It was a cold May night for many in the city of Bengaluru, India. The mercury dipped to 52 degrees Fahrenheit, a low not witnessed in the last 50 years.
The same week, some Indian cities made global headlines not for unusual cold but for extreme heat. Followers of international news likely have seen reports about heat waves and historic high temperatures in South Asia.
“India and Pakistan are no strangers to extreme temperatures, but the current heatwave stands out for its early-season timing, its rapid onset, its extent, and its severity,” reported Vox. “Researchers are now investigating how much human-caused climate change contributed to the severe heat across South Asia.”
However, the mainstream media did not report the record cold that occurred in other parts of India during the same week. It left me wondering: Is the media representing reality accurately or intentionally emphasizing hot weather to promote its climate narrative?
Welcome to the journalism of the climate cult - a systematic reporting of any and every extreme heat event as evidence of pending thermal doomsday while cold weather goes unreported or underreported.
India’s capital Delhi topped the news when the mainstream media used a heat wave as a vehicle for promoting climate fear. Yet at the same time, Western media ignored the coldest day in 50 years in Bengaluru, where I live.
May 12 was the coldest day for the month in the city since 1972. A weather event that had a high probability of occurring, the cold was partly due to a cyclonic system and proof neither of extreme climate change nor of its absence.
Likewise, the extreme heat was a weather event that cannot be attributed exclusively to the trend in global average temperature - a measure that has been reasonably stable since the beginning of this century.
Delhi is notorious for its urban heat island, where a high density of structures causes a heat pocket and compounds the effect of natural warmth. Little relief is provided by houses lacking windows for ventilation and crammed against each other in narrow lanes. The heat can make you feel like a pizza inside a brick oven.
On May 13, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tweeted an image of Delhi heat islands, contrasting the city with the cooler countryside. Most cities in India are now experiencing the phenomenon, the likely reason behind increasingly unbearable conditions in summer months.
If international media were to give equal coverage to hot and cold as weather events, their climate narrative would fall to pieces. The same would happen if reporters were to acknowledge the effects of heat islands in cities like Delhi, Gurgaon, and Pakistan’s Karachi - oft-used examples of so-called climate change’s heat.
This irresponsible reporting extends well beyond Asia. In the past few weeks, unusually cold temperatures were recorded across the globe with little notice from the media.
Canada’s Victoria International Airport set a temperature of 33.4 degree Fahrenheit, the lowest May 12 temperature since 1964. Similarly, in Puerto Rico, Italy, and Spain, the average temperature for April was below normal
In the United States’ lower 48, April temperatures were 1.17 degrees Fahrenheit lower than normal. Even with global wheat futures hitting a high amidst a shortage, the media ignored the disruption of the planting season by cold May weather.
A public brainwashed by a corrupt - or inept - media is ill-equipped to face the real consequences of cold weather while suffering anxiety over a made-up climate emergency.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, VA, and holds a masters degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, UK. He resides in Bengaluru, India.
This commentary was first published at Biz Pac Review May 23, 2022
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Joseph D’Aleo
By the way each year as Vijay will tell you, the major media will report on the pre-monsoonal heat in India that develops and helps draw in the moisture that drives the seasonal monsoon. (BTW the same behavior/hype is seen here in the southwest US before the summer rains).
Expect the media to jump on flooding from the monsoon rains and trying to tie it to greenhouse warming.
See in 2010 here how an Indian PhD scientist, Madhav Khandekar whose career brought him to Canada as a Environment Canada Meteorologist and our very own Wille Soon wrote how the climate modelers and their tinker toy climate models were promising they could predict monsoon success or failure. We could show you the ENSO state (MEI) alone could be used as a skillful predictor.
BTW, Madhav often travels back to India in winter to escape frigid Canada. He reported on Icecap and published papers on how cold in India was the killer not pre monsoonal heat and there were signs that the next cold period may be starting.
In 2020, human deaths due to cold waves were 76 times more than those due to heat waves, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD).
As many as 152 deaths were recorded due to cold waves in 2020 in comparison to just two deaths as a result of heat waves, the Envi-Stats India 2021, Vol. 1 by the Ministry of Statistics, mentioned.
In 2020, deaths from cold waves in proportion to that from heat waves recorded officially were the highest in 20 years, the report mentioned. India recorded 99 days of cold waves in 2020, according to IMD.
There has been a nearly 2.7 times increase in the number of cold wave days from 2017-2020, the report showed. Cold waves killed more Indians than heat waves from 1980-2018.
The number of cold wave days have been consistently on the rise since 2017. In 2018, the country witnessed 63 days of cold waves, which increased 1.5 times to 103 in 2019.
India recorded the least deaths due to heat waves in 2020, when the country was under lockdown for months due to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
In 2011, nearly 60-times more deaths were recorded in comparison to heat waves. Cold waves claimed 722 lives and heat waves 12, according to IMD.
And last Saturday:
URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
National Weather Service Portland OR
137 PM PDT Sat May 28 2022
Northern Oregon Cascades-Cascades in Lane County-South Washington Cascades- including the cities of Santiam Pass, McKenzie Pass, Willamette Pass, and Mount St. Helens
137 PM PDT Sat May 28 2022
...WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 8 PM THIS EVENING TO 11 AM PDT SUNDAY ABOVE 4500 FEET…
* WHAT...Wet snow expected above 4500 feet. Total snow accumulations of 3 to 6 inches for the South Washington, and 5 to 10 inches for the Oregon Cascades with higher amounts expected above 6000 feet. Winds gusting as high as 50 mph on exposed ridges and peaks.
* WHERE...In Oregon, Northern Oregon Cascades and Cascades in Lane County. In Washington, South Washington Cascades.
See here if the earth cools as the next phase of the 60 year +/- cycle goes back cold as was the general opinion was underway at the time:
See how ice cores suggest we may be on the downside of the current interglacial and closer to the next ice age than to a dangerously warm future.
I just got a heating oil delivery - 50% up from the winter ($1067). We live in a modest, energy efficient home. The heating oil is 278% higher in the current administration. Gasoline is up 249% here in New England.
Our country (and world) is in a mess - not just the war in Ukraine - but the UN progressive drive New World Order not just a plan on paper but being implemented. Much of the world is feeling the effect. See this compelling real story on ”41 Inconvenient Truths on the “New Energy Economy”.The elites, most very rich and largely unaffected by their idealistic radical programs that they pushed through the world governments and indoctrinated our young people in schools to support. Many of my colleagues - mostly retired - are engaging in the push back. Those still working for government and schools stay quiet or if they have the courage to be vocal are silenced (see). Even NOAA and NASA have beautiful web sites sadly filled with bad science.
We started Icecap 15 years ago. The software was built for me and my small team. Many of those who I worked with have sadly passed on. I do all the posting now. I am still working in the forecasting industry part time and do consulting work. I am not a programmer and rely on a large web hoster to keep the old software working. The company moved to California from Texas and we were down at times in recent weeks. Thanks for your patience and for your support in the last few years. I came close to shutting it down. I have been told by a team I volunteer for that submitted Request for Reconsideration of the EPA Endangerment finding which attempts to blame all losses from extremes of weather on Greenhouse gases - ignoring the facts they got the science wrong and that CO2 is a plant fertilizer responsible for the rising crop yields that has helped to feed the planet. The Sahara has shrunk 8% in recent decades, our economy thrived when we were energy independent. The plans of the current administration and world governments will lead to not only costly energy but brownouts and blackouts, a real threat in heat and cold to health. Rising energy costs drive up the coast for everything. Remember a few years ago, we warned if carbon control was mandated, the cost for average families would increase by 10-20% (energy and energy based inflation). We are well on the way. Please help us keep going by DONATING even small amounts and get the message out. I am working with scientists to fight the good fight. I have joined the CO2 Coalition team and others as possible.
Thank God for the growing number of organizations and web sites and news services reporting the truth. Here is another one.
Analyst Warns World Has Just ‘Ten Weeks’ of Wheat Supplies Left in Storage
Jack Phillips, The Epoch Times
May 22, 2022 Updated: May 22, 2022
A food insecurity expert said the world has only about 10 weeks of wheat supplies left in storage amid the conflict in Ukraine and as India has moved to bar exports of wheat in recent weeks.
Sara Menker, the CEO of agriculture analytics firm Gro Intelligence, told the United Nations Security Council that the Russia-Ukraine war “simply added fuel to a fire that was long burning,” saying that it is not the primary cause of the wheat shortage. Ukraine and Russia both produce close to about a third of the world’s wheat.
“I want to start by explicitly saying that the Russia-Ukraine war did not start the food security crisis. It simply added fuel to a fire that was long burning. A crisis we detected tremors from long before the COVID 19 pandemic exposed the fragility of our supply chains,” Menker said, according to a transcript.
“I share this because we believe it’s important for you all to understand that even if the war were to end tomorrow, our food security problem isn’t going away anytime soon without concerted action.”
In providing data, Menker said that due to price increases in major crops this year, it’s made another 400 million worldwide “food insecure,” adding that with wheat, the world “currently only [has] 10 weeks of global consumption sitting in inventory around the world.”
“Conditions today are worse than those experienced in 2007 and 2008,” she continued to say. “It is important to note that the lowest grain inventory levels the world has ever seen are now occurring while access to fertilizers is highly constrained, and drought in wheat growing regions around the world is the most extreme it’s been in over 20 years. Similar inventory concerns also apply to corn and other grains. Government estimates are not adding up.”
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of blocking Ukraine from exporting wheat, which Russia has categorically denied. Blinken alleged Moscow is using wheat as a weapon of war.
“The Russian government seems to think that using food as a weapon will help accomplish what its invasion has not ... to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people,” Blinken said.
However, Menker noted that droughts across the world are contributing to wheat shortages. Fertilizer shortages and other weather issues have added fuel to the fire, she also remarked.
It comes as David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program, said the world is now facing “an unprecedented crisis,” noting that 49 million people in 43 nations are “knocking on famine’s door.” With famine comes political destabilization, he noted.
“We are already seeing riots and protesting taking place as we speak - Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Pakistan, Peru,” he said. “We’ve seen destabilizing dynamics already in the Sahel from Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad. These are only signs of things to come.”
Jack Phillips is a breaking news reporter at The Epoch Times based in New York.
References to climate change almost guarantee funding, even for research topics of little interest beyond academia and eco-activists. Polls reveal that most people worry most about energy and food prices, crime, living standards, Putin’s war on Ukraine, and increasing efforts to control their lives.
A recent study by Rutgers University scientists sought to determine how much diversity is required among bee species to sustain wild plant populations. They concluded that ecosystems rely on many bee species to flourish - and “biodiversity is key to sustaining life on Earth,” especially with many species “rapidly going extinct due to climate change and human development.”
US Geological Survey wildlife biologist Sam Droege says wild bees are generally “doing fine.” However, they definitely face challenges, primarily due to habitat loss, disease, and competition from managed honeybees and bumblebees - not to pesticides, since most wild bee species don’t pollinate crops.
That brings us to one of Wokedom’s favorite topics: intersectionality - in this case, actual connections among bees, climate change, habitat losses, and threats to our energy, living standards, and freedoms.
Simply put, the gravest threat to wildlife habitats and biodiversity (and to people’s rights, needs, and living standards) is not climate change. It is policies and programs created, implemented, and imposed in the name of preventing climate change.
Let’s examine habitat and biodiversity threats - without asking whether any climate changes today or in the future are still primarily natural, or are now driven by fossil fuels. Let’s just look at what purported solutions to the alleged “climate crisis” would likely do to the planet and creatures we love. In reality:
The most intensive land use - and thus greatest habitat destruction - is from programs most beloved, advocated, and demanded by rabid greens: wind, solar, biofuel and battery energy, and organic farming.
Team Biden is still intent on getting 100% hydrocarbon-free electricity by 2035. It wants to eliminate fossil fuels throughout the US economy by 2050: no coal or natural gas for electricity generation; no gasoline or diesel for vehicles; no natural gas for manufacturing, heating, cooking or other needs.
America’s electricity demand would soar from 2.7 billion megawatt-hours per year (the fossil fuel portion of total US electricity) to almost 7.5 billion MWh by 2050. Substantial additional generation would be required to constantly recharge backup batteries for windless, sunless periods. Corn-based ethanol demand would disappear, but biofuel crops would have to replace petrochemical feedstocks for paints, plastics, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, cell phones, wind turbine blades, and countless other products.
This is just for the USA. Extrapolate these demands to the rest of a fossil-fuel-free developed world ... to China and India ...and to poor countries determined to take their rightful places among Earth’s healthy and prosperous people - and “clean, green” energy requirements become monumental, incomprehensible.
We’re certainly looking at tens of thousands of offshore wind turbines, millions of onshore turbines, billions of photovoltaic solar panels, billions of vehicle and backup battery modules, and tens of thousands of miles of new transmission lines. Hundreds of millions of acres of US farmland, scenic areas, and wildlife habitats would be affected - blanketed with enormous industrial facilities, biofuel operations, and power lines.
Add in the enormous and unprecedented mining, processing, and manufacturing required to make all these energy-inefficient technologies - mostly outside the United States - and the land use, habitat loss, and toxic pollution would gravely threaten people, wildlife, and the planet.
Let’s take a closer look, now just from a US perspective, but knowing these are global concerns.
Solar power. 72,000 high-tech sun-tracking solar panels at Nevada’s sunny Nellis Air Force Base cover 140 acres but generate only 32,000 MWh per year. That’s 33% of rated capacity; 0.0004% of 2050 US electricity needs. Low-tech stationary panels have far lower efficiency and generating capacity, especially in more northern latitudes. Meeting 2050 US electricity needs would require Nevada sunshine and nearly 235,000 Nellis systems on 33,000,000 acres (equal to Alabama).
Triple that acreage for low-tech stationary panels in less sunny areas. For reference, Dominion Energy alone is planning 490 square miles of panels (8 times Washington, DC) just in Virginia, just for Virginia. Then add all the transmission lines.
Wind power. 355 turbines at Indiana’s Fowler Ridge industrial wind facility cover 50,000 acres (120 acres/turbine) and generate electricity just over 25% of the time. Even at just 50 acres per turbine, meeting 2050 US power needs would require 2 million 1.8-MW wind turbines, on 99,000,000 acres (equal to California), if they generate electricity 25% of the year.
But the more turbines (or solar panels) we need, the more we have to put them in sub-optimal areas, where they might work 15% of the year. The more we install, the more they reduce wind flow for the others. And some of the best US wind zones are along the Canada-to-Texas flyway for migrating birds - which would mean the massive, unsustainable slaughter of cranes, raptors, other birds, and bats.
Go offshore, and even President Biden’s call for 30,000 MW of electricity (2,500 monster 12-MW turbines) wouldn’t meet New York State’s peak summertime electricity needs.
Biofuels and wood pellets. America already grows corn in an area larger than Iowa, to meet current ethanol quotas. Keep-fossil-fuels-in-the-ground lobbyists need to calculate how many acres of soybeans, canola, and other biofuel crops would be needed to replace today’s petrochemical feedstocks; how much water, fertilizer, labor, and fuel would be needed to grow harvest and process them; and how much acreage would have to be taken from food production or converted from bee and wildlife habitat.
Climate activists also approve of cutting down thousands of acres of North American hardwood forests - nearly 300,000,000 trees per year - and turning them into wood pellets, which are hauled by truck and cargo ship to England’s Drax Power Plant. There they are burned to generate electricity so that the UK can “meet its renewable fuel targets.” And that’s just one “carbon-neutral” power plant. That’s one year to slash and burn the fuel, and fifty years to regrow replacement trees. This is not green, sustainable energy.
Organic farming. Environmentalists dream of converting all US (and even all global) agriculture to 100% organic. That would further reduce wildlife habitats - dramatically - especially if we are to simultaneously eliminate world hunger ... and replace petrochemicals organically.
Organic farms require up to 30% more land to achieve the same yields as conventional agriculture, and most of the land needed to make that happen is now forests, wildflower fields, and grasslands. Organic farmers (and consumers) also reject synthetic fertilizers, which means more land would have to be devoted to raising animals for their manure unless human wastes are used. More lost wildlife habitat.
They reject modern chemical pesticides that prevent billions of tons of food from being eaten or ruined but utilize toxic copper, sulfur, and nicotine-based pesticides. They even reject biotechnology (genetic engineering) that creates crops that are blight-resistant, require less water, permit no-till farming, need fewer pesticide treatments, and bring much higher yields per acre. Translation: even less wildlife habitat
There are alternatives, of course. Government mandates and overseers could require that “average” American families live in 640-square-foot apartments, slash their energy use, ride only bicycles or public transportation, and fly only once every few years. They could also switch us to “no-obesity” diets.
Indeed, “scientists” are again saying we “common folks” could “reduce our carbon footprints” by eating less beef and chicken, and more insect protein, ground-up bugs - or roasted bumblebees. Or we could just reduce the number of “cancerous, parasitic” humans. (Perhaps beginning with wannabe overseers?)
See the 50 failed predictions here.
Image from here.
One of those big bad energy companies has been found guilty of killing 150 rare eagles. You might have missed the story because it wasn’t headline news around the world, which may have something to do with the company being a darling of the renewables movement rather than an oil company and it was wind turbines, not a pipeline rupture or tanker leak, that did the damage. But wind turbines are, indeed, making bird salad. The US government has finally noticed that putting giant spinning blades in bird migratory routes is causing slaughter, especially of large raptors. Not that the wrist slap is likely to put a stop to it.
The impact to bird populations is very serious, as a new study has pointed out.
“Of California’s 23 vulnerable bird species studied (barn owls, golden eagles, road runners, yellow-billed cuckoos...), scientists have found 11 are now experiencing at least a 20% decline in their population growth rates because wind turbines and solar panels are killing them and/or destroying their limited-range habitat.”
Great Golden Eagles, Batman. Can these energy sources, that use so many resources to deliver so little power in such an unreliable way with such a hideous waste-disposal issue at the end of their rather fleeting lives, also be an environmental catastrophe while operating? Are the greens’ favourites the worst imaginable choice in virtually every way? And in California?
Yes, yes and yes. And while you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, there are some species whose eggs you cannot legally break for good reason. As the study in question says,
“We assessed the vulnerability of populations for 23 priority bird species killed at wind and solar facilities in California, USA. Bayesian hierarchical models suggested that 48% of these species were vulnerable to population-level effects from added fatalities caused by renewables and other sources.”
And yes, it’s enough to put you to sleep but then shake you violently awake again. Especially that business about “population-level effects”.
“Effects of renewables extended far beyond the location of energy production to impact bird populations in distant regions across continental migration networks. Populations of species associated with grasslands where turbines were located were most vulnerable to wind. Populations of nocturnal migrant species were most vulnerable to solar, despite not typically being associated with deserts where the solar facilities we evaluated were located.”
You mess with nature and bad things happen, apparently. And suddenly the remarkable features of hydrocarbon fuels, namely their energy density, ease of transportation, small footprint, safe storage and so on require a second look...don’t they?
Probably not. As we’ve indicated before, support for nuclear power is something of a sanity test for those who absolutely loathe fossil fuels, and so is awareness that this sort of ecological carnage is a disaster in real as well as PR terms. But it’s a test notable for its high failure rate among climate alarmists.
We mentioned golden eagles above because, as Robert Bradley wrote on Master Resource,
“For decades, the American Wind Energy Association (now part of the American Clean Power Association) has dismissed the ‘avian mortality problem’ as little different than everyday deaths of birds from cats and windows. The Sierra Club echoes this argument in ground-zero wind growth states such as Michigan.”
And while, as he says, it was always a feeble response given how poorly wind power performs, it’s especially so because “It is an open secret was that golden eagles are the particular victims of industrial wind, which inspired a Sierra Club official to dub the technology the ‘Cuisinarts of the Air.’’” Ouch. As Bradley adds, “thus the joke: ‘When is an environmentalist not an environmentalist? ... When it comes to windpower.’”
The firm that recently fessed up to killing eagles is called ESI, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources which touts itself in the predictable modern way. “Fessed up” is a term here meaning pled guilty in court and accepted fines and restitution exceeding $8 million after it was shown to have ignored warnings from the US Fish and Wildlife Service not to build turbines in high-risk locations. But why would they heed the warnings since the federal government paid them to do it; Bradley quotes a U.S. Department of Justice press release that includes:
“According to the information filed in this case… ESI and its affiliates began commercial operations at new facilities on a schedule intended to meet, among other things, power purchase agreement commitments and qualifying deadlines for particular tax credit rates for renewable energy, and with production amounts not impacted by avoidance and minimization measures that might have been required under an eagle take permit. ESI and its affiliates received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal tax credits for generating electricity from wind power at facilities that it operated, knowing that multiple eagles would be killed and wounded without legal authorization, and without, in most instances, paying restitution or compensatory mitigation...”
Still, $8 million is a stiff fine, right? Well, not really. As Gregory Wrightstone observed over at CO2Coalition.org, ESI took steps that did, predictably, kill at least 150 bald and golden eagles at 50 facilities without getting the necessary permits. And “Why would ESI simply fail to do the paperwork that is regularly a part of the process for permitting wind facilities? The answer: money, and a lot of it… This $8 million settlement appears to be the cost of doing business for ESI in order for them to cash in on the Big Wind green energy scam.” Seems incentives matter after all. And what sort of incentives are these?
“The legalized slaughter of eagles and other large birds of prey was legitimized under the Obama administration and continues today. At the time, it was estimated that nearly 600,000 birds of all types were killed by the much smaller wind footprint at that time, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles. Unknown to most citizens is the fact that the FWS [the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] has established a “take limit” for wind energy companies to kill bald eagles. This would be similar to a bag limit for a hunter. However, hunters dare not as they are not of the protected class and would be subject to a maximum fine of $250,000 or two years of imprisonment for a felony conviction. FWS regularly imposes fines on oil companies and electric transmission firms for inadvertent deaths of bald eagles, all the while giving its seal of approval to green-induced eagle carnage of a grand scale from turbines.”
See the joke about an environmentalist above. But as Wrightstone concludes his piece, “Those promoting the flawed idea that a complete transition from fossil fuels to an economy driven solely by wind and solar need to ask themselves, ‘At what cost?’” And what other cause would they say legitimizes this mass killing of such birds?
It is perfectly reasonable to work to ensure clean air and water and towards conservation of our resources. I have always considered myself a conservationist and environmentalist. In the post war boom, we had problems with air pollution from factories, coal plants, cars, inefficient home heating systems and incinerators in apartments. We had air quality issues with pollutants like soot, SO2, ozone, hydrocarbons, NOx, and lead, We set standards that had to be met by industry and automakers. We have the cleanest air in my lifetime and in the world today.
The term “carbon pollution” is a deliberate, ambiguous, disingenuous term, designed to mislead people into thinking carbon dioxide is pollution. It is used by the environmentalists to confuse the environmental impacts of CO2 emissions with the impact of the emissions of unwanted waste products of combustion. The burning of carbon-based fuels (fossil fuels - coal, oil, natural gas - and biofuels and biomass) converts the carbon in the fuels to carbon dioxide (CO2), which is an odorless invisible gas that is plant food and it is essential to life on the planet.
Because the burning of the fuel is never 100% efficient, trace amounts of pollutants including unburnt carbon are produced in the form of fine particulates (soot), hydrocarbon gases and carbon monoxide. In addition, trace amounts of sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and other pollutant constituents can be produced. In the US, all mobile and industrial stationary combustion sources must have emission control systems that remove the particulates and gaseous pollutants so that the emissions are in compliance with EPA’s emission standards. The ambient air pollutant concentrations have been decreasing for decades and are going to keep decreasing for the foreseeable future because of existing non-GHG-related regulations.
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To ensure that the air is safe to breathe, the Clean Air Act (CAA) requires the EPA to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for the most harmful ubiquitous air pollutants. The NAAQS are set at levels requisite to protect human health and welfare with an adequate margin of safety. These ubiquitous pollutants are called the Criteria Air Pollutants and include: fine particulates (PM2.5), larger particulates (PM10), carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, lead, and ozone (O3). The CAA also required States to develop plans to manage the emissions and concentrations of these pollutants so that the NAAQS are attained in every part of the US.
As a result, most areas of the US attain the NAAQS for all the pollutants most of the time. The ambient concentrations have been decreasing for decades (see charts below) and are going to keep decreasing for the foreseeable future because of existing regulations. For the few areas of the US that are in violation of a NAAQS, the States have (or are in the process of) developed plans to attain them in the near future.
It needs to be noted that the current healthy air quality in the US has been achieved with existing regulations that have nothing to do with climate or CO2 regulations.
The EPA and the environmentalists have claimed that the co-benefits of CO2 reductions justify the enactment of CO2-reduction regulations. These co-benefits assume that deaths and other health effects due to exposures of PM2.5 and O3 will be avoided. This assumption is erroneous because the relationships that EPA uses to calculate the purported health effects are based on epidemiology studies that used flawed statistical methods. When the proper methods are used, no causal relationship is found between either PM2.5 or O3 and premature mortality or other serious health effects at levels currently measured in the US.
The environmentalists also claim that rising temperatures caused by increasing CO2 levels will exacerbate PM2.5 and O3 air pollution. This claim is flawed for a number of reasons.
First, as detailed elsewhere, there is no convincing evidence that increasing CO2 levels has caused global temperatures to rise. Second, there is no consistency in EPA model predictions that increasing temperatures will actually cause PM2.5, which is purported to cause most of the health effects and mortality, to increase. In fact, the country by country PM2.5 from NASA and the WHO shows the U.S. with reliance on clean natural gas shows the lowest small particulate count along with Scandinavia and Australia in the world.
Although there is general agreement that higher temperatures will cause increased O3 formation, that only occurs if emissions of O3 precursors remain unchanged. The reality in the US is that O3 precursors have been and will continue to decrease for the foreseeable future. EPA has shown ozone has actually decreased decreased 33% since 1980 and PM2.5 decreased 41% since 2000.
In addition, if for any reason, concentrations of any Criteria Pollutant ever went up so as to exceed its NAAQS anywhere in the Country, the CAA provides mechanisms that are already in place requiring the States to revise their plans to offset any increases.
Finally, as discussed above, the basic premise that PM2.5 and O3 are causing serious health effects in the US at their current levels is simply false
Sulfur dioxide was a few decades ago in the news for its implication in acid rain. When sulfur dioxide reacts with rain or fog, sulfuric acid forms and becomes acid rain or mist (smog). Smog event in Donora PA in 1948 - 7,000 of the 14,000 population experienced damaged lungs, 20 died. The incident led to a series of clean air regulations and culminated in the US Clean Air Act of 1970. Acid rain continued to be a concern into the 1980s before measures were invoked that reduced SO2 by 94%., an environmental success story.
Note that carbon dioxide is not listed as a criteria pollutant. It is essential for all plant life. We breathe in 400ppm CO2 and breathe out 40,000 ppm. It is pumped into greenhouses. A greening of the planet has occurred as a result of the increases the last century. The Sahara desert has shrunk by 8%!
This image shows the change in leaf area across the globe from 1982-2015.
Dr. Craig Idso in Master Resource writes ”Perhaps the most well-known and significant biological benefit of Earth’s rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration is enhanced plant production. Over the past five decades literally thousands of laboratory and field-based studies have been conducted to examine growth-related responses of plants at higher levels of atmospheric CO2. These CO2-enrichment studies, as they are called, are near unanimous in what they have found - increased levels of CO2 significantly enhance plant photosynthesis and stimulate growth.”
The use of fossil fuels to help regulate heat and cold, has led to greater prosperity and reduced poverty. Deaths from weather extremes have declined since 1920.
By the way, perversely, when families can’t afford to pay for the energy (heating oil, gas or electricity) to heat their homes in winter as will be the case with the forced change to unreliable wind and solar, they revert to burning wood. This introduces the particulate matter and other ‘pollutants’ we have worked so hard to remove at the source. Some use kerosene heaters and some deadly fires result.
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming...would fit the bill...It does not matter if this common enemy is “a real one or....one invented for the purpose.” Quote by the Club of Rome “First Global Revolution” 1991.
“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.” Timothy Wirth, U.S. Senator, president of the United Nation’s Foundation.
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