage”.

The Metropolitan Police said two people had been taken into custody having been arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage.

The British Library said the damage to the case, which was caused at about 10:40 BST, was “minimal” and police said the document itself was not harmed.

Rev Parfitt, who held a chisel while Ms Bruce used a hammer, said: “The Magna Carta is rightly revered, being of great importance to our history, to our freedoms and to our laws.

“But there will be no freedom, no lawfulness, no rights, if we allow climate breakdown to become the catastrophe that is now threatened.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68991038

Isn’t it strange that you never seem to find any of these nutters with proper jobs in industry and other wealth creating sectors.

Yes, just the sort of jobs that pay for teachers and Reverends.

And maybe they should get themselves an education. The Magna Carta was all about rights and laws, not the right for nutters to go around doing what they want and breaking whatever laws they want.

They also might want to consider that when the Magna Carta was signed, England was in the middle of a golden age, thanks to the Medieval Warm Period!

But maybe they prefer the deathly times of the Little Ice Age, before fossil fuels lifted humanity to its present state of luxury.

But I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, and blame it on dementia!

Bogus Math for Climate “Reparations”

Nobel Prize–winning economist Esther Duflo thinks rich countries should pay poor countries $500 billion in compensation each year for climate-change damages. It is our “moral debt.” She proposes an international 2-percent wealth tax on the ultra-rich and an increase in the global minimum corporate tax rate to fund this $500 billion transfer.

From Science Matters

 By Ron Clutz

Paul Mueller does the analysis in his AIER article Climate “Reparations” Numbers Are Rigged.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Nobel Prize–winning economist Esther Duflo thinks rich countries should pay poor countries $500 billion in compensation each year for climate-change damages. It is our “moral debt.” She proposes an international 2-percent wealth tax on the ultra-rich and an increase in the global minimum corporate tax rate to fund this $500 billion transfer.

You and I may be shocked by such a suggestion but don’t worry: “It’s really necessary. And it’s reasonable. It’s not that hard.” Only someone in an elite, progressive bubble could say something like that. Let’s check her reasoning.

Duflo claims that climate change creates costs, specifically through “excess” deaths due to excessive heat. Poorer countries from the global south near the equator will see more days of extreme heat, and so will see a disproportionate increase in excess deaths.

Other economists translated those deaths into an externality cost of $37 per ton of CO2. Multiply that by the roughly fourteen billion tons of CO2 emitted by the US and Europe and voila, wealthy countries generate $500 billion in externality costs per year.

She proposes paying for this by increasing the global minimum corporate tax rate from 15 percent to 18 percent and introducing an international 2-percent wealth tax on the ultra-rich, which she defines as the 3000 richest billionaires. We can’t go into the many problems and obstacles to such funding mechanisms here — suffice it to say such ideas will be nearly impossible to implement.

But Duflo’s back-of-the-envelope calculations, besides missing the bigger picture, are so speculative as to require playing make-believe. Let’s play along for a moment to see why. We’ll start by reverse-engineering her $500 billion number into a measure of harm.

Regulatory agencies and insurance companies use the concepts of “statistical value of life” or the “statistical value of a life-year” to do cost-benefit analysis on risk and the monetary value of life. These concepts are slippery, however, and calculated in a variety of ways with a wide range of estimates.

To keep things simple, let’s assume that the value of one life-year is $200,000. The $500 billion number proposed by Duflo suggests that the cost imposed by wealthy countries burning fossil fuels is the loss of roughly 2.5 million life-year” in poor countries per year.  That sounds like a staggering number!

But what about the benefits that have accrued to developing
countries from activities that generate CO2 emissions?

Important advances in medicine, such as antibiotics and vaccines, were developed in modern industrialized countries. So, too, were refrigeration, cars, the internet, smart phones, radar; modern agricultural methods with herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers; improvements in plumbing, building materials, manufacturing, and much more. “Polluting” activities in industrialized countries improved nutrition and safety around the world. These advances, and many others, significantly increased people’s life expectancies — especially in poor countries.

Surely the value of these improvements should weight the opposite side of the scale from the expected harm of climate change — especially since the crusade against fossil fuels and carbon emissions will assuredly slow economic growth and innovation. Let’s consider the case of India for a moment.

Life expectancy in India has basically doubled from about 35 years in 1950 to about 70 years in 2024. If you consider that India has just over a billion people living in it, modern technology developed by rich CO2-emitting countries has added 35 billion life-years in India alone. 

Translating life-years back into dollars, 35 billion life-years times $200,000 per life-year means that the benefits from greater life expectancy in India over the past 75 years is the equivalent of $7 quadrillion dollars — or in annualized terms, an annual benefit of about $93 trillion dollars. In other words, the benefits to India alone are over a hundred times larger than Duflo’s estimate of costs!

Nor is India cherry-picked. China has a similar story with life expectancy rising from 43.45 years to 77.64 years. Similar improvements in life expectancy occur across the global south.

Of course, one could argue that developed industrial countries are not solely responsible for increases in life expectancy around the world. But one could just as easily say the same about whether developed industrial countries are solely responsible for global CO2 emissions, climate change, or harm to people in the global south due to hotter weather. Connecting these two issues makes perfect philosophical sense, because the production of CO2 has historically been directly associated with increases in economic growth; which in turn is necessary for all the developments increasing longevity around the world.

Even if we massage the assumptions in Duflo’s favor, the results remain favorable to industrialization. Suppose western technology and industrial activities contribute 50 percent to improvements in life expectancy. That’s still a $46 trillion annualized benefit to India. Reduce the value of a statistical life-year to $100,000 — that’s still a $23 trillion/year benefit from industrialization in the west. Exclude India from the analysis and cut the population we focus on down to 500 million people — that’s still over $12 trillion/year in benefits. Reduce the improvement in life-expectancy by six years — that still leaves about $10 trillion/year in benefits.

So, even after making tons of assumptions to reduce their size,
the estimated benefits of industrialization are still about twenty
times larger than Duflo’s estimate of its costs. 

Worrying about hypothetical, indirect costs of CO2 emissions when it comes to human well-being is like scrounging for pennies while ignoring $100 bills lying on the sidewalk. Actually, it is worse than that. It is like lighting $100 bills on fire to help you search a dark alley for some pocket change of human welfare.

Economic development, driven largely by Adam Smith’s dictum “peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice” which includes strong private property rights and limited government intervention, has improved human living standards in unprecedented ways over the past 300 years. These remarkable improvements in human welfare are not limited to wealthy, developed economies but are enjoyed around the world. 

Duflo talks about the (external) costs of industrialization on certain countries without considering the truly massive (external) benefits of industrialization to those same countries.

If anything, with a proper accounting, developing countries owe rich countries gratitude for the benefits they have received from industrialization and the corresponding CO2 emissions.

The Great Global Warming Swindle and Climate the Movie: The Cold Truth

On March 8, 2007, the British TV Channel 4 aired a documentary titled “The Great Global Warming Swindle.” This film was the complete opposite of the fourth report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released in February of the same year. It also directly challenged the documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth” by the 45th Vice President of the United States, Al Gore, released in 2006. At that time, fear of man made global warming was sweeping across the world due to the IPCC report and Al Gore’s film.

From Watts Up With That?

This article was published in Korean on the Epoch Times Korea, May 6, 2024

Seok Soon Park, Ph.D. Former President of Korea National Institute of Environmental Research, Professor of Environmental Science & Engineering, Ewha Womans University, Seoul Korea

On March 8, 2007, the British TV Channel 4 aired a documentary titled “The Great Global Warming Swindle.” This film was the complete opposite of the fourth report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released in February of the same year. It also directly challenged the documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth” by the 45th Vice President of the United States, Al Gore, released in 2006. At that time, fear of man made global warming was sweeping across the world due to the IPCC report and Al Gore’s film.

Under these circumstances, British brave director Martin Durkin produced and aired a documentary on TV denying man made global warming, based on interviews with world-class scientists and the Earth’s climate history. This film featured compelling interviews with several prominent scientists, including Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, and Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT in US. Even now, 17 years later, director Durkin’s outstanding screenplay and interviews with scientists are enough to argue that “global warming is a large-scale fraud.”

On the other hand, big lies were hidden in the IPCC’s fourth report and Al Gore’s film. Notable examples include the ‘Himalayan glacier gate’ and the ‘Antarctic Vostok Ice Core fraud.’ However, these lies passed scrutiny by the Nobel Peace Prize committee, and Al Gore and the IPCC were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2007. The Nobel Committee stated that their awarding was for their efforts in raising awareness of the seriousness of global warming and urging action to address the issue. Furthermore, the Committee linked their efforts to maintaining world peace, stating that “excessive competition for the Earth’s resources leads to global warming and, as a result, increases the risk of violent conflicts and wars.“

The ‘Himalayan Glacier Gate,’ which came to light after the award, is a lie that the huge Himalayan ice cap will melt by 2035. Taking advantage of this lie, Rajendra Pachauri, then chairman of the IPCC, received research funds of 2.5 million and 310,000 pounds from the European Union and the Carnegie Foundation, respectively, to his Indian research institute TERI(The Energy and Resource Institute). The justification was that the melting of all Himalayan glaciers would cause serious problems in drinking water supply for nearly 2 billion Asians. However, sceptics continued to raise suspicions, and in 2010, the IPCC admitted that it was a lie. The IPCC’s excuse was that the number of years 2350 described in a Russian paper was written as 2035 in typos. Misleading the world into climate panic and receiving large amounts of research funds due to the number typo is the absurdity level of the UN IPCC report.

Al Gore’s Vostok Ice Core fraud is even more ludicrous. In his film, Al Gore showed data from ice core in the Vostok station of Antarctica, as if CO2 had raised the Earth’s temperature, proclaiming, “The increasing CO2 will turn the Earth into a furnace in the future.” However, this was a blatant lie. It had already been proved by the peer reviewed papers in 1999 and 2003 published in the famous ‘Science’ journal, that the Earth’s temperature rose first, followed by a subsequent increase in CO2 levels several hundred years later. These papers also explain the reason with the perfect scientific theories. He reversed the cause and the result to deceive the world. Furthermore, during the Eemian interglacial period 120,000 years ago, the CO2 concentration did not reach 300ppm which is much lower than today, but the temperature was 8 degree Celsius higher than today. This is solid proof that CO2 doesn’t drive the Earth temperature increase. Yet, Al Gore ignored this solid proof to deceive the world.

Martin’s 2007 film was sufficient to expose to the world the fact that the Nobel Peace Prize, given without scientific validation, was nothing more than a shabby and shameful emblem. Not only that, but the film also wielded another remarkable power. A London truck driver who watched the film filed a lawsuit against the British government for attempting to screen Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” in schools, arguing that “the decision to show a politically one-sided film in schools is wrong.” He didn’t want his two children, who were attending school, to be exposed to “An Inconvenient Truth.“

The London High Court, which took charge of the ruling, examined the scientific truths behind Al Gore’s claims in “An Inconvenient Truth.” Ironically, the court released its judgment outlining nine scientific errors on October 10, one day before the announcement of Nobel Peace Prize. These errors included assertions made by Al Gore himself in the film, such as predictions of a 6-meter sea level rise and the submergence of Pacific atolls in near future due to global warming. The court pointed out that the film was produced in the context of “alarmism and exaggeration,” and that science had been manipulated for political advocacy purposes by politicians and publicity experts. In particular, some of the nine errors were deemed closer to falsehoods than exaggerations. While allowing the use of “An Inconvenient Truth” as a teaching resource in schools, the court also emphasized the importance of presenting opposing viewpoints to prevent one-sided arguments. The government received an order from the court to send 77-page guidelines for correction containing these contents to all schools.

In March of this year, after 17 years, Director Durkin released “Climate the Movie: the Cold Truth”, the Sequel to the 2007 “The Great Global Warming Swindle.” Collaborating with American producer Tom Nelson, they crafted a more meticulous and solid script using scientific data released since then. It features interviews with world-renowned scientists such as the 2022 Nobel Prize laureate in physics Dr. John Clauser, along with William Harper, Steve Koonin, Willie Soon, Roy Spencer, and others. The film has been uploaded on YouTube, Rumble, Odysee, and Bitchute, with subtitles in 29 languages, including Korean and Japanese, so that people around the world can watch it.

The film begins by explaining scientific facts such as the Earth’s climate history, the role of carbon dioxide, the true causes of climate change such as sun and cloud, and the trends in extreme weather events. In the latter part, it exposes the deceitful agreements, the climate bandwagon, and hidden politics behind the emergence of the ‘climate crisis’ narrative. It highlights how individuals’ freedoms and impoverished nations are severely affected. The film concludes in the final remark by stating, “There is a suspicion, or perhaps realisation, that climate change is an invented scare, driven by self-interest and snobbery, cynically promoted by a parasitic, publicly-funded establishment, hungry for ever more money and power. An assault on the freedom and prosperity of the rest of us.”

The film also reveals the basic truth that the climate scam was initiated by the environmental movement that regarded the free-market economy and industrial capitalism, which have brought prosperity to humanity, as it’s sworn enemy. The climate alarmists have been pouring increasingly apocalyptic narratives over the past 30 years, claiming that the catastrophes are imminent. However, none of the catastrophes has occurred, and casualties from climate disasters have rapidly decreased. They put people around the world under mass hypnosis called the ‘climate crisis’ with blatant lies. There is a Korean proverb that says, “Even the hard bank of a large reservoir can be easily collapsed by a small ant hole, if there is a flaw inside.“ The tremendous impact of this film, now accessible to audiences worldwide, is eagerly anticipated.

※Professor Seok Soon Park translated the subtitles of “Climate the Movie: The Cold Truth” into Korean. He currently serves as the South Korean ambassador for the World Climate Declaration by the Climate Intelligence Foundation (www.clintel.org) and a member of the CO2 Coalition (www.co2coalition.org). In 2021, he translated “Inconvenient Facts” by Gregory Wrightstone and “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom” by Patrick Moore into Korean. In 2023, he co-authored “Climate Apocalypse: the Greatest Scam in Human History,“ with British non-fiction writer David Craig, and wrote “[Fact Check] The Climate Crisis Myths” in Korean. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Environmental Science from Rutgers University (New Brunswick, New Jersey USA) in 1983 and 1985, after his B.S. from Seoul National University (Seoul, Korea) in 1980.

Wind Turbine-related Radiation

The amazing conclusion is that over the lifetime of a wind project (20 years), wind energy produces more radioactive waste per MWH than a nuclear facility!

From Master Resource

By John Droz, Jr.

“Lobbyists and other politically correct parties paint industrial wind energy as “free, clean, and green.” With no consequences for lying, is it any wonder that we are drowning in dishonesty?”

This is the last in a series I’ve posted about radiation and some of our energy sources. It started with a commentary arguing that there are good reasons to categorize Nuclear power as a “renewable” source of electrical energy. Next was Nuclear Power Radiation — Part 1 (which outlined radiation from normal nuclear power operations, waste, and misc). Then there was Nuclear Power Radiation — Part 2, which briefly covered the rest of the well-known nuclear radiation possibilities.

Here I will give a quickie overview of a radiation source that most people have never heard about. Lobbyists and other politically correct parties paint industrial wind energy as “free, clean, and green.” Although none of that is true, this deceptiveness is dismissed as marketing puffery. With no consequences for lying, is it any wonder that we are drowning in dishonesty?

A major eye-opener is that wind turbine manufacture results in horrific environmental degradation (also see here and here). A lot of this happens in China so it is conveniently out of sight. But wait, the same organizations who are promoting wind energy also strongly push the one-world (“we’re all in this together”) ideology — so they should be very concerned about what happens in China too, right?

Let’s look at one particular matter: Rare Earth Elements (REEs). In addition to significant air and water pollution, the processing of REEs (30+ steps) results in a large amount of radioactive waste. Yes, you read that correctly.

How much radioactive waste per turbine? My understanding is the following:

Fact 1: Each wind turbine is reported to have several thousands of pounds of REEs (i.e., typically 2000± pounds per MW — and today’s turbines are 4+MW).

Fact 2: A US Army analyst reports (reference page 16) that for every ton of REE, there can be about a ton of radioactive waste!

Once we have absorbed the significance of these numbers, an interesting question arises: how does the quantity of radioactive waste produced by a 1 GW nuclear facility compare to the quantity of radioactive waste produced by the manufacture of wind turbines that would result in an equivalent amount of annual electricity? Let’s look at it by weight.

The key wind energy assumptions are:

a) An optimistic capacity factor of 33% is assumed.

b) There are 2000± pounds of REEs per face value wind turbine MW.

c) Every ton of REE results in about a ton of radioactive waste.

d) Since some of the reported waste includes water, we’ll generously assume that about 50%± of the weight is due to H2O.

So, the radioactive waste for a 3 GW wind facility:

3000 MW x 2000 REE/MW x 1 Waste/REE x .5 =

3,000,000± pounds of radioactive waste

How does this compare to a nuclear facility? There are two methods for processing nuclear fuel (typically uranium). In the US, the fuel is used once (i.e., is a single pass). In the rest of the world, the fuel is used a second time, which substantially reduces the amount of resulting waste.

The key nuclear assumptions are:

a) A 1 GW Nuclear facility has 27± tonnes/year (about 60,000 pounds/year) of used uranium.

b) If reprocessed, only 3% of this is radioactive waste (60,000 x 3% = 1,800). [See this for a good explanation of radioactive waste, and for items a & b.]

c) Twenty years of nuclear power generation is used as that is a very generous expected life of a wind turbine.

d) The reactor is a Light Water Reactor (LWR) [i.e., a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), or a Boiling Water Reactor (BWR)].

The single-pass radioactive waste figures for a 1 GW nuclear facility:

—>  60,000± pounds per year. Therefore the twenty-year total of nuclear radioactive waste would be 60,000± x 20 = 1,200,000± pounds of radioactive waste

The double-pass radioactive waste figures for a 1 GW nuclear facility:

—> 1,800± pounds per year. Therefore the twenty-year total of nuclear radioactive waste would be 1,800± x 20 = 36,000± pounds of radioactive waste

Compare these to the figure above: 3,000,000± pounds of radioactive waste for an equivalent amount of electricity produced by wind energy, over twenty years.

The amazing conclusion is that over the lifetime of a wind project (20 years), wind energy produces more radioactive waste per MWH than a nuclear facility!

So we’ve lifted another wind energy rock, and have found a very disturbing industry secret. The few others who have looked into this have labeled it as the 800-pound Gorilla In The Room. Another good piece is from IER: Big Wind’s Dirty Little Secret: Toxic Lakes and Radioactive Waste.

One more peek under another rock… It’s bad enough to largely rely on Communist China for unneeded materials, but it’s even worse when this investigation concluded that the Chinese rare earth industry is “dominated by criminal gangs.” In other words, much of every dollar spent on rare earths for wind turbines goes into things like fentanyl production — which is then sent to the US to kill its citizens…

So… the next time that a wind marketer feeds you the “wind is green” sales pitch, say Not so fast!

——————–

John Droz, Jr. is a Principal at MasterResource. This is a repost from Critically Thinking About Select Social Issues.

Swimming with a Rare Giant Sting Ray — Yongala, 6 May 2024

A stingray’s venom is not necessarily fatal, but it is apparently excruciatingly painful. The venom is composed of the enzymes 5-nucleotidase and phosphodiesterase and a neurotransmitter that causes muscles to contract.

From Jennifer Marohasy

By jennifer

The stout tail of the Megatrygon microps, that swung above me Monday morning.  And then there is the longer tail from one of coachwhip rays catching a ride on top of it.   Photograph by Jennifer Marohasy, May 6, 2024. Yongala wreck at 18 metres.

I always look for an animal’s eyes, to get a sense of the situation.  But this ray, it has tiny eyes, about the size of sultanas!   I could only sense that it was curious, and that it meant us no harm.

Perched above it were three much smaller coachwhip rays, and they were having trouble keeping their balance as this smalleyed ray, this rare and elusive Megatrygon microps swam away, only to circle back.    It was fun just watching the coachwhips slip and slide.

A stingray’s venom is not necessarily fatal, but it is apparently excruciatingly painful.  The venom is composed of the enzymes 5-nucleotidase and phosphodiesterase and a neurotransmitter that causes muscles to contract.    The most destructive part of the sting mechanism, more dangerous than the venom, are the barbs on the spine. The sharp tip of the sting will enter a person smoothly, but its exit is roughly equivalent to backing up over blades.  Pulling the spike out of a human’s chest or abdomen can apparently be enough to cause death from the massive tearing of tissue that results.

Megatrygon microps is the largest species of stingray in the world with a width of 2 metres and some.   But I felt calm in its presence, and I also wanted to get closer.

The four of us, Thomas, Jessica and Alyson, had jumped in some 15 minutes earlier off the MV SeaEsta for a second dive that morning, on Monday 6th May.    It can be difficult – diving the Yongala. There was a 2-metre swell forecast, but we jump into something less than that.   ‘A bit rollie,’ was how first mate Kerrie described it.

My objective was to just get in and get down the 18 metres to the wreck and hopefully make it the entire length – to swim the entire top of the wreck, the entire length of the Yongala without running out of air.   If I got to the other end with 120 bars, I would be happy.

We got there, to the stern and did an air check.  My three buddies and I, we each still had at least 120 bars.   Whoo hoo!   And the current would take us back to the bow, from where we would make our ascent.

I was feeling happy. Relaxed.  I could see a giant groper in the distance, purple soft corals and golden fish covered the top of the wreck.

Then it appeared.

It hovered and then swung around.  Moved away and then returned.   It swung its tail over my head, and I saw the barbs up close.   Jessica filmed much of the encouter, with her GoPro.

https://vimeo.com/944390588

We hovered, it circled, Thomas moved a bit closer, Jess kept filming.

It was a magical encounter!

The Yongala wreck is inside the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, approximately 48 nautical miles south-east of Townsville not far from the mouth of the Burdekin River draining a catchment rich with sugarcane and beef cattle.

I am so grateful to Paul Crocombe and Adrenalin Dive for the opportunity, for this memory of swimming with a rare and elusive Megatrygon microps — a giant smalleyed ray, with three coachwhips atop slipping and sliding.

Alyson on the dive deck of MV Sea Esta, just before the first dive at sunrise on May 6, 2024.   Anticipation.

Notes, from National Geographic

“The smalleye stingray is a study in contrasts and surprise. It has a wingspan that stretches greater than seven feet, yet its eyes are the size of raisins. While most stingrays avoid humans, the smalleye appears to be inquisitive, sometimes swimming within feet of scuba divers. And despite being the world’s largest oceanic stingray, it is very rarely spotted alive, and almost nothing is known about it.

Before the early 2000s, there were only a couple verified live sightings of smalleye stingrays (Megatrygon microps). But in the past 15 years, biologist Andrea Marshalland colleagues have spotted 70 individuals off the coast of Mozambique, and they’ve catalogued some of these observations in the world’s first study on the animals, published this month in the journal PeerJ.

The paper shows that these rays can be identified individually by the unique spot pattern that each has on its back, which will allow researchers to use photos and videos taken by citizen scientists around the world to track where specific animals … click here for more information.

The distinctive markings on the Megatrygon microps that we swam with Monday morning. Photograph Jennifer Marohasy.  May 6, 2024.  Yongala.
https://vimeo.com/943753166

Jumping in on the first dive, as filmed by Jessica — Thomas, then Alyson and then Jen/me.

‘A ship in harbour is safe.   But that is not what ships are built for.’

The MV SeaEsta at the Townsville Breakwater marina last Friday evening, as we boarded for the new adventure.   I had no idea at that time of the friends I would make, the smalleyed ray/Megatrygon microps that would  preoccupy my thoughts, dominate my memory of events afterwards.

Jessica modelling a Kerrie Horrock’s teeshirt in support of Myanmar refugees at the Umbrella gallery Townsville.

All video by Jessica.  All the photographs of the ray (and Alyson) are by me/Jen with my Olympus TG6.

Update.  

And Jessica has sent me more, a clip of Thomas and I on the dive deck immediately after the first dive.

https://vimeo.com/944667183

The (Anti) Social Cost of Carbon

Forty-two was the mystical number that explained “life, the universe, and everything” in Douglas Adams’ comic novel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Today, another mystical number, the so-called social cost of carbon (SSC), is providing the excuse for the Environmental Protection Agency and green-energy-enamored state regulators to enact crippling energy policies.

From Watts Up With That?

By Jonathan Lesser

Forty-two was the mystical number that explained “life, the universe, and everything” in Douglas Adams’ comic novel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Today, another mystical number, the so-called social cost of carbon (SSC), is providing the excuse for the Environmental Protection Agency and green-energy-enamored state regulators to enact crippling energy policies.

The SCC is the thumb on the scale that can justify virtually any policy aimed at eliminating fossil fuels. When the EPA first proposed its rule to reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, the agency’s cost-benefit analysis determined the benefits would be minuscule. Any putative benefits, it turns out, would come instead from reductions in carbon emissions and, here’s the key, based on a calculated value for the SCC.  The same was true for the EPA’s earlier attempt at carbon regulation via a “Clean Power Plan,” which was shut down by the Supreme Court. But here we are again with the agency’s newest rules trying to force coal plants to further reduce mercury emissions and to force both coal and natural gas-fired power plants to capture 90% of their carbon emissions. The technology to accomplish this doesn’t exist and EPA Administrator Michael Regan admitted the rule will force the closure of fossil-fuel power plants.

The SCC values used by the EPA are derived from calculations in integrated planning models (IPMs). Those models assume a simplistic linear relationship between carbon emissions and world temperature (never mind that the validity of that linear assumptions is a subject of deep debate in scientific circles). The models then assume that the resulting temperature increases cause all forms of environmental doom – rising sea levels, more disease, and declining agricultural production – for which yet more estimates are made to assign future cost consequences. Here’s the key: the IPMs project these costs out for the next 300 years (not a typo). Then, those far future costs are “discounted” to estimate a value in today’s dollars by using truly absurd assumptions about such things as inflation and economic growth.

A tongue-in-cheek forecaster’s creed is “Give them a number or give them a date. Don’t give them both.” Attempting to predict the future three centuries hence may be standard fare for science fiction writers, but basing energy policies on such predictions is insane.

Imagine someone in the year 1724 predicting life – and technology – today. Benjamin Franklin was 18 years old and working in his father’s print shop. George Washington would not be born for another eight years. The French scientist Antoine Lavoisier, who first identified carbon as an element in 1789, would not be born until 1743. The first patent on a flush toilet would not happen for another half-century. Thomas Edison would not invent the light bulb and the telephone for another 150 years. Could anyone in 1724 have imagined automobiles, mobile phones, and MRI machines? How about integrated circuits, nuclear power, and B-2 bombers?

To presume we can accurately predict, or even imagine, what the world will look like 300 years from now is just as preposterous. Yet, simplistic models and arbitrary assumptions are being used to drive energy policy decisions today. Using the SCC estimates, and assuming that new technologies will magically appear, the EPA can justify virtually any pollution control regulation, including those that effectively mandate electric vehicles. Similarly, even though offshore wind generation costs five times more than natural gas and coal, the SCC can “prove” the benefits of offshore wind exceed its costs. New York State, for example, assumes that, by 2040, thousands of megawatts of “dispatchable emissions-free generators” (the equivalent of a natural gas generator burning pure hydrogen) will provide the necessary backup for unreliable offshore wind, even though no such generators exist.

Contrary to the economic fantasies peddled by green energy advocates, policies to eliminate fossil fuels based on the supposed benefits captured by the SCC will cripple the U.S. economy. Electricity prices, coupled with ill-considered plans to electrify virtually everything, will soar. Supplies will dwindle, requiring rationing, either explicitly or through rolling blackouts, such as those experienced every day in South Africa. Rather than creating some green energy nirvana, the lack of adequate and affordable electricity will cause societal decay.

All of this based on a made-up number. 

Jonathan Lesser is a senior fellow with the National Center for Energy Analytics and president of Continental Economics.

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

The Invincible Ignorance of the Western Governing Class

The traditional theology of the Judaeo-Christian world has a useful concept known as invincible ignorance. It is an ignorance so profound, so all-pervading, so irredeemably, pig-headed, so irremediably scatter-brained, that nothing can be done to save its victims from themselves except to smile, shake the dust of their one-horse dorp off one’s cowboy boots, get astride one’s Ducati and thunder off to the next dorp.

From Watts Up With That?

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

The traditional theology of the Judaeo-Christian world has a useful concept known as invincible ignorance. It is an ignorance so profound, so all-pervading, so irredeemably, pig-headed, so irremediably scatter-brained, that nothing can be done to save its victims from themselves except to smile, shake the dust of their one-horse dorp off one’s cowboy boots, get astride one’s Ducati and thunder off to the next dorp.

One of the most difficult and highly specialist tasks in the counter-intelligence community is that of interdicting the agents of influence of hostile powers so that they cannot create or maintain a climate of invincible ignorance by deploying linguistic warfare, gaining control of our news media, suppressing freedom of speech, corrupting the minds of young people in schools and universities, canceling those who dare to speak the truth and eventually prosecuting or even executing the few brave and independent souls who continue to commit the gravest of all mortal sins against hate-filled totalitarianism: to dare to step out of the Party Line and politely suggest that the Emperor’s valet must have been off duty this morning.

But what if invincible ignorance has become so well established that the enemies of liberty and democracy, free markets and prosperity do not have to do anything except sit and wait until the hated free West collapses all by itself?

Here is perhaps the most spectacular instance of invincible ignorance I have come across in a long career studying this phenomenon and working to prevent its weaponization and deployment by those who mean harm to democracy. Here is a verbatim clip from a recent interview. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to guess who the interviewee is.

Interviewee: “The US government can’t go bankrupt because we can print our own money.”

Dim interviewer: “Like you say, they print the dollar, so why does the government even borrow?”

Interviewee: “Well, um, the – er – so the – I mean – again, some of the stuff gets – some of the language that the – erm – some of the language and concepts are just confusing. I mean, the government definitely prints money, and it definitely lends that money, which is why – erm, er – the government definitely prints money, and then it lends that money by – er – by selling bonds – er – is that what they do? They, they – erm – they – yeah, they, they – erm – they sell bonds – yeah, they sell bonds, right, so as they sell bonds and people buy bonds and lend them the money – yup – so a lot of times, a lot of times – at least to my ear – with MMT the language and the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing, but there is no question that the government prints money and then it uses that money to – um, er, uh – er – so – um – yeah, I – I – I guess I’m just – I don’t – I can’t really talk – eh, I don’t – I don’t get it – I don’t know what they’re talking about, like, ’cos – it’s like – the government clearly prints money, it does it all the time, and it clearly borrows, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this that ’n’ defic – conversation, so I don’t think there’s anything confusing there.”

I’ll give you a clue. It could have been (but wasn’t) the Cellar-Dweller, for he has given fewer interviews than any other President (real or purported) in my lifetime. It could have been (but wasn’t) his gibbering, cackling, grossly inadequate deputy, la Harris.

Some further clues. It wasn’t a typically ill-informed, inarticulate Communist undergrad trying and failing to debate Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA on campus.

It was a graduate in music from the Manhattan School of Music. He also holds a Master’s degree in “social” “work” from Hunter College and a Diploma in “social” “work” from Columbia “University” School of “Social” “Work”.

Give up? OK, I’ll tell you. The interviewee was one Jared Bernstein, of whom the world has hitherto justifiably heard little. Believe it or not, our Jared is a member of the U.S. Cabinet in his incapacity as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. I kid you not. That’s his job title.

I should explain that “MMT”, mentioned by Bernstein, is “Modern” “Monetary” “Theory”, which, like “Critical” “Race” “Theory”, is a non-subject manufactured by the shrieking far Left to advance its fell political objectives.

The purpose of MMT – which is not modern, is not monetary and is not a theory – is to induce the West to complete its continuing decline and eventual collapse by abandoning all monetary and fiscal discipline and bankrupt itself by overspending, over-borrowing, over-taxation and excessive money-printing.

It should be clear to all from the above verbatim transcript that Jared the Jejune is not the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors because he knows anything about economics. He is there because he is a Party Line footballer, and for no other reason.

Throughout history, the spend-borrow-tax-print regime has been tried over and over again, and has failed over and over again, from late imperial China via medieval England to the Weimar Republic. It doesn’t work. And that is precisely why it is so attractive to the West-hating far Left.

There is a visible overlap between the invincible ignorance of the Jareds of this world on how many beans make five and the invincible ignorance of the wider governing class in the West on the climate question.

Imagine trying to explain to the U.S. government’s musical “social” “worker” why it is that every cent squandered on interfering in the energy marketplace in the name of Saving The Planet from warmer weather is a cent entirely wasted.

The table shows that even if the Party Line on how much warming we may cause were correct, and even if all nations went directly from here to net zero by 2050, the world would be only 0.2 degrees cooler by then than if our influence on global temperature continued its near-linear increase of the past third of a century over the 26 years to 2050.

After adjustment for the fact that for 34 years global warming has occurred at half the predicted midrange decadal rate, the world would only be 0.1 degrees cooler than now if all nations actually achieved net zero emissions by the target date.

What of the cost? The least unrealistic figure I can find for what it might cost to get to net zero by 2050, the target year, is that of the UK’s National Grid, which has estimated that just to net-zero the UK grid will cost $3.8 trillion. But grid emissions are only a quarter of UK emissions, and UK emissions are only 0.8% of global emissions. So the pro rata cost of net-zeroing the entire planet would be of order $2 quadrillion.

Now for a question way, way over puir wee Jared’s head: value for other people’s money. The candy-cane question is the central question in economics. Tom Sawyer goes into a sweetie-shop, slaps a handful of sticky coins on the counter, points to a pile of candy-canes and says, “Gee, miss, how many candy-canes can I git fer this?”

By the age of ten, most kids know the value of the candy-cane question. Jared hasn’t gotten there yet. So let’s slap a sticky $1 billion of taxpayers’ money on the counter and ask, “Gee, miss, how many degrees’ global cooling by 2050 can I git fer this?”

Spend $1 billion and buy just one 20-millionth of a degree of global cooling by 2050. Even by the low standards of the far Left, that is surely the worst value for money in the history of macroeconomics since the construction of the Great Wall of China. Now we know why the male equivalent of a Karen is a Jared.

Contrast Jared’s invincible ignorance with the alertness of the preceding administration. One day President Trump’s then chief of staff asked me to send the President a brief on a scientific result obtained by my team. The main points of the brief are in two simple slides.

First, if temperature-feedback strength has not changed since 1850, final warming by doubled CO2 – roughly equal to all anthropogenic warming this century – will be 1.1 K, not 2 to 5 K.

Secondly, if the feedback strength has changed since 1850, one cannot use feedback analysis to predict global warming at all, because an increase of just 0.01 in the feedback multiplier would be enough to put up this century’s warming from 2 to 5 K.

Since uncertainties in data and in process understanding altogether prevent the constraint of feedback variables to any such precision as 0.01, feedback analysis cannot be used to predict global warming. But the methods of prediction that do not use feedback analysis tend to predict far less warming than those using that incorrect method, and using it incorrectly.

For instance, the total anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcing in the industrial era is about equal to the forcing from doubled CO2. But the warming since 1850 is only 1.1 K. Since the sensitivity-relevant feedbacks are short-acting (days to years), 1.1 K (not IPCC’s predicted 2 to 5 K) is the final warming we may expect this century from anthropogenic causes. And that is the end of the climate “emergency”.

Is UK Rainfall Becoming More Extreme? Not at Oxford.

It’s worth taking a closer look at daily rainfall in Oxford, as it has such a long database, back to 1827. It tells us a lot about the weather in recent years, things that the Met Office want to hide from us.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

It’s worth taking a closer look at daily rainfall in Oxford, as it has such a long database, back to 1827. It tells us a lot about the weather in recent years, things that the Met Office want to hide from us.

Although we keep being told by the Met Office that our weather has been so wet in recent years because a “a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture”, the principal factor is, and always has been, the number of days when it rains. In other words a meteorological phenomenon, not a climatic one.

The general definition of a rainday is when rainfall exceeds 1mm. The chart below plots these at Oxford. Data is from KNMI:

https://climexp.knmi.nl/data/pgdcnUK000056225.dat

Last year was 5th wettest and also featured high in the number of raindays. The years 2000, 2012 and 2014 also feature highly, as well as earlier ones such as 1872, 1916, 1927, 1951, 1958 and 1960.

Some periods have plenty of raindays, others much less. But there is no apparent trend in either direction.

But we can also analyse the average rainfall intensity, that is rainfall per rainday:

Last year had one of the highest intensities, in large part because spring and early summer was so dry. These are the times of year when daily rainfall is low, with mainly showery weather, so the overall average is bound to be exaggerated. But 2023 was by no means unusual, as there have been other years with similar rainfall intensity, such as 1915, 1949 and 1960.

More notable though is the occurrence of those years in the 1830s, when rainfall was clearly much more intense. Hardly evidence for the Met Office’s theory!

All of this is, of course, weather. I defy anybody to find a pattern or trend towards rainfall becoming more intense in Oxford in the above chart.

Again the overall trend suggests that rainfall intensity has been declining over the period of record.

Maybe the Met Office would like to explain.