Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
The energy transition will be much cheaper than you think
…
Yet, this one point of agreement between climate activists and carbon addicts is, in fact, wrong. Greening the world economy will be much cheaper than the two groups imagine. … the sort of estimates that routinely form the basis for policymaking. They range from around $US3 trillion ($4.6 trillion) a year to almost $US12 trillion a year, which is indeed a lot. But these figures are overblown in four important ways.
…
The incremental bill to cut emissions is likely to be less than $US1 trillion a year, which is to say less than 1 per cent of global GDP – not peanuts, but not an unaffordable pipe dream, either. … …
The IEA’s modelling finds that reaching net zero by 2050 will require $US5 trillion a year of investment in clean energy by 2030. That is more than twice the $US2 trillion a year it reckons is currently going into clean energy and two-thirds more than its estimate of total current investment in energy. …
I’m not sure which model they used to come up with these numbers, but one place such models often fall down is the fallacy of thinking renewables are a one for one swap for conventional energy. A gigawatt of installed capacity from a nuclear reactor is not equivalent to a gigawatt of installed solar or wind capacity. Nuclear power is reliable and continues working at night.
As for the “affordable” amounts being discussed, my chosen unit of measurement for proposed climate investments these days is the cost of constructing a starship.
Back in the 1950s, Manhattan scientists embarked on a series of projects to investigate peaceful uses for nuclear explosives. Carving instant maritime harbors, greening the Sahara, and novel means of generating energy were among the ideas considered. But the most interesting idea for me is they found a viable path using 1950s technology to build a manned starship – Project Orion (search “momentum limited” in the link to see the starship).
We’re not talking Star Trek here, it would be a very slow trip – around 120 years to reach the nearest star. But that is a lot better than 10s of thousands of years, which is the best other currently available technologies can deliver.
At the time the cost was estimated at 0.1 (10%) of US GNP – $367 billion back in the day. If we stick to that percentage, in today’s dollars that would be around 0.1% x US GDP $27 trillion = $2.7 trillion to build a single manned starship. GNP is a slightly different measure of income to GDP, but I think $2.7 trillion per starship is a reasonable ballpark figure, especially if you plan to set up a production line.
For $3-12 trillion / year, you could build up to four starships per year. Within a few centuries with that kind of outlay, we could have established colonies in the Asteroid Belt and in some of the nearest star systems, and have sent human explorers (or their descendants) on grand tours of our corner of the Milky Way.
The proposed energy transition climate investment, which at best would deliver energy infrastructure equivalent to what we already have, just doesn’t seem “much cheaper than you imagine” when the cost is measured in units of starships.
On Episode #136 The Heartland Institute’s H. Sterling Burnett, Linnea Lueken, and Jim Lakely will also cover some of the Crazy Climate News of the week. Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET so you can leave your questions and comments for the show in the chat
The latest annual United Nations climate conference, COP29, is about to wrap up in Baku, Azerbaijan – the second year in a row it has been held in a “petro state.” Add in the election of Donald Trump just before they convened, and it was a pretty grim affair if you are a global climate alarmist. But for some people it was a blast, including Craig Rucker and Marc Morano of CFACT, who attended as they usually do. They will provide us a report from the ground on what even supporters of the global climate command-and-control agenda are admitting was a disaster.
On Episode #136 The Heartland Institute’s H. Sterling Burnett, Linnea Lueken, and Jim Lakely will also cover some of the Crazy Climate News of the week. Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET so you can leave your questions and comments for the show in the chat
Back to Biblical times and beyond, great floods and storms were the promised punishments for those who sinned against the fashionable orthodoxies and beliefs. It is of course a natural go-to for modern day prophets of climate doom. Needless to say, inconvenient scientific facts are unwelcome in the Latter Day Church of Net Zero, so alarmists are cautioned to stop reading here.
Back to Biblical times and beyond, great floods and storms were the promised punishments for those who sinned against the fashionable orthodoxies and beliefs. It is of course a natural go-to for modern day prophets of climate doom. Needless to say, inconvenient scientific facts are unwelcome in the Latter Day Church of Net Zero, so alarmists are cautioned to stop reading here. The rest of us can digest recent research by Paul Homewood on the British climate in 2023 and published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. This notes that sea level rises are showing no acceleration over multi-decadal scales and rainfall is not becoming more extreme, while storms have become less powerful over recent years.
It has become slightly warmer than it used to be, notes Homewood, “but the U.K. climate has changed very little in recent years”. Long-term trends are dwarfed by the natural variability of British weather, he continues, and there is no evidence that weather is becoming more extreme. “Nothing in the data indicates that climate will become more extreme in future,” he concludes.
Homewood observes that sea levels have been rising at between 1.3mm and 2mm a year around the U.K. after taking into account vertical land movement, and there has been no acceleration in the rate of rise on multi-decadal scales. But sea level rises are an easy hit for climate alarmists promoting the Net Zero political fantasy. Residents of Gloucester were alarmed in 2022 by local newspaper reports that their Cathedral, set at 19 metres above sea level, would be flooded by 2050. In the same year, the Mirror added to the gaiety of the nation with a story stating that large parts of the Midlands would be under water. Coastal towns in Hampshire, Essex, Sussex and Kent were at serious risk, it was claimed. Belgium, Germany, Northern France and half of the Netherlands “are expected to be under water by 2100”.
All of this is the work of Climate Central, a Green Blob-funded operation that specialises in ready-to-publish stories for particularly dozy journalists. In its own words, it “provides authoritative information to help the public and policymakers make sound decisions about climate and energy”. Apart from flooding laughs, it seems we have Climate Central to thank for the establishment in the U.K. of World Weather Attribution. It claims to have “initiated conversations with leading researchers and key journalists about bringing attribution science into the news cycle”. Rarely can Green Blob money have been better spent. The pseudoscience of attributing individual weather events to human-caused climate change is well established with “key journalists” ready to peddle all the unprovable claims under the covering banner of ‘scientists say’.
Meanwhile back in the real world it is not apparent that rising sea levels in the U.K. and elsewhere – relatively tiny compared to those just 4,000 years ago – present much danger in the near future. Many Pacific island are growing in size due to natural accretion, while a recently published science paper has published the startling news that low-lying Bangladesh has grown in size over the last 34 years by 3,274 km2 to reach 137,656 km2. Bangladesh and its position on the Bay of Bengal has long been a poster alarm for coastal flooding and population displacement. However, the vast majority of the recent land expansion is shown to have been the consequence of receding relative sea levels along the coasts and synchronous seaward coastal land growth.
Earlier this year a senior meteorologist at the Met Office told the BBC that storms in the U.K. were becoming “more intense” due to climate change. In fact, the opposite is true, with Paul Homewood noting that this is confirmed by the Met Office, which has made it clear that the Burns Storm in 1990, the Boxing Day Storm in 1998 and the Great Storm of 1987 were very much more severe than any storm in the last decade.
The above illustration shows clearly the decline in wind speeds going back over 50 years. One annual analysis of top wind gusts at Bingley is said to confirm this trend and suggests that wind speeds have been falling.
The British Isles are rainy places and plenty of climate mischief can be made from all the natural variations to be expected given its northern location near the top of the Atlantic Ocean. “Why is it raining so much,” asked Ben Rich of the BBC last April. Hardly headline stuff one might think since similar sentiments have probably occurred to everyone who has ever lived in these sodden lands. According to Rich, the Met Office predicts that by 2070, winters in the U.K. will be up to 30% wetter than they were in 1990, while rainfall will be up to 25% more intense.
No doubt computer models are behind this crystal ball gazing but the actual evidence of recent trends suggests something more modest. Homewood notes that annual rainfall in England and Wales has been increasing since 1980 but the 10-year average is at a similar level to earlier periods such as the 1870s and 1920s. There was a significant rise in rainfall in Scotland during the 1980s, he observed, but there has been little change in trend since. Meanwhile, rainfall trends in Northern Ireland have barely changed since 1931. As to rainfall becoming “more intense”, Homewood notes that in England and Wales only seven days have exceeded 30mm since records began in 1931, but none of these have occurred since 2000.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
In the “make climate a part of every beat in the newsroom” mainstream media, we get stories like this in the NY Times this week: “To Save More Water, American Homes Need Smaller Pipes — Most of the plumbing pipes in the United States are oversize, wasting water in a time of increasing drought.” authored by Megy Karydes.
The piece is absolutely hilarious — the NY Times journalist somehow arrived at a very wrong interpretation of something that was explained to her:
“Oversize plumbing pipes move water inefficiently, wasting money and increasing the risk of waterborne diseases. And water efficiency is especially important as climate change makes droughts more frequent and severe.”
Ten points to the first few readers to spot the gross misunderstanding.
She goes on: “When the current method for sizing pipes to transport hot and cold water throughout the home was created in the 1940s, it was under the assumption that every fixture had to be able to support a line of people for the bathroom, like at a sports stadium at halftime, according to Christoph Lohr, a mechanical engineer specializing in plumbing systems and the vice president of technical services and research for the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials, a trade organization.” …. “But even during a party at home, there won’t be a line for the kitchen sink, the shower, the bathtub, the laundry machine, the dishwasher and the toilets, with people using them over and over. In other words, most plumbing fixtures in the United States are designed to accommodate total flow rates far higher than they will realistically encounter.”
Really? How did a matter of plumbing size get assigned to someone who must not even have a high school understanding about fluid flow or home plumbing system design?
Number One: Larger than necessary pipes do move water less efficiently – takes more energy to move the water through too-large pipes – and too large pipes, which don’t get a lot of throughput, can develop biofilms that can be the source of some illnesses.
[Update, 21 Nov 24, 1300, hrs, ET: There has been some correction/clarification on this point. An explanation of Christoph Lohr ‘s point can be found at this page. Two issues: Over-sized pipes waste materials and add to building cost. Over-sized hot water pipes can lead to delayed hot water delivery to the faucet/shower (one has to run the water longer until hot water arrives at the sink) which lowers hot water energy-use efficiency and send fresh water down the drain unnecessarily.]
Number Two: Number One has nothing to do with the concept of “water efficiency” that is related to total water usage and thus peripherally related to drought.
In case Megy Karydes reads here, I will explain: The stadium example mentioned by Mr. Lohr has to do with the number of sinks, urinals, and toilets expected to be in use simultaneously, which requires a high volume water flow … the number of people waiting in line, does not affect flow of water at all (ever). In the journalist’s home, there may well be many people needing to use the sink or toilet but not at the same time…just one after another, which does not affect required water flow or affect choice of water supply line pipe size. Larger supply lines or larger pipes do not use more water (except to fill them initially) – water use as water volume depends on the outlet size and time the water is allowed to flow – in our modern US homes this is regulated by flow restricting washers, which are placed in the faucets and showerheads, with differing sized holes.
[Note: To clarify, flow is the amount of water moving through the pipe and out the faucet. Total water use is the volume of water used. Larger flows require larger pipes – just like fire hoses come in several sizes. But this does not apply to normal home water use. Water pressure also is part of the equation of water use – higher pressure through the same sized outlet increases water coming out of it .]
I bet you all already knew that, but it had to be said.
The size of pipes used in household plumbing does not affect water usage at all. [There might be a tiny itys-bitsy effect when the house water system is first filled, but that is all, a few extra gallons of water stored in the pipes, but this is not ongoing use.]
Household water use is determined by the length of time water is flowing and at what rate it flows through the system. Saving water is done installing:
1. Flow restricting faucets (either factory restricted or by the addition of flow restricting washers). Usually 2.2 gpm or 1.5 gpm (gallons per minute).
2. Flow restricting shower heads. EPA’s WaterSense standard is no more than 2.0 gpm.
3. Low-flush toilets. Current standard 1.6 gpf (gallons per flush) for solids and 1.1 gpf for liquids. EPA WaterSense high efficiency certified toilets use 1.28 gpf.
A water service line comes from the water main to the house. The size of the water service line determines the maximum total water flow/volume (at normal water pressure) that will be available in the home. In my county, the minimum size of the water service line is ¾ inch. All new single-family homes here have ¾ inch supply lines while those with more than one living unit have 1 inch service lines because they will need more total water flow.
A water supply line means the pipe from the incoming water source to a water use point – like a bathroom. In the diagram above, the supply lines are blue for cold water and red for hot water. The hot water heating system has incoming cold water supply and outgoing hot water supply lines. There are T’s in supply lines that divide up the supply of water, sometimes through smaller pipes, and send it to the sinks, appliances, bathtub faucets, shower-heads and the toilets.
Personal Note: In my home, when I had a single upstairs bathroom remodeled into two smaller bathrooms – one with a tub and the other with a shower stall – I had to specify supply line size to my plumber. He wanted to use less expensive ½ inch copper pipe (this is before modern PEX piping). I specified ¾ inch supply for the hot water – as the supply line would feed two bathrooms for six people, three of which were teenagers, and a supper-sized hot water tank, as both showers were likely to be in use simultaneously every morning and evening.
Well, now, we have seen that home plumbing water pipe size does not contribute to “wasting water in a time of increasing drought.”
Wait! What does this have to do with droughts?
Nothing whatever. As in, nothing at all.
But are we “in a time of increasing drought”?
Not according to the IPCC. In AR6, Chapter 12, Table 12.12:
The IPCC’s latest estimate of the predicted time of emergence of various Climatic Impact-drivers (CIDs) – “‘Time of Emergence’ refers to the time when anthropogenic change signals emerge from the background noise of natural variability in a pre-defined reference period” — shows that no signal Hydrological Drought or Agricultural and Ecological Drought has yet emerged. Not only not happening in present time, but not expected to be seen by 2050 and not expected to emerge between 2050 and 2100. Despite what the mainstream seems to say every day, in simple language, increased and more frequent drought is just not happening.
There are a lot of doubts and confusion about drought. In the United States, the primary source of confusion about droughts comes from the NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System through its website at Drought.gov.
Information from drought.gov ends up in the main stream media as this:
I am not contesting the image or the data behind it. But I will state categorically that it is the specific type of mis-information that we see all through the weather and climate news: The actual meaning of the image (in this case) received by the pubic will not be the reality – there is not any context or clear plain language statement of what the image means for the public.
Definition: “A ‘plain language statement’ in science is a concise summary of a … scientific finding written in easily understandable language, designed to be accessible to the general public without requiring specialized scientific knowledge.”
Why is it that the primary source of doubt and confusion about drought is the very agency department whose primary responsibility is to track and inform the public about drought conditions in the United States?
It isn’t that they are trying to fool the public with misinformation. They are not bad actors trying to push “The Climate Crisis”. They do good science and report their results accurately.
“Drought is a complicated phenomenon and can be hard to define. One difficulty is that drought means different things in different regions. A drought is defined depending on the average amount of precipitation that an area is accustomed to receiving.” … “A drought in Atlanta could be a very wet period in Phoenix, Arizona!”
There are at least 11 types of droughts mentioned at aginfo.in (unfortunately no longer active, but the link goes to the ever-helpful Wayback Machine – I send money every time I am forced to use them).
Dr. Jim Angel, State Climatologist of Illinois, says this:
“Drought is a complex physical and social phenomenon of widespread significance, and despite all the problems droughts have caused, drought has been difficult to define. There is no universally accepted definition because: 1) drought, unlike flood, is not a distinct event, and 2) drought is often the result of many complex factors acting on and interacting within the environment.
Complicating the problem of drought is the fact that drought often has neither a distinct start nor end. It is usually recognizable only after a period of time and, because a drought may be interrupted by short spells of one or more wet months, its termination is difficult to recognize.”
So, when the NY Times prints (on paper or digitally) the image used above, they surely explain that this is a representation of an “index” called “U.S. Drought Monitor”. Don’t they?
Well, no, they don’t explain that that is what we are looking at.
The “U.S. Drought Monitor” is an index about drought: “A drought index combines multiple drought indicators (e.g., precipitation, temperature, soil moisture) to depict drought conditions. For some products, like the U.S. Drought Monitor, authors combine their analysis of drought indicators with input from local observers. Other drought indices, like the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), use an objective calculation to describe the severity, location, timing, and/or duration of drought.”
The U.S. Drought Monitor (index) is not an objective calculation about drought or it’s severity in any particular location….involving more than one measure plus “input from local observers”.
My home area is “in a drought condition” which had little or no effect for my family – other than we had to water the vegetable garden twice in a month – which is not different from non-drought conditions.
Here’s another look of the continental U.S. drought conditions produced the same week as the image above, for the month of October 2024, but using different indices:
While they are somewhat similar, they do not even duplicate the deep severe drought in southwest Texas and southern New Mexico. Comparing them side-by-side, or diagonally, often finds no similarity on a state or region basis. Two of the four indices show the Northeast US in fairly serious drought, while the other two show the Northeast to be wet (green and blues) which is the opposite of drought.
The US Drought Monitor drought index is a very subjective metric of drought – and mostly means “less rain over the period [week, month, year] than average”. What it does not mean is that local water companies have to start restricting water use or call for voluntary water usage.
However, lack of rainfall can and does affect some cities (megalopolises) that depend on rain-fed reservoirs for drinking water. New York city’s biggest reservoir is currently down to 60% of normal. It will fill back up when winter rains and snows arrive. In areas where large cities depend on water pumped from deep aquafers, long-lasting problems can develop as these deep aquafers take many years/decades to refill. This is not an effect of drought but rather an effect of over-withdrawal.
CONFUSED? I don’t blame you.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
While researching for this essay, I came across this statement at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA]:
“When you use these water–saving products in your home or business, you can expect exceptional performance, savings on your water bills, and assurance that you are saving water for future generations.”
My home water supply used to come from one of two wells on our property, not exceptionally deep, but we never ran the well dry. Now we have “city water” that comes from a small, dammed stream five miles away, the dam creates a small pond. The water not used by the water treatment plant there runs over the dam and then down the hills eventually into the Hudson River, which runs to the sea.
This setup is the same as it is for NY City, though NY has many distant reservoirs. But in the end, the water not used by NY City flows over or through the dams, down rivers into the Atlantic Ocean. All the wastewater from NY City also flows into the Atlantic (albeit with a great deal of loss from leaking aquaducts).
No amount of saving water from these reservoirs benefits “future generations”.
Fresh water, where it is in low supply, can be wasted, used in foolish ways like to water desert golf courses. But only when this ssavings is of water pumped from aquifers does this saved water benefit our children and grandchildren.
Campaigning organisation Net Zero Watch has demanded a Parliamentary inquiry into conflicts of interest in Westminster. The call comes after it was revealed that the Permanent Secretary of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has a brother who is CEO of Good Energy, a major operator in the renewables sector.
Whitehall Permanent Secretary has “shocking” conflict of interest
Net Zero Watch calls for inquiry into the renewables sector
Campaigning organisation Net Zero Watch has demanded a Parliamentary inquiry into conflicts of interest in Westminster. The call comes after it was revealed that the Permanent Secretary of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has a brother who is CEO of Good Energy, a major operator in the renewables sector. [i]
The DESNZ register of interest states that “appropriate mitigations” have been put in place, and that Mr Pocklington has agreed not to have direct contacts with Good Energy. But this has been dismissed by Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford:
“The insinuation that Mr Pocklington no longer speaks to his brother is preposterous. The public needs confidence that decisions are being made in their interests and not those of the family members of civil servants.”
Mr Montford also said:
“I have tried and failed to get Mr Pocklington to tell ministers the truth about the cost of Net Zero.[ii] Indeed, somewhat mysteriously, he seems determined to avoid the subject altogether. Many will conclude that the explanation lies in his conflict of interest.”
The revelation about Mr Pocklington comes just days after it was revealed that Baroness Brown, the chairman of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, oversaw the writing of a report that called for immediate support for hydrogen energy storage, despite being the director of a hydrogen company and of a windfarm company,[iii] both of which will reap huge benefits from subsidies. Indeed, the Secretary of State recently announced – apparently in response to the House of Lords report – astonishing levels of subsidy for new hydrogen projects.[iv]
In addition, David Miliband, the brother of the Secretary of State, is involved with a company that invests in gridscale batteries in the UK, a sector that will expect to see huge growth under the Government’s ambitious plans for the energy sector.[v]
None of these conflicts of interest appears to have broken any rules. Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:
“This has been going on for at least ten years, right back to the repeated revelations about Lord Deben’s conflicting interests during his time at the Climate Change Committee.[vi] The rule in Westminster and Whitehall for Net Zero people appears to be that it is perfectly acceptable to have a conflict of interest, so long as it is declared, and if it isn’t, or if there are undeclared payments, a blind eye is turned anyway. It’s shocking.”
Net Zero Watch is calling for a Parliamentary inquiry into conflicts of interest in the Net Zero decision-making process.
[iv] Hydrogen companies will get both capital subsidies and revenue subsidies. The capital subsidies may represent the majority of the construction cost of the electrolysers. On the revenue side, the subsidy will allow hydrogen, with a production cost of at £240/MWh to compete with natural gas at £80/MWh. In other words, the subsidy might be expected to be around £160/MWh. £2 billion is expected to be shared between 11 small electrolyser projects.
“To the Church of Climate, Al Gore will always be their champion. But back in reality, citizen voters have had enough as consumers and taxpayers.”
Everyone knows the carnival barker, that deep throated voice at a funfair extolling the merits of an amusement. But then there is Al Gore, the aging guru whose prognostications of climate doom were not only exaggerated but laughably wrong. But on he goes, like a Cuckoo Clock.
On social media, Oliver Bolton, self-described CEO of Earthly, “an organization empowering hundreds of businesses around the world to reverse climate breakdown and restore our planet,” praised yet another emotional outburst of Al Gore toward climate (and political) reality.
Al Gore’s electrifying speech at COP29 is one of the standout moments for me. It was a powerful reminder of what’s at stake and a call for the ambition and accountability the world urgently needs. He reminds us that the stakes have never been higher and the time for decisive action is now.
Key Takeaways from the Speech:
The Science is Undeniable: Decades-old climate predictions have proven correct, reinforcing the need to prioritise scientists over polluters.
Greenland’s Melting Ice: 30 million tonnes of ice are lost every hour, disrupting vital ocean currents.
Risk of System Collapse: Peer-reviewed studies warn of 2050 ecological system collapses if current trends continue.
Escalating Impacts: Climate disasters are now weekly occurrences, accelerating far beyond historical trends.
Fossil Fuel Dominance: Breaking the financial and political stranglehold of the fossil fuel industry is crucial for progress.
Climate Migration Crisis: Up to 1 billion climate migrants this century could destabilise global social and political systems.
Africa’s Solar Potential: Despite holding 60% of the world’s solar capacity, Africa faces huge barriers to capital, stalling its clean energy revolution.
Few have contributed as much to climate action and environmental protection as Al Gore over the last few decades:
Pioneering Climate Advocacy: He spearheaded action as a U.S. Congressman and Senator in the 1980s.
Leading Author: His 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, outlined solutions that remain essential today.
Kyoto Protocol Champion: As Vice President, he was instrumental in securing the first global greenhouse gas reduction treaty.
His Pivotal Documentary: An Inconvenient Truth (2006) transformed climate awareness worldwide.
Nobel Laureate: Co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for catalysing global climate action.
Empowering Advocates: His Climate Reality Project has trained thousands of climate leaders worldwide.
Innovative Solutions: Through Climate TRACE, he uses AI to monitor and expose global emissions.
For so many years Al Gore has sounded the alarm, championed bold solutions and inspired millions to act.
Thank you Al, for your unwavering leadership and tireless commitment to protecting our shared planet for generations to come.
To the Church of Climate, Al Gore will always be their champion. But back in reality, citizen voters as consumers and taxpayers have had enough.
As CO2 concentrations rise, the water requirement for many plants decreases, making them more tolerant of drought.
A farmer in South Korea’s Gyeongbok Province carefully tends to his potato field, while halfway across the world the engines of a thousand cars idle on an American interstate highway. These seemingly disconnected scenes share a bond through the fertilization effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which has been greening the Earth for decades.
Yes, the CO2 effluent of tailpipes and industrial flues are good for plants and all of life, contrary to the alarming tales that make this invisible gas an environmental bogeyman. Increasing CO2 concentrations are literally making the world greener, and in many cases, it’s sending crop production to record levels.
A 2020 study, funded by Cooperative Research Program for Agriculture Science & Technology Development, reported that potatoes grown in an atmosphere of elevated CO2—similar to what might be expected in coming decades—didn’t just survive but thrived!
The plants yielded a “distinct increase in growth and development and canopy net photosynthetic rate during tuber initiation and bulking. Consequently, biomass and canopy net photosynthesis increased, and tuber yield increased by 20.3%,” the researchers wrote.
This isn’t just good news for potato farmers. The CO2 fertilization effect plays a role in the photosynthesis of all plants, and an increase in the gas acts as a kind of turbo boost. Significant increases in yields are seen in wheat, rice, soybeans and maize—all staple crops that feed billions.
As CO2 concentrations rise, the water requirement for many plants decreases, making them more tolerant of drought – a scourge of farmers for millennia.
In the U.S. too, agriculture has flourished because of the additional CO2 in the atmosphere, including in the agricultural heartland of the Midwest. As the data analysis in the CO2 Coalition’s report on the Midwest shows, it is very clear that a warming climate and the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide composition are increasing crop yields in the Midwest’s corn and soybean regions.
As Americans contribute roughly 14 metric tons of carbon dioxide per person annually, those emissions are fertilizing crops across the globe.
The greening effect extends far beyond agriculture. Satellite data from NASA has attributed the increased greenness over the past 35 years to the combined impact of elevated CO2 levels and optimal temperatures for plant growth.
The rising emissions of China and India from their increased use of fossil fuels have contributed significantly to this global greening and has benefited ambitious tree-planting programs and intensive agriculture. Certain countries in Europe have registered an increase in forest area as well. In fact, “36 countries are gaining more trees than they’re losing,” reports the World Resources Institute.
In fact, the rate of greening due to CO2 will be much higher than the rate of browning from the expansion of arid landscapes. Researchers at a Chinese university say that “by the end of this century, drylands will expand slightly by approximately 5%, while vegetation productivity will increase by about 50%.” Elevated CO2 impedes the expansion of drylands and “greatly promotes vegetation growth with increases in both leaf assimilation and canopy foliage,” they say.
Dr. Indur Goklany reports that 70% of Earth’s recent greening is attributed to emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and that “fossil fuel dependent technologies have increased agricultural yields directly or indirectly by at least 167%.”
Whether it’s the tomato plants of Europe or the tropical forests in India, it’s clear that CO2-enriched air is greening the planet, and we as a society have been positive contributors to that. You might say that CO2 is the green energy for plant life.
This commentary was first published at California Globe on November 18, 2024.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) News ran a story claiming climate change has caused or contributed to wildfires currently plaguing New York and New Jersey. This is false. Wildfires have plagued both states throughout their histories, so the present fire season is not unusual. Also real world data shows the acreage lost to wildfires in the United States has declined sharply since the early part of the 20th century.
The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) News ran a story claiming climate change has caused or contributed to wildfires currently plaguing New York and New Jersey. This is false. Wildfires have plagued both states throughout their histories, so the present fire season is not unusual. Also real world data shows the acreage lost to wildfires in the United States has declined sharply since the early part of the 20th century.
The PBS News story, “The role of climate change in an unusual outbreak of wildfires in the Northeast,” consists of William Brangham, correspondent, producer, and substitute anchor for the PBS News Hour, interviewing Hilary Howard a climate change reporter for the New York Times and Rocky Hazelman, a New Jersey farmer who discussed a drought the region has experienced. At the outset Brangham asserts:
For years, wildfires across the American west have served as an urgent reminder of the threat posed by extreme weather, which is often made worse by climate change. But over the last few weeks, nearly 3,000 miles across the country, fires have engulfed parts of the Hudson Valley, stretching between New York and New Jersey, sending smoke into New York City, reducing air quality and turning the skyline a hazy gray.
Often driven by high winds the nearly 5,000 acre Jennings Creek fire has gained ground because of an unusually severe drought that’s occurring on the East Coast.
…
As many people know, this is not a region that is used to wildfires.
With Howard, chiming in, “Dry conditions or a drought. They are the reason for the fire or the reason the fire spreads so rapidly. Right. So, it starts with global warming.”
The problem is neither Brangham nor Howard are climate experts, they provide no evidence for their claims that the present drought or wildfires are unusual or are driven by climate change – because there is none –, and their claims ignore both the history of wildfires in the two states and are debunked by data on droughts and wildfires across the United States.
Every region of the United States suffers droughts of varying severity periodically. No state or region has been drought-free throughout its history. As longtime farm families can attest, drought has affected farmers across the Northeastern U.S. periodically, just at is has farmers across the America. New York and New Jersey experience some degree of drought every two to three years on average over some portions of the states with sustained or more severe droughts occurring every few decades.
Nearly 40% of the [New Jersey] is still in commercial forestland. Its pine barrens, located in the southern part of the state, contain over 1 million acres of highly combustible trees and brush. Another 13% is in parks, recreation areas and watersheds. Numerous farms, orchards and gardens are scattered throughout the state.
With all that forested land, wildfires, some of them orders or magnitude larger than the present fires, have been recorded back to colonial times, as the same article details:
New Jersey’s Wildfire HistoryThe following are but a few of the many wildfires that have occurred:1755 – A pine barrens fire was reported to be 30 miles in length. 1838 – Sept. 7-10, Burlington and Monmouth counties suffered a fire of 179,200 acres with much property loss. 1930 – May saw the worst fires in New Jersey history, with 267,547 acres burned. A huge fire leveled the entire town of Forked River. 1936 – Five Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) firefighters were killed in a forest fire near Bass River. 1941 – Huge fires destroyed 400 structures in the Lakewood/Lakehurst area. 1963 – A series of 37 major fires burned 193,000 acres, 186 homes and 197 outbuildings and killed seven people causing $8.5 million in property losses. One fire burned 76,000 acres and traveled 21 miles. 1977 – A 15,000-acre fire burned six homes on March 31. On July 22, a 2,300-acre fire in the Bass River State Forest killed four firefighters from the Eagleswood Volunteer Fire Company. 1995 – On April 4, a fire burned 19,225 acres in Ocean County and threatened numerous homes and other structures. 1997 – During a summer drought, an 800-acre SWI fire damaged 52 homes in Berkeley Township. 1998 – There were a reported 1,665 wildland fire ignitions burning 1,480 acres in New Jersey. According to Assistant Division Fire Warden Bert Plante, “This was a very good year for the State of New Jersey with respect to wildfire control. A cool wet spring, fire prevention and education programs and rapid responses to ignitions all contributed to that comparatively low acreage loss.”
What’s true for New Jersey is equally true of New York, with wildfires, many much larger than the present fire, recorded across its history. As an article in the Adirondack Journal reports:
The Adirondacks have a long history of epic blazes. While there are no recent comparisons with the terrible devastation faced by the west, fire is no stranger to the vast North Country woodland. Whenever drought conditions exist, there is a heightened risk for fire. Following disastrous fires around the turn of the 20th century, especially those of 1903 and 1908, measures were established to prevent and detect fires, eliminating the scale of destruction that occurred in the Adirondacks a hundred years ago.
There is no trend in increasing drought of wildfires across the Northeastern U.S. or in New York and New Jersey, more particularly, so there is no evidence whatsoever climate change is exacerbating the risk of wildfires there. Thus, Brangham’s and Howard’s assertion that there is such a connection is pure speculation or alarmist opinion, not supported by facts on the ground.
In fact, for the U.S. as a whole, drought is in a fairly sustained decline. As discussed in Climate at a Glance: Drought, the United States set records in 2017 and 2019 for having its smallest percentage of land area experiencing drought conditions and has recently undergone its longest period in recorded history with fewer than 40 percent of the country experiencing “very dry” conditions.
Indeed, the U.N. IPCC reports with “high confidence” that precipitation has increased over mid-latitude land areas of the Northern Hemisphere (including the United States) during the past 70 years, while IPCC has “low confidence” about any negative trends globally.
Nor are wildfires becoming more common in the United States. In fact, data from the U.S. National Interagency Fire Center indicate the peak for wildfires, many in the eastern part of the country, over the past century and a half came in the late 1920s and early 1930s (see the figure below) not the 2000s as one may surmise from the false claims commonly made in the mainstream media about increases in wildfires in recent decades.
Figure 1. Available wildfire acreage burned, by year, in the United States, 1926 to 2019. This includes data from NIFC prior to the disappearance of data that occurred in 2021. Graph by Anthony Watts.
What’s true of wildfires in the United States is also true for wildfires globally with NASA and the European Space Agency both reporting significant declines in the number and amount of acres lost to wildfires since the beginning of the 21st century.
PBS News’ coverage of the wildfires plaguing New York and New Jersey was long on words and anecdotes, but short on facts. One should expect better than false fire alarm from a news agency funded in part by taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars.
Damage to two undersea fiber-optic communication cables in the Baltic Sea—one between Lithuania and Sweden, and the other between Finland and Germany—should be regarded as sabotage, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Tuesday.
Damage to two undersea fiber-optic communication cables in the Baltic Sea—one between Lithuania and Sweden, and the other between Finland and Germany—should be regarded as sabotage, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Tuesday.
“No one believes that these cables were cut accidentally. I also don’t want to believe in versions that these were ship anchors that accidentally caused the damage,” German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said before meeting of European Union defence ministers.
“So we have to state—without knowing in concrete terms who it came from—that this is a hybrid action. And we also have to assume—without already knowing it, obviously—that this is sabotage.”
One more reminder that it is foolish to rely so much on underwater power cables, whether for offshore wind farms or as interconnectors.
Coincidentally I was watching a documentary yesterday about the breaking of enemy cipher codes. Apparently during the First World War, we cut Germany’s man transatlantic telephone cable!
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