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By William M. Briggs
If you’ve never seen the above entire episode, I urge you to do so.
Note that in Buffalo, the more things change the more, etc. Also note the hopeful ending.
Amusing to think the propaganda in this is more accurate than the putrid stuff they serve us today. Yes, it’s another indication of decline. But then it had to be more accurate.
Consider TV in 1978. No real cable, three or four main channels, some local fare. The majority got their signals over the air. Meaning that if people tuned out, the advertising dollars dried up, and shows were canceled.
Which in turn meant network shows could not be as acerbic and outrageous as they can now, and even must be. Because even if you never watch, say, CNN, part of your cable fee still goes to them. They don’t need you to watch to prosper. So their best strategy (mimicked by both sides of the uniparty) is to build a loyal audience, a strategy that rewards more peculiar and extreme programming.
That’s not the whole of it, but it’s close enough.
And then we have that everything is now connected, which intensifies extremes.
Imagine, for instance, that you were made to watch Spock tell you every day in school that the Ice Is Coming. Not just every day in school, but in every class every day, and for every year until you graduated. Imagine Ice Doom was by mandate the focus of all subjects, directly or indirectly.
Do you think you could graduate unscathed? Do you think you could remain a skeptic of the idea that we were all going to freeze to death? Would you retain your sanity?
Or would you worry? Be fretful and nervous for the future? Would you develop climate anxiety? Would you be immune to all contrary evidence, such as warm sunny afternoons?
Washington Post headline: ”In one state, every class teaches climate change - even P.E.”
There was one minute left on Suzanne Horsley’s stopwatch and the atmosphere remained thick with carbon dioxide, despite the efforts of her third graders to clear the air.
Horsley, a wellness teacher at Toll Gate Grammar School, in Pennington, N.J., had directed the kids to toss balls of yarn representing carbon dioxide molecules to their peers stationed at plastic disks representing forests. The first round of the game was set in the 1700s, and the students had cleared the patch of playing field in under four minutes. But this third round took place in the present day, after the advent of cars, factories, electricity and massive deforestation. With fewer forests to catch the balls and longer distances to throw, the gases were accumulating faster than kids could retrieve them.
Third graders.
“In 2022, we got a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” said Horsley. “What’s the problem with it, what is it causing?”
“Global warming,” volunteered one girl.
Girls always know the right answer at that age.
Two years ago, New Jersey became the first state in the country to adopt learning standards obligating teachers to instruct kids about climate change across grade levels and subjects. The standards, which went into effect this fall, introduce students as young as kindergartners to the subject, not just in science class but in the arts, world languages, social studies and physical education. Supporters say the instruction is necessary to prepare younger generations for a world - and labor market - increasingly reshaped by climate change.
Kindergarten to graduation. All subjects.
Historically, climate change has not been comprehensively taught in U.S. schools, largely because of the partisanship surrounding climate change and many teachers’ limited grasp of the science. That started to change in 2013, with the release of new national science standards, which instructed science teachers to introduce students to climate change and its human causes starting in middle school.
Science. Science. Science.
Its no wonder we are so addled.
Buy my new book and learn to argue against the regime: Everything You Believe Is Wrong.
Subscribe or donate to support this site and its wholly independent host using credit card click here. For Zelle, use my email: matt@wmbriggs.com, and please include yours so I know who to thank.
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Another of my hero friends, Steve Milloy:
Milloy climate tweet sets Twitter abuzz; Even Musk admits he is no believer
This tweet has had 13 million views. Even Musk commented. The Twitter censors tried to ‘add context’ but just showed what liars they are. Here’s my explanation and no-lose prediction for the CO2-warming hoax.
Here’s the tweet.
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See the UAH Lower Troposphere monthly temperatures over the same period
By Steven Koonin
A recent National Aeronautics and Space Administration report yet again raises alarm that New Yorkers are about to be inundated by rapidly rising seas. But a review of the data suggests that such warnings need to be taken with more than a few grains of sea salt.
The record of sea level measured at the southern tip of Manhattan, known as the Battery, begins in 1856. It shows that today’s waters are 19 inches higher than they were 166 years ago, rising an average of 3.5 inches every 30 years. The geologic record shows that this rise began some 20,000 years ago as the last great glaciers melted, causing the New York coastline to move inland more than 50 miles.
There is no question that sea level at the Battery will continue to rise in coming decades, if only because the land has been steadily sinking about 2 inches every 30 years because of factors including tectonic motion, rebound from the mass of the glaciers, and local subsidence. Rather, the question is whether growing human influences on the climate will cause sea level to rise more rapidly. To judge that, we can compare recent rates of rise with those in the past, when human influences were much smaller.
The nearby chart shows how much sea level rose during the 30 years prior to each year since 1920. That rise has varied between 1.5 and 6 inches. The 5-inch rise over the most recent 30 years is higher than the centurylong average but isn’t unprecedented and shows no sign of increasing.
As the Earth warms, changes in sea level at the Battery will depend in part on global changes. These include the loss of ice from mountain glaciers, Greenland and Antarctica as well as the ocean’s expansion as it warms. It’s very difficult to predict these changes - many factors influence ice loss, and the oceans absorb only 0.25% of the heat flowing through the Earth’s climate system. The 30-year rises in the latter half of the 20th century were diminished by about an inch due to the filling of reservoirs behind dams and changes in groundwater around the world.
The Battery’s sea level also depends on local changes in the sea and the sinking of the land. Most important is the natural variability of winds, currents such as the Gulf Stream, salinity and temperatures of the North Atlantic, which cause variations in sea level along the entire U.S. Northeast coast. Because of these many variables, climate models can’t account for the ups and downs so evident in the graph.
Despite this, the recent NASA report echoes a February National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report predicting more than 1 foot of rise at the Battery by 2050. Such a rise during the coming 30 years would be more than double the rise over the past 30 years and more than triple the past century’s average. Even more remarkably, the NOAA report says this rise will happen regardless of future greenhouse-gas emissions. There is no way of knowing if this prediction is correct.
So while New Yorkers should watch the waters around them, there is no need to dash to higher ground. The Battery’s sea level hasn’t done anything in recent decades that it hasn’t done over the past century. And although we’ll have to wait three decades to test the predicted 1-foot rise, measurements over the next decade should tell us how quickly we’ll need to raise the seawalls.
Mr. Koonin is a professor at New York University, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and author of “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.”
ICECAP NOTE:
See how the flatttening of sea level rise in recent decades relates to a flattening of the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation)! It would suggest as the next AMO cold phase bout to begin takes hold, sea level rises will slow further not accelerate.
See the lack of any warming in the tropical oceans AND cooling in the troposphere in recent years. That would suggest NO acceleration of sea level rise but a decreased rate even on areas where land is subsiding.
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The last week as intense cold moved from west to east, every state (including Hawaii (atop Mauna Loa Observatory) saw temperatures fall below freezing and parts of 44 states reach 0F or below!
Here is the 7 day departure from average.
Snow fell in at least part of 47 states!
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SCIENTIFIC COMPETENCE - THE ABILITY TO CORRECTLY PREDICT
by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., October 20, 2021, Update December 24, 2022
https://correctpredictions.ca/
“The ability to correctly predict is the best objective measure of scientific and technical competence.”
THE GREENS’ PREDICTIVE CLIMATE AND ENERGY RECORD IS THE WORST
[excerpt from https://correctpredictions.ca/ ]
The ability to predict is the best objective measure of scientific and technical competence.
Climate doomsters have a perfect NEGATIVE predictive track record - every very-scary climate prediction, of the ~80 they have made since 1970, has FAILED TO HAPPEN.
“Rode and Fischbeck, professor of Social & Decision Sciences and Engineering & Public Policy, collected 79 predictions of climate-caused apocalypse going back to the first Earth Day in 1970. With the passage of time, many of these forecasts have since expired; the dates have come and gone uneventfully. In fact, 48 (61%) of the predictions have already expired as of the end of 2020.”
By the end of 2020, the climate doomsters were proved wrong in their scary climate predictions 48 times. At 50:50 odds for each prediction, that is like flipping a coin 48 times and losing every time! The probability of that being mere random stupidity is 1 in 281 trillion! It’s not just global warming scientists being stupid. But no sensible person makes a 50:50 prediction - at 60:40 the odds against being this wrong are 1 in 13 quintillion; at 70:30 the odds against being this wrong are 1 in 13 septillion.
These climate doomsters have not been telling the truth - they displayed a dishonest bias in their analyses that caused these extremely improbable falsehoods, these frauds.
The global warming alarmists have a perfect NEGATIVE predictive track record - they have been 100% wrong about every scary climate prediction - so nobody should continue to believe them.
There is a powerful logic that says no rational person or group could be this wrong for this long - they have followed a corrupt agenda - in fact, they knew from the beginning of their catastrophic global warming narrative that they were lying.
The radical greens have NO credibility, make that NEGATIVE credibility - their core competence is propaganda, the fabrication of false alarm.
The alleged global warming crisis is a decades-old scam that is past its due date - as global cooling happens and people freeze, even the most obtuse warmists will realize they have been conned. The extreme-left needed a new global-scale scam, and that new global scam is Covid-19.
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LAST WEEK we wrote
A major cold outbreak and snow blitz has begun today and will spread rapidly east with sub-zero cold and howling winds and locally heavy snows (whiteouts). Power failures are a threat. Frigid temperatures coast to coast and border to border continues through Christmas. The fast moving cold air mass will ease next week but is likely repeat this winter as La Nina gradually weakens and high latitude blocking repeats. See link to a Weatherbell story on that storm here
Before you read and trust any of the government, AMS, research center or environmental advocacy organization “state of the climate” nonsense, see one that can be trusted by Professor Ole Humlum here.
See the video by Ole Humlum
Dr. Charles Battig in American Thinker on A Winning Trifecta for Climate Science and rationality here.
Also Bjorn Lomborg’s well resourced book False Alarm (How Climate Change Panic Cost Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.
Dr John Christy, distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has been a compelling voice on the other side of the climate change debate for decades. Christy, a self-proclaimed “climate nerd”, developed an unwavering desire to understand weather and climate at the tender age of 10, and remains as devoted to understanding the climate system to this day. By using data sets built from scratch, Christy, with other scientists including NASA scientist Roy Spencer, have been testing the theories generated by climate models to see how well they hold up to reality. Their findings? On average, the latest models for the deep layer of the atmosphere are warming about twice too fast, presenting a deeply flawed and unrealistic representation of the actual climate. In this long-form interview, Christy - who receives no funding from the fossil fuel industry - provides data-substantiated clarity on a host of issues, further refuting the climate crisis narrative.
We should note a 1 degree F change since 1979 is in the noise compared to a normal 30F range in an average day, seasonal variations of 50F from coldest to warmest month, and extremes in temperatures that range from coldest to warmest ever for all states except Hawaii that exceeds 100F with 31 states over 150F (as high as 187F in Montana).
See how as CO2 has increased the number of 90F days has declined.
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Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
Government agencies, energy companies, auto and major corporations are increasing their support of decarbonization programs and policies (including taxes, mandated reduction of our use of fossil fuels, pushing not ready for prime time alternatives). This has proved to be a disaster where this unwise radical agenda has been imposed.
CO2 - NOT A POLLUTANT BUT THE GAS OF LIFE
CO2 is a beneficial trace gas (0.04% of our atmosphere). With every breath we emit out 100 times more CO2 than we breathe in so it is not harmful. The increase in CO2 has caused a significant greening of the earth, with increased crop yields feeding more people at lower cost.
Dr. Craig Idso of CO2 Science noted recently “Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and it is most certainly not causing dangerous global warming. Rather, its increase in the atmosphere is invigorating the biosphere, producing a multitude of benefits for humanity and the natural world, notwithstanding the prognostications of the uninformed.”
Dr. Will Happer, Princeton Physicist talks about the great benefits of CO2 to the biosphere and to all of humanity.says we are coming out of a CO2 drought and humanity would benefit from CO2 being 2 to 3 times higher.
Dr Patrick Moore, ecologist and co-founder of Greenpeace says we are coming out of a CO2 drought and humanity would benefit from CO2 being 2 to 3 times higher.
It’s not the first time we were told we faced an existential threat due to ‘climate change’. In 1970, Stanford’s Paul Ehrlich warned that because of population growth, climate stress (then cold) and dwindling energy that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off” which was too late to stop. Even as each subsequent dire forecast failed (see how the alarmist/media record is perfect (100% wrong) in the 50 major claims made since 1950 here), the alarms continued, each pushing the date forward - 2000, 2020, and now 2030. Last summer, at Glacier National Park signs “Warning: glaciers will be gone by 2020” were quietly removed as ice and snow has increased.
The greenhouse climate models used to predict the future have all failed miserably.
Enlarged
That is because they have used failed assumptions and models tuned to manipulated (fraudulent) data. Dr. Mototaka here exposes that:"The supposed measuring of global average temperatures from 1890 has been based on thermometer readouts barely covering 5 per cent of the globe until the satellite era began 40-50 years ago. We do not know how global climate has changed in the past century, all we know is some limited regional climate changes, such as in Europe, North America and parts of Asia.”
See detailed peer reviewed studies on this here.
I have spent 50 years focusing on attribution science - starting with my Master’s thesis on what caused bomb east coast snowstorms in winter. I have spent the decades doing correlations of weather patterns and extremes with natural factors. The last few years, I worked with a team of scientific experts evaluated today today’s 12 most commonly reported claims and found them all either unfounded and explainable by natural factors - see here.
Tony Heller has a kick butt video that exposed the fraud using a unique data tool that exposed their tricks and the real story.
Heat records have declined since the 1930s, which holds 22 of the 50 state hottest ever temperature records. The 2010’s was the second quietest decade for landfalling hurricanes and major hurricanes since 1850. It was the quietest decade for tornadoes since tracking began in the 1950s. Sea level rises have slowed to 4 inches/century globally. Arctic ice has tracked with the 60-year ocean cycles and is similar to where it was in the 1920s to 1950s. NOAA could find no evidence of increased frequency of floods and droughts (last spring had the smallest % of US in drought on record).
Snow which the university scientists here predicted would disappear, actually has set new records (fall and winter) for the hemisphere and North America, and both Boston and NYC have had more snow in the 10 years ending 2018 than any other 10 year period back to the late 1800s.
Wildfires cause havoc but were far more prevalent before the forest management, fire suppression and grazing of the 1900s. They are problems now because more have left the failing cities to move out of state or to the beauty of the foothills. The power lines to service them can spark new fires when the cold air rushes through the mountain passes this time of years downing trees onto the power lines.
In the U.S., with low cost energy, low taxes and elimination of stifling regulations, we had the lowest unemployment for the nation in decades or history and for the first time in a long time significant wage increases! Here in NH, we had the lowest unemployment in the nation. The U.S. is energy independent, a long time thought unachievable goal. Our air and water is cleanest in our lifetimes well below the tough standards we put in place decades ago.
The real existential threat comes would come from radical environmentalism and their prescribed remedies. The climate scare is politically driven, all about big government and control over every aspect of our lives. AOC’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti in May admitted that the Green New Deal was not conceived as an effort to deal with climate change, but instead a “how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing” - nothing more than a thinly veiled socialist takeover of the U.S. economy. He was echoing what the climate change head of the UN climate chief and the UN IPCC Lead Author said - that is was our best chance to change the economic system (to centralized control) and redistribute wealth (socialism).
The economy in every country that has moved down an extreme green path have seen skyrocketing energy costs - some 3 times our levels.
Renewables are unreliable as the wind doesn’t always blow nor the sun shine. And don’t believe the claims millions of green jobs would result. In Spain, every green job created cost Spain $774,000 in subsidies and resulted in a loss of 2.2 real jobs. Only 1 in 10 green jobs were permanent. Industry left and in Spain unemployment rose to 27.5%.
Many households in the countries that have gone green are said to be in “energy poverty” (25% UK, 15% Germany). The elderly are said in winter to be forced to “choose between heating and eating”. Extreme cold already kills 20 times more than heat according to a study of 74 million deaths in 13 countries.
Politicians in the northeast states are bragging that they stopped the natural gas pipeline, shut down nuclear and coal plants and blocked the northern Pass which would have delivered low cost hydropower from Canada. In Concord, they are now scurrying to try and explain why electricity prices are 50 to 60% higher than the national average here and are speculating they have not moved fast enough with wind and solar. Several states have even established zero carbon emissions. This will lead to soaring energy prices and life-threatening blackouts. For a family of 4 in a modest house with 3 cars, the energy costs could increase well over $10,000/year
(based on a sample of households and their energy costs multiplied by 3 as has occurred in countries with a onerous green agenda). And by the way like in Europe where this plan was enacted or planned, many will lose their jobs. They are being told what (if) they can drive and what they can eat. Prosperity always delivers a better life AND environment than poverty.
REALITY CHECKS LARGELY GETTING NO MEDIA ATTENTION
There are a few recent important reports that show what the impact of these plans are likely to be. The radical environmentalists and globalists believe that people are stupid and can be counted on to believe what government leaders, progressive think tanks and the well paid scientific cabal say. There are a few recent reports that show what the real impact of some of these plans now on the drawing board are likely to be and they are very scary.
U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE’S GLOBAL ENERGY INSTITUTE’S ENERGY ACCOUNTABILITY SERIES 2020
Candidates for elected office have pledged to ban the very technology that has enabled the boom (and the never thought possible energy independence) - fracking. This raises an important question: what would happen to American jobs and the economy if fracturing was banned? In this report, the Chamber’s Global Energy Institute has undertaken the modeling and analysis to answer that question.
Simply put, a ban on fracking in the United States would be catastrophic for our economy.
Their analysis suggest after a ban on fracking, oil leases were cancelled and pipeline projects stopped, by 2025 it would eliminate 19 million jobs and reduce U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by $7.1 trillion. Job losses in major energy producing states would be immediate and severe; in Texas alone, more than three million jobs would be lost. Tax revenue at the local, state, and federal levels would decline by nearly a combined $1.9 trillion, as the ban cuts off a critical source of funding for schools, first responders, infrastructure, and other critical public services.
Energy prices would also skyrocket under a fracking ban and pipeline projects stopped and refining reduced, energy prices would skyrocket. We already saw a doubling of gasoline, household electricity and fuel for heating. With the cold season just starting, the sky is the limit. The administration will blame the energy companies not their policies.
David.whitehouse@netzerowatch.com
Global surface temperature is, and always has been, the key climate parameter. Whatever is happening to the Earth’s climate balance, it must, sooner or later, be reflected in the global annual average temperature, and not just in regional variations. But therein lies what is to some an inconvenience as the changes in the global temperature this century is open to differing interpretations including the suggestion that increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are not needed to explain the changes we have seen in the last 20 years or so.
It’s a conclusion that many would dismiss as coming from climate “skeptics,” or downright deniers. But what if it’s the view of scientists from two of the world’s leading institutes researching climate change; the University of Oxford and the US National Center for Atmospheric Research. Then it must be taken seriously and not dismissed offhand.
It is important research because it is the trend in the increase of global temperature caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions that is most important variable for policymakers considering the scale and timescale of action in the coming decades. However, this vital parameter is uncertain because recent decades have shown that were are living through a period of considerable natural climate variability.
Aerosol Emissions, the real culprit?
Thus, a new study published in the Journal of Climate suggests the effect of carbon dioxide this century might be small if not undetectable when compared to natural climate variability. The researchers contend that recent temperature trends might indicate that there is no detectable increase in global temperature due to greenhouse gas emissions.
While this suggestion is interesting it must be said that the researcher’s get themselves in a muddle when estimating temperature trends this century. On the one hand they acknowledge the existence of the global temperature hiatus between 2000 - 2014, but on the other hand they do not properly distinguish the effects of the natural El Nino events that have taken place in the past seven years. This is why they conclude there might have been an acceleration in global temperature increase over this period.
They say that most of increase is not due to greenhouse gasses but to aerosol emission reductions. The combustion of fossil fuels releases greenhouse gasses but it also causes pollution that cools the Earth, offsetting any warming. This is good news for public health as airborne particles kills several million people a year, but it also accelerates global warming.
Their assessment is that aerosol emissions have contributed to an increase in the rate of anthropogenic warming since 2000 although they have a large uncertainty. When considering estimates of the amount of warming due to aerosol reduction along with natural climate variability they find a solution with all the post-2000 temperature trends being due to natural variability alone. They say (p 4283) it’s a credible hypothesis that global temperature changes since 2000 could be “arising largely from internal variability.”
See how successful changes brought about to reduce emissions of particulates have improved health but also allowed more sunlight warmth (source EPA)
By Gregory Wrightstone
First, there is no climate emergency. Claims to the contrary are based on exaggerations of carbon dioxide’s warming effect and computer models that have proven unreliable.
As Republicans settle into the leadership of the new House of Representatives, we are hoping for clearer congressional thinking about the climate issue. However, there is work to do on the Conservative Climate Caucus.
“Republicans have solutions to reduce world emissions while providing affordable, reliable, and clean energy to our allies across the globe,” said Rep. John Curtis of Utah, caucus chairman, in a news release last month. We infer that carbon dioxide are the emissions of concern because they are most often cited by alarmists as a climate wrecker.
Rep. Curtis’s assumption that there is a need to decrease CO2 emissions is a delusion divorced from reality and unsubstantiated by science. This absurdity regularly is perpetuated by people wanting to sound reasonable in an atmosphere of hysteria and political chicanery.
Such persons of “reason” reliably promote an “all-the-above” energy strategy. And right on cue, in the fifth paragraph of the Conservative Climate Caucus news release is Rep. Debbie Lesko of Arizona saying:
“House Republicans have been hard at work to support all-of-the-above energy solutions without sacrificing our energy security, affordability, and reliability. I am pleased to be joining my colleagues… to demonstrate to the world that we have common sense solutions.”
It is the quintessential statement of reasonableness. It also is devoid of critical thinking, as well as of common sense, which, to her credit, the member of Congress seems to value.
We do not mean to pick on Rep. Lesko. She is merely an example. Neither are we impugning her intelligence or intentions. Plenty of smart people with good intent similarly stumble only to find themselves in an awkward search of a solution for a nonexistent problem.
In reference to energy, the “all-the-above” pitch grants equal standing to numerous sources: coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar, biomass and so forth. Moreover, it assumes that the burning of fossil fuels must be balanced with the use of wind and solar to mitigate the atmospheric warming of carbon dioxide.
Both are light-years from the truth. Energy sources are not equal, and carbon dioxide poses no threat to the planet.
Dr. William Happer, professor emeritus in the Department of Physics at Princeton University, has coauthored a paper that shows that the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide is limited to a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum and cannot cause dangerous heating of the planet.
“Carbon dioxide is completely natural,” he says. “Plants need it to grow. We all breathe out about two pounds of it every day. When people say that we need to remove carbon dioxide from the air, I can’t imagine what they are thinking because today there is not enough carbon dioxide compared to what plants would prefer. We are living in a time of a carbon dioxide famine in the context of geological history. We need more of it not less.
“The demonization of carbon dioxide is absurd. Widely accepted data, such as those from Antarctic ice cores, show that over geologic time almost never have carbon dioxide levels been as low as today. Over most of Earth’s history, levels have been four or five times what they are now.”
As for the comparative value of energy sources, an analysis by CO2 Coalition member Dr. Indur Goklany finds that coal, oil and natural gas are the most beneficial based on their efficiencies and on the salutary effects of their emissions of carbon dioxide. These fuels have fostered unprecedented prosperity and human health.
Their CO2 emissions have contributed to an overall greening of Earth and record crop harvests.
The green lobby’s promotion of subsidies for wind and solar is exactly backward. Reason would dictate that fossil fuels - along with nuclear power - be favored because of their unmatched effectiveness in sustaining human life, although we prefer free markets over government picking winners and losers.
We understand the desire to be “even-handed” or to “reach across the aisle.” However, conceding to false claims of a crisis and promoting foolish strategies as “solutions” is dangerous. It is a packaging of “reasonableness” without regard to reason.
This commentary was first published at Daily Caller, December 3, 2022, and can be accessed here.
Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist; executive director of the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, VA; and author of Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know.
Barges on Drought-Striken Mississippi River Dead in the Water,’ Causing Severe Supply Chain Issues (See Epoch Times story).
“I’ve never seen it this bad,” said Worsham, who’s been with the company for over 20 years. “We had water [levels] close to this in 2012. But it was August, and it wasn’t the harvesting season. It wasn’t a big deal for us.”
At the height of the corn and soybean harvest, and with tons of products waiting to be shipped, Worsham remains optimistic.
“A lot of the soybeans have been stored on the barges. We’ll be down a little bit on volume and stretched out. We’ll be able to get the bushels [out]. It’s just going to take longer,” he told The Epoch Times.
In recent weeks, hundreds of barges have become stalled in the receding Mississippi, caught in the lower depths. In early October, some 2,000 barges reportedly clogged the channels in long pileups along the river south of Memphis.
Barges sit in the port facility at Poinsett Rice & Grain in Osceola, Ark., on Oct. 20, 2022. Behind the barges, the river tributary’s water line has been receding for months in the continuing drought. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)
But as water levels continue to fall, it allows less room for the barges to navigate and more opportunities to become stuck, said Ben Lerner, vice president of public affairs for the American Waterways Operators, a national trade association.
Lerner said the Mississippi River at a historically low level presents a significant challenge for the nation’s supply chain.
“In some spots in the river, it is at its lowest level since 1988, so it’s a real challenge for the supply chain and our industry,” Lerner told The Epoch Times.
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ICECAP NOTES:
The drought was expected in this third year of La Nina. Note in this plot of US drought and El Nino (red) and La Nina (blue), drought coverage in the US spikes in La Ninas, especially multiyear and strong ones.
Notice the mention of 2011 and 1988, See above 2011 had drought.
See the current drought areas.
See 2011 and 2012
See 1988
The La Nina droughts also affected crop yields. See the drop in 2011 and especially 2012.
But you will notice the yields these recent drought years was much higher that 2012 and especially 1988. The reason is increased irrigation in places like Nebraska and western Kansas and drought resistant corn and also increases in the critical natural fertilizer, CO2. BTW, 1993 dropped because of record flooding in a strong El Nino with help from seeding from Pinatubo.
Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
Ian made landfall as a strong CAT4 storm. The damage will rank among that with the past worst storms. Its’ life is not over as it will landfall again in South Carolina with rain the biggest story to come.
See the trends per decade of landfalling Florida hurricanes and major hurricanes since 1850.
Here is a listing of the Major Hurricane landfalls in Florida.
My compadre, Joe Bastardi noted on Hannity “There were SIX hurricanes that hit the Southern part of Florida, below a line from Tampa to Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic in the last 57 years. If you look at the prior 50 years, there were SIXTEEN strikes!”
Dr. Neil Frank, longest serving Hurricane Center Director advises::
“Without question the most reliable indicator of a trend in hurricane activity in the Atlantic is to focus on land falling major hurricanes (3-5) in the mainline U.S. I doubt if a major hurricane could have hit the U.S. in the 1800s without being noticed, while a minor hurricane in a remote area could have been undetected so it is important to concentrate on major hurricanes. It is important to emphasize that the rainfall in a tropical system is not related to the intensity but depends on the forward speed of motion. In the case of Harvey, the weakening hurricane stalled over southeast Texas for three days. Finally, as you know the most active hurricane season in the U.S. was 1886 when 7 hurricanes hit the Gulf coast. One of the major hurricanes in Texas destroyed Indianola on the south shore of Matagorda Bay. At one time there were around 20,000 people in the city before a prior major hurricane in 1875 did major damage. The only thing in Indianola today is a cemetery with numerous headstones with dates 1875 or 1886 ”
The US trend like Florida is down.
Ian encountered a ‘cool’ upper trough and large, chilly surface high to the north, which deflected it northeast through Florida before feeding off the Gulf Stream to become a hurricane again and resuming its journey poleward.
See Ian’s track for landfall #2.
I have added a landfall to South Carolina chart as probably a CAT 1. The trend too here is down. The 1890s was the big decade. The most recent landfalling major was Hugo, a CAT4 in 1989.
See the heavy rains coming inland again the next several days.
See the latest Sea Surface Temperature anomaly chart. The La Nina cold water shows in the Pacific and warm pools in the northwest Pacific and northwest Atlantic.
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These are due to a lack of early to mid-season hurricanes in these areas (until one developed and tracked to the Bering Sea and Alaska). Hurricanes usually track these areas in the late summer and fall. The tropics heat up with the intense high in the sky sun in the summer. Currents carry some of that heat north but this is slow and nature created hurricanes to speed the process. If these warm pools persist they can affect the winter patterns.
By the way, here is a document with trends for all the east and Gulf States. Only Alabama has an uptrend. But Alabama maximum average temperatures yearly since 1895 have declined for May to October.
Bjorn Lomborg, author of ‘False Alarm; ‘Cool It’ and ‘Skeptical Environmentalist’, president Copenhagen Consensus think tank smart solutions through economic prioritization blogs “Climate’related deaths are down 98% in the last 100 years thanks to our access to energy.”
See a very detailed summary of the media's lies about the real trends by Michael Schellenberger here.
See Alex Epstein’s 25 myths about extreme weather, refuted
Farmers a target too!
“Greens don’t want to get rid of fossil fuels, they want to get rid of modern life. Fossil Fuels just happen to be in the way.”
79% of all global energy comes from fossil fuels, renewables produce 16%, most of it from wood (11%) and hydro (3%), solar + wind is 1.8% of global primary energy!
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Skyrocketing gasoline prices are really just the start of an energy crisis in the making for all the energy we use in our lives and homes. We look at that in detail with special focus in the northeastern part of the country, which is subject to heat and extreme cold, which makes us especially vulnerable to rising energy costs and its availability.
GASOLINE
Gas prices have skyrocketed under Biden. In the economic Obama administration, you may recall gas prices had soared to $4 per gallon and the administration warned of $8 gas. It dropped and rose again to $4 but in the Trump administration energy independence crusade, the prices dropped by 50%.
The good old days were prior to 9/11 with February 1999 at $1.01/gallon. Family of 4 with 2 cars driving a total of 24,000 miles/year with 24 mph/gallon would have spent $1000. In January 2020 prices had after a spike declined to just under $2/gallon and a family would have spent about $2000 on gasoline.
By June of this year, gas prices skyrocketed to $5 or higher. JP Morgan warned of $6 gas, which translates to $6000.
This would result in an INCREASE of $4000 under Biden for families who must travel to work.
Prices dropped as the public rebelled and the administration removed oil from the strategic oil reserve and imported oil from China. It is a temporary move to try and save the midterm election. Rest assured prices will resume its upward climb after the election in the democrats maintain control.
It should be noted in the Obama administration, they thought $8 gasoline would accelerate the move to electric vehicles. If Biden stubbornly pushes gasoline to $8. The impact of a return to June levels would be $4000 and eventually $6000 to families who can not afford the big investment in electric vehicles. They would see AN INCREASE OF $4-6000.
HEATING OIL/GAS
In New England, the heating season begins early and ends late. Prices often rise some in colder winters due to demand and supply issues but now large scale supply issues are growing and we saw prices skyrocket in 2022.
In January 2021 I paid $2.55/gallon for heating oil by May 2022 rose to $5.999/gallon, a 235% increase. As of mid July, prices are still high $5.83/gallon.
The $3854 in 2021 would become $9057, AN INCREASE OF $5,200.
Natural gas prices similarly (Henry Hub) rose in 2020 an 2021.
They have skyrocketed after August 2021 and now stand at $6.81 (4.1 times the level of 2020).
ELECTRICITY
In recent decades, electricity prices in nations that took a aggressive green agenda increased to levels 3 to 5 times higher than the US. This chart prepared by an Australian organization using EIA data from the US showed that.
More (some long lasting) blackouts occurring as wind and solar are unreliable!! Many households are said to be in “energy poverty” (25% UK, 15% Germany). Elderly and retirees on fixed income often are forced to “choose between heating and eating”
Here in the US, the states with the highest EIA electricity prices all sectors (c/kwh):
Here in the US, for these states, the greatest change since 2020 (c/kwh):
US STEPS BACKWARD INTO AN ENERGY ABYSS
Electricity is about to start rising or even jumping by at least 50% as the US pushes wind and solar. Other energy pundits expect that a doubling is likely. Remember, in Europe and Australia, who led the way on a green agenda, they pay 3 times what we paid.
The northeast states are already paying much more as part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a cooperative, market-based effort among the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia to cap and reduce CO 2 emissions from the power sector. See how they rank in the top 10 with California and Michigan.
In a modest well-insulated two story home I spent $2136 in 2021. The biggest bills come in the hot summer months and around Christmas (lights). A doubling of rate would translate to AN INCREASE OF $2100
Current trends suggest average electricity prices will at last triple by the end of a decade, a decade that began with the US being energy independent.
THE DAMAGE - INCREASES IN ENERGY COSTS
GASOLINE - $4,000 (eventually to 6,000)
HEATING FUELS - $5,200
ELECTRICITY - $4,300
TOTAL INCREASE over $13,000
TOTAL ENERGY COSTS over $20,000
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This is not to be taken lightly.
Note Countries In Europe and in Australia, that went heavily green, brownouts and blackouts occurred not unlike what the US saw in Texas in 2021 during the cold and heavy snow and snow that froze turbines.
Many deaths occur in cold when the lights go out. In fact research has shown, 10 to more than 20% more deaths occur in the cold than heat. An international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries. The findings were published in The Lancet.
In countries like the US, Canada and the UK, they track mortality in winter - a metric called Excess Winter Mortality.
Countries rushed to build coal plants to provide base load or import natural gas from Russia and keep the lights on. France invested in modern nuclear. Others relied on old reliable coal.
The greens objected to dirty coal. They started importing natural gas - from Russia. By the way Russian natural gas in 2017/18 saved NH from going dark in the extreme cold on late December and early January.
The Russian war has many European countries planning to use coal this upcoming winter to keep the power going in the cold. This is true even as our nation, two years ago energy independent, is moving to abandon our energy dominance for a not ready for primetime gamble on renewables.
Will Biden say we just have to tough it out so we can reach their green dream that in countries in Europe turned into a nightmare?
UK could signal an unravelling of the master plan - see this from Buddy Menton at the Manhattan Contrarian.
See also in this video how the radical attacks include eliminating nitrogen fertilizer impacting food supply in a major way.
Before you follow quietly the radical dictates of the world’s political leaders, you should take a look at their real motivations in their ownwords. You see it is all about power, control and Maltusian philosophy that the earth has limited resources and too many people and that the world through some organizing force (farce) like the UN could remedy that.
In Eco Tyranny, meteorologist Brian Sussman (story below) writes that the environmentalist movement isn’t about protecting the environment at all, it’s about destroying private property, controlling behavior, and expanding government - and the Obama administration has a secret plan to further all of it.
As Earth Day 2012 occurs on Sunday, April 22, Alan Caruba offers a selection of quotes from leading figures in the environmental movement that are worth reading so that you can draw your own conclusions:
In a 2012 story penned here, I provided perspective on the movement and their real motivations.
David Evans, who consulted for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) 1999-2005 and 1998-2010, and was a believer in AGW until the evidence supporting the idea that CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself in 1998 to 2006, when he became a skeptic.
“The AGW scam involves a “regulating class” of believers, consisting of the UN, western governments, major banks and finance houses, NGOs and greenies, totalitarian leftists, government-funded scientists, academia, renewables corporations and the mainstream news media. Against them are the doubters: independently-funded scientists, private-sector middle class, and amateurs. The regulating class does not try to hide its belief that it is cleverer and morally superior. Their solution is regulation of the whole world’s economy by themselves, which was the object at the failed Copenhagen climate conference. On climate change, the regulating class has won over the leadership of most professional and business organizations by lobbying and pressure.”
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Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation
“The free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present - and is gravely to be regarded. Yet in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
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Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, visited Australia in July 2011. In referring to the ideological orientations of those individuals and organizations who have significant financial and other vested interests in propagating the Doctrine. of anthropogenic induced climate change, President Klaus said: “They want to change us, to change our behavior, our way of life, our values and preferences, they want to restrict our freedom because they themselves believe they know what is good for us. They are not interested in climate. They misuse the climate in their goal to restrict our freedom. What is endangered is freedom, the climate is okay.”
After noting that today’s human-induced climate change alarmists are the ideological descendants of the zero and negative population growth advocates of the 1970s who erroneously forecast that human population pressures would lead to increases in global poverty and growing shortages in resources, President Klaus went on to add: “They hate us, the humans, they consider us selfish and sinful creatures who must be controlled by them. I used to live in a similar world - called communism - and I know that it led to the worst environmental damage the world has ever experienced.”
Even the Royal Society has taken a Malthusian direction, and should no longer be regarded as credible on science.
SEEN IN THEIR OWN WORDS:HERE Here are just a few examples:
* Maurice Strong, senior advisor to Kofi Annan, U.N. Secretary-General who chaired the gigantic (40,000 participants) “U.N. Conference on Environment and Development” in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 , who was responsible for putting together the Kyoto Protocol with thousands of bureaucrats, diplomats, and politicians, stated: “We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse...isn’t it our job to bring that about"]
* “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill...All these dangers are caused by human intervention...and thus the “real enemy, then, is humanity itself...believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is “a real one or...one invented for the purpose.” Quote by the Club of Rome.
* Timothy Wirth, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Issues, seconded Strong’s statement: “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
* Richard Benedick, a deputy assistant secretary of state who headed policy divisions of the U.S. State Department, stated: “A global warming treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the [enhanced] greenhouse effect.:
* The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.” - Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
* :The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.” - Dr David Frame, Climate modeler, Oxford University
* “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” - Paul Watson, Co-founder of Greenpeace
* “Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” - Sir John Houghton, First chairman of the IPCC
* “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” - Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
* IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer in November 2010 admitted “one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy”. Instead, climate change policy is about how “we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth...”
* “The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.” - Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund
* “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.” - Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution
* “We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of acres of presently settled land."- David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
* “Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.” - Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute
* “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” - Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
* “My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide (we are now at 6.8 billion), destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.” - Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
* “Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class - involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing - are not sustainable.” - Maurice Strong, Rio Earth Summit (THE REASON FOR THE PUSH TO ALTERNATIVE GREEN ENERGY WHICH WOULD CAUSE COSTS TO SKYROCKET AND MAKE ITS USE UNAFFORDABLE).
* “Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.” - Sir James Lovelock, Healing Gaia
* “The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.” - Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point
* “A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells, the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.” - Prof. Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb
* “A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be 1 billion. At the more frugal European standard of living, 2 to 3 billion would be possible.” - United Nations, Global Biodiversity Assessment
* “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.” - Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major UN donor
* “… the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million but less than one billion.” - Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind
* “One America burdens the earth much more than twenty Bangladeshes. This is a terrible thing to say in order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it’s just as bad not to say it.” - Jacques Cousteau, UNESCO Courier
* Naomi Klein, Papal Advisor admits progressive policies on the environment are really about what Marx and Lenin said the communist revolution desired 100 years ago - the overthrow of capitalism. This is not about science, or health, at all. “Our economic model is at war with the Earth,” writes Klein. “We cannot change the laws of nature. But we can change our economy. Climate change is our best chance to demand and build a better world.”
* “I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.” - John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
* “The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.” - Christopher Manes, Earth First!
* “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.” - David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club
* “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” - Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace
* “The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.” - emeritus professor Daniel Botkin
* “We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis.” - David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive manager
* “Climate Change will result in a catastrophic, global seal level rise of seven meters. That’s bye-bye most of Bangladesh, Netherlands, Florida and would make London the new Atlantis.” - Greenpeace International (It has risen less than 7 inches in 100 years and is decelerating)
* “We are close to a time when all of humankind will envision a global agenda that encompasses a kind of Global Marshall Plan to address the causes of poverty and suffering and environmental destruction all over the earth.” - Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
* “The earth is literally our mother, not only because we depend on her for nurture and shelter but even more because the human species has been shaped by her in the womb of evolution. Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature.” - Rene Dubos, board member Planetary Citizens
* “A keen and anxious awareness is evolving to suggest that fundamental changes will have to take place in the world order and its power structures, in the distribution of wealth and income.” - Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point
* “Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced - a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.” - UN Agenda 21
* “Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of today’s problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time.” - Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution
* “In my view, after fifty years of service in the United National system, I perceive the utmost urgency and absolute necessity for proper Earth government. There is no shadow of a doubt that the present political and economic systems are no longer appropriate and will lead to the end of life evolution on this planet. We must therefore absolutely and urgently look for new ways.” - Dr. Robert Muller, UN Assistant Secretary General
* “Nations are in effect ceding portions of their sovereignty to the international community and beginning to create a new system of international environmental governance as a means of solving otherwise unmanageable crises.” - Lester Brown, WorldWatch Institute
See most ridiculous enviro claims here.
Also see this. PLEASE NOTE THE DATE…
A United Nations meeting on the environment opened Monday with an official forecast that the world faces an ecological disaster as final as nuclear war within a couple of decades unless governments act now. Lack of such action would bring “by the turn of the century, an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust” --- Ecological Disaster Feared, Reuters, 11 May 1982. Now it is 2030.
John Stossel on politically driven climate change meme..
The debate I announced here between Steve Koonin and Andy Dessler took place Monday August 15th, it was very educational and illuminating. I will try and write more about it in a few days.
In short Andy Dessler said that economic models suggest that climate change is a negative for human civilization and not positive at all. But he avoided putting any numbers to this assertion.
Dessler believes that wind and solar produce electricity cheaper than fossil fuels, and that they can provide most of our power. Koonin counters that the only reason wind and solar are cheaper is that the cost of fossil fuel backup and the required changes to the U.S. grid are not included in the solar and wind costs. Koonin shows an estimate of $2.4 trillion to upgrade our electric grid to work with mostly wind and solar.
Koonin stated that the costs of climate change are minimal, and in 100 years will not be noticeable because the world economy will grow so much in that time. Climate change, even in the worse scenarios, only reduces growth very slightly, by 4% or less, and everyone will still be better off. He notes that in the past global warming and climate change have benefited mankind since people are much better off today and much more resilient to climate change than 100 years ago. He also points out that the poor of today should not be made to suffer because the elites (that is the U.S. and the western world) believe, without evidence and only based on models, that fossil fuels are polluting. He adds that solar and wind are not pollution free.
Koonin quotes U.S. economist Anthony Downes, who once said:
“The elite’s environmental deterioration is often the common man’s improved standard of living.”
From “Up and down with ecology - the ‘issue attention cycle,’” by Anthony Downs (link)
At the end of this very interesting Oxford-style debate in the New York Sheen Center, these were the results:
The Koonin-Dessler Debate Results
Obviously Koonin won, the swing was 25% in his favor. Let us hope that these results are not changed online like they were in the last big climate change debate.
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See the a thorough follow-up by the Manhattan Contrarian here.
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See Jodan Peterson’s take on the issue.
Manhattan Contrarian is a valuable resource that sheds light on the issues that are driven by government funding that uses “trust the science” as a tool to get support for policies that do much more harm than good and are based on flawed or even fraudulent science.
They remind us: “One of the most respected scientists and educators of modern times, physicist Richard Feynman, perhaps said it best during a speech to the National Science Educators Association in 1966. Feynman asserted that “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” Beyond that, Feynman contended that the “experts who are leading you may be wrong....there is a considerable amount of intellectual tyranny in the name of science."”
See today’s must read post Great Idea For U.S. Energy Policy: Let’s Follow The Example Of Germany! here
As readers here well know, Germany has long sought the mantle of world leader in the march to save the planet by eliminating fossil fuels from the production of energy. This has been the strategy: induce, via large government subsidies and tax credits, the construction of vast amounts of wind turbines and solar panels to generate electricity; and as more of those come online, gradually phase out facilities that use fossil fuels, and also phase out nuclear.
Unfortunately, the Germans have been so blinded by their religious fervor to save the planet that nobody bothered to figure out how much energy storage would be needed to back up these intermittent technologies and keep the grid functioning 24/365 in the absence of fossil fuels and nuclear. Now Germany has an excess of wind and solar facilities that, however, are incapable of providing reliable power on their own; and it has inadequate back-up other than natural gas from Russia. Thus Germany is facing an imminent energy disaster.
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Here is When will they figure out that reducing us carbon dioxide emissions is pointless:
The Supreme Court’s West Virginia v. EPA decision a couple of weeks ago has brought forth a big wave of hand wringing in the precincts of the left. How oh how are we now going to save the planet, if our friends at the EPA can no longer order up a nation-wide energy system transformation on their own authority? A couple of examples of the genre come from Ron Brownstein in the Atlantic, and from Coral Davenport in the New York Times, both from Friday July 15.
The funny thing about these pieces, and many others like them, is that the authors seem to have completely lost track of, or failed to follow, what has happened and continues to happen in the arena of international energy consumption. When I started to follow this area in about 2000, the U.S. and Western Europe together accounted for close to two-thirds of world energy consumption, the large majority of it from fossil fuels. Perhaps at that time it was plausible to believe that if only the U.S. and Western Europe could be weaned off the fossil fuels, and could show how that could be done, then the rest of the world would quickly follow along.
But that was more than two decades ago. In the intervening twenty-plus years, the U.S. and Europe have achieved some small reductions in their emissions, but the emissions from the developing world - mostly but by no means exclusively from China - have soared. And they continue to soar. Neither China nor any other large-population developing country has agreed to forego using coal or any other fossil fuel to achieve rapid economic growth. Today U.S. emissions stand at about 15% of those of the world, and continuing to shrink rapidly as a percentage, even if they remain about steady in absolute terms.
In short, the effort to make significant reductions in U.S. carbon emissions is completely pointless. Can someone tell Mr. Brownstein, Ms. Davenport, et al.?
Brownstein’s piece in the Atlantic has the title “Mother Nature Dissents,” rather presumptuously implying that “Mother Nature” disagrees with the Supreme Court’s legal reasoning. The heart of the piece is the usual cherry-picked assortment of extreme weather events, as if every year does not have some extreme and record events somewhere.
With record heat in Texas that is testing the state’s power grid, a California wildfire that has threatened an ancient grove of sequoias considered a foundation stone of the national-park system, and persistent drought across the West that is forcing unprecedented cutbacks in water deliveries from the Colorado River, the summer of 2022 already is shaping up as another season of extreme and dangerous environmental conditions.
Does that seem somehow persuasive to you? If so, you might consider looking at the most recent report of the global satellite temperatures from UAH, which shows that the overall temperature anomaly for the most recent month (June) was +0.06 deg C, barely above the 1991-2020 average, and significantly down from a most recent peak of +0.7 deg C back in 2016. If we are having unusually hot weather in Texas and California, yet the overall world temperature is just about average, then clearly it must be well below average somewhere else. And sure enough it is. From Roy Spencer at UAH:
The tropical (20N-20S) anomaly for June was -0.36 deg. C, which is the coolest monthly anomaly in over 10 years, the coolest June in 22 years, and the 9th coolest June in the 44 year satellite record.
But for Brownstein, a few weeks of hot weather in Texas and California clearly mean that the U.S. government must “do something” to change the climate. And the something is meeting the “carbon reduction targets” of the Paris Agreement of 2016. Moreover the blue states can’t do this on their own, so the feds must act. After all, “scientists say” so:
[I]t’s highly unlikely that action in blue states (and cities) alone will be enough for the U.S. to meet the carbon-reduction targets that scientists say are required to avoid the most catastrophic environmental changes.
Davenport equally reports that “scientists say” that the U.S. must cut its emissions significantly by 2030, and that will somehow affect the climate:
Mr. Biden [has set a] target of cutting the nation’s emissions 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. That is the amount that scientists say the United States must reduce its emissions in order to do its part to avoid the most catastrophic near-term impacts of climate change.
Neither the Brownstein nor the Davenport piece so much as mentions what is going on with fossil fuel use and carbon emissions elsewhere in the world, or the extent to which those developments completely nullify anything the U.S. could ever possibly do to reduce emissions. Consider, for example, recent developments in the production of coal. The U.S. Energy Information Administration puts out an annual report on U.S. coal production, most recently in October 2021 covering the year 2020. They report that U.S. coal production decreased by some 24.2% in 2020 over 2019, falling to 535.4 million short tons. Much of that large reduction was undoubtedly a Covid-related blip that will not be sustained, but assume for these purposes that the U.S. can continue to make such dramatic reductions in its use of coal. The problem is that by this time China produces and uses a multiple of the amount of coal used here in the U.S., and continues to increase its production at a rapid and accelerating rate. From NPR, April 25:
Official plans call for boosting coal production capacity by 300 million tons this year, according to news reports. That is equal to 7% of last year’s output of 4.1 billion tons, which was an increase of 5.7% over 2020.
In other words, China’s coal production and consumption are close to 8 times the levels of the U.S., and just two years of annual increases are approximately equal to full U.S. annual production. Here is a graph from Our World in Data showing the trajectory by which China’s coal production went from approximately equal to that of the U.S. in 2000 to some 8 times as much by 2020 (which is before the further increases noted above by NPR):
Note that in that chart India has also risen past the U.S. in coal production. And with nearly 1.4 billion people - four times the population of the U.S., and just slightly less than that of China - India would well multiply its coal production by 8 over the next 20 years, just as China has done over the past 20. It has made no commitments not to do so.
Brownstein, Davenport, and the rest of the fossil fuel suppression advocacy machine seem blissfully unaware that events have passed them by. By this time, nothing can be done to make it such that reduction in U.S. carbon emissions can result in a meaningful difference in the overall world picture. Fortunately, the likelihood of any catastrophic consequences to the climate is extremely remote.
Note: Manhattan Contrarian has compiled 30 examples of the Scientific Fraud by the ‘scientists’ here
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Actor/comedian Russell Brand tore into the green energy movement, calling it a scam and alleging that it is part of the Great Reset with a goal to bankrupt farmers and grab land across the globe.
Brand hosts a popular podcast where he has been exposing the Great Reset and the plight of farmers. Especially when it comes to the fertilizer shortage and predators like Bill Gates buying up farmland.
Brand discussed Dutch farmers who have been protesting over climate laws being forced on them that are bankrupting their livelihoods. That includes being unable to get the fertilizer needed to grow the crops in the first place.
“This is connected to the land grab of Bill Gates. This is connected to corruption of companies like Monsanto. This whole fertilizer situation is a scam. They present it as a green ideology,” Brand proclaimed.
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See Francis Menton’s latest post on “Get Ready For The 100 Year Long Climate “Emergency here.
I am very concerned that not only through soaring gas prices and across the board inflation, the intended move from fossil fuels which with modern technology had produced cheap and clean and reliable energy to unreliable renewables and to electric cars before replacement inventory and charging solutions are ready will add much more pain to most all American households if we don’t apply the brakes.
HOUSEHOLD HOMES ENERGY COSTS
First of all 90 million homes use fossil fuels for heating/hot water. Replacing this with electric heat would cost $70,000/household if full replacement of the heating/boiler the entire water piping and replacing with heat coils (we might assume 33% households would take this step).
The remainder of households (67% or 60 million households) might elect to reconfigure their setup with a heat pump to deliver hot water into an existing hydronic fluid reservoir and use their existing heat distribution infrastructure to move it into the living spaces. This would cost $10,000/household.
ELECTRIC VEHICLES
Electric cars have appeal and benefits but forcing adoption ahead of the needed infrastructure would add more pain and expense.
Most households have 1 to 4 cars. Electric vehicles vary from $35,000 to over $100,000.
We might assume $130,000/household for purchasing two cars.
ELECTRIC COSTS
Charging is a challenge, Charging stations are few and far between now. The charge costs depend on time of day and time to charge, The easiest would be recharging at home at night. Homeowners would/should have your home electricity configuration upgraded to level 2 for faster charging. EV advocates suggest to expect $9 for 150 miles but the real costs at EV charging stations and with electric companies are likely to vary with the hour. Charging overnight is more convenient and can be cheaper. For home use, the one time upgrade to level 2 may cost $1000 especially if 2 cars or more are involved and must be accommodated. My car has a 16 gallon gas tank and with 25 mpg, I get 400 miles from a tank. In an EV at the $9/150miles it would cost $24. But for an EV at a prime time charge of $16/150 miles that requires 3 charges and $43. See how to do the math here.
This assumes electricity costs do not increase dramatically. We know in the green countries that were early adopter electricity prices were 3 to 5 times higher. Remember when prices for gas and all goods and services began to rise, the government suggested it was temporary and not related to policies like the attack on fossil fuels.
If we saw a 3 fold increase, the costs for electric vehicles would be much greater than promised. The early adopter countries also found the green renewable sources were not reliable with brownouts and deadly blackouts (when the sun doesn’t shine or wind blow). Their first solution was to build coal plants but that did make greens happy. That is why Germany and other countries wanted the liquified natural gas pipeline from Russia.
TOTAL HOUSEHOLD COSTS TECHNOLOGY
$140,000 to $200,000+
TOTAL INCREASE IN ELECTRICITY COSTS
Over $10,000/year short term from demand pressures and supply issues and related inflation and more later from the WOKE policies if we don’t as a society wake up and push back.
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR Trail Times 31 May 2022
‘The planet is not burning and carbon capture is a scam’
This letter is in response to letters by Joslyn Sharp and Robert M. Macrae that were published in the Trail Times, May 5, 2022 ("Skeptical as the planet burns’- Sharp, and ‘Carbon capture: sustainable or scam’ Macrae).
I agree with Sharp that we must “act to save our planet as a hospitable home for our grandchildren” and that “we need to move forward with the best scientific information....”
Moreover, we must take care of the environment without destroying the modern, industrial economy that is dependent upon access to fossil fuels.
Furthermore, we must not fall victim to false prophets of doom nor be misled by politicians that want to control the populace “by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” (H.L. Mencken)
The current ‘pandemic’ of climate alarmism started in the 1970s with the fear of global cooling. This narrative soon evolved into the fear of man-made global warming and was formally launched by the UN’s ‘Framework Convention on Climate Change’ at the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit.
Thirty years later and inspite of a record of failed climate predictions, global-warming alarmism perseveres but under a new label: “Climate Change”. Astonishingly, the alarmists accuse man-made carbon dioxide (aka “CO2”, “carbon emission") for causing a climate emergency.
Consequently, we have been witnessing a war on coal, oil, and natural gas ("fossil fuels"), which are the primary sources of man-made CO2.
In support of this war, Macrae reports that the cost of wind and solar power is less than half the cost of electricity from a coal-fired power plant. If this were true, then why are countries such as China and India expanding their grids with coal-fired power plants?
The war has now escalated to a direct attack on CO2. As many as 30 carbon-capture-storage facilities are now operational with many more being planned, including the development of technology to accelerate the natural sequestration of CO2 in the oceans.
Clearly, carbon capture is a scam but not for the reason cited by Macrae. It is a scam because the “best scientific information” reveals that the oceans are already absorbing an amount equal to 98 percent of our carbon emissions.
Carbon capture is not only a redundant activity, it is also an existential threat. CO2 is as important as sunlight, water, and oxygen in sustaining all life on the planet
Climate change is real and has been occurring since the beginning of time. It now appears that we may be experiencing a cooling trend, having enjoyed rising temperatures since the depths of the Little Ice Age - the Maunder Solar Minimum 1645 to 1715.
Fossil fuels are not only essential in supporting an industrial economy but are also vital for a modern society to survive a period of global cooling. The West appears to be living in a virtual world of “levelized costs” and fatally-flawed climate models; that is, a world that is completely divorced from reality.
According Dr. Patrick Moore, a net-zero carbon agenda is suicidal! “After 40 years of dire predictions, there is certainly no emergency.”
Thorpe Watson, PhD
Warfield
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BBC accused of institutional alarmism as new report reveals long list of climate misinformation
London, 9 June - The BBC has been accused of institutional alarmism as a new report reveals the BBC’s persistent exaggeration and false information when it comes to climate and weather-related news.
The report, compiled by climate researcher Paul Homewood, reveals that the BBC has been forced to correct a dozen false claims and other items of fake news in climate-related coverage after receiving public complaints in recent years.
The report, which has been submitted to the Government’s upcoming Mid-Term Review of the BBC, shows that it has become common practice for BBC reporters to publicize exaggerated and often misleading weather=and climate-related stories in order to hype up the potential risks from global warming.
Net Zero director Benny Peiser said:
“Persistent misrepresentation by BBC journalists in climate news coverage is fuelling the corporation’s institutional alarmism.
“Institutional alarmism is a form of hyped and exaggerated news reporting that is deeply embedded in the BBC. It manifests itself as unbalanced, one-sided coverage of climate risks that are habitually exaggerated and that go uncorrected by the BBC’s in-house fact checkers.”
In 2020, the BBC’s director general warned that the problem posed by disinformation online was increasingly serious and that the BBC would need to work harder than ever to expose fake news and separate fact from fiction.
Since then the corporation has set up a team of fact checkers, a BBC-wide Anti-Disinformation Unit and a Climate Misinformation team. Yet none of these teams of fact checkers noticed or addressed the long list of false news stories that were only corrected by the BBC after lengthy and protracted complaint procedures.
Paul Homewood said:
“There can be little doubt that the cases documented in this report are just the tip of the iceberg. Many other such inaccurate news or false information are broadcast by the BBC without being noticed or complained about.
“It is also true that the BBC regularly try to fob off complainants with spurious replies, leading many to give in. This is even the case when their inaccurate claims are obvious, easily proven and manifest.”
Paul Homewood: Institutional Alarmism: The BBC’s disastrous climate complaints (pdf)
Contact
Paul Homewood
e: phomewooduk@yahoo.co.uk
See the 7th Supplement of our Petition for Reconsideration to the EPA of it’s Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Findings here.
See Part I and Part 2 series I co-produced on climate.
Comment and Declaration on the SEC’s Proposed Rule “The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors”.
William Happer, Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Princeton University and Richard Lindzen, Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
June 17, 2022
Comment and Declaration
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the proposed SEC requiring disclosures of climate related risk caused by fossil fuels and CO2.
We are career physicists who have specialized in radiation physics and dynamic heat transfer for decades.
In our opinion, science demonstrates that there is no climate related risk caused by fossil fuels and CO2 and no climate emergency.
Further, nowhere in the more than 500 pages of the proposed rule is there any reliable scientific evidence that there exists a climate related risk. None. It refers to the International Panel on Climate Change ("IPCC"), the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures ("TCFD") and other outside groups, but never provides any reliable scientific evidence that supports the rule. The science is just assumed. Therefore, there is no reliable scientific basis for the proposed SEC rule.
Further, contrary to what is commonly reported, CO2 is essential to life on earth. Without CO2, there would be no photosynthesis, and thus no plant food and not enough oxygen to breathe.
Moreover, without fossil fuels there will be no low-cost energy worldwide and less CO2 for photosynthesis making food. Eliminating fossil fuels and reducing CO2 emissions will be disastrous for the poor, people worldwide, future generations and the country.
Finally, the cost of the proposed rule is enormous and would have no public benefit. It would increase the reporting burden to companies $6.4 billion, which is 64% more than the $3.9 billion all SEC reporting requirements have cost companies from its beginning in 1934. Id., 87 Fed. Reg., p. 21461.
Thus, the rule must not be adopted or, if adopted, ruled invalid by the courts.
To view the entire comment view pdf here: Happer Lindzen SEC 6-17-22
Reader note the link takes you to 28 pages of detail on WHY Science demonstrates that there is no climate related risk caused by fossil fuels and CO2 and no climate emergency
And explains their CONCLUSION
Thus, in our opinion, science demonstrates that there is no climate emergency and N0 climate related risk caused by fossil fuels and CO2. Therefore, there is no reliable scientific evidence that supports the SEC proposed rule. Further, contrary to what is commonly reported, CO2 is essential to life on earth. Without CO2, there would be no photosynthesis, and thus no plant food and not enough oxygen to breathe. Moreover, without fossil fuels there will be no reliable, low-cost energy worldwide and less CO2 for photosynthesis making food. Eliminating fossil fuels and reducing CO2 emissions will be disastrous for the United States and the rest of the word, especially for lower-income people.
Donn Dears - June 10, 2022 CO2 Coalition
(This is the first of four articles, using published data and simple logic, to demonstrate net-zero carbon is unattainable by 2050 with wind, solar or nuclear, or a combination of these methods for power generation.)
The total number of new wind turbines to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050 is: 995,141. Climate change scaremongers insist we eliminate the use of fossil fuels. But what does that really entail?
Here is the first reality check: Can wind turbines achieve net-zero carbon?
Three steps are required to determine the number of wind turbines needed to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050.
Step 1
Step one determines the number of new wind turbines needed to replace all the electricity generated by fossil fuels in 2021.
Wind produced 380 billion kWh, or 9.2% of all the electricity generated in 2021.
The average nameplate rating of existing wind turbines in the United States is approximately 2.5 MW. Based on a Capacity Factor of 32% for these turbines, there were 54,244 wind turbines in the US in 2021.
Subtracting nuclear and renewables from total generation determines the kWh generated by fossil fuels. Dividing the kWh produced by fossil fuels, by the kWh generated per wind turbine determines the number of additional wind turbines needed to replace the electricity produced by fossil fuels in 2021.
Number of new wind turbines needed to replace fossil fuels = 358,447
Step 2
Step two is to determine the new wind turbines needed to supply the electricity needed when light vehicles are all battery-powered, and homes use electricity for heating rather than natural gas. The national renewable energy lab (NREL) has determined that total electricity consumption will double when all light vehicles are BEVs and homes rely on electricity for heating. Hydro can’t be doubled, and without increasing other miscellaneous renewables, the additional electricity generated by wind turbines will equal the amount generated by all methods in 2021, i.e., 4,116 billion kWh.
Number of new wind turbines to double electricity consumption by 2050 = 587,329
Step 3
Step three is to determine the number of new wind turbines needed to generate the electricity required to produce enough hydrogen to make steel and cement that meet net-zero carbon requirements. There’s little reliable data on using hydrogen in the making of cement, while there is considerable data for using hydrogen in the making of steel. The estimate shown here for the number of new wind turbines is based on the amount of hydrogen required to make 62 million tons of steel, which excludes the amount of steel made using scrap in electric arc furnaces, and then doubling the number of wind turbines to compensate for the production of cement. (The United States produced 87.9 million tons of steel in 2021.)
Number of new wind turbines required to generate the electricity used by electrolyzers to produce the hydrogen to make steel and cement = 49,365
Summary
The total number of new wind turbines to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050 is: 995,141
(358,447 + 587,329 + 49,365 = 995,141)
The average number of wind turbines installed in one year after 2004 was 3,000, which, at that rate, means it will take 332 years to install all the wind turbines needed to achieve net-zero.
The maximum number ever installed in one year was 5,680 which, at that rate, would mean it would take 175 years to install all the needed wind turbines.
Wind turbines larger than 2.5 MW are under development, mostly for off-shore installations, however a very few units rated 5 MW or more have been installed in the US. Recognizing there is a possibility that units rated 5 MW might be installed in the US:
It would be necessary to install 17,770 units rated 5 MW every year over the 28 years between now and 2050. This is three times the number of smaller units ever installed in one year.
Additional considerations
Nuclear power plants are scheduled to be shut down beginning in 2032, with all existing nuclear power plants shut down by 2064. There is no provision in the above calculations for the additional wind turbines needed to replace the nuclear power plants shut down before 2050.
Wind turbines have an expected life of 20 years. This means that:
All 54,244 wind turbines installed before 2022 will also have to be replaced before 2050.
All wind turbines built between now and 2030 will also have to be replaced before 2050.
These additional wind turbines have not been included in the above calculations.
Batteries are required to provide back up for when the wind doesn’t blow. No battery has yet been invented that can provide the needed amount of storage to replace the electricity lost if the wind fails to blow for a week or two.
Conclusion
If wind turbines are used in an attempt to eliminate fossil fuels, it will require building over 995,141 new wind turbines rated 2.5 MW between now and 2050.
The largest number of wind turbines ever installed in one year was 5,680, which means it would take 175 years to build the necessary number of units rated 2.5 MW. If larger 5 MW units were used it would require installing over 17,770 units every year between now and 2050, which is three times the number of smaller units ever installed in one year. And of course, storage using batteries that have yet to be developed will also be required. This reality check should give everyone pause, as it demonstrates that it’s not possible to eliminate fossil fuels using wind turbines.
Net-zero carbon cannot be achieved using wind turbines.
Recently, Dr. John Robson of the Climate Discussion Nexus (CDN) interviewed CERES co-team leader, Dr. Ronan Connolly, on the role of the Sun in recent climate change.
CDN have now published their 20 minute “explaine” video including extracts from this interview and discussion of some of CERES’ recent scientific research. Although the video covers quite a few technical points, they are explained in a very clear and accessible manner.
Topics covered include:
The significance of the debates between the two main rival satellite estimates of solar activity trends since 1978, i.e., PMOD and ACRIM.
How using either PMOD or ACRIM to calibrate the pre-satellite era solar data can give very different estimates of how much solar activity has changed since the 19th century and earlier.
How politics and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports have downplayed the possible role of solar activity in recent climate change.
The urbanization bias problem of current thermometer-based estimates of global temperature trends since the 19th century.
The video refers to Connolly et al. (2021), i.e., this recent CERES-led scientific paper:
R. Connolly, W. Soon, M. Connolly, S. Baliunas, J. Berglund, C. J. Butler, R. G. Cionco, A. G. Elias, V. M. Fedorov, H. Harde, G. W. Henry, D. V. Hoyt, O. Humlum, D. R. Legates, S. Luning, N. Scafetta, J.-E. Solheim, L. Szarka, H. van Loon, V. M. Velasco Herrera, R. C. Willson, H. Yan and W. Zhang (2021). How much has the Sun influenced Northern Hemisphere temperature trends? An ongoing debate. Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics 21, 131. Link (preprint pdf).
See here for our press release summary of Connolly et al. (2021)
The video can be found on the CDN website here and the Youtube link is embedded below:
Climate Discussion Nexus’s latest “Backgrounder” John Robson explains that a technical dispute about satellite readings of solar output since 1979 is of enormous importance because temperature fluctuations over the last four decades correlate very closely with cycles in the sun’s activity or have nothing to do with them depending who’s right about the calibration of some backup sensors.
What about the 540 AD global cooling?