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.
But this advancing nexus between climate and religion in my opinion represents a descent back into Dark Ages thinking, in which oppressive religious figures dictated every aspect of people’s lives.
“… The climate crisis demands new ways of thinking … and religion is fundamental to achieving that. …”
Why religion is fundamental to addressing climate change
Published: February 25, 2025 12.25am AEDT Hanane Benadi Research Officer, Religion and Global Society, London School of Economics and Political Science
…
Building a global response to the climate crisis requires us to learn about the many ways people make sense of climate change and learn to live with its consequences. And for most of the world’s population, a purely scientific framing is unhelpful.
…
With my team from the LSE Religion and Global Society research unit, I ran a climate change and religion workshop in Cairo with Muslim and Christian female and male faith leaders. Many of the 30 participants explained they felt frustrated that the climate science lens dominates.
One member of a faith-based organisation told me during an interview after the workshop that: “We are often approached by western organisations and research institutions to collaborate. However, when we ask about the nature of these collaborations, it is often reduced to our logo and a couple of statements that tell people that they should care about climate change.”
…
As Russian author Leo Tolstoy once wrote, “Science is meaningless because it has no answer to the only questions that matter to us: ‘What should we do and how shall we live? ‘” The climate crisis demands new ways of thinking, new ways of perceiving reality, and religion is fundamental to achieving that.
One thing I really like about the US Christians is their tolerance. Providing someone lives a decent life, there is room in the USA for everyone to find their own path.
But this advancing nexus between climate and religion in my opinion represents a descent back into Dark Ages thinking, in which oppressive religious figures dictated every aspect of people’s lives.
In a free society you can question religion, and you can question science. But when science becomes an apocalyptic end of world religion, questioning is heresy and blasphemy. And we’ve all seen what happens to people who question, when religious leaders assume the mantle of scientific authority.
Does this look like a country that cares about carbon emissions?
President Xi said he would “strictly control” coal power from 2021 to 2025, and he has strictly controlled… a huge increase in coal power.
President Xi: — Reuters (April 2021) –“We will strictly limit the increase in coal consumption over the 14th five-year plan period (2021-2025) and phase it down in the 15th five-year plan period (2026-2030),” he said.
SINGAPORE, Feb 13 (Reuters) – China started construction on 94.5 gigawatts of coal-fired power in 2024, the highest volume of new builds since 2015, hampering the country’s transition away from fossil fuels, researchers said…
The surge came despite a record-breaking increase in renewable capacity last year and could make it harder to connect clean power to the grid, said the report, published by CREA and the Global Energy Monitor (GEM) think tank.
China also promised its emissions will peak in 2030, right when a whole squadron of these new plants will have barely started operation. But it’s OK because the new coal plants are only a “back up for renewable power”:
China has retired more than 100 GW of obsolete coal-fired power in the last decade, according to its energy regulator, and new projects can only be built to provide back-up for renewable energy bases.
So each year China is started building ten times as much coal power as it is retiring.
And all this coal power is needed despite the fact that President Xi China added a phenomenal 356 GW of wind and solar capacity in 2024 alone. Where was all that wind and solar power when China needed electricity? — it was providing an excuse for all the extra coal plants China wanted to build.
Spot the strict limit on coal development in China…
These graphs cover Comissioning, Contruction, “Permitted”, New Project” and Retired coal plants in the last ten years.
We can all see for ourselves just how much work China has put in to stop “Climate change”.
The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) gives BOEM the authority to manage the OCS and the requirement to provide environmental oversight. The Gulf continues to be the nation’s primary offshore source of oil and gas, generating about 97% of all U.S. OCS oil and gas production. OCS activities generate substantial revenues from lease sales, royalties on production, and rental fees. These funds are distributed to the U.S. Treasury and several different programs through various revenue sharing laws.
Our mission: To manage development of U.S. Outer Continental Shelf energy, mineral, and geological resources in an environmentally and economically responsible way.
The Gulf of America Region (GOAR) manages three programs on the Gulf of America Outer Continental Shelf (OCS): oil and gas, renewable energy and marine minerals. The GOAR manages offshore resources in Federal waters off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Nearly three-fourths of the Gulf of America employees are scientists including geologists, geophysicists, petroleum engineers, physical scientists, biologists, environmental protection specialists, and environmental scientists.
What is the Gulf of America OCS?
The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) gives BOEM the authority to manage the OCS and the requirement to provide environmental oversight. The Gulf continues to be the nation’s primary offshore source of oil and gas, generating about 97% of all U.S. OCS oil and gas production. OCS activities generate substantial revenues from lease sales, royalties on production, and rental fees. These funds are distributed to the U.S. Treasury and several different programs through various revenue sharing laws. The largest portion goes to the General Fund of the U.S. Treasury, which benefits all U.S. citizens through funding of daily operations of the federal government.
BOEM held the first-ever offshore wind energy auction for the OCS Gulf of America region in 2023, resulting in one lease area receiving a high bid of $5.6 million. RWE Offshore US Gulf, LLC was the winner of the Lake Charles Lease Area, which has the potential to generate approximately 1.24 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity and power nearly 435,400 homes with clean, renewable energy.
The Marine Minerals Program partners with communities to address serious erosion along the Nation’s coastal beaches, dunes, barrier islands, and wetlands. Erosion affects natural resources, energy, defense, public infrastructure, and tourism. To help address this problem, the MMP leases sand, gravel and/or shell resources from federal waters on the OCS for shore protection, beach nourishment, and wetlands restoration with vigorous safety and environmental oversight.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) today announced it is rescinding its Notice to Lessees and Operators (NTL) 2023-G01, Expanded Rice’s Whale Protection Efforts During Reinitiated Consultation with NMFS [National Marine Fisheries Service]. The NTL contained recommendations for suggested precautionary measures by lessees and operators during the reinitiated consultation.
The NTL is being rescinded in response to Secretary’s Order 3418, Unleashing American Energy.
The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) manages development of U.S. Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) energy, mineral, and geological resources in an environmentally and economically responsible way.
Rice’s whales are primarily located in the yellow and back outlined area in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, an area off-limits to oil & gas exploration. Prior to 2021, Rice’s whales were thought to be a local subpopulation of the unendangered Bryde’s whales.
The US offshore oil & gas industry has now been “un-Bidened by what” has been…
Biden: I Wanted ‘to Stop All Drilling’ on the Coasts and Gulf, Got Blocked by Courts
During an interview with The Weather Channel that is set to air on Wednesday, a portion of which aired on Tuesday, President Joe Biden said that he “wanted to stop all drilling on the East Coast and the West Coast and in the Gulf” but was blocked by the courts from doing so.
The court battles will continue. The Enviromarxist agitators are already forum and judge shopping to file more nuisance lawsuits in districts and before judges who have long track records of siding against industry and capitalism in general. However, unlike the past four years, the Federal government will be aggressively defending the law and we won’t have to rely on the API, NOIA, Louisiana and Chevron to fight back. We can only hope that the Supreme Court will finally figure out that these NGO’s do not have standing to sue anyone on behalf of the planet. The current Supreme Court might just be inclined to deny standing to the agitators.
Abstract
The topic of this article is not a happy one. Until very recently, the Court’s environmental rulings during the past five decades reflected the views of its consistently conservative majority, but were nonetheless tempered by moderate conservative Justices who, bounded by pragmatic concerns, were contextually open to account for the environmental protection exigencies present in particular cases. In the past few years, however, that dynamic has significantly shifted as the Court’s majority has increasingly been captured by Justices whom I dub “constitutional alarmists” — motivated in their votes and reasoning by their shared perception that environmental laws peculiarly threaten no less than the constitutional foundations of how law should be made and applied.
The purpose of this article is to describe this disturbing development while placing it in historical perspective. To that end, the article is divided into three parts. Part I highlights the central reason why environmental lawmaking is so challenging for our lawmaking institutions, including for the Supreme Court. As described in Part I, the making and application of environmental protection laws systematically present the Court with difficult questions regarding the Constitution’s allocation of lawmaking authority both between branches and between levels of government and the Bill of Rights’ imposition of limits on laws that interfere with personal liberty and private property. Part II considers how the Court generally resolved these legal issues over five decades from roughly October Term 1970, the dawning of modern environmental law in the United States, through the close of October Term 2019, immediately before President Trump added his third Justice to the Court. It describes how and why there was some modicum of balance in the Court’s environmental rulings during those five decades, notwithstanding a persistent conservative majority. Finally, Part III considers the Court’s environmental rulings since the fall of 2020, when the Court became dominated by six Justices who, alarmed by the threats they perceive environmental lawmaking to present to the Constitution’s very foundation, are joining majority opinions that unravel environmental law’s past successes and erode its future promise.
Thank you Professor Lazarus for adding “constitutional alarmists” to the left’s growing lists of unintentional compliments they’ve paid to hard working, patriotic Americans!. This deplorable garbage is now a proud constitutional alarmist! Having read pretty well all of the Federalist Papers penned by James Madison, I’m fairly certain that our Federal government was supposed to be operated by constitutional alarmists.
President Trump will likely have the opportunity to replace Justices Thomas (76) and Alito (74) with much younger “constitutional alarmists” (hopefully more like Gorsuch than Cavanaugh). He or his successor, J.D. Vance, might even get the opportunity to replace Justice Sotomayor (70) and Chief Justice Roberts (70).
Reference
Lazarus, Richard, The Rise of Constitutional Alarmists on the Supreme Court and Its Portent for the Future of Environmental Law 85 Ohio St. L. J. ____ (forthcoming 2024) (July 13, 2024). Harvard Public Law Working Paper Forthcoming, Available at SSRN:
BP’s green pivot has backfired spectacularly, hammering profits and leaving the company vulnerable to a hedge fund siege, writes Jonathan Leake in the Telegraph.
BP’s green pivot has backfired spectacularly, hammering profits and leaving the company vulnerable to a hedge fund siege, writes Jonathan Leake in the Telegraph. Here’s an excerpt:
Addressing journalists and executives at the Royal Lancaster Hotel overlooking Hyde Park, Bernard Looney, BP’s new Chief Executive, urged them to “reimagine” his company as a champion of green power.
By 2030, BP would have cut oil and gas production by 40%, he pledged, with the lost fossil fuel income replaced by wind farms, solar parks and biofuels made from plants.
He said: “BP has been an international oil company for over a century… Now we are pivoting to become an integrated energy company.
“We believe our new strategy provides a comprehensive and coherent approach to turn our Net Zero ambition into action. This coming decade is critical for the world in the fight against climate change.”
Five years on from that speech in February 2020, the company is beleaguered by a ruthless activist investor, under pressure to boost its flatlining share price and considering a return to the oil and gas exploration that made it so successful to begin with.
The abrupt turn follows decades of crisis at one of Britain’s most venerable institutions. Today, its future is more uncertain than ever.
The Net Zero plans unveiled by Looney have hammered profits and generated intense speculation about a takeover, break up or even a merger with arch-rival Shell.
This month the fears became real with revelations that Elliott, a Florida-based hedge fund and corporate raider, has built a £3.8 billion stake in BP – and is laying siege to the company.
On Wednesday, BP will face the ultimate test at its capital markets day when Murray Auchincloss, the company’s current chief executive, will seek to persuade sceptical investors that he can deliver a “fundamental reset”.
To win round doubters, he is expected to announce a major break with the last five years – shifting away from Net Zero and back towards its oil and gas heritage.
But many in the City are asking how a company of BP’s size and stature has found itself in this position in the first place….
BP’s Net Zero pledges were backed by precise numbers.
Looney promised that by 2030 BP would boost investment in renewables tenfold from $500 million (£395 million) to $5 billion and build windfarms and solar parks with a capacity of 50 gigawatts – roughly enough to supply the whole UK on a windy and sunny day.
Over the same period it would slash oil and gas production from the equivalent of 2.6 million barrels of oil a day to 1.5 million. Refining throughput would drop from 1.7 million barrels a day to just 1.2 million. …
It did not take long for problems to start emerging.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, oil and gas prices spiked. The surge rained cash down on fossil fuel producers, including BP. However, it raised questions as to why the company was pulling back from such a profitable market.
In February 2023, after a blockbuster $28 billion profits for 2022 linked to the global energy crisis, Looney was forced to slash his pledge to cut production by 40% by the end of the decade to a more modest 25%.
BP’s shareholders had realised that the green spending they supported in 2020 had halved their dividends. Total shareholder returns had underperformed Shell by 15%, France’s TotalEnergies by 30%, Chevron by 60% and ExxonMobil by 100%. …
Few of Looney’s 2020 promised renewable energy projects have materialised.
Earlier this month BP used its 2024 results day to announce that those that have been built – such as its 10 US windfarms – are to be sold. Its other wind assets (mostly planning approvals, including around the UK), are to be shunted into an independent joint venture.
BP Lightsource, BP’s solar subsidiary, is still building solar farms – but these are then sold on, meaning no long-term investment or income.
Pushed by analysts, Auchincloss, Looney’s replacement, confirmed a halt to all investment in wind and solar. “We have completely decapitalised renewables,” he said.
The same results showed BP made $8.9 billion in underlying profit compared with $13.8 billion in 2023 – its worst annual result since 2020, the year of the pandemic.
In response, Auchincloss promised a wave of new oil and gas production, including BP’s sixth hub in the Gulf of Mexico. The Kaskida development will soon be producing 80,000 barrels of crude oil a day, with other developments planned in Iraq, India, Brazil, Egypt and the UK’s North Sea.
Overall, he has suggested BP’s oil production will rise by 2-3% a year until 2030.
All that, say analysts, completely contradicts the “zombie” Net Zero strategy bequeathed by Looney – as well as offering a strong clue as to what Auchincloss’s “fundamental reset” will include – a full-blooded return to oil and gas.
EU Commission NGO manipulation highlights decade-long corruption in plastic policy, says Symphony Environmental
With NGO financing from the EC coming to light, plastic policy needs greater transparency to remove corruption and confusion from legislation.
Recent reports from the “Brussels Morning” newspaper said that the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf had uncovered findings that are now shaking the entire European Union. They discovered that the European Commission had been financing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) lobbying for the policies of former EU Commissioner Frans Timmermans and influencing politicians to push through his “Green Deal.” It has now come to light that the EU commission gave €1 billion of public funds to green NGOs and lobbyists to promote the policies of the EU Commission.
The Report says, “We demand transparency from green NGOs. The European Commission must not use taxpayers’ money to fund studies from affiliated NGOs that conveniently produce results tailored to the Commission’s agenda. That is simply wrong. Studies must be professional and independent. European funds should never be used to serve a political faction or ideology, nor to manipulate MEPs or the public.”
Commenting on these revelations, Michael Laurier, CEO of Symphony Environmental, said, “Political manipulation of this kind undermines the credibility of NGOs who have been campaigning against plastic. We have never been able to understand until now how the EU could impose a ban on what they called ‘oxo-degradable plastic’ without any impact assessment or socio-economic analysis and without a dossier from the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) showing any justification for any such ban. We have legal advice that the ban does not apply to “oxo-biodegradable” plastic, which is a different technology, but people have been confused into thinking that it does.”
“Political manipulation also explains the behaviour of the EU court when we sought to deal with that confusion. What other court in the world would dismiss our expert evidence because we paid for it (perhaps they think that Intertek and the other international test-houses are happy to work for nothing) whilst at the same time accepting the evidence of Eunomia for which the Commission had paid. Further, what other court in the world would accept that legislators must act on the best evidence available and then excuse the Commission’s premature termination of a scientific investigation of biodegradable plastic technology by the European Chemicals Agency.”
“As a result of this political manipulation, thousands of tonnes of plastic packaging escape into the European environment and its coastal waters every month, where it will lie or float around for decades. It will continue to do so until this legislation is clarified – or unless the EU bans plastic altogether, which would be a very foolish thing to do. Symphony has been trying for more than ten years to explain to the EU that the way to reduce pollution is not to ban plastic, which is the best material for the job, but to improve waste management and make the plastic biodegradable, as a fail-safe mechanism so that it will quickly biodegrade if it does get into the open environment.”
The Brussels newspaper Report continues, “Many of these lobbying contracts were classified, making them inaccessible, and it was only during an audit conducted by the Court of Auditors that some of them came to light. Others were exposed thanks to whistleblowers—insiders within these NGOs who decided to speak out. Every year, €2.6 billion was spent on questionable studies designed to justify the necessity of the Green Deal.”
“It is not surprising that this scandal is linked to the name of Frans Timmermans, who frequently promised impact assessments but either failed to deliver them or eventually produced studies based on data supplied by NGOs. These reports lacked solid data, thorough analyses, and credible sources.”
Laurier concludes: “One could clearly sense the strong ideological agenda that the architect of the Green Deal was pushing within the Commission—despite repeated objections. His influence was simply too great. He sought to push through his green policies at all costs, with no regard for their impact on the European economy and living standards. Shockingly, one-third of NGOs currently do not disclose who funds them, or who establishes them.”
Brussels Morning cover the story, which they call the EU’s biggest scandal in 20 years. They write:
“A few days ago, the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf uncovered findings that are now shaking the entire European Union. The European Commission has long been financially supporting non-governmental organizations (NGOs) lobbying for the green policies of former EU Commissioner Frans Timmermans. Lobbyists, funded from the EU budget, were tasked with influencing politicians to push through the Green Deal. This is evidenced by secret contracts obtained by the Dutch newspaper.”
The mid-course correction of U.S. policy to reign-in the out-of-control Climate Science Complex is front-page news at home and abroad. Such reform is long overdue. The bloated 25,000 registrations for the last American Geophysical Society meeting indicate how big a government-subsidized sub-industry has become. Maybe next year’s climate confab will be half as much, or less.
“The multi-decade distraction of ‘the climate crisis’ is now being cut down to size. The Climategate emails revealed the professional rot 15 years ago, and more and more money spent on climate alarm has been wasted since. It is time to stop throwing good money after bad to, alas, quieten the issue.”
The mid-course correction of U.S. policy to reign-in the out-of-control Climate Science Complex is front-page news at home and abroad. Such reform is long overdue. The bloated 25,000 registrations for the last American Geophysical Society meeting indicate how big a government-subsidized sub-industry has become. Maybe next year’s climate confab will be half as much, or less.
More Tax Dollars, Please
Is more taxpayer money needed to understand global climate change since, alas, less is known than thought? Such a plea came from climatologists Gavin Schmidt and Zeke Hausfather in the New York Times, We Study Climate Change. We Can’t Explain What We’re Seeing” (November 13, 2024). They admitted that recent events were not predicted by greenhouse physics or climate models. Global warming, global weirding.
“[T]he unusual jump in global temperatures starting in mid-2023 appears to be higher than our models predicted,” the article began.
While there have been many partial hypotheses — new low-sulfur fuel standards for marine shipping, a volcanic eruption in 2022, lower Chinese aerosol emissions and El Niño perhaps behaving differently than in the recent past — we remain far from a consensus explanation even more than a year after we first noticed the anomalies. And that makes us uneasy.
Some humility perhaps? Nope, just a call for more money by the two.
… we do not have systems in place to explore the significance of shorter-term phenomena in the climate in anything approaching real time. But we need them badly. It’s now time for government science agencies to provide more timely updates in response to the rapid changes in the climate.
The article continues with all the problems of incomplete and delayed data that funding bumps for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as the European climate service provider Copernicus, need “sustained funding instead of one-off research grants.”
Schmidt and Hausfather end on a predictable alarmist note: “Some of the unease that people feel about climate change comes from a sense that things are out of our control — that the climate is changing faster than we can adapt.” Tipping points of doom are suggested. But SuperScience stands ready.
The good news is that climate science could easily become more agile in understanding the rapid changes we are seeing in the real world, incorporating them into our projections of the future and, hopefully, reducing that uncertainty.
Enter AAAS Pleading
Consider the above op-ed a lobbying piece for the government-dependent American Association of the Advancement of Science. AAAS CEO Sudip Parikh recently testified before a U.S. House Committee. While avoiding the term “climate change,” he warned about “existential threats to our health; food supply and water security; environmental resilience; energy production, utilization, and storage; and our overall wellbeing.”
SuperScience to the rescue? Not given the recent budget cuts of DOGE. “The announcement of an abrupt spending freeze on science and technology funding broke trust and hurt the S&T enterprise, he argued.
Many scientists, particularly those early in their careers, live paycheck-to-paycheck. I was most saddened to hear from these scientists who began questioning whether they should even continue their scientific pursuits or switch careers.
Is that good news? A market signal to spare taxpayers and go into the private sector for more productivity and social benefits? he for-profit sector. Parikh’s claim that we are going to “lose some of the next generation of science and technology talent and hurt America’s competitiveness” is fallacious. Maybe he should shut down AAAS’s lobby machine and go into the private sector himself.
Alarmism: Out of Time, Out of Money
The multi-decade distraction of “the climate crisis” is now being cut down to size. The Climategate emails revealed the professional rot 15 years ago, and more and more money spent on climate alarm has been wasted since. It is time to stop throwing good money after bad to, alas, quieten the issue.
BP (BP.L) will this week abandon plans to radically increase green energy generation and instead ramp up oil production, according to reports.
The British energy giant will ditch its plan to increase renewable generation 20-fold by 2030, Reuters reported.
The move is expected to be announced at an investor meeting on Wednesday and comes after Murray Auchincloss, the BP chief executive, promised a “fundamental reset” of the company’s strategy.
BP is expected to refocus on its lucrative fossil fuels business as it turns away from green energy.
Scrapping the generation target will represent a further gutting of former chief Bernard Looney’s plans. In 2020, Mr Looney pledged to grow BP’s renewable energy capacity to 50 gigawatts (GW) by the end of the decade, implying massive investment in wind and solar farms. Generation capacity currently stands at 8.2 GW.
On the first day of Biden’s presidency, he issued an executive order canceling the Keystone XL pipeline — making good on his promise to the climate activists who helped get him elected, but inviting the lawsuit brought by 21 states who say they will be hurt economically by Biden’s decision.
But when President Donald Trump took office in 2017, he invited parent company TC Energy to reapply for a new permit for Keystone XL. They did and were approved.
On the first day of Biden’s presidency, he issued an executive order canceling the Keystone XL pipeline — making good on his promise to the climate activists who helped get him elected, but inviting the lawsuit brought by 21 states who say they will be hurt economically by Biden’s decision.
The Bigger Picture: Br’er Canada and the Tar Baby
Disney animation of “Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby” from Songs of the South, a collection of Uncle Remus American folk tales.
On Nov. 6, 2015, President Obama canceled the Keystone XL pipeline. Canada PM Trudeau, just installed and wanting not to offend, politely said he was “disappointed.” Here is the back story that you won’t hear in the media.
Americans should know all about tar pits. As the traditional folk tale suggests, there have been many tar pools across the US. A famous one is in Los Angeles: La Brea Tar Pit. Pictured above around 1910, it’s an oil spill produced by Nature. Notice the many oil derricks nearby.
Tar pits are composed of heavy oil fractions called gilsonite, which seeped from the Earth as oil. In Hancock Park, crude oil seeps up along the 6th Street Fault from the Salt Lake Oil Field, which underlies much of the Fairfax District north of the park.[3] The oil reaches the surface and forms pools at several locations in the park, becoming asphalt as the lighter fractions of the petroleum biodegrade or evaporate.
This seepage has been happening for tens of thousands of years. From time to time, the asphalt would form a deposit thick enough to trap animals, and the surface would be covered with layers of water, dust, or leaves. Animals would wander in, become trapped, and eventually die. Predators would enter to eat the trapped animals and also become stuck.
So, as you can see, tar pits are hazardous to animal and plant life. In Canada, we have a much greater problem bestowed on us: the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta. The oil deposits are much too large to put fences around it an
So, as you can see, tar pits are hazardous to animal and plant life. In Canada, we have a much greater problem bestowed on us: the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta. The oil deposits are much too large to put fences around it and open it as a museum, as was done in L.A. No, in Alberta the environmentally responsible thing is to clean up the mess Nature left behind.
The cleanup requires a massive effort, but costs can be offset by processing the tar into petroleum products and shipping them to markets who want to use them. Using those products from syncrude oil liberates CO2 once trapped in bitumen, and in the air becomes available to plants who grow larger and faster from the increased concentration. The Japanese would call this a “virtuous cycle.”
Br’er America is a neighbor with the facilities to help, but because of CO2 hysteria, the Obama and the Biden administrations were afraid of getting some tar on their hands. Actually a pipeline is the environmentally friendly way of transporting the crude oil, but now trains will be used instead of the pipeline.
The origin of the Alberta oil sands is a debated subject. Two primary theories are asserted:
1.) These sands are the remnants of a once vast reserve of crude oil that, over extremely long periods of time, has escaped or been destroyed microbiologically; thus leaving behind some bitumen and also converting the lighter crude oil into bitumen through bacterial processes.
2.) The bitumen evolved from highly organic cretaceous shales (similar to oil shale). Underground pressure forced the bitumen out of the kerogen rich shales where it soaked into existing silt grade sediments and sand bodies.
In the first theory, petroleum would be formed in the traditional manner, and then converted to bitumen by some additional process. More description here.
Summary
So, whether Nature created the tar mess by bacteria or by underground pressure, it’s up to us humans to clean it up. Canada is doing the heavy lifting, while the Dem administrations preferred posing as innocent bystanders. Maybe a Keystone Pipeline Revival will be triggered by Trump to the benefit of energy dependent North Americans.
Part I of this series focussed on the sources of data substantiating an energy imbalance, the magnitude of said energy imbalance, and the likely uncertainty of this magnitude. Measurements suggest this magnitude is most likely around 0.76W/m2 but the uncertainty is optimistically stated as being as small as 0.1. Even the authors of scientific reports admit their uncertainty does not include all factors, especially instrumentation and processing biases. Most (89%) of this energy imbalance ends up warming the oceans.
Part I of this series focussed on the sources of data substantiating an energy imbalance, the magnitude of said energy imbalance, and the likely uncertainty of this magnitude. Measurements suggest this magnitude is most likely around 0.76W/m2 but the uncertainty is optimistically stated as being as small as 0.1. Even the authors of scientific reports admit their uncertainty does not include all factors, especially instrumentation and processing biases. Most (89%) of this energy imbalance ends up warming the oceans.
Part II examines climate feedback, its potential magnitude, and likely uncertainty. Part III, when I get around to it, will focus on whether or not the Earth possesses a regulator; that is, whether there is some physical process that will limit response to such an imbalance continuing on into the future. In particular, Part III will explore the curious status of Le Chatelier’s principle, which people often invoke lately to suggest there must be such a regulating mechanism.
The Standard View
It’s best to start with the standard argument for why increasing CO2 will raise surface temperature. Then critique this argument. Figure 1 is from a review article by Held and Soden (hereafter H&S), from 2000[1] but which was largely repeated in 2006.[2] I can do no better to explain than to just paraphrase H&S themselves. Their review article, I think, explains the standard view as clearly, and simply as anything I have read.
To maintain an energy balance, the Earth must radiate back to space the 240 W/m2 portion of absorbed solar radiation it receives. To balance this a black body radiator would have to have a temperature of 255 K (240 = σ Te4) which we will call Te the emission temperature. This temperature occurs at a height above the surface which we call Ze. As pictured in Figure 1, one might think of the average infrared photon escaping to space from near this level.
Figure 1.
As H&S say “It is an oversimplification to assume that temperature gradients within the troposphere do not change as the climate warms, but this simple assumption has proven to be a very useful point of reference…”
With a fixed Te and fixed gradient (Lapse rate Γ) surface temperature then becomes; Ts = Te + ΓZe. In this simple model only changes in Ze matter. Now the argument takes the following path.
An increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere makes the atmosphere more opaque to outgoing infrared radiation from the surface. Thus, to have a CO2-doubled atmosphere equally transparent above Ze to enable escape of the average photon, Ze must reside higher in the atmosphere. A doubling of CO2 makes the more opaque atmosphere equally transparent above at Ze+150m. However, the invariant gradient of 6.5K/km means the temperature at Ze+150m is lower by about 1K, and according to the Stefan-Boltzmann law this amounts to a reduction in outgoing radiation by about 4W/m2(236.3 = σ 2544). There is an energy imbalance that warms the entire atmosphere and surface.
Water Vapor Concentration
The effects do not stop at this point. The entire atmosphere is now 1K warmer, and at the Earth’s surface this higher temperature, according to the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship, will lead to an increase in water vapor pressure at saturation of about 7%. This, in turn, makes the atmosphere more opaque still, and raises Ze again. The process repeats, but converges to a new equilibrium at surface temperature enhancement of 1/(1-βH2O), where βH2O=0.4 is the feedback factor for water vapor. As H&S say in their 2006 paper, “ a number of important aspects of the hydrological response to warming are a direct consequence of the increase in lower-tropospheric water vapor.”
My Critique
Recognizing that H&S admitted this model is an oversimplification, let’s nonetheless critique its main elements in order of their appearance.
There is no emission surface at 255K
First, people appear to literally believe in an emission surface in the middle troposphere with a temperature of 255K that radiates as a black body. In other words, they view the problem as akin to a typical boundary value problem with the surface acting as one boundary and some imagined layer above acting as the other. While the surface does behave as a near black body (emissivity=0.97), the clear atmosphere is nowhere so emissive that a thin layer will act as a black body. As H&S, themselves, say in a different publication[3], “…Owing to its much
larger emissivity, the surface contribution is an order of magnitude larger than that from any individual 100-mb atmospheric layer.” What happens instead is that the compensating outgoing LWIR escapes over a broad vertical region of the atmosphere that begins right at the surface for some wavelengths.[4] The upper boundary of this problem is complex.
Instead of a single degree of freedom, Ze, establishing surface temperature, there are many different configurations that will do the task. The emission surface has a complicated, and ever changing, configuration. While the idea of an increase in height of the emission surface is one possible response, an atmosphere dehumidfied from above, which is what precipitation accomplishes, could place the average emission surface lower into the atmosphere without changing the surface temperature much if at all.[5]
Radiative-convective equilibrium doctrine
Second, the unvarying 6.5K/km gradient value of radiative-convective equilibrium is not helpful. Anyone who has examined temperature profiles knows that they are hugely more complex than just a constant gradient. Figure 2 shows a number of model atmospheric temperature profiles drawn from MODTRAN. Note that the only constant 6.5 lapse rate in the set is the U.S. Standard 1976 Atmosphere – a made-up profile of atmospheric non-structure designed by committee.[6] The other examples actually have some structure to them which tell us something about the dynamics of heat transfer in various locales.
Figure 2.
Evaporation
Water vapor assumes primacy in this simplified model, especially in the tropics. Invoking the Clausius-Clapeyron (hereafter CC) relationship means that each 1K rise in surface temperature adds 7% more water vapor into the lower troposphere – it’s a geometrical increase of the most powerful greenhouse gas.
To promote CC scaling, H&S rest their analysis on an atmospheric dynamics relationship for the evaporation process.[7] I have argued in a few instances here and elsewhere that this CC scaling is wrong by reason that the distribution of water vapor throughout the atmosphere is non-equilibrium and dependent on transport processes. It is energy constrained; whereas atmospheric dynamics models of evaporation simply assume the energy constraint vanishes.[8]
Engineering hydrology concerns itself with evaporation from surface storage.[9] Of the expressions for evaporation which they have developed from this focus, some are atmospheric dynamics based; others are energy balance based; others are a combination of the two.[10] Atmospheric dynamics based expressions work well enough, but must have a scale-size issue because they don’t consider energy balance. Without energy balance the process is unphysical.
As Landsay, et al, say in regard to energy used for evaporation.
“In Deep lakes with capacity for considerable heat storage, sudden changes in wind and humidity have longer lasting effects; heat into or from storage assists in balancing energy demands. Thus by using stored excess energy excessive evaporation during a dry, windy week can reduce evaporation which would otherwise occur in subsequent weeks.”[10]
Energy balance provides a constraint. I think atmospheric dynamics is a weak argument. Evaporation (depth of open water evaporated per unit time) based on an energy balance would look something like this:
E=(Qn+Qv-Q0)/(ρHv(1+R) ); where,
R is Bowen’s ratio, Qn=net all wave radiation, Q0 is energy going into storage, Qv=energy advected, and Hv is latent heat of vaporization.
Ignoring observations in favor of theory
Regarding the feedback enhancement from water vapor, H&S, say this:
“…There is no simple physical argument of which we are aware from which one could have concluded beforehand that βH2O was less than unity. The value of βH2O does, in fact, increase as the climate warms if the relative humidity is fixed. On this basis, one might expect runaway conditions to develop eventually if the climate warms sufficiently.”
One might respond this way. There is no simple physical argument except that the precursor to water vapor, liquid water, has covered a majority of the surface of Earth for 4 billion years, under widely varying conditions, including enhanced CO2, and we have not observed anything remotely like a runaway greenhouse effect. In fact, we more commonly observed excursions into exceptional cold.
Climate modellers seem more impressed with agreement among their models than they seem to be with observations. I am not a climate modeller, but I am not impressed with proof of correctness through consistency among models. I have some experience modeling heat transport. I have translated complex codes for all sorts of purposes from one programming language to another, and debugged the results. It was common enough for me to find the same mistakes in different platforms to suggest common ancestry of codes; sometimes agreement is just lack of independence.
Closing the water vapor controversy
Fourth, as H&S say, closing the water-vapor controversy requires comparison with data.
“Given the acceleration of the trends predicted by many models, we believe that an additional 10 years may be adequate, and 20 years will very likely be sufficient, for the combined satellite and radiosonde network to convincingly confirm or refute the predictions of increasing vapor in the free troposphere and its effects on global warming.”
How well do we know the underlying physics?
Bob Irvine wrote about feedback two years ago. He showed data similar to, but independent of that in Figure 3. Figure 3 shows Era5 reanalysis from the tropics plotting 2m temperature and dew point data against one another. There is a rise in dew point temperatures, specific humidity or mixing ratio, as one prefers, all show a modest rise in absolute humidity of about 3% over the past two decades. The observed rise does not support CC scaling and certainly not a constant relative humidity.
Figure 3.
Irvine’s essay provided a Table comparing AR4 to AR6 feedback values. Of particular interest are the large changes in the combined feedback values for water vapor+lapse rate. In AR4 (2007) this value is 0.96 ± 0.08 W/Km2. In AR6 (2019) it is stated as 1.30 (1.15 to 1.47). Perhaps noting that water vapor has not kept pace with CC scaling in the two decades from 2000 to 2019 caused the revision. Of greater interest is the stated uncertainty.
Consider AR4 uncertainty of 0.08 as pertaining to a coverage factor of 1.0, and the interval for AR6 as the 90% confidence interval. This places central values four standard deviations apart, meaning that each estimate is highly unlikely in view of the other. In addition, a graphic in reference [3] shows the water vapor and lapse rate feedback values separately. As was often noted in Part I with regard to energy imbalance, the uncertainty of combined quantities becomes smaller than uncertainty of its components. How does this happen? Possibly model biases in estimates of water vapor feedback are anticorrelated with biases in lapse rate feedback.
Cloud Feedback
Everyone recognizes that clouds are a weakness of global climate models. Everyone may not recognize the tremendous variability of clouds day-to-day. Figure 4 below shows what total downward welling solar radiation looks like on two closely spaced days along the Colorado front range. The raw data is by UTC day, so these plots are patched together. Yet what they show is patently clear. The partially cloudy day has enhanced downward radiation when cumulus or cumulonimbus north and northwest of the observatory redirect scattered light toward the observatory, but more often reduced radiation to winter-time subarctic conditions when they shade the observatory. The change in daily received solar (downwelling total solar) is from 34,000kJ/m2 on the clear day, to 23,000kJ/m2 on the other. That’s huge by anyone’s estimation. Even the surface albedo (ratio of blue curve to red) changes from 18.8% to 19.3% simply because of the redirection of sunlight.
Figure 4.
Figure 5 is from data taken just north of Laramie, Wyoming, at an elevation of 2200m on a clear summer day. There is no SURFRAD site here, but I own numerous radiometers and was testing/calibrating one. By pure serendipity, I caught the sheerest of clouds – Subvisual cirrus so insubstantial that I could not see them by eye. However, the radiometer detected them, and occasionally when the cirrus formed a wisp that could be discerned by eye which passed in front of the Sun, I could correlate it with the radiometer.
Lynch [12] suggests these clouds have an optical depth near τ=0.03, which would translate into a power density variation in the neighborhood of 1000e-0.03=970 or decline of 30 W/m2. Just about what Figure 5 shows. Thus, even in this instance of the least substantial clouds one could imagine, the effect is ten times as large as that of a degree K change in surface temperature.
Clouds present a large climate forcing.
Figure 5
Nevertheless, this climate forcing is not what “feedback” means in the context of climate science. Feedback is the effect a warmer surface has on the radiative difference between clear sky and total sky. It is the change in cloud forcing (clear sky less total sky), and complicating the matter is that clear sky is a calculation from theory again. AR4 lists the feedback effect of clouds as 0.69 ± 0.38 W/K-m2; AR6 lists 0.42 (-0.1 to 0.94).
Exploring Feedback
Models result generally in positive feedback. I have no basis for arguing with that. What I disbelieve is that a relatively tiny differential quantity, calculated as the difference between two other large variable quantities which are, themselves, differences of large variable quantities, aren’t swamped by uncertainty. This is especially so given the lack of resolution in climate models, plus the parameterizations of things like clouds, convection and precipitation that aren’t calculated directly from physics.
I am not an opponent of climate modeling, but I do wish the results of modeling could be grounded by comparison with observations. I fully recognize that observations can be so encumbered with problems of calibration and data reduction schemes that what results has large uncertainty also. Nonetheless, I want to see a comparison now and then. So, what do we do about feedback?
Let’s consider feedback calculation schemes. They’re done with models. The challenge with doing the same things with observations is having long enough runs of days to approximate climate. Can any schemes be mimicked with observations? Soden et al, outline schemes based on modeling.[3] How would they translate to observations?
Scheme 1: Think of the net energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) as a function of just a few items. Figuratively call this R (w, T, a, c); where w stands for water vapor, T for surface temperature, for surface albedo, and c for clouds. Run multiple models changing only one item, c for example, at a time and compare to the unperturbed state. This is very difficult to do with observations because it is difficult to search for and find extended runs of days that are identical in all respects except for one item.
Scheme 2: Separate feedback into two factors. The first, the “radiative kernel,” depends only on the radiative algorithm and the other is simply the change in the climatology of the feedback of interest of two comparator states. The product of the two is the feedback. This method is not pertinent to observation. Yet, radiative kernels are interesting for a different reason in Part III.
Scheme 3: Perturb the climate model with a step change in sea surface temperature. Then infer the climate sensitivity from resulting computed changes in radiative fluxes.
The scheme most amenable to observations is scheme 3. The sea surface perturbations available naturally are ENSO, PDO, AMO, and so forth. In addition, we might think about organizing the effort like the factorial experiments we do in engineering; we purposely change multiple variables in each successive run because that is what the weather will do. Build a table of contrasts with four factors (w,T,a,c) and note how each changes in each successive change of PDO or ENSO. Eventually we will fill in the entire table of contrasts and have a rough idea not only of factors of feedback but also interactions among them.[13]
Conclusion
Just as in Part I, in Part II I find numbers applied to fundamental concepts that are small but with uncertainty estimates I cannot reconcile nor find entirely credible. The entire topic of climate change appears to be like this; guided by numbers and measurements that need to be certain within 0.1% but are often 10 or 100 times worse. Is the cloud feedback positive? I don’t know. There is a lot of weather to sort through to find out. However, if it is positive that is not necessarily a bad thing as explained in Part III.
References and Notes
1-Held, I. M., and B. J. Soden, 2000: Water vapor feedback and global warming. Annu. Rev. Energy Environ., 25, 441–475.
2-Isaac Held, Brian J. Soden, 2006, Robust Responses of the Hydrological Cycle to Global Warming, J. Climate, V. 19, p.5686
3-Brian J. Soden, et al, 2008, Quantifying Climate Feedbacks Using Radiative Kernels, J. Climate, V. 21, p3504
4-Even in the moist tropical atmosphere, clear sky is over 80% transmissive to many segments of the IR spectrum as wide as 2 inverse centimeters in wavenumber.
5- This is an element of Lindzen’s iris hypothesis.
6- This mean profile may be a case of an average that is never actually observed – like the 3.5 average of dice rolls. Of further interest, the band 8,9, and 10 water vapor satellite images are reduced using the U.S. standard atmosphere. Perhaps use of this model in this context could be explored in some future post.
7-An atmospheric dynamics model from H&S: “ … evaporation E from the ocean can be
modeled as proportional to the difference between the saturation vapor pressure at
the surface temperature T* and the vapor pressure in the atmosphere at some small
convenient reference height…”
8-An analogous situation occurs in electronic feedback circuits. The power supply is almost never shown explicitly in such circuits under the assumption that the power supply is capable of providing whatever the feedback circuitry demands. Clipping occurs when output reaches close to the power supply rails. This doesn’t occur in models even though it happens physically.
9-I worked as a USGS hydrologist for three years in the 1970s. Employment is a capable teacher.
10-Ray K. Lindsay, Jr., et al, 1975, Hydrology for Engineers, 2nd ed, Mcgraw-Hill
12- I had a bit of fun with generative AI. I asked if ENSO could be used as an analog of climate change. It said “no”. I then asked if El Niño could be. AI said “yes”.
13-At a conference in 2002 I suggested this as a method of making history itself, and historical sciences, look more like experimental science. No one, to my knowledge, has taken up the idea.
A recent study published in Geophysical Research Letters, has turned up a surprising result: global ocean evaporation, a cornerstone of the hydrological cycle, has been declining since the late 2000s despite steadily warming sea surfaces. This runs counter to the widely held view that a warmer climate should boost evaporation rates. For those tracking discrepancies in climate science, this is worth a closer look.
A recent study published in Geophysical Research Letters, has turned up a surprising result: global ocean evaporation, a cornerstone of the hydrological cycle, has been declining since the late 2000s despite steadily warming sea surfaces. This runs counter to the widely held view that a warmer climate should boost evaporation rates. For those tracking discrepancies in climate science, this is worth a closer look.
The researchers analyzed satellite data spanning 1988 to 2017, drawing from four independent products: J-OFURO3, SeaFlux, HOAPS, and IFREMER. Their findings show that global ocean evaporation—which supplies about 85% of the atmosphere’s water vapor—rose sharply over the first two decades of the period, peaking around 2008. Then, the trend flipped. From 2008 to 2017, the global average dipped slightly, with two-thirds of the ocean experiencing reduced evaporation. This was validated, where possible, against buoy observations from the Global Tropical Moored Buoy Array, though coverage is sparse beyond the tropics.
Abstract
Ocean evaporation (Eo) is the major source of atmospheric water vapor and precipitation. While it is widely recognized that Eo may increase in a warming climate, recent studies have reported a diminished increase in the global water vapor since ∼2000s, raising doubts about recent changes in Eo. Using satellite observations, here we show that while global Eo strongly increased from 1988 to 2017, the upward trend reversed in the late 2000s. Since then, two-thirds of the ocean have experienced weakened evaporation, leading to a slight decreasing trend in global-averaged Eo during 2008–2017. This suggests that even with saturated surface, a warmer climate does not always result in increased evaporation. The reversal in Eo trend is primarily attributed to wind stilling, which is likely tied to the Northern Oscillation Index shifting from positive to negative phases. These findings offer crucial insights into diverse responses of global hydrological cycle to climate change.
What’s driving this? The study points to “wind stilling”—a measurable drop in near-surface wind speeds, particularly pronounced in the Southern Hemisphere. They link this to the Northern Oscillation Index (NOI), a measure of pressure differences between the North Pacific High and near Darwin, Australia, shifting from positive to negative phases after 2008. This phase change aligns with weakened trade winds and a broader slowdown in atmospheric circulation, outweighing the evaporation boost expected from rising sea surface temperatures (SSTs).
This challenges a core assumption in climate science: that evaporation scales predictably with temperature via the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship, where warmer air holds more vapor and thus pulls more water from the surface. The study’s data shows SSTs climbing as expected, increasing the air-sea humidity deficit—a key driver of evaporation. Yet wind speed’s decline overpowered that effect, cutting evaporation anyway. The authors quantify this using a multiple regression model, finding wind speed accounted for 62% of the post-2008 drop, compared to 38% from humidity changes.
The ramifications are significant. First, a weaker evaporation signal could reduce the moisture feeding precipitation, especially for land regions relying on ocean-derived vapor. The study notes spatial variation—declines were strongest in the southern tropical Pacific, Indian Ocean, and extratropical Atlantic—suggesting uneven impacts on rainfall patterns. Second, it could alter ocean salinity trends. Evaporation typically concentrates salt at the surface, but a slowdown might ease that process, particularly in subtropical zones where it dominates over precipitation. This could subtly influence density-driven ocean currents, though the study doesn’t claim dramatic shifts like an Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation disruption.
For climate modeling, this is a wrinkle. Most global circulation models (GCMs) project an intensified hydrological cycle under warming—more evaporation, more rain, more extremes. But if wind speed can override temperature effects, those projections might overshoot reality. The authors frame this as a possible natural cycle tied to decadal oscillations like the NOI or Pacific Decadal Oscillation, not a permanent climate change signature. Still, they leave the door open: if human-driven warming (e.g., polar amplification) is quietly slowing winds, this could signal a longer-term shift. With data ending in 2017, we’re stuck waiting for updates to settle that question.
Uncertainties linger. The satellite datasets aren’t flawless—HOAPS, for instance, shows a steeper drop, possibly due to quirks in its microwave sensor platforms (SSMI/SSMIS), while the others temper that signal by blending multiple sources. Buoy validation helps, but it’s spotty outside tropical zones, leaving high-latitude trends less certain. The study also sidesteps intra-annual shifts and secondary drivers like radiation or upwelling, focusing narrowly on wind and humidity. Future work, they suggest, could refine this with better measurements—think next-gen satellites or ocean drones.
It’s another case where observations don’t match the script. The “warming equals wetter” narrative takes a hit when a natural factor like wind can call the shots. It’s not a knockout blow to climate orthodoxy—evaporation rose for decades before 2008, tracking warming—but it exposes gaps in the models and the risk of over-relying on simplified physics. Is this a strong indicator that atmospheric dynamics are more in charge than CO2-driven forecasts admit? The study doesn’t preach; it just lays out the numbers. That’s plenty of fuel for discussion.
.jpg){kind=link}
You must be logged in to post a comment.