Day: July 5, 2024

Public Health’s Capture by the Net Zero Agenda is Sending it Back to the Dark Ages

International public health operates around a clear set of dogmas, protected by maintaining taboos on discussion of subjects that might undermine them. This may seem backward or even alarming, but it is entirely logical. For a quarter of a century, the industry has been dominated by private investors and corporate interests who are attracted to a market for which products can be coerced and mandated without restrictive advertising standards. The growing narrative around climate and health promises to be the apogee of this approach.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY DR DAVID BELL

International public health operates around a clear set of dogmas, protected by maintaining taboos on discussion of subjects that might undermine them. This may seem backward or even alarming, but it is entirely logical. For a quarter of a century, the industry has been dominated by private investors and corporate interests who are attracted to a market for which products can be coerced and mandated without restrictive advertising standards. The growing narrative around climate and health promises to be the apogee of this approach.

Taboos and dogmas

Human societies always maintain taboos. Some seem to have arisen by common consent, some are driven from above, but it can be hard to identify their origins. Do cultural taboos on pre-marital sex or homosexuality, for instance, originally arise from the bulk of the population, or as restrictions imposed by religious or political authorities? Did a requirement to acknowledge the Earth as the centre of the Universe reflect popular sentiment, or drive popular sentiment? Did the Inquisition in Europe grow through popular prejudice, or was it purely an organ of authoritarian control?

The Enlightenment supposedly brought Europe out of the Inquisition, and while true in some ways it is also an illusion. Safe Spaces in university campuses are areas where the Inquisition persists. So are the protests against drag queen book readings, and the protests against the protests against drag queen book readings. We don’t need to think an Inquisition is right or wrong, just acknowledge that we all put limits on freedom of expression and filter which ideas can be shared.

The public health climate Inquisition

Public health professionals see themselves as Children of the Enlightenment rather than Children of the Inquisition. We claim the side of commonsense rather than taboos and dogma. We think this sets us aside from the general public, who are easily persuaded through ignorance to entertain the rantings of charlatans.

Because we are educated and progressive, and health is so important, we claim a right to bypass much of the conversation that Enlightenment normally requires. We need to fast-track things to the truth because they are so important, and we are so knowledgeable about them. While this may seem reflective of the inquisitors of old, we hold that there is a fundamental difference; they were wrong, and we are right. Comparisons therefore simply show the ignorance of the accuser, whom we then label far-Right or otherwise reality-denying. Climate change and its effect on health is a good example. This will become clear by explaining the official public health industry position on this area, critical both to continued human existence and to securing future funding.

Exchanging truth for permissible narratives

The public health professions, not least at the international level, are adamant that climate change is an “existential threat”. Dogma states that this is almost solely driven by human activity, particularly the burning of the fossil fuels on which the last few hundred years of technological and medical progress have relied. It also implicates traditional meat diets in driving the climate. The Director-General of the World Health Organisation is adamant that this must be his organisation’s priority. Two hundred medical journals considered it so important that they abrogated editorial standards to publish a letter highlighting various controversial claims as dogma; as example, a rapid increase in elderly deaths “due to heat” that ignored the simple increase in the total elderly population that accounted for most of this change, whilst far more die of cold. The letter’s authors were not ignorant of this – they just consider the issue so important that it is worth misleading the public in order to gain a required response.

So, this is where we are on climate in the public health sphere. We are funded, as a group, to impose someone’s dogma. “The Science is settled.” We are still all in favour of human rights and evidence-based policy, but consider ourselves entitled to ignore them in order to protect them.

To explain further, it is useful to list what is deemed acceptable in the international public health industry to secure a salary and serve our funders:

  • The climate is warming, and this will have overwhelmingly negative consequences on health.
  • Human activity – particularly burning of fossil fuels and farming for meat – are the primary drivers of climate change through CO2 emissions and emissions of nitrous oxide, methane and other greenhouse gases.
  • If we don’t reduce emissions (reach Net Zero), we will face mass human death and potentially extinction.
  • A warming climate is increasing pandemic risk.
  • A warming climate is increasing extreme weather events, with a rising impact on health.
  • Warm days, though common where most people live, pose an extreme threat to health.
  • Climate change is driving increased malaria (see later), increased tuberculosis (previously thought due to poverty) and infectious diseases generally (irrespective of their continued overall decline).
  • A warming climate could raise sea levels and enlarge deserts, destroying human settlements and agricultural land, causing mass starvation and forced migration.

Taken at face value, this list constitutes a compelling reason to reach Net Zero carbon emissions and force a change in diets. A delay through continued open debate would make outcomes worse. As a result, we have formed them into dogma and enforce this, protected by a series of taboos, including the following (which, to protect public safety, you can delete later):

  • Climates changed frequently in the past (e.g. Medieval warm period, Roman warm period, 6,000 years ago (tree line further north near the Artic Ocean) etc., and these were not driven by anthropogenic CO2.
  • Reported acute infectious disease outbreaks have been decreasing over the past decade rather than increasing.
  • Mortality from acute weather events has plummeted over the past century.
  • Rising CO2 has increased global plant growth, which is a contributor to our ability to feed eight billion people, a feat many considered impossible.
  • A warmer climate will likely extend productive agriculture in cool temperate regions such as Eurasia and North America, increasing food availability.
  • The main driver of infectious disease and shorter life expectancy in low-income countries is poverty. The reason Western people live longer is because they became richer, and this happened primarily through the burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – in industry, transport, farming, construction, sanitation and in the manufacture of fertiliser and medicines. Wealthy countries still burn many-fold higher volumes of fossil fuels per person, and correspondingly release more CO2, than poorer countries where people live much shorter lives (see graphic).
  • Over three billion people still rely on wood-based cooking (or burning dung) and this is a major cause of deforestation and regional climate change and desertification (e.g. in East Africa), indoor air pollution (that contributes to over a million deaths per year) and impoverishment and physical risk for women (who must walk miles to collect wood).
  • China and India are rapidly increasing their coal-burning capacity and CO2 outputs to achieve the benefits that wealthier nations have, and this will far outweigh CO2 reductions achieved in the West or forced on other poorer and less powerful countries.

This second list is demonstrably true. But such is our concern and discipline (we prefer these terms to “fear” and “cowardice”) that we don’t discuss them in open forums. Even poverty reduction, once integral to public health, is now taboo in the context of climate change. Public acknowledgement that Net Zero policies entrench poverty and inequality would put the entire narrative at risk.

Malaria as an example of a false example

Malaria is interesting as it exemplifies public health’s move to dogma over debate. I have been in forums of malaria ‘experts’ where they agree in small groups that there is little compelling evidence associating climate change with worsening malaria, but in a subsequent plenary none will question this claim. I have been pushed to falsely implicate climate in a report for a major international health agency as a driver of worsening malaria, though it was agreed the evidence on which the report was based did not support this. As a profession, lying is deemed acceptable if the subject is important enough. One agency claiming this justifies another to highlight it, which can then be used as evidence of consensus by the first. More funding all round.

It was popular 15 years ago to call malaria “a disease of poverty”. It is. It also requires a warm moist environment to support the mosquito vector. Warmth improves mosquito survival and, importantly, reduces the time taken for the parasite to mature in the mosquito before it can infect another human. However, malaria is no longer endemic in Singapore and is now rare in Malaysia because they have become wealthy. Money allows access to insecticide-treated bed nets, diagnostics, medicines and good supply lines, which stop malaria. However, it still kills over half a million children every year.

Malaria has indeed spread in the highlands of Papua New Guinea and Ethiopia as a warmer climate has allowed mosquitoes to live at higher altitudes. However, countries further from the equator that should be most impacted by a warmer climate allowing mosquito habitats to move north and south are seeing the greatest progress in malaria elimination.

On a global scale, malaria mortality has risen since early 2020, with progress having slowed or reversed some years earlier. There are many contributors to this. We have growing resistance to the insecticides used in bed nets and house spraying (alternatives are more expensive), some increasing resistance to major antimalarial medicines and there are genetic changes in the parasite that have made it harder for some blood tests to detect them. A diversion of human resources occurred from malaria programmes to (demonstrably pointless) COVID-19 vaccination programs. There is also a reduction in funding in real terms, and an increasing funding gap to provide access to the core interventions – nets, spraying, diagnostics and drugs – that malariologists consider essential, whilst at-risk populations increase due to high birth rates.

This complexity is becoming harder to discuss. Now, climate change is proclaimed the major threat to health, soon to “overwhelm the world’s health systems”, and WHO and partners are prioritising reaching Net Zero. It is not that climate change is irrelevant to malaria, but that the malaria community is unable to actually weigh it and proposals for its mitigation in an objective manner. Net Zero policies will logically exacerbate poverty, increase transport costs, increase malnutrition and thereby drive higher overall malaria mortality, but such discussion is taboo.

We can choose slavery or science

So, the issue of health, climate and CO2 is complicated. One way to cope with complexity is to ignore it. WHO now adopts this approach, and literally invents a narrative, maintaining that “ever increasing climate-mediated disasters create humanitarian emergencies where infectious diseases can take hold and quickly spread”. This creates media headlines but loses the trust of rational people once they are exposed to reality.

A rational assessment may even conclude that, through increasing the human food supply, rising CO2 and warmer temperatures may provide an overall health benefit. Or, they might be outweighed by negatives of warmer temperatures: some areas may lose rainfall, some may see more floods. But stopping this would depend on the current global warming episode being almost entirely due to human emissions while those in the past were not (interesting) and then these causes being remediable without causing net harm to over eight billion of us, which is highly unlikely.

In public health we do not discuss this, as it is awkward. We maintain this taboo for one of two reasons:

  1. The consequences of a warming climate are so dire that the risk is not worth taking. We therefore consider a relative few of us in wealthy countries have the self-assumed right to impose our solutions on the rest of humanity, keeping them in poverty while we thrive. Or:
  2. Wealthy donors, with influence over public health priorities and important investments in climate change-related technologies, expect us to do so. Our job includes selling their product.

The first reason is essentially fascist, whilst the second is cowardice. Either way, we are acting falsely and disingenuously about climate change and health, and we all know it. We label the second list of bullets above as misinformation and censor it. If we argue that we are doing this for a greater good, we therefore see this within the hierarchical, feudalist model that allows a few to dictate restrictions and poverty on the many. We have chosen the side of the Inquisition, not the Enlightenment.

Alternatively, we could embrace the truth, however dangerous and worrisome, through a rational and open discussion. Rather than throwing abuse and derogatory remarks at those who hold a different line, we could examine our own position and weigh it against theirs. This might help restore trust in public health, but it could also wreck our careers. It all comes down to where we place ourselves, and others, in a hierarchy of values. We can play it safe and be slaves to an Inquisition that oppresses and impoverishes the many, but benefits a few including ourselves. Or we can risk following the truth wherever it may lead. But that, in the current climate, would take courage.

Dr. David Bell is a clinical and public health physician with a PhD in population health and background in internal medicine, modelling and epidemiology of infectious disease. Previously, he was Director of the Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in the USA, Programme Head for Malaria and Acute Febrile Disease at FIND in Geneva, and coordinating malaria diagnostics strategy with the World Health Organisation. He is a Senior Scholar at the Brownstone Institute.

10 Questions Climate Doomers Can’t or Won’t Answer- The Climate Realism Show #117

We will go over the Crazy Climate News of the Week. Tune in LIVE for the stream at 1 p.m. ET (noon CT) to watch the show and leave your own questions in the chat with host Anthony Watts, along with panelists H. Sterling Burnett and Linnea Lueken.

The Heartland Institute

Have you ever noticed that when it comes to inconvenient hard facts, climate alarmists either revert to calling you a shill for big oil, or block you because they don’t have the skills or the knowledge to refute your factual challenge?
Well, we’ve got a list of 10 very inconvenient questions that they refuse to answer.

Chris Martz, a meteorology student who has been successfully pushing back climate alarm on Twitter, so much so that he’s been blocked by Michael Mann, will join us. He’s the author of these questions.

We will go over the Crazy Climate News of the Week. Tune in LIVE for the stream at 1 p.m. ET (noon CT) to watch the show and leave your own questions in the chat with host Anthony Watts, along with panelists H. Sterling Burnett and Linnea Lueken.

Seeing Barren Island Corals, and Fish. Part 2

That is a lot of coral. This last summer has not been good for many of the corals, for coral cover, at the Great Barrier Reef. If we are to know the natural cycles of death and regeneration, then we need to acknowledge that not every summer is the same.

From Jennifer Marohasy

By jennifer 

I am often reminded of the Marcus Aurelius quote:

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself on the side of the insane.

And so, I am feeling some relief since I made it crystal clear to everyone who reads me at Facebook and this blog, I made it very clear in my last post, that I do not and cannot subscribe to the Peter Ridd, Anthony Watts, Graham Lloyd and Joanne Nova claims of record coral cover at the Great Barrier Reef, CLICK HERE.

Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor who ruled nearly two thousand years ago.   He apparently, would begin each day by very consciously being grateful, being grateful to be alive.   That is how I feel when I am underwater at the Great Barrier Reef – looking at the corals and the fish, up-close.

It is how I felt last Sunday afternoon on the second dive at Barren Island.  What a privilege, I thought, living in a world with so much natural beauty.  I am so grateful to be able to access this, to be able to witness this extraordinary beauty.

Can you see the gold and green, in this very close-up photograph of a coral, that I found under a dead plate coral. In the wide angle photograph it doesn’t look so special, but up-close it is magnificent.

And so, it is not that I think the Great Barrier Reef is ruin – I just know as surely as the fog lifted at my local beach yesterday, that coral cover varies and it is a lie to claim record coral cover this year.

There was much more coral cover 2,000 years ago when sea levels were about 1.5 metres higher, and there was more of it last year before the very real coral bleaching that was widespread at the southern Great Barrier Reef, and before cyclone Jasper that affected the northern reefs, and cyclone Kirrily that impacted the central region.

If we are to ever understand the nature of life, and regeneration and what drives significant change at coral reefs, including changes in the distribution and abundance of coral and fish species, then we need to be better able to monitor changes in coral cover.

Just as sometimes it can be difficult to see across to Great Keppel Island because of the fog, visibility can also vary a lot underwater.  So, any proper survey method, whether underwater or aerial, would need to consider this, and not just the setting on the camera.   An accurate report of total coral cover would also include the different habitats at most coral reefs, including the reef crest.  At the moment, for the last forty years, the Australian Institute of Marine Science in-water surveys used to report on total coral cover at the Great Barrier Reef, they have only been of the reef perimeters.  I explained all of this in my last blog post.

On Sunday afternoon, just last weekend, visibility was perhaps 8 metres at the coral reef fringing Barren Island.   The coral is down 10 metres. From the surface it is impossible to know that the coral is even there.  The sea was just a beautiful blue, and it appeared so deep.   It wouldn’t matter what setting I had on my camera, from above the waves, whether at the surface or 150 metres in the air, I would not be able to see the extraordinary beauty that is Barren Island Reef.

The area overlaid with the Google text and also my red arrow, marking the area of coral reef, that is about where I dived. It is about 10 metres underwater that I took the photographs.

After I stepped-off the boat just on midday and let all the air out of my buoyancy control device (BCD) and started to sink down to the bottom I saw so many corals.

I have a photograph of the large Porites sp.  From a distance it was a haze of blue – to know that it was healthy I needed to get up-close.  Then I could see that it was very much alive. I could see the individual corallites and that they were intact.

Wide angle, and also close-up photographs of the Porites sp., underwater at Barren Island reef on Sunday 30th June 2024.   Even without my light on, in the wide angle shot, it is possible to see the yellow lemon damsel fish.  Colour in the longer red wavelengths is lost within a few metres of the surface, but yellow that is a shorter wavelength can penetrate to at least 10 metres depth, and so the yellow damsel fish are yellow even though most of the rest of the above photograph is blue. For the close-ups I had my new underwater light turned-on, and see how red that clam is, the clam embedded in the Porites sp..  So colourful with lines and spots in red, against that brilliant purple.

*****

Part 1 of this series is here:

Seeing Barren Island Corals – and Fish.  Part 1. – Jennifer Marohasy

Humanity’s Ascent Linked to Fossil Fuels: A Story Less Told

Having been subjected to daily media fantasies about a climate crisis, consider the reality that your children’s children will not only survive but thrive in a world that is benefiting from a warmer climate, higher levels of atmospheric CO2 and a plethora of scientific discoveries and innovations.

In the annals of human history, few, if any, periods have witnessed such profound and rapid advancement as the span from the mid-20th century to the present day. The transformative power of human ingenuity — coupled with the harnessing of natural resources, particularly coal, natural gas and oil — has spurred remarkable progress.

From Watts Up With That?

By Vijay Jayaraj

Having been subjected to daily media fantasies about a climate crisis, consider the reality that your children’s children will not only survive but thrive in a world that is benefiting from a warmer climate, higher levels of atmospheric CO2 and a plethora of scientific discoveries and innovations.

In the annals of human history, few, if any, periods have witnessed such profound and rapid advancement as the span from the mid-20th century to the present day. The transformative power of human ingenuity — coupled with the harnessing of natural resources, particularly coal, natural gas and oil — has spurred remarkable progress.

Some key metrics of humanity’s upward movement are life expectancy, access to clean water, the reduction of disease-related mortality, the resurgence of natural habitats in developed nations, advancements in transportation, increases in productivity and the overall elevation of living standards.

In 1950, the global average life expectancy at birth stood at a modest 46 years. By 2021, this figure had surged to 73 years, marking an increase of nearly three decades in the span of a single human lifetime. In 1950, 63% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. By 2018, this figure had plummeted to less than 10% while the global population more than tripled.

Nutrition has improved significantly. Concerns about global food security were widespread in 1950. Today, food production has more than kept pace with the growing number of people. The Green Revolution, powered by fossil fuel-based fertilizers and mechanized farming, has enabled agricultural yields to increase by 175% over the last 70 years.

This extraordinary achievement is the result of a confluence of factors, many of which can be traced to the utilization of fossil fuels to affect scientific advancements and make electricity widely available.

The petrochemical industry, a byproduct of refining fossil fuels, has been instrumental in the development of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment. From the plastic tubing used in intravenous drips to the synthetic materials in prosthetics, the fingerprints of hydrocarbon derivatives are ubiquitous in modern medicine.

Access to clean water, a prerequisite for health and social development, has expanded markedly since the mid-20th century, when only a small fraction of the world could count on access to safe water. Today, according to the World Health Organization, more than 70% of the population enjoys healthful water services.

The development of modern plumbing systems, facilitated by the mass production of pipes and fittings (often derived from petroleum products), has brought clean water directly into homes. This seemingly simple advancement has had profound implications for public health, personal hygiene and overall quality of life.

Contrary to popular belief, the latter half of the 20th century and the early 21st century have witnessed an extraordinary recovery of natural habitats in many developed nations, particularly in the United States and Europe. In more recent decades, even rapidly developing and highly populated economies like India and China have registered a growth in forest area and even resurgence of some once at-risk wildlife species.

Proliferation of automobiles has transformed societies, granting individuals unprecedented freedom of movement. The global logistics network, powered by diesel engines in ships, trucks and trains, has enabled the creation of complex supply chains that bring a diverse array of goods to consumers at ever-decreasing costs.

In 2019, 4.5 billion passengers used commercial air travel. The advent of jet engines, which rely on petroleum-based fuels, has shrunk the world, making international travel accessible to millions and facilitating global commerce on an unprecedented scale.

Powered by fossil fuels, machines have taken over much of the physical labor in agriculture, manufacturing and construction, dramatically increasing output per worker. This productivity surge has been the engine of economic growth, enabling the production of more goods and services with fewer resources.

While life expectancy in Japan reaches 85 years, it barely exceeds 50 in some African nations. The path to development for these nations must, by necessity, employ the same drivers that propelled the West’s progress in the 20th century. Access to abundant, reliable energy is paramount. The role of fossil fuels in this process cannot be overstated.

The story of human advancement since the 1950s is inextricably linked to our harnessing of fossil fuels and our ever-expanding scientific understanding. As we look to the future, we must build upon these foundations, pushing the boundaries of innovation.

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

Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, U.K., and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, U.K.

The Net Zero Cure is Far Worse Than the Disease

We hear a lot about how we are supposedly in a climate crisis and how The Science™ tells us we are about to succumb to global boiling. Most climate activists claim that we must cut emissions by spending more money on windmills and solar panels or we will all burn to a crisp.

I would describe myself as a lukewarmer, by which I mean that I acknowledge the earth is warming and that human emissions of CO2 have made some contribution to that warming. However, it is also true that the climate has changed dramatically without human intervention; clearly, there are other causes of climate change too.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY DAVID TURVER

We hear a lot about how we are supposedly in a climate crisis and how The Science™ tells us we are about to succumb to global boiling. Most climate activists claim that we must cut emissions by spending more money on windmills and solar panels or we will all burn to a crisp.

I would describe myself as a lukewarmer, by which I mean that I acknowledge the earth is warming and that human emissions of CO2 have made some contribution to that warming. However, it is also true that the climate has changed dramatically without human intervention; clearly, there are other causes of climate change too.

The strategy of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to Net Zero is classified as a “mitigation strategy” in the parlance of the IPCC. The alternative strategy is adaptation which means taking measures to adjust to climate change such as building flood defences, irrigation systems or developing new strains of crops to cope better with changing weather patterns. Most spending effort in the West is geared towards mitigation. But, what if the Net Zero cure is worse than the disease? What if mitigation is less effective than adaptation?

Mitigation Drawbacks

The mitigation strategy has significant drawbacks. First, mitigation only works if CO2 is the main climate control knob. But we know this cannot be the case because we can clearly see that temperatures have changed significantly over past millennia, as illustrated in Figure 1 below sourced from Figure 7.1 of the IPCC’s First Assessment report. These changes cannot have been caused by humans or our CO2 emissions.

Figure 1 – Global Temperature Change from IPCC First Assessment Report

Second, mitigation can only work if everyone else slashes emissions too and we can see from Figure 2 (from Our World in Data) that this is not happening.

Figure 2 – Global CO2 Emissions from 1900 to 2022 (Source – Our World in Data)

Moreover, there are plenty of potential climatic events that could occur that we ought to be prepared for, and which will require energy and ingenuity to deal with. For example, we could see another Mount Tambora-like eruption which ejected about 40km2 of material into the atmosphere and caused a reduction in global temperatures. This led to 1816 being termed the Year Without a Summer, where European summer temperatures were the lowest on record and led to an agricultural disaster with widespread food shortages and famine.

Adaptation Success

Adaptation has been a remarkable success. The rate of people dying from natural disasters has plummeted by a factor of more than 50 in the past century as shown in Figure 3 below, sourced from Our World in Data.

Figure 3 – Decadal Average Death Rates from Natural Disasters (Source: Our World in Data)

This improvement has come despite (more likely because of) the near 20-fold increase in CO2 emissions that we saw in Figure 2.

Cheap energy has led to big improvements in crop yields through mechanisation, irrigation and availability of fertiliser. Cheap energy has enabled flood defences to be built and homes to be more resilient to extreme weather.

Adaptation measures have many benefits. They require no international treaty and they can be applied locally where they produce results quickly. They also work to protect against changes in the climate that are not driven by CO2. Adaptation measures might also have additional benefits such as more efficient water use or more robust crop varieties. There is no reason why we cannot continue to adapt.

Risks of Net Zero

By contrast, the risks of Net Zero mitigation policies are manifest. First and most obvious, they cannot work against climatic changes that are driven by forces other than CO2. Second is the outright cost. In 2020, the National Grid ESO estimated the cost of the energy transition to be around £3 trillion. This is probably an underestimate because the cost of renewables has gone up since then (see AR6) as interest rates have gone up from almost zero to over 5%. To put this in context, U.K. GDP was £2.3 trillion in 2023, so the cost will be at least 1.3 times GDP. For further context, the budget for NHS England was £155bn in 2022-23, so the cost of Net Zero will be around 19 times the NHS budget.

The increased penetration of renewables has led to a massive increase in our electricity bills. This increase comes from renewables subsidies as well as grid balancing costs and the massive costs of expanding the grid out to remote offshore wind farms.

Expensive energy has led to creeping deindustrialisation as we have seen with the closure of Port Talbot and our last fertiliser plant. With geo-political tensions rising the closure of domestic steel, fertiliser and chemical industries means we are less able to defend ourselves and feed the nation in the event of a crisis.

Expensive energy also means we run the risk of missing out on the industries of the future such as AI. For instance, Amazon has recently bought a 960MW datacentre campus that is adjacent to and powered by a nuclear power station. Mark Zuckerberg has said the next generation of datacentres will be 1GW or above and Microsoft is considering building a $100bn datacentre campus that could consume 5GW for OpenAI by 2030. Clearly, AI is very energy hungry and suitable datacentres cannot be run on zephyrs and sunbeams, nor with expensive energy.

Our grid planning authority is planning to reduce total end user demand by about half to 600-800TWh per year by 2050, with just over 300TWh for industrial and commercial use, with the rest being used for heating homes and road and rail transport. However, just 10 of those 1GW datacentres would consume 87.6TWh in a year or about a quarter of the energy budget for the whole of industry and commerce. We are clearly heading towards a world of energy scarcity where we can no longer make the basic building blocks of a modern society, nor will we be able to compete in modern technologies. As Figure 4 below, again from Our World in Data, reminds us, there are no rich countries with low energy consumption.

Figure 4 – Energy Use per Person-vs-GDP per Capita (Source: Our World in Data)

Impact of Net Zero Policies

Net Zero is driving us to penury. Significant damage has already been done with productive industries shrinking compared to the whole economy since 1997. The trouble is, these industries are far more productive in terms of Gross Value Added (GVA) per hour worked than most service industries, and they consume more energy. This is why Sir Jim Ratcliffe has warned that the “chemicals industry in the U.K. is finished” and the main reason is that energy costs are five times those of the U.S. and there are carbon taxes levied on such products. This explains why we have lost six times as many jobs in energy intensive industries than have been gained in our green energy sector (see Figure 5).

Figure 5 – Hours Worked in Energy Intensive Industries vs Electricity Supply (1997-2021)

The job losses have not finished either, with Stellantis (owner of Vauxhall) warning that Labour’s plan to ban new petrol cars by 2030 will lead to plant closures.

Of course, Net Zero policies have also pushed up our electricity bills with the myriad of subsidy schemes costing about £11bn each year, with extra grid balancing and extension costs on top. Plus all of the climate doom-mongering is taking a toll on the mental health of children.

Even though this economic destruction is being carried out in the name of the environment, it is far from clear that wind and solar power are environmentally friendly. I showed in this article, using data mostly from the UNECE, that renewables rank poorly overall on a range of sustainability measures including land use and mineral intensity, see Figure 6.

Figure 6 – Wind and Solar Score Badly on a Range of Sustainability measures

Other studies using US DOE data into the material intensity of wind and solar power have shown a similar result, see Figure 7.

Figure 7 – Material Requirements by Energy Source

All we get in return for all this effort is expensive, intermittent energy that needs even more minerals to be mined to make the storage required.

Conclusions

It is my belief that the economic, social and national security risks of Net Zero policies are far greater than those posed by climate change.

The risks of climate change can be averted by continuing to adapt, just as we have for millennia. It is certain that unilateral action by the U.K., or indeed multilateral action by much of the West, will do nothing to change the weather while the countries of the developing world continue to increase their consumption of hydrocarbons to make themselves richer. Indeed, even if mitigation measures were adopted globally, it is naïve to believe that bad weather will cease and we will suddenly get the “stable climate” demanded by more than 170 lawyers.

Yet we continue down the path of Net Zero, wreaking havoc on industry, jobs and the environment, pushing up energy bills and damaging the mental health of our children. The Net Zero ‘cure’ is worse than the supposed climate change disease.

David Turver writes the Eigen Values Substack page, where this article first appeared.

How Things Change – the Weather and Coral Cover

For sure the Great Barrier Reef will recover. But it is also important to acknowledge that the famous coral, that featured in our short film ‘Cafe Latte Coral’, it is important to acknowledge that earlier this year it was ripped from the reef crest, lifted-up, turned-over and drop-over the edge. That coral is now seven metres below at the sandy perimeter of John Brewer reef.

That famous coral, it has been reduced in size by perhaps one third, which is by about how much I estimate the loss of coral cover will be by the end of this year across the bay at the reefs fringing Great Keppel Island.

From Jennifer Marohasy

By jennifer

Great Keppel Island is just across the bay from Lammermoor Beach.  Tuesday afternoon I could see the island so clearly, and I took a short clip of some seagulls at the beach with my iPhone.   Wednesday morning visibility was terrible.  It was a fog – the island had disappeared, from sight.   To understand fog, and what causes it, however temporary the phenomenon may be, we first need to acknowledge it.  Which is more than most of my colleagues are doing when it comes to the changes in coral cover at the Great Barrier Reef this last year.

I couldn’t see across to Great Keppel Island on Wednesday morning.  Not a reason to panic, but worth noting.    If we are to understand how the seasons, tropical cyclones, and even the 18.6 year lunar declination cycle – how all of these natural phenomena can impact coral cover at the Great Barrier Reef, we first need to note the dramatic changes at individual coral reefs this year.

For sure there has been a very dramatic reduction in coral cover this last year at many reefs including my local reefs that are part of the southern Great Barrier Reef, and also at my favourite reef that is part of the central Great Barrier Reef, and many northern reefs were impacted by Tropical Cyclone Jasper – as was one of my favourite cities, Cairns where my dear mother lives.

Many Great Barrier Reef corals have been significantly impacted this last eight months, from cyclones and bleaching.  It is disingenuous to suggest otherwise yet that is what so many of my colleagues are doing.

We have a situation were many opinion leaders on the right, who are usually so sceptical of official statistics are promoting them, including the ‘record high’ coral cover as reported by Graham Lloyd in a nonsense article in The Australian newspaper last weekend, spruiked by Peter Ridd and reposted by Joanne Nova and Anthony Watts.  Such a shame.  So many lies.  And it does matter.

As I have been explaining to Peter Ridd the ‘record high coral cover’ this year might be a consequence of so much coral ‘dumped’ at the ‘perimeter’ of these reefs.

That might sound ridiculous, but then again so are the two candidates currently vying for leadership of the free world.  This might seem unrelated, but only if you are unaware that little has changed in one thousand years, we are still ruled over by a greedy elite whichever side of politics.*  And the Great Barrier Reef is not something those in power care about for its intrinsic beauty.  Rather it is one of the most heavily politicised Climate Change™ subjects in Australia.  Now I am quoting from the introduction to an interview I did recently with ‘Lies are Unbekoming’, at Substack also published last weekend, CLICK HERE.

It is perhaps the case that the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) in-water surveys show an increase in total coral cover because these are perimeter surveys and because at places like John Brewer Reef so much coral has fallen to the perimeter.

At John Brewer Reef much of the top of the reef, the reef crest, was swept clean of coral by Tropical Cyclone Kirrily when it struck on 25th January.  It all happened that Thursday afternoon, over a period of some two hours.

I visited John Brewer Reef soon after and observed that some of the corals at the inside edge of this reef crest had been picked-up, flipped-over and dropped down over the edge – to the reef perimeter.

I wrote a blog post about this, entitled ‘Cyclone Kirrily Smashed my Favourite Coral Reef’, and in it I show parts of the reef crest scoured clean and so many large corals strewn over the edge, about the sandy sea floor – around the perimeter.

Indeed, that entire wall of coral that featured in the short film I made last year with Stuart Ireland starring Rowan Dean about the ‘Café Latte Coral’– that entire wall of coral with that famous coral from The Guardian newspaper: it collapsed, it broke off from the reef crest proper and is now strewn about the reef perimeter as a consequence of TC Kirrily.

As mad as this may sound, there is now opportunity for this famous coral to be part of the AIMS survey and it presumably was included in June, because the coral has been lost from the reef proper and is now at the perimeter of this coral reef, and AIMS are reporting an increase in coral cover at John Brewer Reef while denying the cyclone.  I’ve written in detail about this just recently, CLICK HERE.

And as I explain in a rather long (5,000 words) interview, published at Substack last weekend:

Peter Ridd has gone to some effort over the last two years to promote these AIMS in-water coral cover surveys, to claim they show record high coral cover at the Great Barrier Reef.  This may be what they show. But science is a method, it is not the truth. The truth exists independently of what might be reported.

In all the promotions, it is never acknowledged that these AIMS coral cover surveys are only of the reef perimeter, these surveys do not include the habitat with arguably the most coral cover that is the reef crest. The reef crest is not surveyed because this habitat can be difficult to survey at low tide in water.

Of course, just because something is difficult, that is not a reason for not doing it.   Rather it would suggest AIMS, and its scientists, are more concerned with convenience than the truth.

I’ve explained to Rowan Dean, Peter Ridd and others, who have not got into the water at the Great Barrier Reef since last year, since 2023, that that whole wall of coral, including the famous coral that first featured on the front page of The Guardian – it has collapsed.   I have explained to both, and to Graham Llloyd, that the Great Barrier Reef is not doing so well this year.

Of course, there are patches that are still magnificent – and terrific tourism operators who know their local reefs, including Keppel Dive and Adrenalin Dive know where to find them.   Despite the tremendous loss of coral, I have so enjoyed scuba diving this year.  As I explain in my answer to the very last question published at Substack just last weekend:

I was recently over at Great Keppel Island, the reef flat that we were diving was to my eye ‘ordinary’ and clearly suffering from the recent bleaching, but the American I was diving with, my buddy for that dive was an airline pilot from Colorado and he was in awe of this reef: the colourful fish and colourful corals. It was the first time he had dived at the Great Barrier Reef.

When I explained, after the dive, that this reef was suffering from the recent bleaching, he explained to me that it was the best dive he had ever done. He explained that ‘the best’ he ever gets to see on scuba back home in a nearby freshwater lake is a bit of moss growing on a wreck, a plane sunk into that same lake.

It is the case that not all environments are equally inspiring and rejuvenating.

For sure the Great Barrier Reef will recover.   But it is also important to acknowledge that the famous coral, that featured in our short film ‘Cafe Latte Coral’, it is important to acknowledge that earlier this year it was ripped from the reef crest, lifted-up, turned-over and drop-over the edge.   That coral is now seven metres below at the sandy perimeter of John Brewer reef.

That famous coral, it has been reduced in size by perhaps one third, which is by about how much I estimate the loss of coral cover will be by the end of this year across the bay at the reefs fringing Great Keppel Island.

On our way back from Barron Island reef last Sunday. It was such a good dive.

____

* American journalist Tucker Carlson explained some of the politics in Canberra a week or so ago, the day after Julian Assange was released, CLICK HERE.

The feature photograph is from a coral reef fringing Bald Rock, another dive site across the bay that I visited in April when so many of the corals were so white because they were so badly bleached.

You can read about what I found back then from my blog post in April, CLICK HERE.  I was back at that dive site last weekend, and there are a lot of corals smothered in algae.  There will be a significant reduction in coral cover, but there will still be a lot of coral.  To understand the changed composition including changes in species diversity, it will be important to consider what happened this last summer, to acknowledge the extent of the bleaching in March and April 2024.

Purple States Take Note: Youngkin Saves Virginia From the Tyranny of California’s Gas Car Ban

Governor Glenn Youngkin announced recently that Virginia would decouple from California’s onerous mandate requiring all new vehicles sold in the Commonwealth to be electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles (EVs) by 2035. This regulation—a ban on sales of new gas, diesel and traditional hybrid vehicles—promulgated by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), would have taken effect as soon as next year when 35% of all model year 2026 cars sold would be required to meet California’s definition of “zero emission.”

From Watts Up With That?

By Chet Thompson

July 02, 2024

Governor Glenn Youngkin announced recently that Virginia would decouple from California’s onerous mandate requiring all new vehicles sold in the Commonwealth to be electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles (EVs) by 2035. This regulation—a ban on sales of new gas, diesel and traditional hybrid vehicles—promulgated by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), would have taken effect as soon as next year when 35% of all model year 2026 cars sold would be required to meet California’s definition of “zero emission.”  

This all stems from a 2021 bill championed by then-Governor Northam and his allies in the General Assembly. They enacted policy directing the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board (APCB) to adopt regulations tying Virginia law to California’s vehicle emission standards. And if you can believe it, the law was intentionally exempted from the Administrative Process Act, denying Virginians any opportunity to give input on the regulatory process and dodging larger economic review for the policy.

It sounds brazen, but that’s exactly what happened: the previous administration in Richmond put Virginia vehicle policy in the hands of Californians.

In November 2022, California finalized entirely new regulations at the direction of their Governor Gavin Newsom. Under the new California policy, selling any new gas, diesel, flex-fuel or traditional hybrid cars and trucks would be unlawful and subject to severe penalties, whether in California or in states aligned with California.

California’s gas car ban would have been devastating for Virginia drivers and small businesses and damaging to U.S. national security. Consumers would have paid dearly under the ban, facing higher costs in both the new and used car markets and finding more and more vehicles simply priced out of reach for families. Any compliance penalties levied on automakers—roughly $20,000 per vehicle—would also likely be passed on to Virginia consumers.

The absurd and un-American mandate to “go electric” on California’s timeline would also have increased Virginia’s and the U.S. dependence on China, since China controls the global EV battery and mineral supply chain.

Make no mistake: criticism of California’s gas car ban and EV mandate policies—and fervent opposition to the spread of those policies in the Commonwealth of Virginia and to any other state—should not be construed as an indictment of EVs themselves. EVs are a good choice for many Americans, and if those cars and trucks work for a family’s needs and fit within their budgets, that’s wonderful. Families have every right to make the choice to buy an EV, but no government mandate should compel them toward that purchase or restrict their access to other vehicle options. 

When the stakes are absolutely clear and the choice is between government mandates and consumer freedom, the right move is to err on the side of consumers. And that’s exactly what Governor Youngkin did when he chose to end California’s control over the vehicles that can and cannot be sold in Virginia. Virginia drivers, not California regulators 3,000 miles away, should be able to choose for themselves which vehicles to purchase. When people are free to choose, they make decisions that work best for them, their businesses and their families. 

Other states tethered to California’s EV mandate should follow Governor Youngkin’s bold and necessary leadership and free their residents, too, from the tyranny of California’s gas car ban.

Chet Thompson is president and CEO of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM). He previously served as deputy general counsel for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the George W. Bush administration and was a partner at Crowell and Moring, where he chaired the Environment and Natural Resources Group.

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

Not-Transitioning: India burns more coal than the US and Europe combined and just ordered $33b in “new coal plants”

The need for energy in India is so dire, the Modi government just leaned on the power companies to get their act together. Instead of adding the usual 1 – 2 gigawatts of new coal power, which they have for a lot of the last decade, last year they ordered enough gear to build 10 gigawatts. And this year Modi wants them to aim for 31 gigawatts. Which is about the same capacity as the entire coal generation of the Australian National Grid (and our gas plants too).

Somewhat miraculously, they are talking of building them “in the next 5 or 6 years”:

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

Coal trains in Bihar, India November 2023. by Salil Kumar Mukherjee

India is going gangbusters building coal

The need for energy in India is so dire, the Modi government just leaned on the power companies to get their act together. Instead of adding the usual 1 – 2 gigawatts of new coal power, which they have for a lot of the last decade, last year they ordered enough gear to build 10 gigawatts. And this year Modi wants them to aim for 31 gigawatts. Which is about the same capacity as the entire coal generation of the Australian National Grid (and our gas plants too).

Somewhat miraculously, they are talking of building them “in the next 5 or 6 years”:

India ‘Asks Utilities to Order $33bn in Gear to Lift Coal Output’

Rush to add more coal plants

India is rushing to add fresh coal-fired plants as it is barely able to meet power demand with the existing fleet in non-solar hours.

Post pandemic, the country’s power demand scaled new records on the back of the fastest rate of economic growth among major economies and increased instances of heatwaves.

India saw its biggest power shortfall in 14 years in June, and had to race to avoid night time outages by deferring planned plant maintenance, and invoking an emergency clause to mandate companies to run plants based on imported coal and power.

—  Asia Financial

And they are discussing numbers like $33 billion instead of $3.3 trillion. When President Modi wants electrical generation fast, he didn’t say “quick, build 50,000 wind mills, with batteries, gas plants, high voltage lines and pumped hydro.”

India now consumes more coal than Europe and North America combined, making Australia and the UK, and everyone except China, just so irrelevant.

Meanwhile the Western advisors sit around at frequent-flyer lounges on the way to UN junkets and tell themselves how the world is transitioning away from coal. And when the UN patsy declares coal is a “stranded asset” they nod obediently and sip more champagne.

When our inept and traitorous scientific agencies calculate energy costs, they won’t even put coal on the map unless they add up the cost of every cyclone in the next hundred years and park it in the “coal” column. Witchdoctors, every one of them.

Source: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Pablo Rosado at  OWID.

Not All the Seas are Hot

With the news channels banging on about hot hot hot water – Atlantic water, Gulf of Mexico water, the Caribbean water, Western Pacific water off of Australia — I mean, one would think the seas are boiling.

From Watts Up With That?

News Brief by Kip Hansen

With the news channels  banging on about hot hot hot water – Atlantic water, Gulf of Mexico water,  the Caribbean water, Western Pacific water off of Australia — I mean, one would think the seas are boiling.

In the last couple of weeks, the another side of the story has emerged:

California Water Temperatures Drop to Dangerous Levels — Jun 21, 2024

“A recent temperature reading off the coast of Crescent City [California] revealed that water temperatures were 47.3 degrees Fahrenheit, more than 3 degrees below normal for this time of year and 4 degrees below winter water temperatures in January.

Meteorologists and weather experts are blaming the temperature plunge on an “intense marine cold spell.””

“”An intense marine cold spell is gripping the Northern and Central California coast, with water temperatures up to 5°F below normal,” storm chaser Colin McCarthy posted on X (formerly Twitter).

He continued: “A buoy near Crescent City reported a water temperature of 46°F yesterday. In waters that cold, hypothermia can occur in as little as 30 minutes. These well below normal water temperatures due to strong upwelling of cold ocean water are enhancing the marine layer or ‘natural AC,’ keeping coastal areas cool while inland areas experience intense heat (100-108°F in the Central Valley  Saturday).”  [ Newsweek ]

Meanwhile, in the middle of the country:

Lake Michigan water temperature drops nearly 20 degrees since yesterday, NWS says

“The U.S. National Weather Service saw nearly 20-degree water temperature drops offshore from Port Sheldon and South Haven since yesterday.”

“”Until the water warms back up, beware of cold water shock (don’t dive into the water… your body may involuntarily inhale), and hypothermia after just 1 hour,” the NWS warned in their Facebook post.”

—

Hypothermia:

“Hypothermia, defined as a core body temperature lower than 35 C (95 F), may be classified as acute, sub-acute, or chronic. Acute hypothermia is caused by a rapid loss of body heat, usually from immersion in cold water. Sub-acute hypothermia often occurs from exposure to cool weather (below 10 C (50 F)) outdoors, in combination with wind chill, wet or inadequate clothing, fatigue, and/or inadequate nutrition. Chronic hypothermia in predisposed persons generally occurs from exposure to cold temperatures (below 16 C (60 F)) indoors over a prolonged period. Predisposed persons have an impaired perception of cold; decreased mobility; and inadequate nutrition, clothing, and heating systems.” [ CDC ]

Bottom Line:

Even in sunny southern California, sea water can be cold enough to cause dangerous hypothermia in the unprepared, the old, the very young and those especially susceptible to cold.   The same is true of lake water. 

Know the water temperature before you swim or let your children enter the water.  Surfers and other water sports enthusiasts should wear thermal protection — wet suits — appropriate to the temperature. Thin “skins” ( 1 mm) are not enough protection for water as cold as in these two weather alerts.

Many representations of sea surface temperature report “skin temperature” down to a whopping 1 mm. . Don’t be fooled by the constant drumbeat of “boiling seas” – the temperature of the sea water and lake water is a very local phenomena.

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Author’s Comment:

In the spirit of full disclosure, as a teen, I was a “Southern California Surfer Boy” —  right out of a Beach Boys’ song.  One calendar year, I calculated that I had spent at least some part of 200 (out of 365) days on the beach — in all weathers — despite attending high school and living more than 5 miles from the beach.  But, I was a small, skinny kid and had to have a custom surfboard made short enough for me to handle.  Today, that 8’6” board would be considered a “long board”.  With no body fat to speak of, I would get hypothermic fairly rapidly and retreat to the sand to warm up in the Sun.

During our decade+ living on our sailing catamaran in the Caribbean, my wife and I discovered that the sea water temperature was wildly variable, horizontally and vertically.  Warm, almost hot, at the surface, and quite cold at 20 feet.  Cold here but warm 50 feet away in a errant current. 

Thanks for reading.

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Was Beryl Only A Cat 4?

We’ve now got more data in for Hurricane Beryl, and as we have seen many times recently, it appears that the wind speeds have been grossly overestimated.

According to the official reports, Beryl has sustained winds of 165mph (145kts), and a minimum central pressure of 934mb.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

We’ve now got more data in for Hurricane Beryl, and as we have seen many times recently, it appears that the wind speeds have been grossly overestimated.

According to the official reports, Beryl has sustained winds of 165mph (145kts), and a minimum central pressure of 934mb.

But according to the official satellite Dvorak measurements, the wind speeds were well below the warning intensity, around 135kts. On the Saffir Simpson scale, Cat 5s are 137kts and over, so it seems that Beryl was probably a top end Cat 4:

http://rammb-data.cira.colostate.edu/tc_realtime/archive.asp?product=dgtldvor&storm_identifier=al022024

As usually happens nowadays, the National Hurricane Center tends to overestimate wind speeds, to be “on the safe side”. This may make sense from a public safety point of view, but unfortunately it is these warnings which appear in the media as “actual”.

http://rammb-data.cira.colostate.edu/tc_realtime/about.asp#strmstat

Further evidence that the windspeeds were overstated is provided by that central pressure of 934mb. In pre-satellite days, winds were estimated from air pressure.

The chart below plots windspeed against pressure for all Atlantic Cat 5s which had Beryl’s air pressure or below.

As you would expect, low pressure means high windspeed. Beryl, however, bucks the trend. Five other hurricanes have recorded 165 mph, but all have had much lower central pressure, ranging from 910 to 927mb. And a further six storms have had lower pressure, but only speeds of 160mph:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_5_Atlantic_hurricanes

Below are all of the 165mph ones:

.

Yearmb
Cuba1924910
Hattie1961914
Inez1966927
Isabel2003915
Ivan2004910
Matthew2016934
Irma2023926
Beryl2024934

I should also point out that in terms of minimum pressure, Beryl ranks 37th amongst Cat 5s.

Quite clearly the likes of Cuba, Hattie and Ivan were in a different league to Beryl. It is significant too that Matthew in 2016 has been overstated in exactly the same way as Beryl. This is plainly a new phenomena.

Aftermath of Hurricane Hattie 1961 – Belize

I should perhaps make it clear that I accept that modern measurements are the ones that are accurate. But if this is the case, all of the others that have gone before must be underestimated.

Just to finish, the following describes how Dvorak works:

I make no comment as to the accuracy or reliability of Dvorak.