It’s amazing how many people want to use climate change - and the Covid-19 lockdown - as a justification, blueprint or dress rehearsal for reducing global energy use and CO2 emissions, transforming the US and global economic systems, and redistributing the world’s wealth and resources. They’re now claiming the three-month lockdown’s “success” in slashing fossil fuel consumption proves we can do this on a permanent basis, by imposing a global Green New Deal that will be all gain with no pain. My article this week explores these claims, and finds them sorely wanting.
I hope you enjoy it and thank you for posting it, quoting from it, and forwarding it to your friends and colleagues.
Best regards,
Paul
The Green New Deal dress rehearsal
The Covid-19 lockdown as a blueprint for a permanent economic shutdown to ‘save the Earth’
Paul Driessen
More than 1.4 million cases of Wuhan Coronavirus and 106,000 deaths in the United States alone have accompanied stay-home lockdowns, businesses bankruptcies, over 40 million unemployed workers, plummeting tax revenues and unprecedented debt. Ongoing rioting, vandalism, arson and looting are compounding problems for many cities and minority communities.
But where many see disaster, others see opportunity. Some want to use the crises to enact laws and welfare programs they could never get otherwise. More ambitious activists see the lockdown as a blueprint or dress rehearsal for a total energy, economic and lifestyle transformation to “save the planet.” If three months of Covid lockdowns can reduce fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, they argue, permanent fossil fuel bans are possible, essential and should be undertaken immediately.
Five years ago, former UN official Christiana Figueres said the real goal of climate actions was to “intentionally transform the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years” - and replace it with socialist-environmentalist global governance. More recently, she said post-Corona economic stimulus packages should be used to “kick-start” investments “in low-carbon infrastructure projects that will create jobs and put the world on a safer, fairer, more resilient path.” Others want to use climate change as a pretext for dictating how global wealth and resources will be redistributed.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff is on the same page. The Green New Deal “wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” he said in May 2019. It was “a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.” Presidential candidate Joe Biden and other leading Democrats have endorsed the GND.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres believes “the pandemic could create an opportunity to rebuild the global economy along more sustainable lines.” His environment chief thinks COVID-19 presents “a chance to do capitalism differently.” The UN Green Climate Fund says it “offers an opportunity to direct finances towards bolstering climate action
and “re-launch[ing] economies on low-emission, climate-resilient trajectories,” to control climate and weather and prevent massive extinctions.
In short, echoing former Obama science advisor John Holdren, they want the United States and other modern societies to de-develop and de-industrialize, establish low-consumption life styles that ensure “more equitable distribution of wealth,” and tell poor countries how much “ecologically feasible” development they will be permitted to pursue.
Perhaps most important, these “visionary” ruling elites will be in charge. They will define what is clean, green, renewable, sustainable, ecologically feasible, safer, fairer, more resilient. They will demand less travel, trade and commerce - for the masses. They will live quite well, while telling today’s oilfield and factory workers their industries must disappear and they must be content with minimum-wage jobs installing, maintaining and dismantling wind turbines and solar panels made overseas.
Fans and implementers of Covid-19 lockdowns have been oblivious to the economic, societal and human devastation caused by the lockdowns: not just economic losses, depleted savings and ruined dreams, but millions of cases of depression, drug addiction, alcoholism, domestic violence, obesity, stroke, heart attack, thousands of deaths from these causes, and suicide and murder attributable to the lockdowns.
Add to that millions of future or still uncounted deaths and disabilities from missed biopsies, skipped cancer screenings and chemotherapy, missed early treatments for stroke and heart-attack patients, and organ transplants simply not performed - because “non-essential” medicine was closed down, people lost their health insurance, or patients were afraid to go to clinics and emergency rooms.
Many hospitals, clinics and practices lost so much money that they may have to close their doors. The cumulative long-term impact from that on healthcare, life spans, and death tolls among obese, diabetic, elderly and severely ill patients could be enormous. These human costs will take years to manifest themselves and be calculated. Indeed, the ultimate cost of the lockdown could be worse than the virus.
We still do not have reliable data on Covid infections, cases and deaths - and don’t know whether deaths were due to Corona, or merely associated with the virus and primarily due to age or serious underlying health problems. We don"t even know how many vulnerable elderly people died from Covid complications inflicted on them by decisions by New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and other officials to force nursing homes to accept recovering Corona patients and keep Covid-infected staff working in those facilities.
All this is from lockdowns lasting several months. Suggestions that we “transform” our economy with expensive, unreliable, weather dependent energy - and endure energy, employment, healthcare and other deprivations in perpetuity - border on homicidal insanity. They would postpone or eliminate any economic recovery, result in unimaginable misery and death in now-developed countries - and condemn tens of millions of people in still impoverished nations to horrible suffering, disease, starvation and death.
As to saving the planet and ensuring “ecologically feasible” development, GND energy systems would be vastly more devastating to scenic areas, habitats and wildlife - and to human health and welfare - than any likely effects from manmade portions of future climate changes or weather events.
As Michael Moore’s new film, “Planet of the Humans,” dramatically demonstrates, wind, solar, battery and biofuel technologies are the antithesis of clean, green, renewable and sustainable. Even worse, the ecological devastation it documents is happening in a world that is still 81% dependent on oil, natural gas and coal, 4% on nuclear and 7% on hydroelectric. The impacts and species losses would be orders of magnitude greater if we were 100% dependent on pseudo-renewable energy sources.
Adopting UN-AOC energy prescriptions would require literally millions of 800-foot-tall wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of half-ton batteries, thousands of biofuel plantations and clear-cut forests, billions of battery-powered vehicles, and thousands of new and expanded mines to provide tens of billions of tons more metals and minerals. The ecological impacts would reach every corner of every continent. Hundreds of bird, bat, reptile and mammalian species would disappear. Household, hospital, school, business and factory electricity costs would skyrocket. Jobs and industries would vanish.
Those prescriptions would also make the United States enormously dependent on China, not just for medical devices and pharmaceutical components - but for metals, raw materials and component parts needed in wind turbines, solar panels, backup power batteries, and defense, aerospace and high-technology applications. And all that mining and manufacturing, in Asia and other distant lands, would require fossil fuels, at levels far beyond anything seen in history, under minimal to nonexistent pollution, workplace safety and human rights laws, accompanied by prodigious emissions of carbon dioxide.
Fans and implementers of GND transformations are willfully oblivious of these realities. They refuse to discuss them or allow others to discuss them - because to do so would destroy their phony “saving the planet” narrative and quest for total control over our lives, livelihoods, living standards and liberties.
No wonder the UN-AOC-environmentalist crowd went ballistic over Moore’s film. YouTube yanked the movie from its viewing platform, and “mainstream” media, social media, search engines and information sites are now engaging in blatant censorship on climate, energy and environmental issues.
An increasingly activist, liberal media complex also wants to dictate and control what people see, hear, say and think on race relations, medicine and virtually every other political topic. From the NY Times and Washington Post, to Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube and Wikipedia, platforms that should be forums for robust debate instead are used to dictate what is true or false, permissible or banned.
US, EU and UN green new deals are just one component of the battle for our future. Corona lockdowns should serve as a bitter taste of what could come - not as a dress rehearsal or blueprint for it.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.
Naomi Seibt, the 19-year-old anti-Greta from Germany whose climate-skeptical Youtube videos have gone viral, needs your urgent financial help. Without a hearing, German officials have fined her and demanded costs on the ground that in her devastatingly effective videos she has dared to question the Party Line about what officialdom profiteers by presenting as “dangerous” manmade global warming.
Greta (Far Left) vs. Anti-Greta (Center-Right)
As a result of this arbitrary and capricious prosecution and conviction without trial, Naomi has had her earnings cut off. Please donate securely and directly to her Patreon account. May I suggest at least $10 per month? That would be a real life-saver, and would enable Naomi to continue her valuable work.
Naomi was the star of the show at last year’s climate conference held in Munich by EIKE, the European Institute for Climate and Energy. She is an internet influencer with her own popular YouTube channel - so popular, in fact, that the totalitarian censors at YouTube have shadow-banned her channel, cutting her potential income from it by nine-tenths.
James Taylor of the Heartland Institute met Naomi in Munich and invited her to speak at the Heartland Conference in in December 2019 during the U.N. Gaia-worship haj in Madrid. Her five-minute speech attracted ten times as many YouTube hits as mine. Naomi has since been showing the Heartland Institute how to increase its internet presence.
Naomi Seibt speaking at the 2019 Heartland conference in Madrid
Naomi recently received a letter from a functionary at the State Media Authority for North Rhine Westphalia, the region where she lives. The letter informed her peremptorily that, without a hearing, she has been found guilty of the alleged offense of exercising her right of free speech about the climate on YouTube in a manner that the letter described as not being “climate-friendly”.
What was such a value-laden term doing in an official letter from a public authority to its teenage victim?
In a subsequent letter, the Authority demanded a fine of about $400 and costs on top, and instructed Naomi that she must not mention the Heartland Institute in her videos. The insubstantial ground for this attempt at silencing Naomi was that such mentions constituted unlawful product placement under a recently-enacted law of the North-Rhine Westphalia region. he insubstantial ground for this attempt at silencing Naomi was that such mentions constituted unlawful product placement under a recently-enacted law of the North-Rhine Westphalia region.
However the letter makes it clear that a video is held to contravene the new law if it does two things at the same time: it advocates any policy position unacceptable to the Gau (such as opposition to Germany’s crippling Energiewende) and, in the same video, to mention a named product or entity associated with that position (such as the Heartland Institute).
The Authority listed three videos by Naomi that it considered unlawful. In fact, the list demonstrates that the charges against her are false. The Authority trumped them up, inferentially at the behest of “climate-friendly” activists.
In the first of the three specific videos of which the Authority complains, Naomi made plain her opposition the Party Line, but did not break the law because she did not mention the Heartland Institute. At the time she made that video she had not even heard of it.
In the second video Naomi announced to her followers that she was collaborating with Heartland, but did not break the law because in that video she did not advocate any policy position, whether on climate or anything else.
In the third video, Naomi again expressed opposition to the official position on climate, but did not break the law because she did not mention Heartland.
On the facts, not one of these three videos offended against the law as the correspondence from the Authority chartacterises it. The prosecution had no rational basis in fact or in law.
This is yet another instance of a traditional totalitarian tactic: to enmesh all who have publicly and effectively challenged the Party Line on climate in complex and costly legal wrangles, however ill founded, in the hope of muzzling them and cowing everyone else into silence.
Just ask Professor Peter Ridd or Dr Susan Crockford or Dr Tim Ball or Mark Steyn or countless others thus harried and bullied by the lavishly-funded watermelons.
The process is the punishment
Naomi has engaged a lawyer pro bono. She has splendidly demanded that the Authority produce its entire file on this matter, including the identities of those who complained to the Authority about her. She has also demanded copies of all correspondence or conversations between the Authority and such questionable third parties as these.
The Authority has responded by sending a file that has been obviously, in-your-face redacted. It is manifestly reluctant to admit its unsavory links with whatever totalitarian groups had asked its fellow true-believers there to silence Naomi.
The Authority’s notice of prosecution culpably fails either to spell out or in any material respect to comply with Naomi’s right to a fair trial as laid down in the European Human Rights Convention, to which Germany is a signatory.
Naomi would be well within her rights to counterclaim against the Authority for damages for abuse of its power, for contravention of the Convention (which grants her the right to a remedy) and for causing her distress, alarm and offense without the slightest legitimate or reasonable justification.
The Authority’s motto is “Committed to freedom of expression”. Try to keep a straight face.
Bizarrely, the Authority’s motto is “Der Meinungsfreiheit verpflichtet”, i.e., “Committed to Freedom of Expression”. Yeah, right. I have seldom come across so striking an example of Orwellian Newspeak. To Orwell’s “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” we can now add “Silence is Free Speech”.
Fifty years ago, I helped organize Earth Day #1 programs on my college campus, calling attention to serious pollution problems that afflicted much of the USA. Over the ensuing decades, laws, regulations, and changed attitudes, practices and technologies reduced most of that pollution, often dramatically.
I didn’t buy into the 1970 end-is-nigh, doom-and-gloom, billions-will-die hysteria that Ron Stein and Ron Bailey summarize, including the manmade global cooling crisis. I don’t buy it today, either -certainly not this year’s Earth Day focus on the alleged manmade global warming crisis, also blamed on emissions of carbon dioxide, the same gas that humans and animals exhale, and plants use to grow. We’re told the crisis is unprecedented, and poses existential threats to humanity and planet. What nonsense.
But what I find fascinating in all this is the steadfast, often nasty determination of scientists, politicians and interest groups promoting alarmist themes - and profiting immensely from them - to reject and deny any science, history and evidence that undermines their claim that nothing like this ever happened before.
The “highest ever” temperatures are a mere few tenths or even hundredths of a degree above previous records set many decades ago. The United States recently enjoyed a record 12-year respite from Category 3-5 hurricanes, ended finally by Harvey and Irma in 2017. Violent tornadoes were far fewer during the last 35 years than during the 35 years before that, and the complete absence of violent twisters in 2018 was unprecedented in US history. Modern day floods and droughtswere certainly no worse than past floods or the multi-decade droughts that devastated Anasazi, Mayan and other civilizations.
However, alarmists insist, Earth’s climate and weather were stable and unchanging until humans began using coal, oil and natural gas. We must eradicate fossil fuels now, they say, regardless of what biofuel, battery, wind and solar replacements(and mining for raw materials to manufacture them) might have on wildlife, scenery, environmental values or human rights. Their disconnect from reality is astounding.
Equally fascinating is the notion that melting glaciers are something new. It amounts to asserting that everything was just peachy until American, European and Greenland glaciers started melting a few decades ago, threatening us with catastrophic sea level rise. It amounts to claiming the glacial epochs never happened; their mile-high ice sheets never blanketed a third of the Northern Hemisphere, multiple times, with warm periods in between; and seas haven’t risen some 400 feet since the Pleistocene ice age, leaving the entrance to Cosquer Cave and its Paleolithic paintings 115 feet beneath the Mediterranean.
It amounts to claiming the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods never happened, and weren’t followed by the Little Ice Age, when priests performed exorcisms, asking God to keep glaciers from inundating villages in the Alps of Europe. It’s as though we couldn’t possibly be finding what we are finding today.
In the latest example, government and university researchers recently found numerous Viking-era artifacts along a Norwegian mountain pass that had been heavily traveled for at least 700 years, but then was buried beneath the ice and lost to history for 1,000 years. Locals used the rough 2,200-foot-long pass to travel between summer and winter lodgings, while long-distance trekkers used it as a trade route.
Within the treasure trove were tunics, mittens, horse shoes and bits, remnants of sleds used to haul food and gear over winter snow, a small shelter, and even the remains of a dog with a collar and leash. They all came to light because the glacial ice is again receding, as Earth continues its post Little Ice Age warming.
Alarmists insist the warming is due to fossil fuels, and deny that it is just part of natural climate cycles. And much more evidence of past warming and cooling periods has also come to light in recent years.
In 1991, German hikers found the incredible mummified and heavily tattooed remains of “Oetzi the Ice Man” sticking out of the ice in the Oetzal Alps near the Italian-Austrian border, at an altitude of some 10,000 feet. A partial longbow, bearskin hat and other artifacts were found nearby. He had died about 5,300 years ago from an arrow wound and had the blood of four different people on his clothes and weapons. He is further evidence of human habitation in these alpine areas during past warm periods.
Tourists and archeological teams have also discovered parts of shoes, leather clothing, fragments of a wooden bowl and numerous other items from 3000 to 4500 BC (BCE) that have emerged from the alpine ice. They are among the oldest objects ever found in the Alps. A Bronze Age pin, Roman coins and early Medieval artifacts have also been found. They show how these mountain passes and trails, impassible during cold, more glaciated periods, served as vital trade routes in periodic warmer centuries.
Norwegian ice fields show shrinkage and growth patterns similar to those of the alpine glaciers, says Norwegian glacial scientist Atle Nesje. The archaeological findings “seem to fit quite nicely with our glacier reconstructions,” he adds, which helps us understand past, present and future climate changes.
Years of research by Swiss and other scientists have produced similar findings -sometimes human artifacts, but also plant and animal remains, in areas of newly melted ice. In one location in the Swiss Alps, University of Berne geology professor Christian Schluechter found pieces of wood 12-24 inches thick and the remains of a moor. Melting waters had flushed them out from under the glacier. That means the ice there is hardly “perpetual,” he says. There were multiple periods of warmer weather and less ice.
In fact, carbon-14 dating shows ten “clearly definable time windows” over the last 10,000 years - periods when glaciers were limited to regions up to 1,000 feet higher in the Alps than today. This means that, for multiple long streches of time, “the Alps were greener than they are today”, Schluechter concludes.
Inca children sacrificed 500 years ago in Argentina’s Andes have also emerged from melting glaciers.
Off the Florida coast, the Mel and Deo Fisher archeological diving team didn’t just find the famous Spanish galleon Nuestra Seņora de Atocha, which sank during a ferocious 1622 hurricane, or only the British slave ship Henrietta Marie, which went down during a 1700 hurricane, after leaving 190 Africans in Jamaica to be sold as slaves. They also found charred tree branches and pine cones from a forest fire 8,400 years ago, when this ocean area 35 miles from Key West was still well above present day sea levels!
Even an entire forest has been discovered, protruding from the melting Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau, Alaska - an area I visited several years ago. Roots, stumps and large segments of entire upright spruce or hemlock trees have already been found across several acres. They are the remains of a forest that thrived there for as long as 2,350 years, until it was buried by glacial ice around 1,000 years ago.
The chronicle of amazing discoveries yielded by melting glaciers goes on and on. Their most important lesson is that our current climate is but a snapshot in time, on a vibrant planet where climate change and extreme weather have been “real” since time began. Only a science-denying climate alarmist would refuse to recognize this. Simply put, there is nothing “unprecedented” about what we are seeing today.
This is dangerous stuff - sacrilegious, even. It pulls the rug from under demands for a post-Coronavirus Green New Deal. It must be suppressed. And frightened climate science deniers are doing their best to keep it out of “mainstream” and social media. Realists must do their best to disseminate climate facts.
Of course, it may be that these past climate changes were caused by carbon dioxide and water vapor from wheezing, snorting horses, oxen and humans - laboring at the edge of exhaustion, doing what our fossil-fuel-powered vehicles and equipment do for us today. But it’s far more likely that the changes were due to a complex and still poorly understood combination of solar and other powerful natural forces.
Climate alarmists may not want to recognize or discuss these natural fluctuations and causes. But the rest of us should, and this historic evidence must be a central part of that discussion.
Improving our knowledge of what these forces are and how they work together will enable us to better predict, prepare for and adapt to future climate changes. Continuing to focus on carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases,” as the primary or sole cause of climate changes and weather events, will ensure that we never get beyond the politically driven climate and energy battles in which we are now engaged.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power; Black death and other books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, Co Chief Meteorologist at Weatherbell Analytics, LLC
I have long followed and written about volcanism and its effect on the weather. I have wondered with my colleagues whether undersea volcanism could be playing a role in ocean surface thermal patterns and through that affect our weather.
We wondered whether it played a role in the 2013-2015 warmth in the NPAC that drove two incredible NAM winters like it did in 1916/17, 1917/18, 1919/20, 1933/34, 1963/64, 1977/78, 1987/88, 1993/94, 2002/03, 2004/05 - all cold and big NE snow winters.
We know El Ninos and La Ninas affect global weather patterns (with differences depending on the strength and structure) and the AMO and PDO influence global temperatures, blocking tendencies, and the frequencies of extremes like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods/droughts, snow and ice). But as the great Jerome Namias noted, warm and cold ocean pools that are not really associated with these oscillations can affect the jet stream and weather patterns. These ocean oscillations and transient thermal anomalies are a large part of the analog methods we at apply at WeatherBell.
We wondered if the very strongly positive IOD last summer might be driven by a warm pool that blossomed in the western Indian Ocean. It favored the MJO staying in cold phases from October to early December. At the same time, we observed the NPAC turn warm resulting in early snow and cold as we mentioned above occurred in some of the wildest winters.
But then that pattern flipped as the +IOD collapsed as a 5C warm blob developed in the South Pacific east of New Zealand. The MJO readjusted to the warm phases.
We recently saw this paper that provided some support for that thinking of warm pools and their influence on the weather regimes and their relation to geothermal heat from volcanism.
Hot blobs beneath the sea surface formed by the release of geothermal heat through submarine volcanic eruptions and/or sub-aerially erupted hot volcanic materials including lava flows into the sea are an underestimated natural cause of ocean heat waves. Recent examples include the 2013-2016 North Pacific Blob and the 2018-2019 Southwest Indian Ocean Blob. The present study on the development of a blob in the South Pacific Ocean referred to as the 2019-2020 South Pacific Blob has provided evidence to account for the observed recent warming in Antarctica including a new hottest temperature record on February 6, 2020 and heat wave conditions dramatically changing Antarctica in just 9 days.
At least three volcanic eruptions (Figure 1) have been identified to contribute geothermal heat during August to December 2019 (spring and early summer in the southern hemisphere) to create the South Pacific Blob with an ocean surface temperature maximum attained on December 30, 2019 (Figure 2). Out of these, two were initially submarine volcanoes located in the territorial waters of Tonga and one was an island volcano with a crater just above sea level off the North Island coast in New Zealand waters.
Figure 1 Volcanoes contributing geothermal heat to the 2019-2020 South Pacific Blob.
In August 6-8, 2019 submarine volcano F in the Tofua Arc, Tonga located about 40 kilometers south of Fonualie Island had a major eruption. The detection of this large explosive eruption was assisted by a pumice raft greater than 136.7 km2 in area on the ocean surface captured by imagery from ESA’s Sentinel-2 satellite. In October 13-22, 2019 another submarine volcano erupted destroying Lateiki Island in the Tongan archipelago followed by the birth of a new island 100 m wide and 400 m long in October 30, 2019 which subsequently disappeared beneath the waves in mid-January 2020. Meanwhile in December 9, 2019 the White Island volcano in the Bay of Plenty erupted with a 3.7 km ash plume and hot materials was discharged into the ocean through the eruption cloud.
An examination of NOAA satellite sea surface anomalies map archives has revealed that the South Pacific Blob located about 800 kilometres east of New Zealand attained maximum temperature and largest areal extent in December 30, 2019 (Figure 2). The sea surface temperature was more than 5C above normal.
Figure 2 Sea surface temperature anomalies showing the development of the South Pacific Blob east of New Zealand on December 30, 2019. Source: NOAA
See the 2013/14 warm blob in the NPAC that led to two wild central and eastern winters.
See the west Indian Ocean warm pool that drove the +2 STD IOD late last summer.
See how that drove heavy convection in the Indian Ocean and India and kept the MJO corralled in the cold phases in the late fall.
Meanwhile the NPAC warm pool blossomed as it did in 2013 - leading to ideas about cold in NAM.
But then the IOD dipole faded and the warm blob developed east of New Zealand. The MJO moved into the warm phases with heavy precipitation shifting east, the NPAC warm blob faded and the arctic trough and ++AO took away winter.
Alaska had a top 3 cold winter after the heat of early summer 2019.
Fairbank’s average 2019/20 daytime high was -2.1F, while the daytime low -20F, average daily mean was -11F! The coldest was -43F while the warmest was 31F December 9. 33 days were at or below -30F, 5 fell at or below -40F. The winter average 4.7F below normal, the coldest (3rd) since before (1975/76) the Great Pacific Climate Shift (a shift of the so called Pacific Decadal Oscillation to positive) in the late 1970s when warmer Pacific waters favored warmth in Alaska and western North America.
See how the AO was off the scale positive as the entire arctic atmosphere top to bottom was cold February to March.
Now we see more warm pool action north and south. We will be following this carefully.
Nature is awesome… forecasting is challenging, we have to look up, and globally but are at the mercy of changes from beneath too it appears.
Oceans the biggest reservoir of CO2. A simple experiment - open a can of Coke and let it warm to room temperature. You will see it loses much of its fizz.
At the very least 2 things are obvious, 1) this is showing there is reason to question the origins of COs’s increase (note my words question, not just accept it blindly) and 2) That people pushing economic shutdowns as a way to combat global warming are apparently unaware of this glaring gash in their argument. CO2 is quick to react to changes. That is why you see the big downturns and upturns as the greening northern hemisphere demonstrate plants love of CO2 (solution plant trees) and what happens when they are not there (winter).
I suspect the amount of warmth in the oceans have not yet reached an equilibrium and are still in a positive outsourcing situation But the data is there. Mans output has shutdown, but the warm oceans is there So why the rise if its man.
Timothy Birdnow
This is the first time we had experimental data on this issue and it essentially fails to support the theory that carbon dioxide is being increased in the atmosphere by industrial emissions. It’s actually quite amazing; almost falsifies the whole theory. But we won’t hear anything about this in the mainstream media, and it’s doubtful even in science journals.
From NOAA ESRL
Can we see a change in the CO2 record because of COVID-19?
There have been many inquiries whether we can see in our CO2 measurements at Mauna Loa and elsewhere the slowdown in CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. That drop in emissions needs to be large enough to stand out from natural CO2 variability caused by how plants and soils respond to seasonal and annual variations of temperature, humidity, soil moisture, etc. These natural variations are large, and so far the “missing” emissions do not stand out, but we may see them as the year progresses. Here is an example: If emissions are lower by 25%, then we would expect the monthly mean CO2 for March at Mauna Loa to be lower by about 0.2 ppm. When we look at many years of the difference between February and March we expect March to be higher by 0.74 ppm, but the year-to-year variability (one standard deviation) of the difference is 0.40 ppm. This year the difference is 0.40 ppm, or 0.33 below average, but last year it was 0.52 ppm below average.
Most of the emissions come from urban areas, so that it may be easier to see the effect downwind of cities, although also in that case they need to stand out from natural variations. Only measurements of carbon-14 in CO2 would enable us to cleanly separate fossil sources of CO2 from ecosystem sources and sinks regardless of how variable the latter are.
The only climate model that agrees with observations says there is NO climate emergency. Meanwhile half of the IPCC models are getting hotter than ever before, hence getting further from reality than ever before. A modeling showdown is looming and CLINTEL is a leader among the climate critics. They make a strong plea that in the current health emergency any climate action should be put on hold. “Why construct a false climate crisis on top of a true corona crisis?”
My previous article - ”CLINTEL Manifesto blasts climate scaremongering” - includes the all important graphic showing a dramatic divergence of the IPCC climate model predictions from the satellite temperature readings. The models are all running much hotter than reality.
There is however one major model that agrees with the satellites, that being the Russian model. The reason is simple, yet profound. CLINTEL President professor Guus Berkhout explains it this way: “I have studied Russia’s climate model INM. Unlike IPCC’s models, the Russian INM model predictions fit the measurements remarkably well. A plausible explanation is that it uses a negative cloud feedback: -0.13 W/m2/degree C, while the IPCC models use a large positive cloud feedback: up to + 0.80 W/m2/degree C. This large positive cloud feedback is responsible for the catastrophic IPCC predictions.”
The physics behind this explanation is pretty simple. Warming leads to more water vapor on the air, which causes increased cloudiness. Clouds can then either increase the warming (positive feedback) or decrease it (negative feedback). The scientific question is which occurs? The Russians are finding that it is a negative feedback. Measurements support them.
CLINTEL is an international climate science advisor so it makes sense that they look closely at these findings. Their vision is: “Progress requires Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Scientific Inquiry.” In fact Professor Berkhout has been officially invited by the Russian Academy of Sciences to learn more about the INM model and to share the climate vision of CLINTEL.
Unlike the U.S. and European modelers, the Russian modeling community has not been captured by the alarmists. This has given them the freedom to explore the negative feedback option, which the alarmists have refused to do, at least so far.
Yet even within the alarmist community we see a promising development, as a big fight is shaping up over cloud feedbacks. The IPCC is in the process of writing the latest of its big Assessment Reports, which it does every five years or so, this being the sixth report (AR6). Most of the major alarmist climate models are run to feed into this report.
This time we see that in AR6 about half of these models are running much hotter than they did for the fifth report (AR5). Although the review process is not yet finished, it appears that the AR6 modelers have juiced up the positive cloud feedback. We are not aware of any big new science to support this exaggeration. Has it been done to support the political push for radical zero-carbon laws? The hotter the model the worse the catastrophe it predicts from fossil fuel use, justifying a higher level of panic.
A lot of people within the climate community are questioning this increased global warming in the AR6 model outputs. For one thing it suggests that at least half of the models are wrong, either the half that haven’t become hotter (predicting the same level of panic as in AR5) or the half that have (predicting a higher level of panic as in AR679). In the process the alarmist consensus is coming apart. How the IPCC will handle this schism remains to be seen.
A higher positive cloud feedback may not solve all inconsistencies, but for sure we may state that it is a most unlikely assumption on the modeler’s part. No science compels this choice and measurements strongly advise against it. This opens the door for the empirically confirmed Russian findings, which call into question the entire catastrophe narrative of AR5 and even more AR6.
Professor Berkhout puts it succinctly: “If the Russians are right, the carbon budget - being the amount of carbon mankind may emit before we reach the 1.5 and 2 degree C warming thresholds in The Paris Accord - is very, very large. In other words, there is no problem with continuing CO2 emissions until we have a technologically reliable and economically affordable alternative. Zero emission in 2050 is totally foolish. Looking at the the current health emergency it is a crime against humanity.”
It is ironic, yet fitting, that the “blue sky” fantasy of climate alarmism may be brought back down to earth by clouds. Negative feedback is a truly positive message.
Stay tuned to CFACT to see how this drama unfolds.
David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For origins see For over 100 prior articles for CFACT see Available for confidential research and consulting.
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