Make No Mistake, Reality Consistently Drives Reason Into Power Choices

At a time when campaigning politicians defy reality with extravagant promises, recent developments suggest reason may be returning to the electric power sector --- even as the Biden administration frantically tries to spend billions on “renewable energy.”

Much of this drama plays out in the Pacific Northwest.

There, policymakers favor faddish, ideological approaches to energy needs over practical technologies relying on fossil fuels, nuclear, or hydro.

One result has been the intrusion of expensive, unreliable, and environmentally damaging wind turbines on the beauty that makes the Northwest special.

Among those saving us from ourselves are native people, for whom the land is sacred. They recently forced the federal government and Gov. Tina Kotek, D-Ore., to cancel the sale of large offshore tracts for wind development.

Also playing a role were market realities.

Only a single, inexperienced company bid on the project.

Other competitors dropped out because offshore wind is financially risky, involving high costs and the hazards of a corrosive and stormy marine environment.

Besides, who wants intermittent power that costs more than it is worth?

No one.

Another ally in the fight for sanity is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, sometimes known for questionable schemes, such as blocking out the sun to cool Earth.

Sweden nixed that.

Nevertheless, Gates rightly has championed nuclear power, much maligned despite obvious advantages. In 2006, he founded TerraPower to develop an advanced breeder reactor that will power a plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

With one billion dollars from Gates, TerraPower broke ground in June.

The plant is designed to run 50 years without refueling.

In Pennsylvania, Microsoft, which Gates continues to advise, signed a 1.6-billion-dollar agreement to power data centers with 800 megawatts of nuclear power from Three Mile Island.

With the generating capacity of thousands of large wind turbines, TMI’s Unit 1 will provide power far more reliably than wind and solar.

TMI’s reopening would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Many now seem to have forgotten the partial meltdown of Unit 2 in 1979.

Or, they’ve come to understand that the risks of nuclear power can be managed --- just like the hazards (real or imagined) of other modern technologies.

Then there is Amazon, a company better known for its delivery of consumer goods than for its profitable data centers.

Eastern Oregon’s residents are familiar with Amazon’s large, dreary concrete buildings that have elaborate cooling equipment and large backup generators should utility power fail.

These hint at enormous power consumption.

Lured by Oregon’s generous tax breaks, Amazon and other web service providers like Google and Facebook built data centers to take advantage of the state’s cheap hydroelectric power.

However, the newcomers did not realize that public officials were inadequately planning for the increased power that new data centers would require.

This came at a time when politicians were also forcing electric utilities like Portland General Electric to switch to wind and solar while promoting an all-electric economy.

Data centers had to find reliable power and meet the ideological requirements of Oregon politicians. It did not work. The centers now need more electricity than the Oregon grid can supply.

Blackouts are a distinct possibility.

Although ideologically aligned with Oregon politicians, Amazon executives realized their very profitable data centers would fail if they kept posturing with renewable energy.

So, they took a bold step on Oct. 16, announcing that they will work with X-Energy to build small modular nuclear reactors to provide the power they need.

These will be set up, not in Oregon where nuclear power is essentially banned, but across the Columbia River in Washington State, near an existing nuclear plant.

Power can be easily shipped to Oregon.

Amazon announced that it is working with Energy Northwest, a consortium of 29 Washington State utilities on this nuclear project. This suggests that many Northwest utilities are finally acknowledging that the region will need great amounts of new and reliable power.

Thank you, Amazon, for promoting a solution to the looming Pacific Northwest power shortage. This may not save us from the massive rate increases that are beginning to hit consumers due to the renewable debacle.

But it may keep the lights on.

Following two back-to-back hurricanes that severely pummeled the Southeastern United States, climate activists have swooped in like vultures, blaming political conservatives for the destruction wrought by Helene and Milton. At MSNBC, Chris Hayes spouts, “We have known for decades that our planet is warming and that we would start seeing the brutal effects. But conservatives remain so deep in their denial that they are flailing around for anyone or anything else to blame.”

While many attempt to falsely connect hurricanes to anthropogenic climate change, the truth is these monster storms are a natural and necessary function of our planet’s atmosphere. But that didn’t prevent CNN from posting a piece wildly declaring, “Helene was supercharged by ultra-warm water made up to 500 times more likely by global warming.”

Hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean traditionally begins on June 1, as the equatorial waters warm to near 80 degrees Fahrenheit, the minimum temperature required for a hurricane to form. Water temperature is often considered the fuel for a hurricane because as the warm water evaporates it subsequently condenses within the storm releasing latent heat. However, there are a multitude of other factors that must be present for hurricane formation including a storm’s distance from the equator, light winds blowing into the center of the storm, high humidity values, and something we refer to as the “saturated adiabatic lapse rate” which is basically the rate at which saturated air cools with altitude. When all of these ingredients are in perfect sync, a hurricane begins to form.

Dr. Neil Frank, longtime head of the National Hurricane Center, contends the total number of hurricanes each year ebbs and flows in sixty-year cycles. On the average, each year there are ten tropical storms (wind speeds less than 74 mph) that develop over the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico. Six of these storms become hurricanes (wind speeds of 74 mph or more).  In an average three-year period, roughly five hurricanes strike the United States coastline, killing approximately 50 to 100 people anywhere from Texas to Maine. Of these, two are typically major hurricanes (winds greater than 110 mph).

The cover endorsement for my recent book, Climate Cult: Exposing and Defeating Their War on Life, Liberty and Property, was written by Dr. Frank. He contends there is no evidence suggesting we are seeing more hurricanes than ever (over the past 170 years of records), and he insists the frequency and intensity of hurricanes has not changed over years.  Additionally, Dr. Frank reminds us that hurricanes are a beneficial component of the overall global atmosphere as they act as mechanisms which draw hot air from the earth’s equatorial regions into the jet stream which then transports the natural warmth to the colder latitudes. This allows for expansive and comfortable temperate zones, where most of us live.

But why do recent storms seem worse than ever? The answer is threefold.

First, there is no doubt property damage, in terms of dollars, is on the rise. This trend is driven by the continued development of expensive property along the coasts putting more value at risk of wind and water damage. Also, flooding has increased due to residential and commercial properties edging right up to the water’s edge. Under these modern circumstances, any given hurricane would cause more damage than it would have in the past. Sadly, the same could be said for the number of lives lost during these storms.

Second is media coverage. Back when I was presenting the weather for both CBS-TV News and KPIX-TV in San Francisco, content producers knew severe weather gains eyeballs. It is still true on TV today.

Third, there is the ad nauseam, agenda-driven propaganda put forth by activists attempting to pin their climate fiction hoax on deadly hurricanes.

But why is Florida seemingly often in the crosshairs?

Because the “Sunshine State” is a sitting duck. It’s a 500-mile long, 160-mile wide peninsula extending into the warm waters of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico with 1,146 miles of coastline and an average elevation of a mere 100-feet. Given that the average hurricane is about 300-miles-wide, the Florida peninsula is a prime target for potential disaster. As a result, during this 2024 season, of the nine hurricanes formed to date, four have hit the United States with two terribly striking Florida.

Brian Sussman is an award-winning meteorologist, former San Francisco radio talk host, and bestselling author.
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I frequently write about how the mandates for energy transition that New York has adopted are impossible and irreconcilable in the real world; and therefore it is inevitable that they will have to be abandoned at some point when implementation of the project runs up against physical reality. 

Probably the most frequent question that I get asked is, OK, how and when will that occur?

The question is important because for as long as the impossible mandates remain in place they are causing massive ongoing damage to our electricity system and to consumers.  As examples, on the electricity generation side, natural gas power plants that currently supply about half of our electricity are slated for forced closure at the rate of several a year until all of them are closed by 2040.  The longer the net zero fantasy goes on, the more difficult and costly it will be to re-open these plants (if they are even still standing), or build new ones.  Wind and solar facilities are getting built at the cost of billions, with huge subsidies, producing essentially no useful power.  Every time another one gets built, the taxpayers and ratepayers are on the hook to pay its costs for its entire life.  On the consumer side, residents of large buildings are under a mandate to discard their current natural gas or oil heat systems in favor of inferior electric heat pumps, at costs estimated at $100,000 per housing unit or more for older buildings.  When the net zero project gets abandoned, these massive investments will be a deadweight loss.  And there are many other examples of the ongoing damage being caused by the mandates.

So what will be the event that causes the project to crater?  If nothing else comes first, at some point we will get hit with a string of catastrophic blackouts.  That would surely wake people up and almost certainly force a re-think of the project.  But just waiting for this catastrophe to turn things around is not really a great idea, for two reasons:  first, to their credit, the people who run the grid are good at keeping it going in difficult circumstances, meaning that we could get “lucky,” and the catastrophe could be postponed for years during which enormous ongoing damage from mal-investment occurs; and the second problem is that when the blackouts come they could cause real human harm and tragedy, such as deaths of people with electric heat who freeze in their apartments.  In other words, people who care about New York owe it to their fellow citizens to try to straighten this out before the catastrophe hits.

And thus it comes about that three public-spirited guys, who have been observing the ongoing slow-motion train wreck with horror, have written a Report to urge New Yorkers to defy the statutory mandates to electrify building heat.  The title of the Report is “Don’t Do It!  Report to New York Co-op and Condo Boards and Trade Associations On LL97 Conversion To Electric Heat.”

The three public-spirited guys are myself and co-authors Roger Caiazza and Richard Ellenbogen.  Caiazza is a retired air pollution meteorologist who has a blog called the Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York, where he writes prolifically about New York’s impending energy disaster.  Ellenbogen is a Cornell-trained electrical engineer who does not have a big internet presence, but is a very knowledgeable frequent commenter on New York’s various regulator dockets relating to the energy transition, where he pulls no punches.  The three of us wrote this Report for no compensation so that nobody could accuse us of being shills for the fossil fuel industry or the real estate industry or any other special interest.

The reason that the Report is directed to condominium and co-op Boards and Trade Associations is that the condo/co-op community represents a group of hundreds of thousands of voters who find themselves in the cross-hairs of New York’s impossible energy mandates.  Among other New York residents, small building residents and single-family homeowners have been exempted from the heat conversion mandates (at least for now), while rental tenants are insulated by rent regulations.  So the boards and shareholders of the large condos and co-ops are the largest group of residents directly affected by the mandates.  Many boards of these buildings are only now starting to look into how to comply with the 2030 mandate to convert to electric heat, and getting feedback from consultants about the enormous costs.  Few of them realize that the State at the same time has no credible plan to generate enough electricity to make the heat conversion mandate work.

The distribution of the Report to the relevant communities has recently begun.  Daughter Jane - known to readers here as a frequent contributor - has set up a group called New Yorkers for Affordable Reliable Energy ("New Yorkers ARE") to organize grass-roots opposition to complying with the heat conversion mandate.  Co-author Roger Caiazza wrote a post for Watts Up With That two weeks ago announcing the issuance of the Report. 

I recommend the Report to readers who are at all interested in the depths of ignorance and incompetence of the New York legislators and regulators who are pushing the impossible"energy transition.” It’s only about 15 pages long, with a good Introduction and Executive Summary at the beginning that capture the gist.  Here is a summary quote from the Executive Summary:

The Net Zero transition is by far the largest, most expensive and ambitious government-directed project ever undertaken in New York. However, the statutory mandates of the CLCPA and LL 97 have been enacted without:

* Any detailed Feasibility Study of whether this transition is possible under basic physics and existing technology;

* Any Demonstration Project anywhere in the world showing how an electrical grid can function relying on mostly on wind and solar and without emissions-creating resources for back-up of intermittency;

* Any detailed analysis or projection of the costs to New Yorkers of this transition, whether in their capacities as taxpayers or ratepayers or both.

This Report assesses issues of the feasibility and cost of New York’s electricity transition project.  The purpose is to advise New York residents, particularly co-op and condo owners and their Boards who are subject to LL 97, on how they should respond to the statutory mandates. The Report reviews facts and data showing that there are strong reasons to believe that the goals that have been set, and mandated by law, are impossible of achievement, let alone at any remotely affordable cost. The State and City have totally failed in their responsibilities to their citizens to assure that the mandates they have enacted are feasible and affordable. 

So to get back to the initial question of how New York’s energy madness will end:  An alternative to just waiting for the blackouts to come will be for a critical mass of New Yorkers in the cross-hairs of the mandates to refuse to comply and to demand that the mandates be rescinded.  We are attempting to start that process into motion.  Let’s hope that we have some success.

New US-EU Methane Rules Won’t Affect Temperatures

By Steve Goreham—July 9, 2024
“Because of greenhouse gas saturation in the atmosphere, methane regulations across the world will have no measurable effect on global temperatures.”

In March, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published new methane emissions regulations for the oil and gas industry. The European Union enacted new rules to reduce methane emissions from the energy sector in May. Agriculture is also being targeted regarding methane.

But methane regulations, even if established worldwide, won’t have a measurable effect on global temperatures. However, they will raise costs for energy and food, impacting consumers and businesses.

On March 8, EPA finalized its rule on methane emissions for the oil and gas sector. The rule is intended to “reduce wasteful methane emissions that endanger communities and fuel the climate crisis.” The new policy will require companies to pay a penalty of $900 for every ton of methane emitted above limits set by the EPA, starting this year. A legal challenge to the EPA’s new rule has been filed by 24 states.

On May 27, the European Union (EU) announced new regulations on methane emissions from coal, gas, and oil operations. These rules will require energy firms to monitor and report methane emissions and to reduce methane flaring from operations. The rules also apply to international firms that ship hydrocarbon fuels to Europe.

Background

Methane (CH4) is also called natural gas. It is emitted from oil and gas operations from flaring or system leaks. CH4 is also produced through the decay of organic material, such as from municipal solid waste landfills. The EPA and the EU have proposed methane regulations to try to fight global warming.

But nature and human agriculture are larger sources of methane than the energy industry. Termites and other insects emit large amounts of methane. We have about 1.5 billion cows on Earth, and numerous other livestock and wildlife, emitting methane from both the nose end and the tail end.

Methane is a greenhouse gas and part of Earth’s greenhouse effect, which is blamed for global warming. Sunlight, which is high-energy radiation, enters the atmosphere and is absorbed by Earth’s surface. Like any warm body, Earth emits radiation. Since Earth’s temperature is lower than that of the sun, Earth emits lower-energy radiation called infrared radiation or longwave radiation, which is not visible to our eyes.

Figure 1.

This longwave radiation seeks to leave Earth’s atmosphere, but almost all of it is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These gases then re-radiate the absorbed energy, which acts to warm Earth’s surface. The warming caused by the absorption of infrared radiation is called the greenhouse effect. Emissions from human industrial processes add to the effect and increase global temperatures.

But Earth’s greenhouse effect is overwhelmingly a natural effect. Water vapor, not carbon dioxide or methane, is Earth’s dominant greenhouse gas. Water vapor accounts for 70 to 90 percent of the greenhouse effect.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the next most important greenhouse gas, but most of the CO2 in the atmosphere comes from nature, such as CO2 emissions from the oceans and the biosphere. Every day, nature puts 20 times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as all human emissions and removes about the same amount. Methane ranks only as a distant third as a greenhouse gas.

Overhyped Contribution

The European Union states:

... methane’s ability to trap heat in the atmosphere is even stronger than that of carbon dioxide. On a 100-year timescale, methane has 28 times greater global warming potential than carbon dioxide and is 84 times more potent on a 20-year timescale.

These widely reported assertions from the EU and other sources are incorrect. Claims about the global warming potential of methane are accurate in the laboratory, but not in the atmosphere.

No one paints a room in their house ten times, because after two coats of paint, no difference is observed. Similarly, greenhouse gases are already saturated in Earth’s atmosphere at the frequencies at which methane absorbs outgoing long wave radiation. Additional methane will have almost no effect.

A 2020 analysis by Wijngaarden and Happer looked at the absorption of outgoing long wave radiation by methane and other greenhouse gases across the radiation spectrum. The researchers found that doubling atmospheric methane, from either natural or human causes, would increase greenhouse gas absorption by only about 0.3 percent, a negligible amount.

Figure 2.

Farming has become a target for efforts to reduce methane emissions. Earlier this year, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued JBS, the world’s largest beef producer, over the firm’s methane emissions and for allegedly making misleading sustainability statements to the public. The costs of this litigation will add to food price inflation for consumers.

Earlier this year, the EU sought to impose the Sustainable Use Regulation (SUR) on European farmers. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, stated that the agricultural sector needed to transition towards a “more sustainable model of production.” Farmers were asked to reduce the size of dairy herds and to limit the use of nitrogen fertilizer to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of methane and nitrous oxide. Germany’s Federal Agricultural Minister, Cem Ozdemir, even proposed a consumption tax on meat.

But angry farmers launched intense protests in France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and other nations. Hundreds of tractors blocked traffic in major cities and police were pelted with eggs and liquid manure. The SUR was defeated, and the EU backed away from additional agricultural regulations, including regulations on methane and the use of nitrogen fertilizer.

Possibly the most bizarre law to reduce emissions was the Australia Carbon Farming Initiative Act of 2011, which awarded carbon credits for killing feral (wild) animals, including:

... the reduction of methane emissions through the management, in a humane manner, of feral goats, feral dear, feral pigs or feral camels.

Killing of animals for carbon credits was halted in 2012.

Conclusion

Greenhouse gas saturation in the atmosphere means that methane regulations across the world will have no measurable effect on global temperatures. But to the extent that they are enacted, these rules will raise the costs of energy and food production and prices to consumers and businesses.

Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and the author of the new bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.

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Climate activists are wrong about which energy source reduces air pollution

Today’s media are filled with concerns about air pollution. But few people know which energy source has produced the greatest modern reduction in air pollution. The answer isn’t wind or solar energy.

During the 1950s, my grandfather had a coal furnace in his basement, like many homes in Chicago. Five days after a winter snowfall, the snow was covered with a visible black film of dust from coal furnaces. Our younger generation does not know the original reason for “spring cleaning.” Every spring, homeowners would wash their inside walls to remove coal dust.

It was the rising use of gas fuel, primarily natural gas along with propane, that produced the greatest reduction in air pollution in the United States and across the world. Gas furnaces and stoves have replaced wood in businesses and homes in developed nations. And natural gas power plants have replaced coal-fired plants to generate electricity, with gas becoming the leading fuel for industry.

Natural gas and propane are clean-burning fuels that emit no harmful pollutants when burned. When gas heating is substituted for coal or wood heating, indoor particulate pollution is reduced by 1,000 times.

Today, 70% of U.S. homes use natural gas or propane, a percentage that has been rising for decades. Gas fuels have also become the leading heating and cooking source in Europe, providing 83% of heat energy in the Netherlands and 78% in the United Kingdom. But there are still 70 million wood stoves in Europe.

The World Health Organization estimates that 2 billion people in developing nations still cook using open fires or inefficient stoves fueled by kerosene, biomass (wood, charcoal, animal dung, or crop waste), and coal. These fuels generate harmful indoor air pollution. Indoor air pollution is estimated to cause more than 3 million deaths annually in poor nations. Emerging nations need gas fuels to boost health and well-being.

The great news is that gas fuels are increasingly used in developing nations, reducing illness and death from cooking. For example, in 2016, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a program to provide liquid petroleum gas, or LPG, to 200 million people, making India the second largest LPG importer. About 70% of U.S. propane production is exported as the key component of LPG, mostly to Eastern Asia.

In fact, gas has become the primary fuel for generating electricity in developed nations over the last three decades. Natural gas rose from 12.6% of U.S. electricity generation in 1990 to 43.1% in 2023. By 2022, gas had become the leading fuel for electric power in Italy, at 48%, the Netherlands, at 59%, and the U.K., at 36%.

The combination of rising gas use to generate electricity, the use of scrubbers on coal plants, and the reduction in vehicle pollution has produced vastly improved air quality in recent decades. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that ambient air pollution declined by 78% from 1970 to 2020.

Despite the benefits of reduced indoor and outdoor pollution from rising gas use, gas fuels are under attack. Driven by the ideology of climatism, the fear of human-caused climate change, advocates of net-zero energy policies demand the elimination of gas to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

But carbon dioxide is an odorless, harmless, invisible gas. It doesn’t cause smoke or smog. Increased levels of atmospheric CO2 boost plant growth. Carbon dioxide should not be called a pollutant.

Nevertheless, President Joe Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and other leaders have called for a net-zero electric grid by 2035. Twenty-three states now have net-zero electricity targets by 2050. Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, totaling about half of Europe’s electricity, have pledged to eliminate CO2-emitting power plants by 2035.

A war rages in Europe over the elimination of gas appliances. The governments of Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.K. seek to force homeowners to spend thousands of euros or pounds to switch from gas appliances to electric heat pumps to reduce CO2 emissions. Amsterdam recently announced that it would become “aardgasvrij,” or gas-free, by 2040. But conservative gains in European Union elections this month reflect a popular backlash against efforts to eliminate gas fuels and force acceptance of net-zero policies.

In the U.S., cities and counties in six states, California, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Oregon, and Washington, along with Washington, D.C., enacted statutes banning natural gas in new construction. New York passed the All Electric Buildings Act in 2023, a statewide ban prohibiting gas appliances in new one- to six-story buildings by 2026. But 20 other states have passed laws preventing local governments from passing ordinances that ban gas fuels.

Despite misguided government efforts to eliminate gas, consumption of natural gas and other gas fuels continues to rise. World natural gas consumption has doubled since 1995.

Green energy advocates have it exactly wrong. The adoption of gas fuels did more to reduce air pollution over the last 60 years than any other energy source. And gas consumption will continue to rise for decades to come.

Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and the author of the bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.

Before the post...this from Mike Smith with examples.

As We Close Out May: State Record Hot Temperatures
By Mike Smith - May 31, 2024

Now we are one day from meteorological summer, we will be bombarded by climate activists trying to tie global warming into every heat wave. Earlier today I wrote about how the Tonga Volcano is causing—natural—heat waves even years after the eruption.

Below is a map showing the year that each state’s record high temperatures were set for the month of May.

Enlarged

Note how relatively few of them occurred post 2000. Some were set more than 100 years ago. So, when the MSM attempts to tie global warming to hot temperatures, please keep this map in mind. Humans affect the weather --no question—but it is not the primary mechanism.

One other item:

Enlarged

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Back to Climate Stupidity

The specific gravity of carbon dioxide is 1.52 relative to dry air - the same weight as propane.  It is even heavier in relation to our humid atmosphere, ranging around 1.61.  It falls through the atmosphere about like a cottonseed.  Wind can blow it upward, but it falls right back down.  It acts like rainwater, seeking low points.  We do not need to build pipelines to inject it into the ground.  It sinks into to the ground all by itself.

Photosynthesis (CO2 + Sunlight + H2O) cannot exist without carbon dioxide.  Photosynthesis uses sunlight to transform carbon dioxide into glucose and other organic compounds that make plants, and it transforms water into oxygen, which is exuded.

We breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.  Plants absorb carbon dioxide and give us oxygen.  As Patrick Moore (co-founder of Greenpeace) has pointed out for over ten years, carbon dioxide is critical to the life cycle of the plant and animal kingdoms.  He has referenced analysis that indicates that nearly triple the carbon dioxide content in our atmosphere would be more ideal for plant life.  He is correct.

“[An] increase in carbon dioxide directly increases plant photosynthesis. If photosynthesis ceased, there would soon be little food or other organic matter on Earth.  Most organisms would disappear, and in time Earth’s atmosphere would become nearly devoid of gaseous oxygen” (Britannica, ref. Plant Physiology, Salisbury, and Ross).

Furthermore, carbon dioxide does not cause warming.  It cools 20 degrees Fahrenheit in less than 4 minutes.  It cannot possibly retain heat from day to day (global warming).  We know this because we measured it at my gas-physics Weights and Measures facility.  We also measured humid atmosphere including all the trace gases therein.  That cools about 1 degree every 32 minutes, or 20 degrees in roughly 11 hours. 

Carbon dioxide will therefore cool as fast as the Sun and the atmosphere allow it to cool.  Even our humid atmosphere cools too quickly to retain heat from day to day.  The latter test also proves that no gas - not carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane, or even humid air - retains temperature from day to day.  These experiments are detailed in the book referenced below.

The stupidity began in 1988, when James Hansen, who coined the term “global warming,” flip-flopped from “global cooling” to “global warming” being dangerous.  He testified before Al Gore’s committee and Gore fed the fear with $22 billion in annual funding for universities and professors to study the matter.  Hansen’s claim is a falsehood.  People move to warmer climates for their health.  Consider all the species, in the plant and animal kingdoms, that thrive near the equator, and none survives at the poles.

Yet, out of desperation for the money, professors cornered themselves into attempts to prove a falsehood true.  To do that, one must lie or proffer chimerical theories.  This has led climate change activists to demand devastating economic rules to assuage their self-induced fears.  They fear a recurrence of the 1.16 degrees Fahrenheit global temperature rise over the past century; meanwhile, temperatures rise and fall 20 degrees each day.  They fear that sea levels might rise millimeters in decades to come while tides rise and fall six feet each day.

Ever wonder why they decided to vilify CO2 rather than smog?  This mental disintegration began with our first climate change bureaucracy.  The Federal Clean Air Act authorized states to make their own rules.  What a mistake that was. 

See CO2 the Gas of Life here See Carbon Dioxide: The Gas of Life. Tiny amounts of this miracle molecule make life on Earth possible. It is a Special Report for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow By Paul Driessen.
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The logic of global warming alarmism - i.e., fear of the hand of man - is a sign of the times. What about nature’s footprint?

GW has been called a mass mania. Is it more? Is it an anti-humanism that would consign humanity’s future to the whims of anti-industrialist Utopians in Ivory Towers? Is it a new age doomsday religion preaching apocalyptic Thermageddon? Has government-funded production of hybrid cars become a Golden Calf?

Realists have been watching this dumbing-down of society and the government-funded education system for years. Global warming alarmism is just one of many indications of the spiral into oblivion of Western civilization.

Leading the spiral down are accepted behaviors that lead to the ruction of morals, ethics and even the principles of the scientific method. These accepted behaviors undermine our personal faith and shared cultural confidence in our abilities to overcome ignorance and superstition with reason and knowledge. They rub all of our collective noses in societies’ lack of will to discriminate between good and bad.

We no longer feel the need to reward excellence and personal achievement over self-destruction and self-defeating nihilism. If you don’t know and understand that fear of global warming is simply a symptom of a sick, corrupt and mentally dysfunctional zeitgeist - a case of global societal ADHD that has spread across and infected all of the Leftist and liberal fascists in the Northern hemisphere- then, answer these questions:

“Why do scientists and news stories blame everything on global warming?

“… Why is warming always framed as bad news?

“Why does so much ‘research’ claim a warmer planet ‘may’ lead to more diarrhea, acne and childhood insomnia, more juvenile delinquency, war, violent crime and prostitution, death of the Loch Ness Monster - and even more Mongolian cows dying from cold weather?

“… Why is it a bad thing that more CO2 helps plants tolerate droughts better and re-vegetate deserts?

“...Why do ‘error corrections’ always seem to result in more warming than originally predicted, instead of less?

“ And why do taxpayers have to shell out Big Bucks on this stuff?

“… If we didn’t know better, we’d think the operative rules were: Never seek logical or alternative answers, if you can blame a phenomenon or problem (like decreasing frog populations) on global warming. Do whatever it takes and fund whatever research is needed, to advance the goals of ending hydrocarbon use, increasing government control and ‘transforming’ society. And always include the terms ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ in any grant application.

“It may not be corruption. But it sure skews the research, conclusions and policy recommendations.”

Driessen P, Soon W, Legates DR. Cause for alarm? (May 23, 2010)

Will the Left apologize to the American people for blaming George Bush and not Katrina for flooding New Orleans?

Who plays politics with the weather? It goes back to Al Gore, VP under Bill Clinton. The motivation behind the fearmongering about deep and disastrous climate change disruption has nothing to do with what is good for the people; and, it has everything to do with more power to an out-of-control federal bureaucracy that has grown too large to fail. Only the dishonest refuse to admit global warming is a Left vs. right issue that is more social than science.

Climatists of global warming alarmism essentially have given up pretending that they can use science to make their case against Western industrial man; they’ve given up on reason. The climatism of the weather fearmongers has evolved to the point now where it has the credibility of earthquake prediction science. The official ‘science’ of the global warming alarmist community is simply to pray for catastrophe and then point. The only real ‘consensus’ that exists, now that Bush is gone, is to simply blame capitalism whatever Nature brings our way.

See, e.g.:

This by Judith Curry here , and comments by WUWT in weekly roundup here.

Terence Corcoran (Financial Post, 29-Oct-12) gets it and correctly exposes the warp and woof of the Left’s hype machinery, busily weaving hairshirts for the rest of us to wear, as follows: As gloom descended over the warmist camps across the continent, their overheated claims flickering dimly like dying campfires, their cause lost, there suddenly rose in the East a powerful force [Hurricane Sandy]. Look! What’s that on the horizon? A mighty blast of good news! FRANKENSTORM...The Natural Resources Defence Fund tweeted the blessed arrival of Sandy. Soon the idea [i.e., linking carbon emissions with natural disasters] was in all the media where such junk science routinely finds a home: The Huffington Post, The Atlantic, blogs at The Washington Post.