Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
The state-subsidised electric car market has crashed in China and the country is trying to dump the vehicles on the West, but the same is happening here as well. For manufacturers it’s going to be a blood bath. Ross Clark has the details in the Spectator.
The state-subsidised electric car market has crashed in China and the country is trying to dump the vehicles on the West, but the same is happening here as well. For manufacturers it’s going to be a blood bath. Ross Clark has the details in the Spectator.
China is often characterised as a copycat when it comes to industry and technology but in one way it has proved to be a pioneer. It was China which saw the first boom in electric cars – and it was China that was the first to suffer when demand for them collapsed. The vast graveyards of unsold vehicles found in Hangzhou and other Chinese cities are the result of a huge, subsidised push to manufacture electric vehicles, demand for which has never caught up with supply. Ride-share services bought the vehicles– in a rerun of the great cycle-share fiasco of 2018, which led to piles of unused and unwanted bikes. But private buyers have been notably less keen.
Where China leads, the rest of the world seems doomed to follow. With China’s manufacturers struggling to sell their electric cars at home, last year they started shipping them in large numbers to Europe – where many are now accumulating in ports at Rotterdam and Antwerp. The window in which to sell them may prove small, as the EU is considering measures to prevent the ‘dumping’ of cheap Chinese cars in Europe. The Biden administration has already taken action, increasing tariffs on cars imported from China from 25% to 100%. While that may put paid to Chinese imports, it won’t do anything to alleviate unsold stocks of U.S.-made electric cars. The great electric revolution that was promised just three years ago is already failing – and it will bring the car manufacturers down with it.
If there ever was a real-world demonstration of the old proverb ‘you can lead a horse to water…’, it is electric cars. Elon Musk’s visionary work with Tesla panicked the old combustion engine firms, which set themselves ambitious targets to phaseout petrol completely: Fiat, Ford, Jeep, Nissan and Lexus by 2030, Vauxhall by 2028, Jaguar by 2025. One of the most dramatic announcements came three years ago when Hertz declared that a quarter of its entire rental fleet would be electric by 2025. “The new Hertz is going to lead the way as a mobility company,” it said. It certainly did lead the way – into headlong retreat.
At the time, Hertz signed a $4 billion deal with Tesla and announced plans to buy 175,000 EVs from General Motors. In January it went into reverse and said it would instead start selling 20,000 EVs (later raising this to 30,000). It has pledged to “re-invest a portion of the proceeds from the sale of EVs into the purchase of internal combustion engine vehicles”. Its share price (down 80% since the Tesla announcement) has made it a case study.
In Britain, things don’t look much better. The slowing EV momentum led Rishi Sunak to drop his target of banning new petrol car sales by 2030 and push it back to 2035. The number of electric cars sold to drivers (as opposed to companies) was falling by 20% as of last month. The U.K.’s market for EVs is being propped up by fleet companies which, spurred on by Government incentives, now buy five in every six EVs sold.
They’re not even cost-effective, says Clark: “Not only are EVs themselves 40% more expensive to buy than petrol cars, but they are also costlier to run. The average charge for refuelling at a rapid charger is 22p per mile, compared with 17p for petrol.”
Coal is not the favorite “child” these days. It seems that almost the entire western political world has sworn to send coal to its grave. Not only have the United Nations and the IEA literally declared “war” on coal, but countless political, activist organizations and even leading financial institutions have pledged, if it had to be in their power, to immediately stop the usage of coal.
Coal is not the favorite “child” these days. It seems that almost the entire western political world has sworn to send coal to its grave. Not only have the United Nations and the IEA literally declared “war” on coal, but countless political, activist organizations and even leading financial institutions have pledged, if it had to be in their power, to immediately stop the usage of coal.
The reason for all of this is of course this “terrible” chemical element called carbon (number 6 on the periodic table). Please remember though that the same carbon is the 2nd most abundant element in the human body and it is a key building block for all life on Earth. By the way, carbon is not only essential because CO2 is plant food and plants grow best at 1.500 ppm of CO2 in the air (current atmospheric content is 420 ppm), CO2 is also a greenhouse gas, contributing to keeping our Earth temperature temperate and livable.
I have to mention that the prize for keeping Earth livable has to go to water, or better yet, water vapor, the most important and most abundant greenhouse gas. We all understand that increased greenhouse gas concentrations will contribute to slight warming, though only a few of us have learnt – including me only after studying it – that there are so-called saturation levels to consider which means that higher concentrations of any greenhouse gas have less and less impact on temperature changes (the warming impact logarithmically declines).
But today’s blog is not about globally measured temperature changes, its causes and its negative or positive impacts, but about coal and solar.
So why are coal and solar so closely interlinked? Why is it that solar panel manufacturing is impossible without coal? I always thought that coal is “only” important for electricity, contributing to 36% of global power demand, or over 8h of 24h every single day of the year. I always thought that coal is “only” required to produce all steel. Let us have a look at solar panel manufacturing, which is really about silicon production.
The vast majority of all energy required to make solar panels is consumed during silicon production, purification, and wafering. But first let’s talk about purity. 6N pure silicon means 99.9999% purity level, 11N pure silicon means 99.999999999% purity level, you get the point.
You may now have a first glimpse of the chemical and mechanical difficulty of making such a pure metal from a natural product.
In this blog post, you will see how important uninterrupted power supply is, especial for industrial processes such as silicon smelting. Obviously, this power comes from coal in China, and cannot come from wind or solar. Let’s dig deeper.
1. Metallurgical-grade silicon making and high purity quartz (HPQ)
Elemental silicon (Si) is not a naturally available element. Largely unchanged for over 100 years, silicon (Si) is produced by chemically reducing mined high purity quartz (SiO2) using carbon (C) in submerged-arc furnaces. The arc furnaces are each powered by up to 45 megawatts of electricity also to produce the heat required for the processes. As the mix of quartz stone and carbon heats, the carbon reacts with the oxygen in the quartz and forms CO gas, this is called silicon smelting. Consider it like iron ore (Fe2O3) being reduced using coke from coking coal (C) to make iron (Fe).
All simplified
Iron making: Fe2O3 + 3C + heat => 2Fe + 3CO
Silicon making (smelting): SiO2 + 2C + heat => Si + 2CO
This means that each ton of silicon roughly releases 5-6 tons of CO2 in this silicon smelting process alone.
High purity quartz sand (HPQ) is the feedstock for metallurgical-grade silicon. It is generally considered that the starting quality of feedstock for solar panels and semi-conductors is 99.95% silicon oxide (SiO2), with only <500 ppm of total impurities. Such HPQ is scarce and needs to be mined, processed, and of course transported before it is ready to be used for smelting (Chemical Research 2023 and Troszak).
The typical processing sequence for high-purity quartz includes:
(a) pre-treatment, which involves crushing, scrubbing, desliming, screening, and grinding;
(b) physical separation methods, including radiometric sorting, dense media separation, gravity separation, magnetic–electric separation, and flotation;
(c) chemical treatments, such as calcination-water quenching and leaching; and
(d) advanced treatments, encompassing chlorination, roasting and vacuum refining (Zhang et al 2023).
Estimates of the energy and therefore also CO2 footprint of silicon manufacturing diverge widely in the literature or “scientific community”. Though I believe we already understand that global silicon purification and solar panel manufacturing is dominated by China (Figure 1).
If you are interested to learn more about the physical and chemical characteristics of coal, please read the author’s newly published Coal Handbook available at your favourite book store.
2. Carbon sources for silicon making: Coal, petcoke, hardwood
Interesting is that various sources of carbon are used for the silicon smelting process. These carbon sources are derived largely from coal, petcoke (a byproduct of oil refining) and hardwood. Coal, to make coke, is the most important, but this coal must be of special quality, very low ash, high fixed carbon, with specific reactivity (tested using SINTEF tests), and of a specific size. This coal is rather scarce globally, with Colombia playing an important role. For more detail on silicon smelting please also see Troszak’s 2019, Burning coal and trees to make solar panels.
The mining of such coal is not only expensive, because it is scarce and requires large overburden removal, but also the coal processing (washing) requires energy and “wastes” resources. Once washed and ready, only a fraction of the coal consisting of specific sizing, usually 3-12mm can be used in the furnaces used for silicon smelting. The finer material has to be sold at lower values. Furthermore, to maintain the sizing, the coal should be shipped in bulker bags or sea containers so the sizing does not degrade with handling.
You can see why such special coal demands a large premium and a significant amount of energy for mining, processing/upgrading/sizing, and then of course transportation to the smelters (thanks also to Rob Boyd from New Zealand for his valuable input).
Hardwood is a remarkable one. Shredded hardwood must be mixed into the silicon smelter “pot” to allow the reactive gasses to circulate, so that the liquid silicon that forms, can settle to the bottom for tapping, and to allow the resulting CO (and other gasses) to escape the smelter “charge” safely (Troszak 2019). Woodchips provide a large surface area for the chemical reaction to take place more completely and at improved rates.
Hardwood helps to maintain a porous charge, thereby promoting gentle and uniform – instead of violent – gas venting. Woodchips help regulate smelting temperatures to keep the furnace burning smoothly on top, reducing conductivity, promoting deep electrode penetration, reducing dust, and help in preventing bridging, crusting, and agglomeration of the mix (Wartluft 1971).
Of course, aged hardwood trees are required to be burned to make woodchips. Hardwood is biomass that is extracted from nature but those trees, i.e. in the Brazilian Amazon, you may not be surprised, take more than a couple of years to grow.
Figure 2: The production of charcoal in a traditional manner in the forest
3.Solar-grade silicon (SoG-Si) making and wafering
For solar panel manufacturing to be complete, more is required. Metallurgical grade silicon (MG-Si) from the smelter, usually of 98% purity, does not meet the purity requirements of the photovoltaic industry, it must undergo two more energy-intensive processes before it can be made into solar cells and then into panels.
Firstly, the Siemens Process converts metallurgical grade silicon (MG-Si) from the smelter into polycrystalline silicon (called polysilicon) by using an extremely energy intensive process, a high-temperature vapor deposition process (Troszak 2019). The purity requirement for solar grade silicon (SoG-Si) is currently 9-11N (99.999999999%), a factor of 10.000 to 100.000 more pure compared to the 5-6N purity required for solar PV a decade ago and likey the basis for the solar panels on your roof (if you have some). In the Siemens process, silicon is crushed and mixed with hydrochlorous acid (HCl) to create Trichlorosilane gas (SiHCl3). This gas is heated and deposited onto very hot rods of polysilicon (1.150C) while the reaction chambers walls are cooled.
Each batch of polysilicon “rods” takes several days to grow, and a continuous, 24/7 supply of electricity to each reactor is essential to prevent a costly “run abort.” Polysilicon refineries depend on highly reliable conventional power grids, and usually have two incoming high-voltage supply feeds. (Sources Mariutti and Schernikau 2024, unpublished academic paper, Troszak 2019).
Secondly, the Czochralski Process turns the liquid silicon metal from the smelter and doping materials (gallium or phosphorous) into the silicon ingot, a large monocrystal, 20-30 cm diameter and 1-2 m in length. Next, the ingot is sawed into rectangular bricks, which are sliced into wafers using a diamond wire sawing process (Figures 3 and 4). This process requires several days, and uninterrupted 24/7 power supply. An ingot/wafer/cell plant can use more than 100 MWh additional energy per ton of incoming polysilicon, which is about 6 times as much as the original smelting of the silicon from ore.
Estimates of the energy and therefore CO2 footprint of silicon purification and wafering also diverge widely in the academic literature, mainly due to two reasons. On the one hand, there is no agreement on the estimated energy demand for these core processes. For example, solar grade silicon (SoG-Si) is the most energy-intensive step in the silicon purification process and should best be understood. Yet, SoG-Si inventories report an electricity demand ranging from 50 kWh/kg to 110 kWh/kg, which appears quite low.
On the other hand, secondary and pre-smelting processes are rarely included when considering the definition of an energy footprint, applicable to the average Chinese silicon industry. Currently, reporting used by governments for decision making, tend to be based on best-in-class plants, like in Europe or North America, which is far removed from reality.
Figure 3: Czochralski silicon ingot being pulled from melted polysilicon. Source: Siltronix, from Troszak 2019
4. Finalizing solar panel manufacturing
Once wafers are produced a few more steps are required before we have a ready-made solar panel. All of these steps require a significant amount of energy in addition to the raw materials required to build the factories and machines, the running of processes and operations, and the supply of electricity and heat required to perform these processes.
Wafer sawing: Silicon “bricks” are sliced into thin wafers for later manufacturing of solar cells
Solar cell and module production: requiring aluminum, glass, copper, plastic, rare earths, acids, and over 400 chemicals
Mounting structure supply: requiring aluminum or steel frames, cement foundation, etc.
Transportation: everything needs to be transported to the point of use i.e. in the US or Germany consuming at least oil products
I am not covering decommissioning and disposal of solar panels here. But it will suffice to mention that the average operational lifespan of the newest utility scale solar panels, is a fraction of the 20-25 years marketed in the media, proving to be more like less than 15 years. While older solar panels used to “live” longer, newer ones are optimized for the lowest raw materials and energy use, negatively impacting lifespan. Libra et al 2023 details that after about 10 years, serious failures of 1st tier (bankable) PV panels occur at an increasing rate.
It is obvious that decommissioning and disposal, and certainly any recycling, require again energy and actually also equipment made out of raw materials.
Figure 4: Czochralski process whole ingot (left), and brick and chords after sawing (right), crown and tail (upper right) Source: SVM from Troszak 2019
5. Coal and China
From this blog, you can now better see how important uninterrupted power and heat supply is especially for industrial processes such as silicon smelting. Obviously, this power comes from coal in China, and cannot come from wind or solar. Figure 5 illustrates how China increased its power consumption more than 5-fold in 20 years and how coal-fired power generation continues to grow with the economy. The large wind and solar installations can be seen as addition, rather than transition. For comparison, I added lines to illustrate the approximate electricity consumption of the US and Germany respectively.
Figure 5: Chinese electricity generation by sources compared to US and Germany. Source: Schernikau based on Ember, details here
Global electricity generation is dominated by thermal power. Coal and gas alone account for about 60% (Figure 6). We understand that the world, and especially China (Figure 7), continues to build large coal power plants to provide reliable uninterrupted power and domestic and industrial heat. Wind and solar enthusiasts often underestimate the importance of inertia of rotational mass for the stability of our grids.
Coal consumption hit another record in 2023, globally (8,6 Bn tons) and in China (over 4 Bn tons). At the same time, China also led the global installation of new solar plants domestically in addition to selling its solar panels globally. 2023 and 2024 show another upswing of new coal power plant installations amounting to numbers surpassing 2018 levels (Figure 7).n
Total global installed capacity for electricity generation is probably around 8,6 TW (including coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, etc.), of which coal is about 2,1 TW. Thus, 25% installed capacity provide for 36% for actual power generation. Utilization of coal plants will continue decreasing as more wind and solar hits the grids, but the installed coal capacity is still required and has to grow along with peak power demand.
Figure 6: Global electricity generation by source. Source: Schernikau based on Our World in Data and Global Electricity ReviewFigure 7: China coal power capacity additions. Source: BNEF, details here
6. Summary
Solar power and coal are closely interlinked. Today, there is not one single solar panel that can be produced without coal (or even oil and gas). The coal is required as a reducing agent for silicon making and as source for heat and electricity for the industrial process required to manufacture solar panels, not only in China. As unpopular as it may be, the world requires coal, even for the so called “energy transition”.
That is why I support investment in, not divestment from, coal technologies to make the production and utilization of coal as efficient as possible, not only to minimize its environmental impact, but also to keep costs low, which supports economic development and benefits in particular the less fortunate.
I hope this post helps you to understand my passion for coal and gives you a new insight into the “clean” world of solar power.
To learn more about how wind and solar work in our modern energy systems please read our recent book The Unpopular Truth… about Electricity and the Future of Energy available at your favorite book store.
A new study shows electric cars are twice as likely to hit pedestrians compared to petrol and diesel cars. Presumably this is because EVs are so quiet. Though it’s also possible the dash interfaces are hideous, and some menu options are more deadly and distracting than others. Or perhaps EV drivers are more stressed or feeling nauseous? The study didn’t investigate that.
A new study shows electric cars are twice as likely to hit pedestrians compared to petrol and diesel cars. Presumably this is because EVs are so quiet. Though it’s also possible the dash interfaces are hideous, and some menu options are more deadly and distracting than others. Or perhaps EV drivers are more stressed or feeling nauseous? The study didn’t investigate that.
Amazingly the data was from six to ten years ago in the UK, so countless people have died in the interim, and if it is just a noise issue, it could have been fixed, or at least investigated. Where is the precautionary principle when you need it?
And if electric cars are killing more people in cities, we would presume that Fido and Spot would be a part of the carnage too. But who would know what the car-pet-kill tally was? Well, manufacturers might — they own the camera footage, but no one is even asking that question. Animals have rights you know, but they don’t donate to Greenpeace.
The Greens are rushing headlong to roll out the auto-weather-saving-machines across the countryside, and they might be killing wallabies and spotted quolls too but who cares, right? It’s not like anyone has done that study, or the Greens are worried about flattening a few rare endangered animals on their road to redemption.
Apparently, it makes sense if a few extra people and pets die now to save someone else who might suffer in one hundred years, maybe, if the computer models are right, and if EVs reduce emissions, and if emissions matter in the first place. All of which is unlikely. But rush, sprint, hurry to force those EVs onto the road. Even if they kidnap people, or kill children, it’s all for a good cause.
Study reveals a higher risk of accidents in urban areas across Great Britain from 2013 to 2017. Researchers call for measures to mitigate this risk as fossil-fuel vehicles are phased out.
A study has found that pedestrians are twice as likely to be hit by electric or hybrid vehicles compared to those powered by petrol or diesel. The research, which was published on May 21, 2024, in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, examined casualty rates in Great Britain from 2013 to 2017.
The risk is greater in urban areas, and governments must take steps to mitigate this safety hazard as they proceed to phase out fossil-fueled vehicles to improve air quality and curb climate change, urge the researchers.
Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for children and young people, and 1 in 4 road traffic deaths are of pedestrians, they note. Amid the ongoing shift to electric and hybrid cars, concerns have been raised that these vehicles may pose more of a safety hazard to pedestrians than fossil-fuelled cars because they are quieter, particularly in urban areas where background ambient noise levels are higher.
the researchers calculate that between 2013 and 2017, the average annual casualty rates of pedestrians per 100 million miles of road travel were 5.16 for electric and hybrid vehicles and 2.40 for petrol and diesel vehicles.
Perhaps it’s really the fault of all those young inexperienced drivers?
And younger, less experienced drivers are more likely to be involved in a road traffic collision and are also more likely to own an electric car, possibly accounting for some of the observed heightened risk associated with these vehicles, they suggest.
The only thing we know for sure is that the rush to force EVs on us has nothing to do with morality or compassion. It’s not about saving lives or protecting fluffy mammals. The Greens don’t care about those lives now, let alone the people of the future.
While Al Jazeera’s article detailing the plight of the San Miguel Centro Marankiari is a great human-interest story, it is not one about the dangers of climate change. The problems they face aren’t caused by global carbon dioxide emissions, but rather something much more local and manageable.
An article by Al Jazeera claims climate change is wreaking havoc in the lives of the San Miguel Centro Marankiari indigenous peoples of the Ashaninka village in the mountains of central Peru. This is false. Climate change is a red herring. Data and historical evidence show that neither temperatures or rainfall/drought conditions in the region are outside its historical norm. Also, the story itself makes it clear that incursions from farmers outside of the Marankiari community, who are deforesting the mountain slopes. are disrupting the traditional lives of Marankiari, neither of which are being driven by climate change, though they both can affect the local climate.
First, the story spends almost no time at all detailing the problems “climate change” is supposedly causing for the lives of the Marankiari, rather it vaguely references drought as a problem, but doesn’t provide evidence of a long-term trend. Perhaps, because there is none. Second, the story’s headline indicates that that Ashaninka has been “uprooted,” but, in fact, as the story reveals, current conditions are causing the tribe’s leader, Tsitsiri Samaniego, to consider whether “Migration, . . . might be his community’s best option.
“But leaving his homeland is a last resort — a complicated decision born of circumstances beyond his control,” writes Al Jazeera.
To be clear, belying Al Jazeera’s headline, because the village is still located where it has existed for generations, it has not, in fact, been “uprooted.” It may move at some point in the future, but it also may not.
Concerning climate change, the story references the World Bank’s claiming that climate change is one factor among many facing indigenous people around the world.
“In Latin America today, nearly half of all Indigenous peoples have migrated to urban areas due to land degradation, territorial dispossession, climate change, and conflict, according to the World Bank,” says Al Jazeera, playing up climate change in the headline, while ignoring the other factors, two of which, in particular, the actual story discusses as length.
Looking at the climate factors in Peru, one finds there is no trend in worsening drought or heat there. According to World Data, the hottest summer from December to February, in Peru below 2,540 meters altitude, was recorded in 1998, 26 years of global warming ago. The coldest winter in Peru in 75 years was recorded in 1974, but the coldest single day at the Tacna weather station was in July 2010, well withing the recent period of purported dangerous global warming.
Drought has been common throughout Peru’s history. The highly complex Wari empire, which had developed an extensive water system to mitigate the naturally arid conditions in parts of Peru, eventually succumbed to a long-term severe drought more than 1,000 years ago. Many of the historical droughts are tied to El Nino events. Other serious drought events occurred during the late-18th and early 19th century, and again in the early 1930s. Some regions of Peru experience drought with regularity, with “two meteorological stations in Puno hav[ing] registered an annual drought frequency of 18 percent in one and 35 percent in the other.”
In fact, “[w]ith a total of 5.20 rainy days, it rained more often in December 2023 than it has in the same month for 12 years (5.90 days in 2011) [and] [w]ith 3.92 liters of precipitation in 2023, April was the wettest in 40 years (6.27 l/m² in 1983),” reports World Data.
The point being, swings in climate extremes of drought and heavy rainfall have been common throughout Peru’s history. Current conditions are not unusual.
Of course, the mountain peaks where Ashaninka is located may be experiencing less rainfall than other parts of the country, but climate change isn’t picky, causing rain on this mountain and village, not the next one, it is global phenomenon with regionwide affects.
Even with recent good rains Ashaninika might still be seeing less rainfall than other locations in the Peruvian Andes, but if so, the reason is not climate change but rather other more direct and immediate causes that Al Jazeera itself spends time writing about: massive deforestation, which reduces local humidity, with said deforestation being driven by, “settlers from the high Andes escaping poverty, who are steadily absorbing territory occupied by the Ashaninka for generations.”
“The incoming farmers have razed much of the humid rainforest near the village to plant groves of citrus, avocado, and coffee. That, in turn, has altered the local rain cycles, bringing extreme heat and drought to San Miguel Centro Marankiari,” Al Jazeera states. “The result has been the desiccation of his community’s cassava and plantain crops, Samaniego explains. Food and clean water have become scarce. And tensions with the neighbouring landowners have soared.”
So, deforestation and invasive farmers are causing the Marankiari’s woes, not climate change.
While Al Jazeera’s article detailing the plight of the San Miguel Centro Marankiari is a great human-interest story, it is not one about the dangers of climate change. The problems they face aren’t caused by global carbon dioxide emissions, but rather something much more local and manageable. With this being the case, why did Al Jazeera feel the need to tie the plight of the Marankiai and their Ashaninika village to climate change? Perhaps to garner eyes on the story and clicks online, but it certainly does not reflect the truth or serve as an example of honest journalism.
The NSW government will extend the life of Origin Energy’s Eraring coal-fired power station for at least two more years until August 2027, at a cost of up $225 million a year, after warnings the shift to renewable energy has fallen off track.
Under the deal, Origin will seek to generate a minimum of six terawatt hours a year – about 3 per cent of total generation in the eastern states’ National Electricity Market – from the giant plant on the shores of NSW’s Lake Macquarie.
Origin will pay the government a fifth of any operating profits up to a maximum of $40 million a year should the plant operate at a profit during the extension period.
But if Eraring is run at a loss, Origin can call on the state to subsidise the plant’s operating and capital costs, capped at $225 million per annum.
Origin may run the plant until 2029 if it chooses but the state will not pay any compensation after August 2027.
Just as well renewables are the cheapest energy ever, otherwise all these enormous subsidies for all different forms of power would be costing NSW taxpayers a heap of money.
I wonder if other coal plant operations will notice how easy it is to squeeze big money out of desperate, net zero obsessed politicians? Politicians who are barely beginning to wake up how badly they have stuffed up?
Just as well the government has decreed everything will be back on track by 2027.
t’s that most wonderful time of the year for the weather weaponizers. It’s summer, so it gets hot, and it’s hurricane season.
So, the climate hysteria offensive is here, and it is going to get stronger. It’s the perfect storm of the election, the current highest on record in the satellite era, which can be directly linked to natural sources. For instance, long-term geothermal input into the oceans, which in turn has been pumping more water vapor into the air, is the only GHG that has a direct correlation with temperatures.
Saturation Mixing ratio tables show this:
Once the air is saturated, if there is a continued increase of water vapor, the temperature must rise, or if they try to hold steady, there must be precipitation. It takes very little to do that where it is cold, much more where it is warm. Condensation processes are much slower where it’s warmer. It’s not a matter of “Holding water”, it’s a matter of the column of air expanding.
So the density of water vapor molecules, despite an increase, is not as great. When the column contracts (cools), condensation occurs. So the kind of warming one sees, for instance, the arctic warming in the winter, but not in the summer, is an example. Combine that with the fact that MELTING ice is a cooling process, while freezing is a warming process to the air around, explains why the Arctic is warming more in its winter season. But it’s all linked to water vapor, not CO2.
One way you can tell this is the case in the US is that night-time temperatures are increasing more over the east and south than daytime highs, which actually are not increasing much as more clouds form when it warms. This shows you the response in the mid and upper levels of the atmosphere is not as fast. Remember all the talk of the new Dust Bowl. Apparently, it did not hit them that this would be the case. And we all see what happened to California’s perma drought, but when it dries in the west this summer, you can bet that talk will be back.
Where is the increase in WV coming from? In the past few decades, I strongly suspect increased geothermal input. I have shown this dozens of times, and I don’t know how one can simply dismiss it.
It is difficult, if not impossible to say this has nothing to do with the warming.
Far more likely is that it’s a major cause. From 1950 to 1990, the SSTs across the planet changed little, and there was no alarming warming. CO2 feedback bands were already saturated around 1950. They can do no more than what they do in the warming process once they are saturated. So why did the oceans warm so much after 1990?
The answer seems clear. The cumulative buildup of heat in the oceans leads to infrequent, though stronger El Ninos, which we saw in 1997,2015, and recently. These are huge water vapor sources, and temperatures have risen in a step-up function.
The immense amount of water vapor put into the atmosphere by the Honga volcano, which has a lag time that intersected with the El Nino, makes perfect sense as to why temperatures spiked as they did, and this SHOWS IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MAN MADE EMISSIONS. The warming is disproportionately occurring more strongly over the ring of fire in the Pacific, and due to the thermohaline circulation, it naturally migrates further to the north, which in turn leads to the distortion of temperatures.
The midpoint of the earth’s highest mean temperatures has pulled north due to this. The response is the weakening of the Hadley cell, meaning less cloudiness over the tropics and more incoming solar over warm waters, adding to that aspect. I suspect the reason Antarctica is NOT WARMING is due to the pull northward of the mean highest global temperature average. All this leads to different feedback. In some cases, it can help enhance local extremes, and in just as many, decrease.
So we get tweets like this, from an Emmy-award-winning meteorologist who graduated with honors in the field.
But the warmth is PROOF IT IS NOT man-made since there is no way we see that kind of warming in such a short period of time from man-made sources.
There is climate change, but when looking at the reason CO2 would be causing it as opposed to NATURAL SOURCES, CO2 has to be trivial. Yet this is a classic example of what I am saying to expect. He tweets a comment that is pointed directly at ripping De Santis. Again, this is a meteorologist who graduated with honors and has won Emmys, much more credentialed than I could ever be. But he neglects to show the other side of the issue. Weather, after all is diverse, equitable in balancing things out, and inclusive as far as the reactions of all sources. (There, I support DEI in showing the entire picture in climate, ha ha). But by eliminating the major natural source, the left does not support it in climate.
BTW, if things are so bad in Florida why are so many people moving there? Why is Jeff Bezos buying mansions on a man-made barrier island that is long overdue for a major hit? Or Obama has a house in a place that if Edna from 1954 returns would likely be damaged severely?
Here is another little ditty. Look at the people in on the tweet. One is Climate Central.
Where are they located?
One Palmer Square, Suite 402, Princeton, NJ 08542.
Well, guess who teaches at Princeton? Dr. Will Happer of the CO2 coalition. And he is much more credentialed than most of us. Why has no one from Climate Central ever bothered to go over there and talk to Dr Happer? It’s because none of these people want anything to do with actually looking at the total picture. So why would someone listen to them if they don’t at least stand up and have their ideas tested?
If you are a meteorologist to make your forecast, do you look at just one thing? Don’t you have to, using the lingo of today, to come up with your best solution, have a diverse view, understand the weather, try for equity in a search to balance out the factors, and be inclusive of all the factors? You would not shut that out in a forecast, would you? If a Cat 4 hurricane is heading for South Florida on one model but another says no, or in the case of models today, many models, do you not look? So why would you not practice that when advocating for ideas that basically would end the very way of life that made it possible for you to rise to where you are today?
Why would you not say, yes, its warming, but not nearly as much as the models said?
Would you not look at the rise of CO2 understanding these bands have been saturated since 1950?
And ask why the oceans have warmed in the last 30 years?
Look at 1950 to 1960
1981 to 1990
Very little, but you can see the oceanic warming since 1990 is shown in the chart above with the explanation.
All I am asking of people pushing this is they look at what they don’t look at. The apostle Paul said it best, “Those who know what they know don’t yet know what they ought to know”. Our side knows the CO2 feedback idea inside and out, and it is great if there is nothing else. It is sort of like winning with no opposition. Interesting, eh, maybe that’s where Biden is getting his strategy to get elected again, win with no opposition (See there’s linkage).
So, I am asking the meteorologists out there to step out of their comfort zone and look. The meteo misinformation media is going to pile on in the hurricane season. A hurricane season, which, if I am right about from DECEMBER, will be a hurricane season from hell. Yet that forecast was made IN DECEMBER in part based on my hypothesis that due to all I have pointed out, a rapid La Nina response had to take place due to the temperature distortion ( since the 1997 Super Nino), and the Atlantic had to remain warm. The planet is in a La Nina base state where there are more La Ninas than El Ninos. Keep in mind, La Ninas are counters to warming. They will level off the warming and cause some drops, as we will see in response to this one, but until input of solar and geothermal decreases, nature will lead to other step-ups) We see most hurricane forecasters following what Weatherbell said in December.
So here we go. Now what will happen in 2025? Global temperatures will decrease. And the hurricane season will be much less than this one. Yet the combination of the warmth of this year and the hurricane season will lead to this turning into a media-pushed cause for alarm. There are so many blame climate change articles coming out now that I can’t keep up with them.
And you don’t think all the weather people are not going to have their marching orders? The major meteo-media misinformation is only showing one side of the issue and is going to have a field day with the heat (for all you Buffalo Springfield fans out there).
And so, while it may seem like a small number of people (according to the polls) are concerned, small amounts turn elections. I warned about this before.
So, for whoever has an open mind and an open heart, here is my advice. DON’T BELIEVE ME. BUT GO LOOK FOR YOURSELF. I challenge all the meteorologists out there to go and look at the amount of counter-evidence as to the cause. I realize it’s risky. Quite frankly, if I were a young met today, I don’t know if I would have the guts to do it. But this steamroller is coming, and while right now many in my field are riding on it, once it has taken over, there won’t be much room left. You, like the rest of the country, may find yourself run over by it and have no way to get back up.
The climate ghouls were out in force recently following the severe clear air turbulence incident on board a Singapore Airlines Boeing 777 that led to a passenger suffering a fatal heart attack. The Guardian asked if the “climate crisis” was making turbulence worse, and both the newspaper and the BBC pointed to one model-based report stating that it was.
The climate ghouls were out in force recently following the severe clear air turbulence incident on board a Singapore Airlines Boeing 777 that led to a passenger suffering a fatal heart attack. The Guardian asked if the “climate crisis” was making turbulence worse, and both the newspaper and the BBC pointed to one model-based report stating that it was. Needless to say, actual data were ignored in the rush to feed the politicised climate emergency, Net Zero-inspired narrative. Figures published by two safety bodies show there has been no increase in turbulence accidents or rise in injuries per passenger mile over the last 30 years. This in the context of at least a quadrupling of global air passengers over the same period.
The figures above from the International Civil Aviation Organisation confirm the continued low level of turbulence incidents across the United States, the largest air market in the world. There has been no statistically significant increase since 1989.
The second graph above was produced in a 2021 report from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. It showed no increase in passenger and aircraft accidents, allowing for the enormous growth in traffic during these decades. The NTSB concluded: “There was no obvious trend in turbulence-related accidents during this period.”
Whatever the actual data show, you can’t beat a good climate predicting model when there is Green Blob-inspired work to be done in mainstream media. Both the BBC and the Guardian cited the work of Professor Paul Williams of Reading University. He suggested that atmospheric dynamics have changed significantly since scientists first observed them via satellite data in the late 1970s. Using climate models and the RCP8.5 scenario, he forecast huge increases in clear air turbulence.
Of course he is using the RCP8.5 pathway that assumes soaring temperatures of up to 4°C in less than 80 years. This pathway is little more than a climate model plaything, and an increasing number of scientists believe it is not remotely plausible. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states it is of “low likelihood”. Nevertheless, the clickbait addiction to this scenario is still high, with an estimated 40% of IPCC climate impact statements still based on its modelled use. In addition the pathway is said to be behind an astonishing 50% of impact findings produced across the wider scientific community, and these provide a convenient ‘scientists say’ tag for the latest climate scare du jour. The science writer Roger Pielke Jnr. notes that the world imagined in RCP8.5 is one that “becomes increasingly implausible with every passing year”.
The investigative climate journalist Paul Homewood has been debunking nonsense climate and weather stories over many years. He was disgusted with the latest effort from the BBC. Can the wretched BBC sink any lower, he asked, adding: “You are utter scum, BBC – how can any organisation try to play politics with a tragic death like this one?”
Homewood’s bitter comments are understandable as the BBC and most legacy media seek to catastrophise almost every bad event and human tragedy that can be related to the weather. This despite the fact that many authorities state that there has been no increase in most extreme weather events over the last 100 years, human caused or otherwise. In this latest case around atmospheric turbulence, it is surely grossly irresponsible to scare people, young and old, about air travel using the unverifiable findings of computer models fed with highly contentious data. Unless, of course, the mostly undeclared aim is to stop people flying altogether. As regular readers will know, many journalists attend courses to learn how to insert climate scares into almost any story. In addition, they sign up to ready-made copy outfits, all funded by green billionaires seeking to radically reorganise the social and economic lifestyles of global populations.
At this moment, BBC Verify’s climate ‘disinformation’ specialist Marco Silva is coming to the end of his six-month sabbatical at the Oxford Climate Journalism Network (OCJN). This operation is run out of the Reuters Institute and has attracted past funding from a number of green foundations including the European Climate Foundation, an operation heavily supported by Extinction Rebellion paymaster Sir Christopher Hohn. Over 400 journalists from around the world have been re-educated at the OCJN, which aims to move climate specialists “beyond their siloed past” into a strategic position within newsrooms, “combining expertise with collaboration”.
Take a mango, or indeed any fruit, and write about how it is less tasty than before due to climate change, is one suggestion for the delegates. Past speaker and BBC regular Dr. Friederike Otto uses climate models to attribute individual weather events to long-term changes in the climate through her billionaire-funded World Weather Attribution operation. Following her OCJN presentation, attendees were reported to have shown a “massive jump in self-confidence” when attributing individual weather to climate change. The more curious might wonder how this can be so, given the computer-modelled pseudoscientific claims are, to coin a phrase, unfalsifiable and unverifiable.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
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