Day: January 1, 2025

Claim: Artificial Intelligence can Improve Climate Models

If you have a possible missing variable problem, the solution is to add more arbitrary adjustments to your model?

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

If you have a possible missing variable problem, the solution is to add more arbitrary adjustments to your model?

AI Exposes Accelerated Climate Change: 3°C Temperature Rise Imminent

BY IOP PUBLISHING DECEMBER 28, 2024

AI-enhanced research shows regional warming will exceed critical thresholds faster than expected, with most regions surpassing 1.5°C by 2040. Vulnerable areas like South Asia face heightened risks, urging swift adaptation actions.

Three leading climate scientists have analyzed data from 10 global climate models, utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance accuracy. Their findings indicate that regional warming thresholds are likely to be reached sooner than previously estimated.

…

Elizabeth Barnes says: “Our research underscores the importance of incorporating innovative AI techniques like transfer learning into climate modeling to potentially improve and constrain regional forecasts and provide actionable insights for policymakers, scientists, and communities worldwide.”

…Read more:

 https://scitechdaily.com/ai-exposes-accelerated-climate-change-3c-temperature-rise-imminent/

The referenced study;

Combining climate models and observations to predict the time remaining until regional warming thresholds are reached

Elizabeth A Barnes*, Noah S Diffenbaugh and Sonia I Seneviratne

Published 10 December 2024 • © 2024 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd
Environmental Research Letters, Volume 20, Number 1 Citation Elizabeth A Barnes et al 2025 Environ. Res. Lett. 20 014008DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/ad91ca

Abstract

The importance of climate change for driving adverse climate impacts has motivated substantial effort to understand the rate and magnitude of regional climate change in different parts of the world. However, despite decades of research, there is substantial uncertainty in the time remaining until specific regional temperature thresholds are reached, with climate models often disagreeing both on the warming that has occurred to-date, as well as the warming that might be experienced in the next few decades. Here, we adapt a recent machine learning approach to train a convolutional neural network to predict the time (and its uncertainty) until different regional warming thresholds are reached based on the current state of the climate system. In addition to predicting regional rather than global warming thresholds, we include a transfer learning step in which the climate-model-trained network is fine-tuned with limited observations, which further improves predictions of the real world. Using observed 2023 temperature anomalies to define the current climate state, our method yields a central estimate of 2040 or earlier for reaching the 1.5 °C threshold for all regions where transfer learning is possible, and a central estimate of 2040 or earlier for reaching the 2.0 °C threshold for 31 out of 34 regions. For 3.0 °C, 26 °C out of 34 regions are predicted to reach the threshold by 2060. Our results highlight the power of transfer learning as a tool to combine a suite of climate model projections with observations to produce constrained predictions of future temperatures based on the current climate.Read more: 

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ad91ca

If I have understood correctly, they are essentially using the AI as a complex black box polynomial correction to their rather imprecise climate models, to try to squeeze out better answers. The polynomial is trained by comparing observed temperature data to model output, then the resultant amalgamation of climate models and AI polynomial corrections is extrapolated to try to predict future events.

The problem with this approach is it creates the illusion of accuracy, without actually knowing if greater accuracy has been achieved. An AI used in this way applies complex arbitrary “corrections” to input data, to generate a near perfect match to any data used to train that AI. But the AI knows nothing about the underlying physical phenomena. The AI might be able infer physical phenomena if it has enough data – or the AI could just make stuff up, especially if unknown critical input data is missing from the set of data which is used to train the AI.

AI does have a role in scientific analysis. In fields like drug discovery and complex optimisation problems, AI can produce excellent results.

But AI also has a well known tendency to go off the rails, to “hallucinate” false results.

An AI malfunction is not a problem if you can test the quality of the AI results immediately. But using AI to try to figure out how to correct climate models, where nobody will know for years or decades whether the AI got it right, then using those AI corrections to project future events, this seems a dubious use of artificial intelligence.

What Keeps “Energy Transition” Going? $ $ $

Wind and solar power have provided politicians with an excuse to dispense favours—including taxpayer-funded subsidies and tax preferences to a supposedly “green” industry—while appearing to do something for the environment. And yet, despite more than two decades of massive subsidies, tax preferences and purchasing mandates from governments, wind and solar power still represent barely more than a rounding error of global energy production.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Robert Gauthier answered posting on a Quora topic How could we reverse the damage done by the “green energy” global scam that brought less efficient and highly polluting energy producing projects and high energy prices? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Wind and solar power have provided politicians with an excuse to dispense favours—including taxpayer-funded subsidies and tax preferences to a supposedly “green” industry—while appearing to do something for the environment. And yet, despite more than two decades of massive subsidies, tax preferences and purchasing mandates from governments, wind and solar power still represent barely more than a rounding error of global energy production. In jurisdictions where renewables enjoyed strong but ill-considered political support, consumers and taxpayers now face much higher electricity bills and less-reliable power. And despite promises to the contrary, countries such as Germany, which have significantly increased wind and solar electricity production, have seen no meaningful reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Far from being a miracle cure-all for the shortcomings of conventional power generation, wind and solar power exaggerate the symptoms they pretend to address. Added up over the past two decades, the cumulative subsidies across the world for biofuels, wind, and solar approach about $5 trillion, all of that to supply roughly 5% of global energy.

The whole justification for the falling costs of wind generation rested on the assumption that much bigger turbines would produce more output at lower capex cost per megawatt, without the large costs of generational change. Now we have confirmation that such optimism is entirely unjustified – the whole development process has been a case of too far, too fast. Again, this was both predictable and predicted. The idea that wind turbines are immune to the factors that affect other types of power engineering was always absurd. The consequence is that both capital and operating costs for wind farms will not fall as rapidly as claimed and may not fall significantly at all. It follows that current energy policies in the West are based on foundations of sand – naïve optimism reinforced by enthusiastic lobbying divorced from engineering reality.

In the end, however, politicians cannot defy the laws of physics and economics. The promise of wind and solar power will always clash with the need for electricity that is low cost and reliable. That’s why voters routinely punish politicians who pursue flawed renewable energy policies. Rising electricity costs due to increased wind and solar power damage the economy by making businesses that consume significant volumes of electricity less competitive and by leaving less money in the pockets of consumers.

In Ontario, Canada during the run of the Green Energy Act there which attempted to replace coal and nuclear with wind and solar the upshot was a 138% increase in the price of electricity at the meter for the consumers. This led to the government that brought in this legislation to lose the next election so badly that they were no longer recognized as a party in the legislature. Naturally the government that replaced them killed the program and started refurbishing the nuclear reactor fleet there.

Unfortunately, solar and wind technologies require huge amounts of land to deliver relatively small amounts of energy, disrupting natural habitats. The real estate that wind and solar energy demand led the Nature Conservancy to issue a report last year critical of “energy sprawl,” including tens of thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines needed to carry electricity from wind and solar installations to distant cities.

Land required for wind farms to power London UK

Building a single 100-MW wind farm—never mind thousands of them—requires some 30,000 tons of iron ore and 50,000 tons of concrete, as well as 900 tons of nonrecyclable plastics for the huge blades. With solar hardware, the tonnage in cement, steel, and glass is 150% greater than for wind, for the same energy output

Take batteries. It is estimated that current battery manufacturing capabilities will need to be in the order of 500-700 times bigger than now to support an all-electric global transport system. The materials needed just to allow the UK to transition to all electric transport involve amounts of materials equal to 200% the annual global production of cobalt, 75% of lithium carbonate, 100% of neodymium and 50% of copper. Scaling by a factor of 50 for world transport, and you see what a showstopper is now. The materials demand just for batteries are beyond known reserves.

And that’s just one of the issues. Others include vast costs constituting a multiple of current energy costs; the environmental impact of mining and transporting huge amounts of materials; need for vast amounts of rare elements, far beyond known world reserves; incredibly huge amounts of material to recycle when facilities wear out; and on and on.

Spend enough time researching this stuff and you gradually realize that almost everything you read about green energy shows that at best it’s really a dark shade of brown.

Seventh Hell

What’s the urgency, you might ask? Well, the problem is that we in the UK are already slipping behind the targets, and if we are to achieve net zero by 2050, as mandated by the CCA, then policies must be implemented sooner rather than later.

From Climate Scepticism

By Mark Hodgson

Things can only get worse

The prospect of the Climate and Nature Bill being passed into law has prompted discussion of its implications, both at Cliscep (here and here), and also at Paul Homewood’s site. However, grim though the implications of the Bill are, things are quite bad enough already.

Today’s Guardian features an article whose title and sub-title alone make it clear that the ongoing effects of the Climate Change Act (CCA) aren’t about to go away, and those effects will include massive changes to our way of life: “Starmer faces test of climate leadership with big decisions on carbon budget – PM will have to respond to Climate Change Committee’s recommendations on future emissions cuts with drastic changes in many sectors of economy” Specifically, it reminds us that the Climate Change Committee (CCC):

will set out recommendations on the UK’s seventh carbon budget on 26 February. At the core of the budget will be an overall cap on emissions for the years 2038 to 2042, needed to meet the legal obligation of reaching net zero emissions in 2050.

What’s the urgency, you might ask? Well, the problem is that we in the UK are already slipping behind the targets, and if we are to achieve net zero by 2050, as mandated by the CCA, then policies must be implemented sooner rather than later. The article reminds us that thanks to the Prime Minister’s grandstanding in Baku and the pledge he then made, the UK will need to have reduced emissions from 1990 levels by 81% by 2035. Mind you, given how lightly the PM regards pledges, perhaps we shouldn’t worry too much about his world stage posturing. On the other hand, the Cabinet does seem to be stuffed full of climate and net zero zealots (as do the government back benches, if support for the Climate and Nature Bill is any guide), so maybe we should be concerned after all. And it gets worse – according to the Guardian, the seventh carbon budget, to be issued by the CCC, will need to go further still: “by 2040, emissions should be about a quarter of what they are today.”

Naturally, the Guardian is all in favour, and rolls out talking heads to tell us there’s nothing here to frighten the horses. According to Ed Matthew, campaigns director at the E3G thinktank:

It is the opportunity to put the finishing touches to a project to rewire the UK economy, to make it globally competitive and help nature to flourish. The only question is whether our leaders have the courage to be ambitious and stand up to the vested interests standing in our way.

The only question? I appreciate that we all see the world in our individual ways, but I think there might be a few other questions too – such as, is this affordable? Is it sensible? Will it achieve anything positive? Is it practicable? Will it damage the economy, our manufacturing sector, our way of life?

Even the Guardian acknowledges that it is in fact a big deal. It notes that it will require not only the decarbonisation of the power sector, but also drastic (the Guardian’s word – not mine, though I agree) changes in many other sectors of the economy. EVs must replace ICE vehicles; a widespread extension of public transport will be required (by which I infer that far fewer people will be allowed to have – or perhaps be able to afford – private vehicles); homes must be insulated (despite the issues?) and gas boilers exchanged for heat pumps (despite the problems); big changes will be needed to farming practices; new techniques for industry (a casually thrown-out phrase, with massive implications); and tree-planting and nature programmes must “restore carbon sinks”.

The Guardian rightly observes that both the Prime Minister and Mr Miliband have very prominently, on the world stage, claimed “global climate leadership” for the UK, so it will be difficult for them to depart from CCC advice. Worryingly (to me, and I suggest, to anyone who cares about this country’s future) an automaton at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has been approached for a quote and duly parroted the official mantra:

Britain is back in the business of climate leadership because the only way to protect current generations in the UK is by making Britain a clean energy superpower, and the only way to protect our children and future generations is by leading global climate action. We look forward to receiving the CCC’s expert advice and we will set our seventh carbon budget by June 2026, in line with our statutory duties.

Even Guardian journalists have an inkling that this stuff isn’t going to be easy, whatever the spin climate evangelists put on it. The article points out that the first three carbon budgets were relatively easy to meet, as simply shifting from coal to gas and throwing lots of money at – sorry, investing in – offshore wind was a quick and easy way to reduce emissions (but never mind the price). But little progress has been made with regard to other emitting sectors of the economy – transport, industry, buildings and farming. Already, the UK is well off-track to achieve the fourth carbon budget, which runs until 2028. The shift to EVs isn’t exactly going as planned, and the public’s fondness for SUVs isn’t helping either.

Agriculture apparently accounts for around 12% of the UK’s emissions, but the government has picked a fight with farmers, and co-operation might be in short supply. At this point the Guardian trotted off to obtain a quote from another of its favourite organisations – in this case from Tom Lancaster of the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit. He opined that the farming sector is well off-track and that significant acceleration in this area is needed:

Issues such as land use, production and consumption of livestock products and demand-side policies are likely to feature more prominently [in the seventh carbon budget] than in previous carbon budget advice.

I trust I’m not alone in finding references to “demand-side policies” as being more than a little sinister. It sounds like a euphemism for forcing the public to change their ways. Reading on, it appears that my suspicions might be correct. Next up is another old favourite – Friends of the Earth. Mike Childs, head of policy there, is quoted thus:

The deeper cuts needed to meet a 2040 goal can be met through more people choosing greener, cheaper and healthier lifestyles,” he said. “Already people are increasingly opting for meat and dairy alternatives and choosing to walk and cycle. The path to net zero should lead to better quality of life, particularly for those who have been left behind financially over the last decade.

It’s all there. Deeper cuts – doesn’t sound like a consumer-friendly option. More people must “choose” lifestyles which he claims (without supporting evidence) will be not only greener, but also cheaper and healthier. Greener and healthier I might accept, but colour me unconvinced on the claim that such options will be cheaper. I’m also unconvinced that what is being referred to as a choice really is just that. More likely we will be hectored and cajoled and ultimately given no choice. The precedent is there already, after all, with regard to official diktats regarding EV and heat pump quotas. As to how healthy it is to cycle or walk several miles to work in the dark, cold and rain or snow in winter, rather than driving there, must be a moot point.

The only glimmer of hope is that the Guardian article ends by pointing out that the cross-party “consensus” regarding these issues is not so strong as it once was.

If Badenoch takes issue with the CCC’s findings, or vows to unravel the carbon budget should the Tories take back power, it would be an unmistakable sign that the crack has become a chasm.

Here’s hoping. Happy New Year!

The Ruby Mountains Gambit: Sabotaging America’s Energy Future for Political Games

It’s hard to view the Biden administration’s last-minute moves to withdraw 264,000 acres of federal land in Nevada’s Ruby Mountains from oil, gas, and geothermal development as anything but an exercise in obstruction. This isn’t about protecting the environment—it’s about tying the hands of an incoming administration poised to reverse disastrous climate policies.

From Watts Up With That?

By Charles Rotter

https://apnews.com/article/nevada-ruby-mountains-oil-gas-development-503e0a2576ec5455d5c586df087f0c6a

It’s hard to view the Biden administration’s last-minute moves to withdraw 264,000 acres of federal land in Nevada’s Ruby Mountains from oil, gas, and geothermal development as anything but an exercise in obstruction. This isn’t about protecting the environment—it’s about tying the hands of an incoming administration poised to reverse disastrous climate policies. In the waning days of Biden’s presidency—or more accurately, in the waning days of an administration largely piloted by climate-obsessed staffers—the White House has ensured that its progressive priorities will remain legally sticky, even as the reins of power shift to a more rational energy policy.

The Biden administration’s gambit, which proposes a 20-year withdrawal of these lands from leasing, conveniently includes a two-year temporary leasing prohibition while the process meanders through the public comment phase. This puts the lands off-limits almost immediately, erecting a bureaucratic wall for any incoming administration. Yet, if there’s one thing the past few decades of governance have taught us, it’s that no regulation or policy is immune to challenge when approached with the right mix of legal acumen and political will.

The Real Motive: Entrenchment by Design

This isn’t just about protecting the Ruby Mountains. After all, even environmentalists admit there are no known oil reserves in the area, with some lamenting that the “urgent threat” is gold mining—an industry unaffected by this withdrawal. Instead, this is the latest chapter in a broader strategy by climate warriors to create legal and procedural tripwires to stymie any rollback of their agenda. By initiating the withdrawal just weeks before the administration changes hands, they seek to cloak their decisions in the shroud of legality, betting on the complexities of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and potential lawsuits to discourage or delay reversal.

To their credit, it’s a savvy play. By using the machinery of government to amplify their ideological priorities, they’ve thrown down a gauntlet that the next administration will need to pick up carefully if it intends to return sanity to federal energy policy.

What Can Be Done? An Action Plan for Reversal

For the incoming administration, time is of the essence. Fortunately, this particular gambit, while troublesome, is far from insurmountable. Since the withdrawal is still within the public comment period when new agency leadership takes over, there are straightforward pathways to undoing this politically motivated maneuver. Here’s how:

1. Decline to Finalize the Rule

The easiest way to deal with this proposed withdrawal is simply to let it die on the vine. Under the APA, the incoming leaders of the relevant agencies—likely the Department of the Interior—have the discretion to review all public comments and decide whether or not to move forward. The Trump administration can simply conclude that comments opposing the withdrawal carry more weight and opt not to finalize the rule.

This approach avoids the procedural complexity of undoing a finalized withdrawal and sidesteps the two-year temporary prohibition. Once the rule is abandoned, the lands revert to their previous status, making oil, gas, and geothermal leasing immediately available.

2. Build a Strong, Reasoned Justification

If environmental groups or other stakeholders attempt to sue over the decision to abandon the rule, the administration must be prepared to defend its actions. Courts demand a “reasoned explanation” for any policy shift, meaning the administration must clearly articulate why the proposed withdrawal is unnecessary or harmful. The rationale could include:

  • The absence of known oil reserves, rendering the withdrawal pointless as a practical matter.
  • The economic harm to local communities, particularly in terms of lost opportunities for geothermal energy development.
  • The narrow focus on oil and gas, while leaving mining activities untouched, exposing the withdrawal as arbitrary.

3. Rescind the Temporary Withdrawal

The Biden administration’s two-year leasing prohibition, implemented while the rule is under consideration, is another hurdle that the Trump administration could tackle directly. By issuing an executive order or agency memorandum, the new leadership can cancel the temporary freeze and restart leasing processes immediately. This might provoke legal challenges, but with sound reasoning and proper documentation, such an action is likely defensible.

Time to Call Out the Farce

What’s particularly galling about this whole episode is the blatant bad faith on display. The Ruby Mountains, as noted by the U.S. Forest Service in 2019, are unsuitable for oil and gas development, and conservationists themselves acknowledge there’s no viable oil to be found. The real aim here is to signal virtue to environmentalist allies while throwing procedural roadblocks in front of an administration determined to restore energy independence. The theater kids running this show are less interested in real-world outcomes than in satisfying their ideological fan base.

Conclusion: Undoing the Damage

The Biden administration’s Ruby Mountains withdrawal is a textbook example of using regulatory theatrics to pursue political goals under the guise of conservation. It’s not about protecting lands or species—it’s about binding the hands of future leaders with red tape and legal complexity. Fortunately, the incoming Trump administration has tools at its disposal to reverse course quickly and effectively.

By refusing to finalize the rule, rescinding the temporary freeze, and articulating a clear defense of its decisions, the Trump administration can ensure that America’s energy future isn’t held hostage to environmentalist dogma. It’s time to call out these games for what they are: an ideologically driven attempt to sabotage responsible energy policy. The new administration has the opportunity—and the obligation—to restore common sense to federal land management, putting the needs of the American people ahead of political theater.

Do conventional and intermittent system have the same dynamic?

Recently, I came across the blog post titled The Dunkelflaute Disaster: What Happens When Wind Power Goes Silent. That post discusses the phenomenon known as Dunkelflaute, a German term that means “dark doldrums” (periods when there is little to no wind and sunlight, leading to a significant drop in energy production from wind and solar).

From Trust, yet verify

Recently, I came across the blog post titled The Dunkelflaute Disaster: What Happens When Wind Power Goes Silent. That post discusses the phenomenon known as Dunkelflaute, a German term that means “dark doldrums” (periods when there is little to no wind and sunlight, leading to a significant drop in energy production from wind and solar). The post highlights the challenges faced during such events and the importance of having (fossil fuel) backup energy. I generally don’t look much at the comment section, but in this case I did and by doing so found an interesting question.

It started with the comment that “it is impossibly expensive to run two energy systems in parallel”, which then lead to this response:

Have you added up to see if that is true? We’ve been running multiple systems for a long time. Coal with gas, and particularly with gas peakers.
The thing is, wind and sun are free, so the fuel savings are very great, and can offset a lot of costs.

I surely agree that grids have been running multiple systems for a long time. Conventional systems indeed used to run base load combined with peaker power plants, but the commenter seem to suggest that intermittent systems with backup are somehow comparable with base load with peakers because they both run multiple systems. As far as I understand, base load/peaker systems and intermittent/backup systems have their own dynamic and are not one-to-one comparable.

So, how different are those two systems? Let’s compare both.

In an electricity grid, production should always be synchronized with demand. Traditionally, a system of base load and peaker plants were used to achieve this synchronization. In such a system, base load power plants run continuously over extended periods of time, ideally producing roughly the same as the minimum demand. This base load can be nuclear power, but also hydro, coal or gas. When there is more demand than what base load provides, then peaker plants kick in, filling in the gap between demand and base load. This is how it looks like simplified (just as illustration):

Base load plants will continuously produce electricity (red area) and peaker plant production (purple area) kicks in when demand is higher than base load.

This is very simplified. In reality the peak capacity will be higher than just the maximum demand, there will be extra capacity available for unexpected situations. There are also levels in peak capacity (fast reacting and slow reacting backup).

Trying to do the same for the intermittent system plus backup will give something like this (also here, simplified and without safety margins):

In this case, there is no guaranteed production. The intermittent production (the orange area) is between almost zero production (dunkelflaute) and high production (sunny and windy day). The rest needs to be filled in by backup capacity (the light blue area).

Now side by side to get the proportions right:

In the conventional system, base load and peakers work complementary. The total capacity is at least equal to the maximum demand (again, this is simplified, in reality there will be also safety margins etc.). The backup capacity is relatively low because peakers only need to react to changes of demand.

In the intermittent system, the backup system run more or less in parallel with the intermittent power sources. The electricity production by solar and wind is not guaranteed, therefore the backup capacity needs to be larger than in the conventional system. This because backup needs to react to changes of demand as well as to changes of intermittent solar/wind production. This means that more backup capacity is required in the intermittent system, meaning a larger capacity needs to be build, operated and maintained. Depending on the period, the backup will run at a low efficiency (extra fuel consumption). These costs will eventually result in a less economical viable system (then not only solar and wind will require financial support, but also backup systems will also).

I agree that we have run multiple systems for a long time. The sun and wind are free, but the installations to create electricity from sun and wind aren’t (and we need more of them, spread over a larger area). Integration of that intermittent energy into the grid is also not free. Reliables and renewables have different dynamics and different price components. This means that we cannot just take a conventional system, replace some of it by intermittent power sources and then declare “a lot of” cost savings. I don’t see those lowering costs in the real world, despite increasing share of renewables.

Climate cartel frays as Goldman Sachs exits global Green Banking Alliance 

One month after the election of Donald Trump, and amid a deepening economic crisis in Europe, investment banking giant Goldman Sachs has broken ranks with a U.N.-sponsored coalition of high-end banks, dedicated to directing funds away from fossil-fuel projects worldwide.

Sign for Wall Street in New York City

From CFACT

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

One month after the election of Donald Trump, and amid a deepening economic crisis in Europe, investment banking giant Goldman Sachs has broken ranks with a U.N.-sponsored coalition of high-end banks, dedicated to directing funds away from fossil-fuel projects worldwide.

In abruptly walking away from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), New York-based Goldman Sachs is signaling that its financial interests may no longer be served by aligning itself with climate-centric lending and investments practices now clearly at odds with emerging political realities in Washington and elsewhere.

In a bland statement announcing its decision, Goldman Sachs gave no explicit reason for its departure, choosing instead to emphasize its continued compliance with climate-related reporting requirements imposed by international regulators.

“We have the capabilities to achieve our goals and to support the sustainability objectives of our clients,” the company said in a statement, according to Reuters.  

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/sustainable-finance-reporting/goldman-sachs-quits-global-climate-coalition-banks-2024-12-06/

Goldman Sach’s statement is a far cry from the NZBA’s commitment “to design, set, and achieve credible science-based net-zero targets for 2030 or sooner that deliver value for their investors, clients, and customers.”  

https://www.unepfi.org/net-zero-banking/

Even after Goldman Sachs’s exit, NZBA still boasts a membership of 145 banks in 44 countries, with assets of $73 trillion. Remaining in the alliance, at least for now, are U.S. behemoths Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo

The financial heft of the NZBA, and its commitment to invest only in projects that align with its net-zero greenhouse-gas-emissions agenda, has not gone unnoticed by industries fearing they will be blacklisted by the big banks.  Of those, none has been more alarmed than U.S. agriculture.

In a letter sent to the U.S. members of NZBA earlier this year, agricultural officials from 12 states warned that “we hold serious concerned about the commitments made by your bank as part of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), and the potential impacts on the agricultural sector; specifically, food availability and price increases on consumers, credit access for our farmers and agricultural product producers, and overall negative economic consequences.”

“Achieving net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions in agriculture requires a complete overhaul of on-farm infrastructure – one of the goals of the NZBA,” the ag officials wrote.  “This would have a catastrophic impact on our farmers.  Proposed net-zero roadmaps describe dramatic, impractical, and costly changes to American farming and ranching operations, such as switching to electric machinery and equipment, installing on-site solar panels and wind turbines, moving to organic fertilizer, altering rice-field irrigation systems, and slashing U.S. nutrient meat consumption in half, costing millions of livestock jobs.”

As if these concerns were not enough that state ag officials noted that “your banks have given the U.N. Environmental Programme (UNEP) authority to ‘review’ and monitor’ your banks’ climate targets for ‘consistency’ with U.N. criteria…”

These concerns were raised months before the political earthquake that returned Donald Trump to the White House.  The incoming Trump administration cannot be expected to look favorably on American financial institutions remaining in a U.N.-sanctioned banking cartel that is fundamentally hostile to American agriculture.  Making American farmers’ creditworthiness dependent on the adoption of suicidal agricultural practices, unrelated to producing food, is the very antithesis of “Putting America First.”

Another pillar of the climate cartel – ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investing – is being shunned by the very investors it purports to benefit.  Like the NJZBA, ESG funnels investors’ cash into companies touting their commitment to net-zero emissions and other decarbonization schemes.  Yet these “climate-friendly” investments have fallen on hard times.  As recently noted by Austin Gae and Renzo Rodriguez in the Washington Times, “ESG funds have seen eight straight quarters of withdrawals by U.S. investors, the latest coming in the third quarter of 2024, when ESG funds saw a net outflow of $2.3 billion, contracting by 1.4% overall while the rest of the market expanded.”

Even before Goldman Sachs and disgruntled ESG investors became wary of decarbonization goals, Elon Musk had begun cutting his own ties to the climate cartel.  The one-time donor to the Sierra Club and fan of Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” called for “a popular uprising” against the fossil fuel industry in a 2016 film.

No more. Though Musk’s Tesla profited handsomely from the sale of carbon offset credits to other automakers that failed to meet EPA’s tailpipe emissions standards, he has now joined forces with climate-skeptic Trump.  It may have dawned on Musk that SpaceX, Tesla, and his other energy-hungry enterprises will never be powered by wind turbines and solar panels. Musk and fellow billionaire entrepreneur Vivel Ramaswamy will soon spearhead a Trump administration initiative to cut waste in the federal government.  Taxpayer handouts to otherwise non-competitive green industries are a prime target.

The growing recognition that decarbonization = deindustrialization is likely to persuade other titans of industry to reach the same conclusion as ordinary people burdened by high energy bills: The forced transition to green energy is a dead end.

I Had a Dream

I had a dream the other night and so have tried to put the essence down on paper. It was in a primary school and the pupils were about to start a general science lesson. Richard, the teacher asked, “Does anyone know what a trace gas is?”

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

Guest Post by Patrick Fossett

I had a dream the other night and so have tried to put the essence down on paper. It was in a primary school and the pupils were about to start a general science lesson. Richard, the teacher asked, “Does anyone know what a trace gas is?”

General mumbling amongst the children. “Well, they are gases that are present in very small amounts within an environment such as a planet’s atmosphere. So how much do you think you can have as a trace gas before it is no longer considered ‘trace’?”

Sacha volunteered “less than one percent?” “Not a bad response” said the teacher, but I prefer ten times less, so less than zero point one percent (0.1%) or one part per thousand. Imagine, if you had a thousand yellow tennis balls in an empty swimming pool and one red one, you would have some difficulty in finding the red one don’t you think?”

All the children agreed and seemed to think that one in a thousand was, indeed, a miniscule amount.

“Well,” said the teacher, “let me tell you about one trace gas of which there is actually less than half that definition of ‘trace’ and which we will call Trace Gas One, or TG1. It is not a very exciting gas, but it does have one or two interesting properties. It is colourless and odourless but is the one of the few gases in the atmosphere that allows us humans to exist on the face of this wonderful planet. Most of us know that we need oxygen to breathe and without this we would die. But there is plenty of oxygen in the atmosphere (about 21%) so this is not in any sense a trace gas. But TG1 is the one and only gas that allows plants to grow. So the grass which the cows eat to enable us to eat hamburgers, the wheat that grows so we can bake bread, the cane and beet that give you sugar for your fizzy soft drinks, the grapes that your parents are so glad exist so that they can drink the fermented juice, and the barley and hops that go so well together to make my favourite beer are all dependant on enough TG1. Without TG1 we would have nothing to eat, and only water to drink.”

“Equally we would have no wood to build our houses or make our furniture. This TG1is so important that, if the level drops below a certain amount, all living plants will die. TG1 is the fuel that allows all plants to grow.”

“So” said Alexi, “how can we make sure that we have enough? It seems to me that the government should be making laws that ensure that we have enough TG1 for all our food and other requirements.” “Good point” said the teacher, “what can we do?”

There followed an animated discussion between all the children, but after a while the teacher weighed in and said “Well, what if I told you that the activity of making more TG1 would also make your lives better and increase the living standards of the whole world?”

“What, you mean a real win-win situation?” said Gregory. “Yes” said the teacher, “the more TG1 we make, the better peoples’ lives will be and food, plants, trees and all living animals will prosper.”

“Well, why don’t we hear more about this problem of not enough TG1?” asked Julie. “Ah, but you do” said the teacher, “there is almost no day that goes by in the western democracies without the press, the media and politicians of all colours banging on about the problem.”

At this point, since the children were understandably perplexed, the teacher returned to the blackboard where he had previously written “TG1”. Underneath the “T” he wrote “C”, underneath the “G” he wrote “O” and underneath the “1” he wrote “2” thus changing TG1 into CO2.

A deathly silence descended on the classroom and (not surprisingly) I woke up.

Dozy Dopes:   Wooden Drift Cards

“A plastic drift card from one of America’s most significant oil spills [the wreck of the Argo Merchant off of Nantucket Island in 1976] has surfaced on a Scottish beach after nearly five decades at sea.”

From Watts Up With That?

Brief Note by Kip Hansen

To close out the year, I thought I’d mention an item from the Shipping News. 

Five Decades at Sea: ‘Argo Merchant’ Oil Spill Drift Card Turns Up on Scottish Isle

“A plastic drift card from one of America’s most significant oil spills [the wreck of the Argo Merchant off of Nantucket Island in 1976] has surfaced on a Scottish beach after nearly five decades at sea.”

“Barbara Payne, while cleaning debris from her property on Scotland’s Isle of Coll following an October 2024 storm, found a red, credit-card sized plastic item with instructions in multiple languages to contact NOAA in Boulder, Colorado.”

That’s a Drift Card:  made of plastic, with raised lettering. This one has been at sea for 48 years and traveled almost 3,000 miles. Somewhere on it, it has an identifying number – which allowed it to be traced back to the site of the 1976 Argo Merchant spill site. 

This is not the only drift card that has been at sea for decades – a testimony to their longevity and suitability for purpose. 

NOAA Drift Cards Found 45 Years Later

88,000-mile journey? Plastic card makes landfall in Alaska after 33-year sea voyage

 So, after this kind of success what do you suppose NOAA has done?  Drift cards, NOAA says were “originally plastic but [are] now thin, biodegradable pieces of wood, colored with bright non-toxic paint”. 

And when did they make the change?  I couldn’t find out.  I tried, fairly hard.  Even the famed Perplexity couldn’t find out any closer than I did, returning this:

“NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) has transitioned from using plastic drift cards to biodegradable wooden ones, but the exact date of this change is not explicitly stated in the search results. However, we can infer that this transition occurred sometime after the 1970s and before 2005. The search results indicate that:

    In the past, NOAA used plastic drift cards. For example, a plastic drift card released in 1976 near Nantucket, Massachusetts was recently found 48 years later.

    More recently, NOAA has been using “thin, biodegradable pieces of wood, colored with bright non-toxic paint” as drift cards.

     In 2005, during the Safe Sanctuaries pollution response drill in Florida, [wooden] drift cards were already being used as part of the exercise.

    The transition from plastic to wooden drift cards likely occurred gradually as environmental concerns about plastic pollution grew. NOAA made this change to reduce the environmental impact of their studies, as the wooden cards are biodegradable and painted with non-toxic paint. While we don’t have an exact date for when NOAA completely phased out plastic drift cards in favor of wooden ones, it’s clear that this change was implemented sometime between the late 1970s and the early 2000s.”

In any case, plastic cards used up through at least 1976 have been replaced, at some unknown time since with wooden ones.

The claim, the boast even, is that they are biodegradable.  Even more environmentally correct, they are painted with non-toxic paint. Biodegradability means that the drift cards will degrade at sea. The non-toxic paint guarantees that sea life, plant and animal, will colonize the wooden cards, eating into and degrading the paint.  That’s why “bottom paint” for boats are all toxic to some degree.

My question to readers:

Is the new-and-improved, biodegradable, non-toxic-painted drift card likely to be an improvement over the 1970s-style plastic cards?

# # # # #

Author’s Comment:

My opinion, NO.  I could be wrong there, but I don’t think so.

If they no longer want drift cards to last decades at sea, then the wooden ones, if they are still readable after their intended lifetime, would at least not be worse. 

But if drift cards are meant for serious science, then I would have thought it far better to have them last, still floating and in readable condition, for as long as possible.  So far, 48 years is the record for a drift card. 

There was, however, a [non-biodegradable] drift bottle found after 98 years.

Thanks for reading,

And may 2025 be a good year for you and yours.

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Met Office Claims to Have Been Recording Temperatures at “Stornoway Airport” 30 Years Before Aeroplanes Were Invented

The U.K. Met Office claims to have a continuous record of temperatures at Stornoway Airport going back to 1873. This is truly remarkable since manned powered flight was not achieved until 1903 and the actual airport was built in 1937. Yet another error in the Met Office’s temperature recording database.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

The U.K. Met Office claims to have a continuous record of temperatures at Stornoway Airport going back to 1873. This is truly remarkable since manned powered flight was not achieved until 1903 and the actual airport was built in 1937. Yet another error in the Met Office’s temperature recording database. Yet another sign that in its mission to scare the population into accepting the looming Net Zero catastrophe, the Met Office is failing in its day job to accurately record temperatures across the U.K. Over the last year there have been revelations about data invention at 103 non-existent weather stations while almost the entire 380-strong network is heavily skewed by unnatural heat corruptions. All of this in a year when it added a politicised measure to its “Indicators of Global Warming” based on just 10 years of actual data and 10 years of computer model speculations loaded with improbable claims of future temperature rises.

Again, we are obliged to the work of super sleuth Ray Sanders, who has been conducting a forensic examination of the temperature claims made by the state-funded Met Office. Of course there was no airport on the site in 1873. The coordinates provided apply to the current airport location, although there is no indication in the detailed records when these might have changed. The diligent Sanders discovered that the original site was located 4.25 kms away in the grounds of Lews Castle. Further research found that the move to the airport site occurred in 1968. “Is all of this just ineptitude on the part of the Met Office or is there some motivation behind this covert dataset bonding?” asks Sanders. “Did nobody ever stop to think about the dates when attributing 19th century readings to a site with the name ‘Airport’ attached?” he further inquired.

Sanders’s work is published on the Tallbloke blog and comments are invited. Derek T noted: “You are uncovering so much of this sort of thing that it cannot be that they are unaware of any of it. The explanation must be that they are intentionally ignoring it. Eventually they must be held to account for it.”

Derek might be in for a bit of a wait. Any mainstream discussion of the Met Office’s sloppy methods will open a Pandora’s Box and will be extremely unhelpful in promoting the political Net Zero fantasy. Populations in the U.K. and around the world are being groomed to accept that temperatures are rising at a faster rate than can be justified by the poor data presented. Recent academic work suggests urban heat corruption, which appears to be a worldwide problem affecting many state-run weather services, is adding around 30% extra warming to recent temperature measurements.

Earlier this year, the Daily Sceptic disclosed via a Freedom of Information request that almost eight out of 10 U.K. temperature measuring stations were sited in locations that had internationally-recognised ‘uncertainties’ between 2-5°C. But is a scientifically-chastened Met Office trying to make amends for all this unscientific siting at or near airports, car parks, walled gardens, main roads, solar farms and electricity sub stations? It does not appear so. This year we have also learnt that 80% of the 113 measuring stations opened in the last 30 years were deliberately or carelessly sited in World Meteorological Organisation junk Class 4 (uncertainties of 2°C) and super-junk Class 5 (uncertainties 5°C). Shockingly, the situation was just as bad over 10 years, and it beggars’ belief that in the last five years, eight of the 13 newly opened stations were at junk sites. And step forward again citizen journalist Sanders who used FOI requests to discover that the Met Office was inventing temperature data from over 100 non-existent stations.

Late last year Professor Richard Betts, the Met Office’s Head of Climate Impact, published a paper that sought to sidestep the inconvenient fact that temperature trends can only be measured over a long period, and breaching the so-called Paris threshold of 1.5°C industrial-age warming would take years to confirm. Science, alas, getting in the way of politics. Betts’s solution was to provide an “instant indicator” that would point to an exact period when the 1.5°C ‘guard-rail’ had been breached.  This would “provide clarity” and reduce delays in imposing further climate control measures. This magic indicator uses just 10 years of past data which are added to 10 future years of guesstimates from climate models.

A few problems would seem to present themselves. Recent global temperature datasets, including the Met Office’s HadCRUT5, have been subject to considerable retrospective warming adjustments of late, while computer models have barely an accurate temperature forecast to rub together over the past 40 years. In addition, the models will be loaded with a ‘pathway’ known as RCP4.5, which assumes a temperature rise over the next 80 years of up to 2°C. Given a rise of barely 0.2°C over the last 25 years, this looks a bit of a stretch. The indicator is now in use by the Met Office. Betts hopes that his “instantaneous indicator of current warming” will find favour with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In future years he suggests the IPCC could state: “It is very likely that the current global warming level exceeded 1.5°C in year X.”

All the while keeping a straight face, a discipline it seems is required for a great deal of the Met Office’s current output.

May I wish all my readers a Happy New Year. I love you all dearly and am encouraged by the support, insights and wisdom you give me in this publication and in wider social media. As can be seen, there are massed forces at work promoting the idea of a climate crisis and the need for a political Net Zero solution. Attentive readers might have gathered that I regard Net Zero as a looming catastrophe for humanity but I am encouraged that much more attention is being paid to what is little more than a luxury middle-class belief. If you are a student of history, you will know that these puritanical groupthink cults pop up at regular intervals. I am also encouraged by the growing interest in the underlying science and the scandalous way the scientific process has been traduced in recent years. We fight and debunk this nonsense with facts. Next year is likely to see reality make substantial gains and it should be fun.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.