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.
A July 16th article published by Yale Environment 360 claims global greening is not a positive, but rather a negative because it will harm water supplies. This claim is at best amusing, and at worst, misleading. While acknowledging that many scientists see the greening of the Earth due to rising CO2, especially its desert regions, to be beneficial, the writer tries spin that as a negative.
Image: Green areas saw a growth in foliage from 2000 to 2017, while brown areas saw a drop. JOSHUA STEVENS / NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY
A July 16th article published by Yale Environment 360 claims global greening is not a positive, but rather a negative because it will harm water supplies. This claim is at best amusing, and at worst, misleading. While acknowledging that many scientists see the greening of the Earth due to rising CO2, especially its desert regions, to be beneficial, the writer tries spin that as a negative.
Despite warnings that climate change would create widespread desertification, many drylands are getting greener because of increased CO2 in the air — a trend that recent studies indicate will continue. But scientists warn this added vegetation may soak up scarce water supplies.
First, we should applaud Yale Environment 360 for bringing out the good news about the effect of carbon dioxide (CO2) towards greening the planet. The article adds:
What is going on? The primary reason, most recent studies conclude, is the 50-percent rise in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere since preindustrial times. This increased C02 is not just driving climate change, but also fast-tracking photosynthesis in plants. By allowing them to use scarce water more efficiently, the CO2-rich air fertilizes vegetation growth in even some of the driest places.
This greening due to increased CO2 is something we have reported before here on Climate Realism. Data from satellite measurements indicates that the globe has increased its green area about 5% over the first 20 years of the 21st century. The Sahara Desert is becoming smaller as a result. A 2018 study by Venter et al found the Sahara desert had shrunk in area by 8 percent over the previous three decades.
At issue is the claim made by Pearce, “But scientists warn this added vegetation may soak up scarce water supplies.”
For once there is some good news from Africa. Farmers are reclaiming the desert, turning the barren wastelands of the Sahel region on the Sahara’s southern edge into green, productive farmland.
Satellite images taken this year and 20 years ago show that the desert is in retreat thanks to a resurgence of trees. They are mainly ana trees (Faidherbia albida), a type of acacia. Wherever the trees grow, farming can resume.
Tree planting has led to the re-greening of as much as 3 million hectares of land in Niger, enabling some 250,000 hectares to be farmed again.
The key factor is evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration, which is the combination of evaporation and plant transpiration (water into the air from leaves), is a key factor in the formation of deserts. Deserts form when the amount of water that evaporates from the ground is greater than the amount of rain or snow that falls. This is because deserts are arid, or dry, and receive no more than 10 inches of precipitation per year.
Evapotranspiration is an energy-driven process that increases with temperature, solar radiation, and wind. In deserts, the rapid heating and cooling of the air creates strong winds that circulate hot, dry air, which further increases evaporation rates. For example, in American deserts, evaporation can range from 70 to 160 inches per year. With that rate of water loss, deserts remain deserts – they are locked in by the evaporation process.
But with trees, the cycle is broken. Tree leaves both reflect and absorb sunlight so that solar radiation to the ground is reduced and thus ground temperatures are reduced. With lower ground temperatures, the tree canopy sunshield actually reduces evaporation, and therefore helps the desert retain more ground water.
Modest warming has already produced slightly higher rainfall totals. Also, as Agronomy and Botany explain under higher CO2 conditions plants use water more efficiently, losing less moisture to transpiration. So, plants use water more efficiently and the increase in plants reduces moisture loss in arid regions. How terrible!
This is basic plant science, known for decades that reduces any claimed increase in water use, but Pearce missed it entirely. Or perhaps, he knows of it and preferred to keep the narrative of “CO2 driven climate change is the cause of everything bad happening on Earth” alive and well, facts be damned.
Given the many examples we illustrate weekly here at Climate Realism of the media sticking to that narrative in the face of contrary facts, it isn’t at all surprising that Yale Environment 360 attempted to spin good news about global greening into bad. Shameful, but not surprising. For climate alarmists, it seems, maintaining narrative is more important than reporting the facts.
These days, there is lots and lots of news about how the supposed “energy transition” is not happening. There’s so much news on this subject that I could devote this entire blog to that subject alone and have plenty to occupy my time. Expect multiple posts about this topic over the next several weeks.
These days, there is lots and lots of news about how the supposed “energy transition” is not happening. There’s so much news on this subject that I could devote this entire blog to that subject alone and have plenty to occupy my time. Expect multiple posts about this topic over the next several weeks.
To whet your appetite, I will take you today to Australia, where we find the latest news on the inevitable collapse of impossible dream of “green” hydrogen as the means to make electricity from wind and sun work.
But before getting to the latest news, kindly let me remind you of my post of February 14, 2024 titled “When You Crunch The Numbers, Green Hydrogen Is A Non-Starter.” “Green” hydrogen is the type of hydrogen produced by electrolysis of water using electricity generated only by wind and sun. The idea is that you run your electrolyzer to make the “green” hydrogen on sunny and windy days when the wind turbines and solar panels produce a surplus; and then you burn the hydrogen to cover the gaps in wind/solar production on overcast days and calm nights. If it all works out, you end up with electricity that matches demand 24/7/365, and there is no carbon in the process from beginning to end. In other words, energy utopia.
But has anybody crunched the numbers to see if this can be done economically? By “economically,” I mean: producing electricity costing at or about the same as our current cost of electricity.
My February 14 post discussed a Biden Administration initiative to allocate $7 billion in government funding to “catalyze” $40 billion in private investment to jump-start production of “low-cost, clean hydrogen.” How “low-cost”? The government of course didn’t quantify it, but my post cited a guy named Jonathan Lesser who had done a work-up that concluded that they could get to “green” hydrogen in a price range of $2.74 – $5.35 per kg of hydrogen provided they could buy the wind/solar-generated electricity for $40 per MWh. Anyway, that’s the goal.
Does $2.74 – $5.35 per kg of hydrogen sound cheap? I love the way they quote prices for hydrogen in different units from the normal units used for natural gas, in order to make it so no one can easily make the comparison. Natural gas prices are generally quoted in $ per MMBtu. What you need to know is that it takes 8 kg of hydrogen to produce 1 MMBtu of energy. So $2.74 – $5.35 per kg of green hydrogen translates to $21.92 to $42.80 per MMBtu. In the past 5 years, U.S. natural gas prices have been under $4/MMBtu for most of the time, and have never reached as high as $10/MMBtu. And to achieve the green hydrogen prices of $20 – 40/MMBtu requires a cost of wind/solar electricity of $40/MWh. Recent contracts for wind and solar generators have been requiring guaranteed prices of $150/MWh and up. So adjust the $20 – 40/MMBtu accordingly. The green hydrogen is going to cost you at least 10 times the cost of natural gas, and perhaps as much as 20 times.
On to the latest news from Australia. Australian energy blogger Joanne Nova reports yesterday (July 19) that a large green hydrogen project in that country has just “collapsed” with the loss of 700 jobs. I assume that by “collapse” Ms. Nova is referring to some sort of bankruptcy or equivalent. Ms. Nova’s headline is “The Hydrogen Titanic just collapsed in Australia because renewable electricity costs too much.”
The project in question is the baby of Australian industrialist Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest and his company Fortescue. According to Ms. Nova, Mr. Forrest has “burned off $2 billion dollars (AU) on setting up his Green Dream Hydrogen energy plan.” Forrest’s project had been the “centerpiece of [the Australian Labor government’s] $2 billion Hydrogen Headstart program.”
Ms. Nova quotes liberally from the big Australian newspaper called The Australian, which unfortunately is behind a pay wall. I will just use Ms. Nova’s excerpts. Here is the key one:
For more than two years, Fortescue has been full throttle trying to turn Forrest’s promise of converting green hydrogen into a commercial reality within years. Instead, as the economics around surging electricity costs needed to produce green hydrogen sunk in, deadlines were pushed back and back. The mission changed, then there was a revolving door of executives.
The problem is very simply the cost of producing the “green” hydrogen, which is not remotely competitive with natural gas. Nor can anything be done to make the cost anything close to competitive. This quote is from another Australian source called Financial Review, also behind pay wall:
Matthew Rennie, a former EY partner who is now an independent adviser, said his firm’s analysis indicated that prices for power and electrolysers – which use renewable power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen – would need to be much cheaper to produce green hydrogen in Australia even at under $[AU]3 a kilogram. He said power prices would need to be less than $[AU]40 a megawatt-hour and electrolyser costs would need to more than halve to produce hydrogen at that level – still 50 per cent more expensive than the government’s ${AU]2 target for the gas to be competitive.
The $[AU]3/kg target is the equivalent of $[AU]24/MMBtu [thus about $US16] — 5 [or so] times the typical natural gas price in the U.S. of $3-4/MMBtu. And they’re saying that to achieve even that, they would need wind/solar-generated electricity prices of $[AU]40/MWh [thus about $US27/MWh] and electrolyzer prices to halve. Ms. Nova reports that the two Australian states that produce the most electricity from wind and solar are South Australia and Tasmania, and they have wholesale electricity prices of $[AU]199/MWh and $214[AU]/MWh respectively [thus about $US133 and $US138 respectively]. So in the real world the cost of this green hydrogen is going to be more like [ten to] 20 or more times the cost of natural gas, instead of the paltry 5 [or so] times higher that they were hoping for.
Meanwhile, I keep reading many things saying that green hydrogen is the wave of the future. But I can’t find anything about major production facilities for the stuff coming online. Maybe none ever will.
UPDATE, July 21: Commenter littleoil (who I believe is Australian) asks for clarification as to which monetary figures in this post are in $AU versus $US. An Australian dollar is worth about 2/3 of a US dollar. I have added some clarification in the post.
The Seattle Times, in its usual alarmist fashion, has an article about how the dreaded “rising seas” are forcing the Quinault Nation to move its main town, Taholah.
The Seattle Times, in its usual alarmist fashion, has an article about how the dreaded “rising seas” are forcing the Quinault Nation to move its main town, Taholah.
Seeing that, I decided to take an overview of the claims about Taholah. A Google search for “Taholah rising seas” finds over eighty media claims that “rising seas” are threatening Taholah. Searching “Taholah climate change” finds a bunch more. A Bing search for “Taholah” and “rising seas” yields no less than 1,830 articles. And they’re all singing from the same hymnbook, going on about seawater incursions into the town and raving about how rising sea levels are the cause … but not one of them has taken the time to investigate the facts.
Here’s an overview of where Taholah is located, on the Olympic Peninsula up near the Canadian border, about as far north as Seattle.
Figure 1. Overview of the location of the main town of the Quinault Nation, Taholah
Let me start with the important question. Do the good folks of the Quinault Nation need to move their largest town?
Yes, absolutely they do, but not because of climate change or rising sea levels.
The real reason they need to move? Because when, not if but when the next tsunami comes, it will wipe them off the map. Most of the town is less than sixteen feet (five meters) above sea level.
And curiously, the geological forces that create the tsunamis also mean that the sea level at Taholah isn’t even rising … I’ll return to that in a bit. First, let’s delve into the tsunamis.
Geological evidence shows that the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ), which runs from Northern California to Vancouver Island, Canada, produces large tsunamis that threaten the coasts of Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and Northern California every four hundred to five hundred years on average. And it’s been a while since the last big one in 1700… we’re coming due. That’s why I said when the tsunami comes, and not if the tsunami comes. It is inevitable. A NOAA article on the question says:
“It has been over 300 years since the 1700 event. In this time, stress has been building between the plates. Evidence suggests it may not be too long before the next great earthquake shakes the region.
We do not know when that will happen. It could be tomorrow, or it could be many years from now.
It could be a magnitude 9.0 “full rip” or a partial rupture (magnitude 8+). Either would have significant impacts.”
Seems to me like a more than adequate reason to move Taholah to higher ground right there, no need for further excuses …
So what is the connection between tsunamis and sea levels? Well, the CSZ is where the Juan de Fuca, Explorer, and Gorda tectonic plates subduct beneath the North American plate. The plates colliding are what creates the earthquakes that generate these monster tsunamis.
And in that ongoing slow collision between plates, the North American plate is continually being forced upwards fast enough that at some Pacific Northwest coastal locations, sea levels are actually falling. Here are the local NOAA tidal stations. Blue arrows show where the sea levels are falling.
Figure 2. Nearest NOAA tidal stations to the Quinault Nation town of Taholah.
Note that of the three stations nearest to Taholah on the coast, two of them show falling sea levels and one shows a rising sea level … here’s the rising sea level at the first station south of Taholah.
Now, there’s something interesting about this record. The uncertainty (± 0.71 mm/year) is larger than the trend (0.43 mm/year). And when that happens, statistically we cannot even say whether the sea level is rising or falling—it could be either one.
Next, here’s the falling sea level from Astoria, Oregon, the next tide station south of Toke Point.
This record, although it is much longer than the Toke Point record above, shows the same thing—the uncertainty is greater than the trend. So once again, statistically we can’t say if the sea level is rising or falling in Astoria.
We can say, however, that it is highly unlikely (~2.5% chance) that the sea level is rising more than the trend plus the uncertainty, which is 0.15 mm per year. That highly unlikely occurrence is about 15 mm (0.6 inches) per century … be still, my beating heart …
Finally, here’s the Neah Bay record from up at the north tip of the Olympic Peninsula.
Here, the uncertainty is far smaller than the trend, so statistically, we can say that the sea level around Neah Bay is falling due to the land being forced upwards faster than the global rise in sea level.
So given that the sea level isn’t rising around Taholah, why is Taholah seeing water incursions into town?
It’s because they built the town on unconsolidated estuarine silt and soil in the Quinault River delta … and as such soils inevitably do over time, they are compacting and sinking, and taking the town down with them. This is indeed tragic, but it has exactly zero to do with sea level rise.
Figure 6. Closeup of Taholah and the Quinault River delta.
To summarize: South of Taholah, there’s no statistically significant sea level rise or fall, and north of Taholah, the sea level is falling.
This, of course, all means that the dozens and dozens and dozens of articles claiming that Taholah is endangered by rising sea levels are … well … let me call them “ludicrously misinformed” and leave it at that.
And the conclusion from this?
You absolutely cannot trust the modern media to do even the simplest verification of factual claims. And you can’t believe them even if they agree with each other—the media consensus is as meaningless as the so-called “scientific consensus”. Here we have over a hundred articles by various print, online, and tv media from all over the planet, all passionately and forcefully repeating the same easily checked falsehood.
This would have been somewhat acceptable before the internet, but it took me a total of about fifteen minutes to look up the local sea level rise and to learn that Taholah cannot possibly be endangered by sea level rise because the sea level is not rising around Taholah.
In closing, let me say that I wish the good folks of the Quinault Nation all the best in their plans to move to higher ground. Moving a whole town is not an easy thing to do, but as the saying goes, “Needs must when the devil drives” … and a giant tsunami certainly qualifies as a devil in my book.
My very best to everyone, and to all you good media folks out there … do your dang homework, because in 2024 you can be sure that if you don’t, someone else will …
w.
PS: It’s also obvious from these sea level records that there is no acceleration in the rate of sea level rise … but that’s a separate question.
My Usual: When you comment, I implore you to quote the exact words you are discussing. I’m more than happy to defend my words, but I can’t defend your interpretation of my words. Thanks.
Proving Me Wrong: If you wish to prove me wrong, here is how to do it. Hele on!
Since all hospitals, airports, communication systems, militaries, planes, trains, and vehicles are based on products that did not exist before the 1800s and are now made from fossil fuels, today’s policymakers are incapable of sharing a plan to support a supply chain for the products and fuels demanded by today’s materialistic society and economy as America tries to reduce its dependency on crude oil.
Since all hospitals, airports, communication systems, militaries, planes, trains, and vehicles are based on products that did not exist before the 1800s and are now made from fossil fuels, today’s policymakers are incapable of sharing a plan to support a supply chain for the products and fuels demanded by today’s materialistic society and economy as America tries to reduce its dependency on crude oil.
The elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss is that crude oil is the foundation of our material intensive society as it is the basis of all products and fuels demanded by the 8 billion on this planet, of which only one billion existed less than 200 years ago.
> As a refresher for those pursuing net-zero emissions, wind and solar do different things than crude oil. Wind turbines and solar panels only generate occasional electricity but manufacture NOTHING for society.
> Crude oil is virtually never used to generate electricity but, when manufactured into petrochemicals, is the basis for virtually all the products in our materialistic society that did not exist before the 1800s being used at these infrastructures like ⏤ transportation, airports, hospitals, medical equipment, appliances, electronics, telecommunications, communications systems, space programs, heating and ventilating, and militaries.
> Over the last 200 years, we’ve become a very materialistic society, and the world has populated from 1 to 8 billion because of all the products for society and the different fuels for jets, ships, trucks, cars, military, and space program that did not exist before the 1800s.
> If world governments want to rid the earth of crude oil usage, what’s the backup source that can manufacture the supply chain for refrigerators, tires, asphalt, X-ray machines, iPhones, air conditioners, and the other 6,000 products that wind and solar CANNOT manufacture?
> Crude oil products are essential to human flourishing for the foreseeable future. Pursuing “net zero by 2050” without first identifying a crude oil replacement would be one of the most destructive developments in human history.
> Without crude oil, there would be nothing that needs electricity!! Everything that needs electricity to function, such as iPhones, computers, data centers, and X-ray machines, is made with petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil!
> Until a crude oil replacement is identified, the world cannot live without crude oil, which is the basis of our materialistic “products” society.
One fact is for sure: Wind and solar will not be the replacement for crude oil. Those “renewables” only generate occasional electricity but manufacture NOTHING for society, nor will these “renewable electricity” even come close to meeting our demands for continuous electricity. To put it bluntly, wind and solar are a joke, as they generate electricity only when the sun shines and the breezes blow.
In addition, wind power needs enormous amounts of oil to make and turn the non-degradable turbine blades that are filling landfills when they wear out. To provide the infrastructure for the planned forests of turbines requires massive amounts of raw materials, including limestone, steel, aluminum, lithium, cobalt, and nickel. To make way for the wind and solar farm fields, millions of trees are being cut down. Remember when we used to call environmentalists tree huggers? Where are they now?
Real science is now revealing that the massive span of solar panels over millions of acres of land is changing the natural atmosphere. The materials the panels are made of cause warming. In the winter, they cause cooling, thus exacerbating weather extremes. When air is warmed, as happens over the solar panels, it rises. Even small differences in ordinary land surfaces can create powerful forces of weather. In short, solar farms will become thunderstorms and tornado incubators and magnets. There is nothing green about green electricity. Farmers must beware of allowing their property to be used for these installations.
Most importantly, today, there is a lost reality that the primary usage of crude oil is NOT for the generation of electricity but to manufacture derivatives and fuels, which are the ingredients of everything needed by economies and lifestyles to exist and prosper. Energy realism requires that legislators, policymakers, and media demonstrating pervasive ignorance about crude oil usage begin to understand the staggering scale of the decarbonization movement.
In fact, all electricity is only possible with parts made from oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil, occasionally generated electricity from weather-dependent wind turbines and solar panels, and continuous and uninterruptible electricity generated from coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric power plants.
Many developing nations do not share the Western elite’s obsession with reducing emissions. Since life for most people on earth is still a battle against poverty, hunger, and disease, many countries, particularly India and much of Africa, will continue to focus on becoming richer through fossil fuels and the many products that have made richer countries have a more comfortable living lifestyle.
World leaders continue experiencing a “dangerous delusion” of a global transition to “just electricity” that they believe will eliminate the use of the crude oil that made society achieve so much in less than 200 years. Without those products made from petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil, the policymakers must be imagining no jets, ships, defense, or space programs!
Over the last 200 years, after the discovery of the products and transportation fuels that could be manufactured out of crude oil, the world populated from 1 to 8 billion.
Looking back at the history of the petroleum industry, it illustrates that the black cruddy looking crude oil was virtually useless unless it could be manufactured (refineries) into oil derivatives that are now the basis of chemical products, such as plastics, solvents, and medications, that are essential for supporting modern lifestyles. The more than 6,000 products that are based on oil are being used for the health and well-being of humanity, and the generation of electricity did not exist a few short centuries ago.
Today, we have more than 50,000 merchant ships, more than 20,000 commercial aircraft, and more than 50,000 military aircraft that use fuels manufactured from crude oil. The fuels to move the heavy-weight and long-range needs of jets moving people and products, the merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space programs are also dependent on what can be manufactured from crude oil.
For aircraft and ships, just like that, for the diverse options for the generation of electricity, they all utilize parts and components made from the oil derivatives manufactured from raw crude oil.
As a refresher of the limitations of wind and solar to achieve net-zero emissions, they do different things than crude oil.
> Wind and solar renewables only generate occasional electricity but cannot manufacture anything. The problem with renewable electricity from wind turbines and solar panels is that they don’t work most of the time and thus are unreliable for “just electricity”!
> Then there is “the nameplate farce” of those renewables. There should be financial penalties for the subsidies and tax credits provided to wind and solar power plants for their inability to deliver at least 90 percent of their permitted nameplate ratings on an ANNUAL basis, like their backup competitors of coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants that provide continuous uninterruptable electricity.
> Of the three fossil fuels, coal and natural gas are used to generate electricity, but the third, crude oil, is virtually never used to generate electricity. However, when crude oil is manufactured into petrochemicals, it is the basis for virtually all the products in our materialistic society that did not exist before the 1800’s.
From this quick refresher, conversations are needed to discuss the difference between just ELECTRICITY” from renewables and the “PRODUCTS” that are the basis of society’s materialistic world.
Tom DeWeese is one of the nation’s leading advocates of private property and individual liberty. He is the National Grassroots Coordinator for CFACT, the author of the book Sustainable, the WAR on Free Enterprise, Private Property and Individuals, and President of the American Policy Center.
LONG ESSAY WARNING: This essay is long and technical, 3300 words. Dr. Welch provides a summary for those less interested in the details of his analysis.
A Technical Note by Dr. Alan Welch FRAS, FBIS — 20 July 2024
LONG ESSAY WARNING: This essay is long and technical, 3300 words. Dr. Welch provides a summary for those less interested in the details of his analysis.
Summary Three representative graphs for Global Temperatures, Sea Level Rises and El Niño Indices were selected and analysed to see if there were any correlation between them. The Temperature and El Niño have large definite variations whereas the Sea Level has deviations from a fitted curve that are relatively small leading to a debate as to whether the variations are noise or have a significant meaning.
A method of making each graph dimensionless (called throughout this note, rightly or wrongly, normalisation) is employed and the three normalised graphs compared in pairs visually and numerically. Many of the graphs are rather “busy” and the 3 figures 11A, 16A and 18A, are added to show more clearly the main findings.
The main conclusions are that there are common patterns of behaviour between all three graphs, especially when a “phase shift” is applied to the Global Temperatures and that the Sea Level Rises are well represented by a linear line plus a sinusoidal variation of about +/- 4 mm over a 26-year period.
The main reason for this study was to supplement my understanding of Sea Level Rise variation and the involvement of Temperatures and El Niño Indices is solely to aid this. Having said that my knowledge of how El Niño Indices are formulated and how they may interact with other phenomena is sparse and if any commenter could elaborate on this, I would be grateful. I see a “chicken and egg” scenario between El Niño indices and values of Temperature and/or Sea Level but may have missed some fundamental point.
Finally, I have taken the liberty to add an “Epilogue” that summarises my 6-year journey in studying sea level rises and pulls together my findings in one graph, Figure 19. Assuming I remain compos mentis, I intend to review each future year to show what changes have occurred and how my predictions pan out.
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The main purpose of this Technical Note is to see if comparing the Sea Level Rise graph with other climatic graphs throws any light on the how the variation in Sea Levels from the long-term trend line may be judged.
Every month the UAH Temperatures are reported by Dr. Roy Spencer on WUWT. This reports the “Global” Temperatures monthly starting in 1979. The data are available on https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/. Below, Figure 1, is a recent plot of temperatures.
Figure 1
Also, on a less regular basis the Sea Levels are reported by NASA with data being presented at 10-day intervals. The data are available on https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/. Again, a recent plot, Figure 2, is shown.
Figure 2
At first glance they look like the proverbial chalk and cheese and there seems no correlation between the two graphs. The Temperatures have a small slope with relatively high variations the form of which is readily accepted and is like many other Thermal graphs. On the other hand, the Sea Levels have a steep slope with small variations which, given the quoted accuracies of measurement (Ref 1), could be taken more as “noise” in the data. To perform a comparison, the following procedure was followed.
First the data for the 31 years from January 1993 to December 2023 were extracted from both data sets and a linear line fitted. Next the residuals obtained from extracting the values on the linear line from the actual values were obtained. These two sets of data were normalised so that the values fitted between -1 and +1 and the two sets of normalised data plotted together. ( The use of the term “normalised” needs to be checked as to its appropriate use but will be used when applied in all the subsequent work. ) The normalisation process consisted in obtaining the minimum residual (MIN) and maximum residual (MAX). Next select the largest absolute value of MIN and MAX calling it ABS. Then divide all the residuals by ABS. The term normalised is used as the outcome are sets of dimensionless values that are contained between the 2 limits of -1 and +1. Note for both sets of data residuals based on a quadratic fit were also determined and in the case of the sea levels residuals based on a sinusoidal variation of +/-4.2 mm over a 26-year period were also pursued. This variation was introduced in Ref 2 and following queries in the comments on the paper that followed was investigated as to its origin in Ref 3. The general forms of these differed little from the linear fit calculations so the intermediate details are shown solely on the linear fits. Also, a linear fit could be considered less controversial.
Three plots are shown for each of the sea level data (Figures 3 to 5) and the temperature data (Figures 6 to 8). These are respectively the data with a linear regression line fitted, the residuals obtained by subtracting the linear line values from the actual values and the normalised values. The second and third graphs (figures 4 and 5) are exactly the same shape but with the third graph fitting between -1 and +1.
Figure 3 – Sea Level data with Linear fit line
Subtracting the linear line values from the actual values results in the next graph.
Figure 4 – Sea Level Residuals
The relevant values to create the next graph are Min = -13.389, MAX = 11.21715 and ABS = 13.389.
Figure 5 – Normalised Sea Level Residuals
The same process is applied to the Global Temperature Data.
Figure 6 – Temperatures with Linear fit line
Subtracting the linear line values from the actual values results in the next graph.
Figure 7 – Temperature Residuals
The relevant values to create the next graph are Min = -0.48963, MAX = 0.733408 and ABS = 0.733408.
Figure 8 – Normalised Temperature Residuals
Figures 9 to 11 show comparisons of normalised graphs of Global Temperature and Sea Level Residuals as measured from a range of fitted curves. The three figures are for
Linear line for both sets of data
Quadratic fit for both sets of data
Quadratic fit for Temperatures and Sinusoidal fit for Sea Levels.
Figure 9 – Comparison of Normalised values (Linear Fit)Figure 10 – Comparison of Normalised values (quadratic Fit)Figure 11 – Comparison of Normalised values (sinusoidal fit for sea levels)
Figure 11 is rather busy so to visualise the trends better it is replotted in figure 11A as 13-month averages. (This presentation is also applied to figure 16 and 18)
Figure 11A – Comparison of Normalised values (sinusoidal fit for sea levels)
13 Month Average
There is a general similarity over all three sets although the latter two do show an improvement except for the peak in Temperature at year 5 and the dip in Sea Level at year 6. In ref 4 it was pointed out that around this period major changes to data occurred with the Topex data which may just be a coincidence. It would be informative to apply a check like R Squared between the pairs of data but there are about 3 times more sea level data points, so this is ruled out at this stage.
Another check that can be made is with a normalised graph of the El Niño Index. The El Niño Index data was obtained for the period 1990 to 2024 and is shown in figure 12. The data are on a monthly basis, so this opens up the possibility of more numerical comparisons.
Figure 12
The data for the period 1993 to 2023 were extracted and as the linear fit was basically the zero axis the El Niño Index values were taken as the residuals and normalised as they are. There is a small positive curvature, but this is ignored.
The relevant values to create the next graph are Min = -2.03, MAX = 2.64 and ABS = 2.64.
The normalised plot is shown below.
Figure 13 – Normalised El Niño Indices
The El Niño Index normalised values were then compared with the various Temperature and Sea Level normalised values.
Figure 14 – Comparison Normalised Values Temperature and El Niño (Linear)Figure 15 – Comparison Normalised Values Sea Level and El Niño (Linear)Figure 16 – Comparison Normalised Values Temperature and El Niño (Quadratic)
The Linear and Quadratic plots for Global Temperatures are not too dissimilar so a 13-month moving average version of figure 16 is shown below in figure 16A.
Figure 16A – Comparison Normalised Values Temperature and El Niño (Quadratic)
13 Month Average
Figure 17 – Comparison Normalised Values Sea Level and El Niño (Quadratic)Figure 18 – Comparison Normalised Values Sea Level and El Niño (Sinusoidal)
The Quadratic and Sinusoidal plots for Sea Levels are not too dissimilar so a 13-month moving average version of figure 18 is shown below in figure 18A.
Figure 18A – Comparison Normalised Values Sea Level and El Niño (Sinusoidal)
13 Month Average
The main conclusions from these 5 plots are that the Temperature and Sea Level variations match the El Niño variation more closely than when they are compared with each other. The Temperature variation lags about 4 months behind the El Niño variation. Having said that the latest El Niño seems to buck this trend, but it is still in operation and judgement needs to be deferred. Of the comparisons the case of a quadratic fit is best for the Temperatures whereas the sinusoidal Sea Level fit is considered best for the Sea Levels although there is not much in it.
Another mathematical way of looking at the fits is to calculate the R Squared values between various sets of results. The Temperature and El Niño values are monthly, but the Sea Levels are every 10 days. An averaging process was applied to the Sea Level data as follows. If the year contained 36 sets of data, these were averaged in triplets to give 12 monthly values. If there were 37 sets again triplet averaging was applied except for the 6th month when it was averaged over 4 sets of data. Linear and Quadratic curve fits were applied to the reduced data set and found to agree with the full data set to at least 2 significant figures.
Table 1 below lists all the R Square values but those of initial interest are those involving the El Niño values, that is the last column.
Table 1 – R Squared values for various pairs
For the temperature data the R Squared values are poor and very little difference between linear and quadratic fits. If the temperature data is progressively moved over a month at a time the best result is found with the quadratic fit and a 4-month shift, similar to a phase shift, giving a R Square value of 0.410, compared with 0.138 if no shift is applied (Table 2). The best R Squared value for the linear fit is 0.399 again with a 4-month shift (Table 3).
R Squared values for Temperatures
For the Sea Levels the best R Square is for the sinusoidal curve at 0.481 although a 1-month shift improves this slightly to 0.492 (Table 4). If linear or quadratic fits are considered the best R Squared values are again roughly with a 1-month shift at 0.298 and 0.454 respectively (Tables 5 and 6).
R Squared values for Sea Levels
The main conclusions are:
1) The normalised data for Temperature, Sea Levels and El Niño Indices tend to be closely related. (Figure 11A).
2) The Temperature and Sea Level normalised data match the El Niño values more closely than with each other. (Figures 16A and 18A).
3) The variation in Temperature values tend to appear about 4 months after the other two sets of values. (Tables 2 and 3) with the Linear and Quadratic fits being very similar.
4) The variation in Sea Level variation is not therefore due to “noise” but is accountable for by showing similar behaviour to the Global Temperature variation and the El Niño Indices variation.
5) The use of a sinusoidal variation in residuals of about +/- 4mm over a 26-year period leads to a better correlation. (Table 4). It is slightly better than the Quadratic fit but greatly improved over the Linear fit.
6) Unfortunately climate changes occur too slowly, and 30 years of data is much too short to judge finally between the Quadratic and Sinusoidal fits or Sea Level changes but hopefully the next 10 years will bring a closure to this part of the debate.
6 years ago, I was a typical UK retired engineer, cutting my grass, listening to the BBC and reading the Guardian. One day the last two highlighted a news item concerning “accelerating sea level rises”. I quickly found the source, the Nerem et al paper of 2018, which used quadratic curve fitting over 25 years and extrapolation over 80 years which frightened the life out of all the children and anyone living near the sea. Any Engineer worth his/her salt would cringe at such mathematical manipulation. Any extrapolation of polynomials would be viewed with suspicion. Any Scientist likewise should tread carefully. But Climate Scientists seem to have a law unto themselves and plough on regardless.
Not knowing anything about Climate Science I started my own investigation and wrote a short, be it a bit rough round the edges, paper which I submitted to PNAS. It was turned down at the peer review stage. Hence my involvement with WUWT and with much help and encouragement from Kip Hansen have produced six papers over the last two years or so. These were generally individual papers but over time a consistent message appeared. That was that there may be an alternative curve to the quadratic fit, with its perceived “accelerations”, namely a sinusoidal variation.
The fifth paper (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/04/06/measuring-and-analysing-sea-levels-using-satellites-during-2023-part-2/) addressed the legitimate question of why the identified sinusoidal curve may be present. The combination of the 66-degree inclination of the satellite orbit and a decadal oscillation up the North Atlantic/Arctic Sea corridor were investigated and found to be a possible cause. It was a case of what was not measured that was important.
This current paper addresses whether the small deviations in sea level data are noise or meaningful. In so doing it also strengthens the suitability of the sinusoidal variation in levels.
It is now a wait and see scenario. Nature moves at a slow pace at times. I intend, assuming the pills keep working, to analyse each complete year as it comes. 2024 will see the demise of the El Niño and a return to normal service with the “accelerations” predicted to return to a downwards trend during the year. An interesting graph will be the plot of sea level residuals from the linear fit and how these compare with the quadratic and sinusoidal curves.
I’ve enjoyed the comments made, be they praise or criticism, learnt much about Climate Change in the process and hope to have contributed something to the understanding of the science involved.
Finally, one graph (Figure 19) showing how the actual and predicted “accelerations” vary with time encapsulates much of my findings.
Figure 19
It shows
– The variation of “accelerations” as calculated by the Method in Nerem et al’s paper of 2028 – labelled “NASA Readings”.
– How the El Niño and La Niña phenomena cause oscillations in values of “acceleration” about a basically smooth curve.
-How the variation of “accelerations” based on a sinusoidal variation of residuals (differences between actual sea levels and a straight line) echo the variation of actual values.
– Predicts a gradual reduction in “accelerations” over the next decade or so approaching values measured with long term (greater 100 years) Tidal Gauge readings.
– Both curves peak at just below 0.10 mm/year2 around 2020.
– Not shown fully is that actual values of “acceleration” prior to 2012 are erratic due to the El Niño and La Niña phenomena causing much more variation over the shorter time scales involved.
– The Graph has been extended to 2060 to cover more than 2 cycles of the predicted 26-year sinusoidal variation. Remember the curve labelled “Sinusoidal” is not a sinusoidal curve but the resulting more complex curve of calculated “accelerations”.
– The Graph converges to the zero-acceleration line but in reality, it may converge to a small positive acceleration similar to the long-term Tidal Gauge of about 0.01 mm/year2. Its form is of a slightly under-damped oscillation.
– Also, the year 2060 is important to me as Halley’s Comet should becoming visible for its next return and I plan to see it. I will only be 122(!) and hope I can turn my head up enough to see it! Make a date in your diaries.
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(Health Warning – Between the first and last drafts of this Technical Note I suffered a stroke which put me in a stroke unit for over a week. Consequently, the combination of this, being 86 and the unsociable Time Differences means I may be slower in responding to any comments. — aw)
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Comment from Kip Hansen:
Dr. Welch has been working on these analyses for years and this is his latest effort. This and his five previous essays on the topic (linked in the essay and in the references) are offered here by Dr. Welch as an alternative hypothesis to Nerem (2018) ( .pdf ) and Nerem (2022). [ In a practical sense, Nerem (2022) did not change anything substantial from the 2018 paper.]
I find Dr. Welch’s analyses interesting and feel strongly that Dr. Welch’s analyses deserve to be seen and discussed. I have encouraged him to present his findings here at WUWT.
On that note: I am always willing to receive your work as well for review. I promise not to be overly kind — in fact, I will be honest — which may not be what you are looking for. If I think your work has merit, I will encourage you to whip it into something publishable at WUWT. If I think it stinks, I will still encourage you to keep at it ‘til it shines (which may require abandoning your favorite-but-nutty hypothesis altogether). You may write me with your ideas at my first name at i4.net.
Note that Dr. Welch lives in the U.K. and his responses to comments on this essay will be occurring on British Summer Time : UTC +1 – and please take into account his health warning above.
During a high-profile conversation with moderator Peter Bryant at the recent RealClearEnergy Future Forum, Gill Pratt, chief scientist at Toyota, said that his company’s philosophy focuses first on quality of life. From that perspective, he added, the automotive future must be a multi-pathway that respects human diversity and the diversity of uses for motorized vehicles (check the video above to see the Pratt section).
During a high-profile conversation with moderator Peter Bryant at the recent RealClearEnergy Future Forum, Gill Pratt, chief scientist at Toyota, said that his company’s philosophy focuses first on quality of life. From that perspective, he added, the automotive future must be a multi-pathway that respects human diversity and the diversity of uses for motorized vehicles (check the video above to see the Pratt section).
Toyota, he said, recognizes the difference between decarbonization – which is the goal – and electrification, which is one means of reaching that goal. Toyota, therefore, is building hybrids, electric vehicles (EVs), and internal combustion engines that use hydrogen rather than gasoline or diesel as a fuel. In the developing world where electricity is in short supply, he added, the best choice may be low-carbon liquid fuels.
Prior to being recruited by Toyota to lead its research institute, Pratt had worked on robotics and neuromorphic computing at the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, making machines that could help in disasters and computers that worked more like the human brain. There, he says he learned that technological predictions are often unreliable and that we must expect to be surprised.
Today’s vehicles are quite advanced compared to those of just 20 years ago. Today, global positioning systems help guide drivers through both urban traffic and rural roads; we now have telephones and the internet in our vehicles, and today’s vehicular onboard computers are sophisticated enough to drive themselves safely with or without passengers.
But we have also concluded that the products of combustion of fossil fuels exceed the limits of human tolerance and threaten our future. The “quick fix” of electrifying everything has proven to be a stubborn challenge, if only for the sheer magnitude of battery-EVs needed to replace 300 million American vehicles and a billion and a half worldwide, most of which operate on gasoline or diesel fuel.
To achieve a safe self-driving vehicle, Toyota opted for a diverse approach with a focus on saving lives sooner. The company’s approach to decarbonization has also focused on diverse solutions, including battery-EVs, plug-in hybrids, and fuel-cell EVs. “We want to give people around the world from all walks of life the best tools to solve the global problem of climate change,” Pratt said in a 2021 Toyota Research Institute video.
“Different people,” he said then, “have different circumstances and different needs. Some live in areas with electric grids powered by renewables; others live in areas that will be powered by fossil fuels for some time. Some have convenient charging stations at home; others live in cities where that is more difficult. Some are wealthy; most are not.”
One benefit of this strategy is the wiser use of available lithium, the critical element in today’s EV batteries. Pratt explained that Toyota’s strategy focuses on maximizing the carbon return on investment of every battery cell produced, which is defined as grams of carbon dioxide reduced divided by grams of lithium used.
With the average U.S. daily commute of 32 miles a day, hauling around a 320-mile-range electric battery yields a low carbon ROI. Allocating the same components of these large EV batteries into multiple hybrids multiplies the carbon ROI for these expensive battery components. One battery-EV uses about 90 times the lithium as one hybrid. On the other hand, braking energy adds to the efficiency of battery-EVs in city traffic.
Toyota has found that hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles have similar lifetime carbon emissions as battery-EVs at a lower cost to the consumer. Fully EVs may still be the better option wherever there are ample fast-charging options and sufficient electricity capacity at affordable prices.
But this is hardly the case in the developing world, nor even across much of the U.S. landscape today. That’s one reason Toyota has a focus on hydrogen-powered vehicles, which also have zero carbon tailpipe emissions. While hydrogen is a gas that must be cooled to near absolute-zero or pressurized for use in motor vehicles, there are ample supplies. The petrochemical industry alone creates enough hydrogen to fuel millions of vehicles.
Hydrogen has been used in race-car internal combustion engines, but Toyota believes its “sweet spot” may be in 18-wheeler trucks, tanks, cranes, and other large vehicles that would otherwise require huge electric batteries that add weight and reduce load capacity. While intensifying its European operations via Hydrogen Factory Europe, Toyota is applying fuel-cell technology to buses and trucks, railways, ocean and river shipping, and even baseload electricity generation.
A recent article notes that Toyota’s hydrogen combustion engines provide great performance while utilizing efficiency in engine features. These engines can provide up to 400 horsepower, equivalent to many piston Atkinson cycle gasoline engines, and can reach a thermal efficiency of up to 45%, equal to that of the best diesel engines. The only emissions from these engines are clean water vapor.
Another recent article explains that Toyota’s hydrogen fuel cell system involves the chemical reaction of the hydrogen stored on the vehicle and the oxygen from the surrounding environment to produce electricity to the electric motor without the need for the heavy lithium-ion batteries utilized in battery-EVs.
Pratt compares the decision by Toyota to seek a multi-pathway approach to the automotive future to the old debate between VHS and Beta. Those who put all their eggs in the Beta basket ended up bankrupt as VHS proved more amenable to consumers than the technologically superior Beta. But, he says, in tomorrow’s automotive universe, battery-electric, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and hydrogen-powered vehicles may all play important roles.
The bottom line, though, is that the poor and middle class worldwide will continue to rely on gasoline- and diesel-powered internal combustion engines until these newer technologies can produce vehicles they can afford to buy and maintain, and until fuel supplies (including ample electricity) are also conveniently available at affordable prices.
While the gasoline fuel hose and the electric charging cable are about the same size, the fuel hose today delivers ten times the power of the electric charger in a much shorter time frame. Multiply the charging time versus the liquid refueling time, and you begin to see the magnitude of the challenge.
Texas-based Buc-ee’s just opened its largest station, with 120 pumps on a 75,000-square-foot lot. They would have to have 1,200 of today’s best chargers, covering perhaps 750,000 square feet, to service the same number of EVs today.
With 80% of the EV chargers in the U.S. today being slow chargers, the transition even in the developed world, may be slower than politicians and bureaucrats demand.
Systematic statistical analysis indicates that offshore wind development has likely been killing lots of whales since it began around 2016. This long-standing conjecture that wind kills whales may be confirmed.
Call it forensic statistical epidemiology. The epidemic is the huge number of Northwest Atlantic whale deaths that were first officially observed by NOAA in 2016-17, and that continued to this day. It is forensic because killing whales can be highly illegal.
North Atlantic right whale (CALO0901, 3710) with debilitating abnormal curvature of the spine (scoliosis) caused by an entanglement. This injury caused chronic damage to the spine, as seen in the CT scan image, which ultimately led to the young animal’s death. Image Credit: (a) University of North Carolina Wilmington (b) Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; NMFS Permit No. 932-1489.
Systematic statistical analysis indicates that offshore wind development has likely been killing lots of whales since it began around 2016. This long-standing conjecture that wind kills whales may be confirmed.
Call it forensic statistical epidemiology. The epidemic is the huge number of Northwest Atlantic whale deaths that were first officially observed by NOAA in 2016-17, and that continued to this day. It is forensic because killing whales can be highly illegal.
Professor Gerasoulis has confirmed with profound statistical evidence the widespread conjecture that offshore wind sonar surveys have been killing whales. There is now no reasonable doubt that the extensive sonar harassment authorized by NOAA since 2016 has caused the massive increase in whale deaths that NOAA first flagged in 2016-17.
Here is a lengthy article that provides some of that compelling evidence:
Given that I and others have been yelling at NOAA about this for two years, it is not a stunning discovery to us, just tragic proof that we were right. For example:
I have repeatedly pointed out that the overall Humpback Whale death rate doubled when sonar blasting began. Gerasoulis finds that in the region where the surveying was most active, the death rate jumped to an astonishing five times greater.
It took a computer guru to do this pioneering work because it is a complex computation problem. He geographically logged all of the deaths and all of the sonar blasting routes over time, then looked at the correlations, which are profound. It is statistically impossible that these correlations between sonar blasting and dead whales are just a coincidence.
Note that the sonar blasting does not kill the whales outright. It is predicted by NOAA to change the whale’s behavior, so all it has to do is change it in deadly ways, such as causing a ship strike. It is actually expected by NOAA that some whales will be deafened.
Here is a telling analogy. A firecracker thrown at a dog causes it to run into the street and be struck by a car. The car killed the dog, but the firecracker caused the death. In science, this is called the first cause (firecracker) versus the final cause (car strike) of the dog’s death. Sonar blasting is like an endless string of firecrackers going off, lasting for hours or even days.
The press has consistently ignored the warnings, never reporting the potentially adverse effects of “harassment”, as it is officially called. That widespread acoustic harassment is actually predicted and authorized by NOAA is never even mentioned. Even worse, NOAA never mentions it in their online material on the whale death crisis despite it being pointed out to them repeatedly.
Unfortunately, the incredibly loud pile driving that is now starting at the offshore wind construction sites is even worse than the sonar blasting. The NOAA harassment authorization numbers are much higher, ten times higher in some cases. We, therefore, expect the deaths to increase unless decisive action is taken.
Now that the numbers indicate that authorized harassment is likely the cause of widespread whale death, something must be done to stop the carnage. If NOAA continues to authorize potentially deadly harassment without first studying the data, and if wind developers continue unabated, each whale death is a reckless violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Gerasoulis‘s statistical model may even tell us when this happens.
Given this compelling new evidence, if NOAA still refuses to act, then either the President or Congress should do so. Acoustic harassment is ongoing, and whales may be dying from it. This reckless killing of whales must stop.
This week, the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) published a ‘Green Physician Toolkit‘. The toolkit from perhaps the world’s oldest professional organisation, founded by royal charter in the early 16th century, has caused an eruption of incredulous comment. Controversy has been created by the fact that, as well as the planet-saving advice such as “Generate less waste” and “Limit the environmental impact of travel”, the toolkit suggested doctors “Reduce unnecessary prescribing” and “Limit diagnostic activities”.
This week, the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) published a ‘Green Physician Toolkit‘. The toolkit from perhaps the world’s oldest professional organisation, founded by royal charter in the early 16th century, has caused an eruption of incredulous comment. Controversy has been created by the fact that, as well as the planet-saving advice such as “Generate less waste” and “Limit the environmental impact of travel”, the toolkit suggested doctors “Reduce unnecessary prescribing” and “Limit diagnostic activities”. Journalists have been asking whether the RCP is asking doctors to put green ideology before care. But worse, the toolkit is evidence of a deadly virus spreading throughout professional institutions. This vicious pathogen erodes professional standards and ethics and dissolves institutions’ founding principles.
The idea of a climate “toolkit” for doctors may sound familiar. That’s because it’s not a new idea. Earlier this year the WHO published precisely the same thing – a “toolkit” that the WHO claimed is “designed to equip health and care workers with the knowledge and confidence to effectively communicate about climate change and health”. But the toolkit seemed more designed for GCSE students than for people with advanced degrees in medicine. Trite, condescending, shallow in detail and containing conjecture in place of fact, the WHO’s missive was an injunction – holy green orders – to proselytise. And now it seems that the RCP has done the WHO’s bidding.
There is not much more to say about the RCP’s reproduction of the WHO’s toolkit itself that has not already been said. Suffice it to say that if doctors are running too many diagnostic tests, or prescribing drugs unnecessarily, then these are problems in their own right, and the doctor’s first and only duty is towards the patient’s health, not the planet’s “health”, which should be of no concern to doctors and nurses, nor their managers. The tension between these two putative beneficiaries of clinicians’ work speaks to the antagonism posited by environmentalism between “Nature” and humanity. On the green view, industrial and economic development, which have indubitably raised living standards, are unsustainable at current rates. The greater good can only be served by limiting or reversing that development. And that has to have consequences for human welfare. In other words, the WHO’s and RCP’s toolkits really are a green utilitarian ‘greater good’ injunction to begin rationing medicine for Gaia’s benefit. That tension is intractable.
Here on the Daily Sceptic, our in-house doctor advises that most physicians will simply ignore the RCP toolkit. But the danger, he adds, is in the institutional capture made possible by just a small number of administrators, and perhaps people with clinical expertise, taking the WHO and RCP’s work at face value. Already, notes the doctor, the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP2) and the General Medical Council (GMC) have made climate interventions. And the problem must be taken seriously: institutional capture cannot be challenged by doctors merely ignoring their colleagues’ cult-like behaviour. And the RCP2 and GMC are not the only institutions of medicine that are now annexes of the Green Blob.
Founded in 1823, the Lancet is yet another British medical institution. Though it is privately owned, it is a prestigious weekly journal that publishes research and commentary on a range of public policies, sometimes only very loosely connected with medicine. According to its Editor Richard Horton, “the climate emergency that we are facing today is the most important existential crisis facing the human species”. It is nonsense, of course. There is no science, for example, produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to support the claim that climate change is an “existential crisis”, much less evidence showing how that crisis compares to other risk factors. Even the RCP’s toolkit, for example, claims that globally, climate change “is projected [by the IPCC] to cause an excess of 250,000 deaths per year by 2050”. A quarter of a million deaths each year is certainly nothing to be blasé about. But on a global scale, how does it compare to other risk factors? Data on mortality risk compiled by Oxford University’s Our World in Data website put that figure into perspective.
The IPCC itself says those annual deaths in 2050 will be caused by “heat, undernutrition, malaria and diarrheal disease”. Horton is simply wrong. Grotesquely wrong. And the IPCC itself is likely also wrong. Deaths from malaria are half what they were in the early 2000s – down by more than three times the IPCC’s estimate of climate-related deaths in 2050. Diarrheal diseases claimed 1.17 million lives in 2021 – a fall of 1.76 million since 1990. That’s seven times the 2050 mortality estimate. 778,091 were killed by nutritional deficiencies in 1980. Mortality from that cause in 2021 was more than two thirds lower, at 222,274 – again, by a multiple of the number of climate-related fatalities predicted for 2050. And even if one could make an argument that climate change could negatively influence such grim statistics, the fatalities attributed to Nth-order effects of climate change are much lower-order consequences of poverty. Solve the problem of poverty – a far better understood and far less intractable ‘problem’ than climate change – and the “existential threat” of climate change goes away.
But is Horton interested in facts, or is the notion of an “existential threat” serving some other purpose? Horton goes on to claim that, “since medicine is all about protecting and strengthening the human species, it should be absolutely foundational to the practice of what we do, every single day”, and so “doctors and all health professionals have a responsibility and obligation to engage in all kinds of non-violent social protest to address the climate emergency”. If Horton was truly interested in human welfare over ideological partisanship, he would surely have commissioned studies showing how the progress of developing and emerging economies in eliminating poverty had been dependent on fossil fuels – including the half of the world’s population that is dependent on synthetic fertiliser, produced from natural gas. But instead, the Lancet produces an annual report called ‘Lancet Countdown‘ which emphasises false, misleading and unscientific claims in order to influence political decisions, rather than inform wider public debate.
Another prestigious organisation is the British Medical Association (BMA) – a trade union for physicians, founded in the early 19th Century – which also publishes a weekly journal, the British Medical Journal (BMJ). And the BMA and BMJ, too, have been on quite a journey from their founding purpose to green ideological activism. In 2016, the two organisations helped to set up the U.K. Health Alliance on Climate Change (UKHACC) – an association of 48 member organisations in healthcare, including the Association of Anaesthetists, the British Dental Association, the Paediatric Critical Care Society and many more.
The UKHACC, though nearly a decade old, and housed at the BMA’s address in Tavistock Square, London, recently became a charitable organisation, but has no shame in explaining its purpose as political lobbying. It published a manifesto in the run-up to the 2024 U.K. General Election and clearly states its intention to “influence decision makers to strengthen policies responding to the climate and ecological crisis”, among other equally questionable things. When the General Medical Council’s (GMC) Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service suspended Just Stop Oil protester Dr. Sarah Benn, following her criminal prosecution, the UKHACC lobbied the GMC, demanding that it “avoid being on the wrong side of history”. The UKHACC appears not to believe that doctors should face any consequences for criminal acts, despite their privileged and respected positions in society.
But what do the doctors, nurses, dentists and other healthcare professionals who are members of the 48 associations that comprise the UKHACC membership think of their representative organisations’ commitment to this political campaigning organisation? Was there a vote? Was there a debate? What happens to members of the BMA itself, or the UKHACC’s membership, who want to disagree? UKHACC boasts that is “an alliance of U.K.-based health organisations representing about one million health professionals”, providing “leadership, and amplifying the voice of health professionals”. But what is the substance of this association?
With no debates, no votes and apparently no deliberation, the “alliance” looks less like an association of people with expertise than something resembling the Midwich Cuckoos – Midwit Cuckolds, perhaps. The alignment of so many professional organisations with such ease should strike us as suspicious.
The point of a professional association, be it teachers, lawyers, architects or clinicians – all of whom have been drawn into the climate wars – is surely to reciprocate and secure the trust that society places in these professionals. They are exceptional, and so held to higher standards by these self-governing organisations of peers. But when we look closely at the work, for example, of the Lancet and its Editor, we find extremely high-pitched rhetoric and unscientific claims where we would expect expertise. Back in 2020, I asked Horton to explain how he had determined that climate change is “the most important existential crisis”, compared with other mortality risks. No reply was forthcoming. I have also exchanged views with doctors defending the Lancet’s, RCP’s and UKHACC’s interventions. Their replies are invariably little more than to call me a “denier”. Their views, then, are no better substantiated than those of a bloke at the pub. And he has a didgeridoo and a dog on a string, the worse for wear on so much cider and ketamine.
The point of the professional association, therefore, seems less about enforcing standards than lowering the standards expected of “professionals”. Rather than vehicles through which peers hold each other to account, putting the reputation of the profession above everything else, the associations have become mechanisms for enforcing political dogma. The goal of professional associations like the RCP now is, in part, to leverage the trust the public places in medical professionals to make green propaganda more likely to be believed. That’s a long way from their original scientific ethos.
The condition of this infection is anomie – “instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals”. Only doctors – those who have yet to be infected by it – can stop the spread. But it cannot be stopped by ignoring it and hoping it will get better. Doctors must form their own new associations, to argue that it is enough to be a doctor, and that aspiring to be a planet-saving superhero risks undermining the commitments that doctors make: make doctors doctors again. Physicians, heal thyselves!
Climate science has become too political. Climate policies have become insufficiently scientific. And financial products ostensibly designed to reverse climate change now broadly exacerbate it.
Climate science has become too political. Climate policies have become insufficiently scientific. And financial products ostensibly designed to reverse climate change now broadly exacerbate it.
It is against this failing backdrop that a new initiative – the National Center for Energy Analytics – has been launched. NCEA scholars are devoted to data-driven analyses of policies, plans, and technologies that affect the supply and use of energy essential for human flourishing. I recently participated in their first Energy Future Forum in Washington, DC, during which I tried to make four critical points (check the video above to see my part).
The first was that the greatest threat to human progress does not emanate from climate deniers; it comes from trade-off deniers. The idea that public policies, corporations, and individuals should unite around an austerity agenda that deprives markets of the energy sources they need to function risks human calamities that dwarf those from rising temperatures alone. This is why Pope Francis wrote in his climate encyclical Laudato Si: “We are not faced with separate crises – one environmental, another economic – but rather one complex crisis with multiple challenges. Solutions demand an integrated approach. We must combat poverty, restore dignity to the excluded and protect nature all at the same time.”
It follows that every nation-state should choose an energy-abundant future – that is, energy plans that are as clean, affordable, reliable and consistent with national security needs as possible. Energy-austerity plans offer none of these. To properly care for the Earth and its soon-to-be 10 billion inhabitants, we must choose energy abundance.
Second, too much that is uncertain about our climate future is being misrepresented as certain for political purposes. It is undeniable that human activities – including the consumption of fossil fuels – are affecting our air, land, and water in ways that merit our attention. But it is also clear that non-human influences are even more of a determinant for global temperatures. This is why the IPCC – the world’s most authoritative body opining on climate science and trends – casts all of its climate findings in probabilistic terms. Hence we learn from the IPCC that it is highly likely that global temperatures have already risen +1.1° C since the nineteenth century, and that they are likely to rise another +1.3° C in the next 80 years. While there would be many important economic, social, and environmental implications of this continuing warming trend, mass human extinction is not among them.
Changing global weather patterns create both winners and losers. Today it is only the potential losers that dominate global headlines and policy debates. It follows that the punitive terms of the Paris Accord – which fatefully pledges to limit global temperature rise to less than +1.5° C by 2050, no matter the cost to human wellbeing – has outlived its usefulness. Policymakers should abandon the precepts of Paris, which are both unreasonable and fundamentally ill-conceived.
Third, so-called climate-aligned financial products are precisely the opposite of what mindful asset owners and climate activists want and need. Climate-aligned funds restrict their investment universe to firms that have verifiably pledged to be carbon neutral by 2050. As it happens, fewer than half of the firms in the S&P 500 now fit this description. The unavoidable consequence of such filtering is that investors end up with massively inefficient portfolios and no voting rights within those firms that most need to change for the globe to reach net zero.
Here’s another energy hard truth: we may be able to divest ourselves to a green portfolio, but we will never be able to divest ourselves to a green world. Decarbonization and reconfigured energy grids require massive investment, not divestment. No doubt this is why Bill Gates once said that trillions of dollars of ESG investments have failed to remove one ton of carbon from the air.
Finally, fiduciary rules almost certainly require that asset managers now close down all their ESG funds and redirect these client assets toward broader market alternatives and verified-impact investment strategies. It turns out that it is possible to make market-related returns while advancing a range of important social and environmental objectives; it is simply not possible to do so through divestment of public equities, as ESG strategies pretend. Direct investment in certain categories of green bonds, low-income housing funds, and sustainable private credit strategies can produce verifiable social and environmental benefits while generating returns consistent with the underlying risks of their asset class, something almost no ESG fund can now claim.
NCEA will help scientists address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions on global warming and its consequences. We pledge simultaneously to hold politicians to account, making sure they accurately calculate the real costs and benefits of their proposed policies. Finally, we will help ensure that finance plays its proper role in society as a steward of asset owners’ single-and-double-bottom-line objectives, consistent with fiduciary rules. For far too long, ESG products promised their loyalists that they would do well and do good, while they in fact did very little of either. Now, following years of false promises and obfuscation, the truth will set us free.
The first time I saw a group of them I was far to the east of the Great Barrier Reef, beyond Australia’s continental shelf, 15 metres underwater at Bougainville Reef that rises as a platform in the northern Coral Sea.
The first time I saw a group of them I was far to the east of the Great Barrier Reef, beyond Australia’s continental shelf, 15 metres underwater at Bougainville Reef that rises as a platform in the northern Coral Sea.
They were like buffalo across an open plain: kicking up the dust – except it was sand. And eating the grass – except it was coral. I am, of course, referring to the mega parrot fish, the bumpheads: Bolbometopon muricatum.
Bougainville Reef, January 20, 2020. Photographed by Clint Hempsall.
A single bumphead will feed on about 5 tonnes of live coral in a year. They often hang around in groups of about 30, with that one cluster all up consuming more coral than the entire live export coral trade takes each year from the Great Barrier Reef (100 tonnes versus 150 tonnes).
In short, these fish have bellies full of coral – lots of coral.
We live in an age that tends to promote empathy for corals, so I am surprised there are not stories cancelling all the parrot fish.
Worldwide, there are some 130 species of corallivorous fishes (fishes that consume live coral) from 11 different families, with butterflyfishes (family Chaetodontidae) accounting for approximately half of all of these.
Three years after that expedition to Bougainville Reef, I spent three days on the liveaboard Reef Encounter just off-shore from Cairns. One morning, as I waited in the water for the sunrise dive to begin, I saw a group of them, bumphead parrot fish, sleeping together in a particular formation under the boat. I don’t have a photograph, I was initially confused at what I was seeing, and then I was so enamoured I couldn’t be bothered with my camera.
As part of the Underwater Megafauna Expedition & Photo Competition we are visiting Wheeler Reef, to the south east of Townsville, because bumpheads are known to pass along a northwest channel at that reef late in the afternoon. Reliability so.
The plan is that the ‘megafauna photographers’ will be waiting – to photograph them.
There are three photographers coming, with two of these already signed-up! There is more information at my Facebook page, where I have it listed as an event.
I love a beautifully composed underwater photograph with perfect lightening, but the winner(s) of each of the four categories in this competition will not only have a great photograph of the very largest, but they will also know its size, they will have some measure of what they have photographed. Hopefully. This is the inaugural competition and I am asking a lot of the photographers.
There are potentially places for two more underwater photographers. All aboard the MV Sea Esta by 8pm on Monday September 2nd en route to Myrmidon Reef via Wheeler and also Grub Reef. At Grub Reef we will be looking for the giant clams.
A photograph of a parrot fish taken by my daughter at Saxon Reef free-diving off Reef Encounter in April 2023. With the little, is it a cleaner wrasse, included in the top left hand corner of this photograph, does it potentially make it easier to put a measure to this fish?
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The feature image was taken by Tobi, in April 2021 at Saxon Reef. How can we know the size of the largest of these bumpheads?
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