UPDATES: See Larry Bell’s post ‘Hottest Temps Ever’ Alarms Reveal Ignorance of History’ here.
According to the banner headline in an Aug. 2 article in The Hill, “July was Earth’s hottest month ever recorded.” That’s certainly newsworthy, considering that “ever” unquestionably dates back a very long time.
The claim was based on provisional data provided by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Services (C3S), highlighting that their then-predicted July temperatures were “on a par with, and possibly marginally higher” than the previous high of 2016 - purported by them to be 2.16 degrees Fahrenheit more than pre-industrial levels.
AccuWeather founder and CEO Joel Myers posted an August 7 blog article challenging those claims titled “Throwing cold water on extreme heat hype.”
Myers reports that “there is no evidence so far that extreme heat waves are becoming more common because of climate change, especially when you consider how many heat waves occurred historically compared to recent history.”
New York City, for example, has not had a daily high temperature day above 100 degrees Fahrenheit since 2012, and only five such days since 2002. By comparison, in a previous 18-year span from 1984 through 2001, New York City had nine days at 100 degrees or higher.
Meyers adds, “When the power went out in New York City earlier [last] month, the temperature didn’t even get to 100 degrees - it was 95, which is not extreme. For comparison, there were 12 days at 99 degrees or higher in 1999 alone.”
Or take Kansas City, Missouri - another example - which experienced an average of 18.7 days a year at 100 degrees or higher during the 1930s, compared to just 5.5 a year over the last 10 years.
As AccuWeather further clarified, “over the last 30 years, Kansas City has averaged only 4.8 days a year at 100 degrees or higher, which is only one-quarter of the frequency of days at 100 degrees or higher in the 1930s."”
As a matter of fact - here in America - 26 of the 50 states set high temperature records during the 1930s which either still stand or have since been tied. An additional 11 state all-time-high temperature records were set before 1930, and only two (South Dakota and South Carolina) that were set in the 21st century.
AccuWeather concludes, “So 37 of the 50 states have an all-time high temperature record not exceeded for more than 75 years. Given these numbers and the decreased frequency of days of 100 degrees or higher, it cannot be said that either the frequency or magnitude of heat waves is more common today.”
And as Ross McKitrick points out in a July 23 Vancouver Sun article, “Reality check - there is no ‘climate emergency’ in Vancouver” either. Amid the ordinary variability of nature, today’s weather is about the same as it’s been for as far back as the records go (since 1896).
McKitrick reports, “Looking at the 100 years from 1918 to 2018, February and September average daytime highs rose slightly at about 1.5 degrees per century, while the other 10 months did not exhibit a statistically significant trend.”
Since 1938, no month exhibits a significant upward trend in average daytime highs, while four months slightly declined. From 1958 to present, only four months slightly warmed, while annual average daytime high temperatures evidenced no significant trend.
The decade with the most daily average temperatures over 86 degrees Fahrenheit (seven) occurred in the 1960s, followed by six in the 2000s. So far, the present decade has known only one. The most in a single year (four) was 2009, followed by 1960 and 1942 which both had three.
As reported on July 28 by Joe D’Aleo of WeatherBell Analytics, “in the last 7 and 30 days, there were more U.S. record lows than highs.”
D’Aleo, who previously served as the first Weather Channel director, added, “The heat wave in what has been a cool and wet spring and summer was intense but brief and mainly notable for the elevated nighttime temperatures.”
Regarding a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) preliminary announcement that 2019 may have been the hottest month globally, University of Alabama climatologist Roy Spencer asks us to treat that claim with great skepticism.
Spencer’s website notes, for example, that unusual warmth in western Europe (France) was offset by unusual cool of eastern Europe and western Russia.
Even these recording comparisons are skewed by notorious and well-documented recording errors resulting from badly compromised urban temperature measurement locations, inconsistent calibration methods, and long-standing patterns of warm-biased surface and ocean temperature data “tuning adjustments” by NOAA.
Nevertheless, London’s The Telegraph ran an article headlined, “Give heat waves names so people take them more seriously, say experts, as Britain braces for hottest day” (as is done for winter storms).
So okay, I’ll volunteer to give this latest one a name.
How about calling it “summer?”
-------
See also Dr Roy Spencer post - July 2019 was not the warmest on record here.
-------------
Inconvenient facts about the heat this summer
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
In the last 7 and 30 days, there were more US record lows than highs. The heat wave in what has been a cool and wet spring and summer was intense but brief and mainly notable for the elevated nighttime temperatures. That nighttime warmth is consistent with the very wet first 6 months of 2019. Water vapor is by volume by far the most significant and potent greenhouse gas. Note the large number under HIGH MIN the last 30 days. There were also more DAILY and MONTHLY record lows than highs year to date.
As for Europe’s heat, it was a surge of Sahara air ahead of a eastern Atlantic trough in a pattern that was very amplified for this time of year (characteristic of cooler regimes earlier this century).
Europe’s all-time heat record was in 1977 (also very hot in the summer in the US but surrounded by two brutal winters that had the media talking ice age). The heat wave of 2003 had a similar jet stream scenario. Though proclaimed to be the new climate norm, they had to wait 16 years to see it repeat.
Climatologist Dr. John Christy shows heat here in the U.S. has been declining since the 1930s.
The politically driven NCA boondoggle produced a chart that finessed the issue by doing a ratio of heat records to cold records. Both are declining but nighttime lows are elevated by the urban heat island as most stations are now city or airport and so the record lows have declined faster.
Undoubtedly you read at least some organs of the mainstream media. Perhaps your go-to source is the New York Times, or maybe the Washington Post, or Bloomberg News, or The Economist, or maybe Reuters. And therefore you have the strong impression that the world is well on its way to a huge energy transition, away from the dirty fossil fuels of the past, and toward the low carbon and renewable energy of the future. Or maybe you steer clear of all of those propagandists, but you still have the same impression. Perhaps you are getting this impression from the politicians running places like New York, or California, or Germany, or Denmark, or South Australia, or Spain, or any of many other holier-than-thou jurisdictions that have announced the imminent end of their fossil fuel use. Anyway, with so many people so loudly proclaiming the approaching end of fossil fuels, surely by now fossil fuel use must have begun its rapid drop toward oblivion.
But where can you get actual information on world energy consumption of each type, and of how it is changing over time? One quite comprehensive source is the Statistical Review of World Energy, put out each year by the BP oil company. The 2019 version, covering statistics through 2018, just came out on June 11. It was covered at Watts Up With That by Larry Hamlin on July 23.
The following chart, covering 2018 world energy consumption by fuel type, really tells you all you need to know:
In simple terms, world consumption of all the fossil fuel types continues to increase, and at fairly rapid rates. There was a notable pick-up in the rates of increase from 2017 to 2018. The “renewables,” like wind and solar - represented by that tiny red-orange band in the middle - have increased somewhat from a tiny base, but remain a barely-perceptible portion of the overall total.
Much of the interesting information in the Review appears in spreadsheets rather than graphs, so to get the most out of the report you need to spend some time with pages full of numbers. Hamlin has done some of that work for us, and comes up with some interesting statistics derived from BP’s spreadsheets. Examples:
The results for the last decade show that global energy use grew by 18.5% during the last decade with 98.5% of that energy growth accounted for by the developing nations.
The developing nations represented about 51% of global energy use in 2008 and ended the decade accounting for over 59% of global energy use.
Energy use growth by the developing nations during the last decade occurred at a rate 5.5 times greater than the flat growth rate that occurred in the developed nations.
Almost all of those energy consumption increases come from fossil fuels, of course.
In the graph category, this next one nicely illustrates the total futility of the U.S. and Europe trying to “save the planet” by reducing coal consumption:
The “Asia Pacific” category in that chart includes not just China and India, but also places like Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam. Clearly, the increases in their coal consumption are swamping - and will continue to swamp - any modest reductions that Western nations can achieve by hobbling their economies.
A spreadsheet of carbon dioxide emissions by country and region appears at page 55 of the BP Review. Overall, world emissions were up 2% in 2018 over 2017, and up close to 12% since 2008. But those aggregate numbers hide interesting differences by country. U.S. and European emissions were both down since 2008, but in 2018 U.S. emissions increased 2.6% (with the booming economy) while European emissions continued their slow decline. China’s CO2 emissions were up 2.2% in 2018 (and up over 25% since 2008). The 2.2% increase for 2018 may not sound like all that much, but it represented an increase of about 200 million tons of CO2, an amount far exceeding the reduction of about 69 million tons of CO2 emissions achieved by Europe in that year. Meanwhile, places like India (7.0%), Indonesia (5.2%), Bangladesh (9.3%) and Vietnam (14.8%) saw their emissions soar in 2018. India’s 7% increase also represented a multiple of Europe’s decrease (about double) in terms of tons of CO2. Only one country achieved a double-digit CO2 emissions reduction for 2018. Yes, it is Venezuela, at -13.2%. Green New Deal anyone?
In short, the few rich guys who are knocking themselves out over CO2 guilt are achieving totally insignificant reductions in emissions, while those reductions are getting totally swamped by rapidly increasing emissions from the developing world.
The BP guys who put out the report are overcome with angst over what their statistics are showing. There’s this from a guy named Spencer Dale, the “group chief economist” and apparently the man in charge of compiling the Review:
[W]hen our successors look back at Statistical Reviews from around this period, they will observe a world in which there was growing societal awareness and demands for urgent action on climate change, but where the actual energy data continued to move stubbornly in the wrong direction. A growing mismatch between hopes and reality. In that context, I fear - or perhaps hope - that 2018 will represent the year in which this mismatch peaked.
Don’t they realize that they are in the oil and gas business? Anyway, I have some news for Mr. Dale: There is zero chance that any of those third world countries will stop their emissions increases until they have achieved the same levels of per capita energy consumption that we have here in the U.S. and in Europe. I say, get over your angst, relax and enjoy it.
The math behind “The New Energy Economy: An Exercise in Magical Thinking”
A week doesn’t pass without a mayor, governor, policymaker or pundit joining the rush to demand, or predict, an energy future that is entirely based on wind/solar and batteries, freed from the “burden: of the hydrocarbons that have fueled societies for centuries. Regardless of one’s opinion about whether, or why, an energy “transformation” is called for, the physics and economics of energy combined with scale realities make it clear that there is no possibility of anything resembling a radically “new energy economy” in the foreseeable future. Bill Gates has said that when it comes to understanding energy realities “we need to bring math to the problem."55
He’s right. So, in my recent Manhattan Institute report, “The New Energy Economy: An Exercise in Magical Thinking,” I did just that.
Herein, then, is a summary of some of bottom-line realities from the underlying math. (See the full report for explanations, documentation and citations.)
Realities About the Scale of Energy Demand
1. Hydrocarbons supply over 80% of world energy: If all that were in the form of oil, the barrels would line up from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, and that entire line would grow by the height of the Washington Monument every week.
2. The small two percentage-point decline in the hydrocarbon share of world energy use entailed over $2 trillion in cumulative global spending on alternatives over that period; solar and wind today supply less than 2% of the global energy.
3. When the world’s four billion poor people increase energy use to just one-third of Europe’s per capita level, global demand rises by an amount equal to twice America’s total consumption.
4. A 100x growth in the number of electric vehicles to 400 million on the roads by 2040 would displace 5% of global oil demand.
5. Renewable energy would have to expand 90-fold to replace global hydrocarbons in two decades. It took a half-century for global petroleum production to expand “only” 10-fold.
6. Replacing U.S. hydrocarbon-based electric generation over the next 30 years would require a construction program building out the grid at a rate 14-fold greater than any time in history.
7. Eliminating hydrocarbons to make U.S. electricity (impossible soon, infeasible for decades) would leave untouched 70% of U.S. hydrocarbons use - America uses 16% of world energy.
8. Efficiency increases energy demand by making products & services cheaper: since 1990, global energy efficiency improved 33%, the economy grew 80% and global energy use is up 40%.
9. Efficiency increases energy demand: Since 1995, aviation fuel use/passenger-mile is down 70%, air traffic rose more than 10-fold, and global aviation fuel use rose over 50%.
10. Efficiency increases energy demand: since 1995, energy used per byte is down about 10,000-fold, but global data traffic rose about a million-fold; global electricity used for computing soared.
11. Since 1995, total world energy use rose by 50%, an amount equal to adding two entire United States’ worth of demand.
12. For security and reliability, an average of two months of national demand for hydrocarbons are in storage at any time. Today, barely two hours of national electricity demand can be stored in all utility-scale batteries plus all batteries in one million electric cars in America.
13. Batteries produced annually by the Tesla Gigafactory (world’s biggest battery factory) can store three minutes worth of annual U.S. electric demand.
14. To make enough batteries to store two-day’s worth of U.S. electricity demand would require 1,000 years of production by the Gigafactory (world’s biggest battery factory).
15. Every $1 billion in aircraft produced leads to some $5 billion in aviation fuel consumed over two decades to operate them. Global spending on new jets is more than $50 billion a year - and rising.
16. Every $1 billion spent on datacenters leads to $7 billion in electricity consumed over two decades. Global spending on datatcenters is more than $100 billion a year- and rising.
Realities About Energy Economics
17. Over a 30-year period, $1 million worth of utility-scale solar or wind produces 40 million and 55 million kWh respectively: $1 million worth of shale well produces enough natural gas to generate 300 million kWh over 30 years.
18. It costs about the same to build one shale well or two wind turbines: the latter, combined, produces 0.7 barrels of oil (equivalent energy) per hour, the shale rig averages 10 barrels of oil per hour.
19. It costs less than $0.50 to store a barrel of oil, or its equivalent in natural gas, but it costs $200 to store the equivalent energy of a barrel of oil in batteries.
20. Cost models for wind and solar assume, respectively, 41% and 29% capacity factors (i.e., how often they produce electricity). Real-world data reveal as much as 10 percentage points less for both. That translates into $3 million less energy produced than assumed over a 20-year life of a 2-MW $3 million wind turbine.
21. In order to compensate for episodic wind/solar output, U.S. utilities are using oil- and gas-burning reciprocating engines (big cruise-ship-like diesels); three times as many have been added to the grid since 2000 as in the 50 years prior to that.
22. Wind-farm capacity factors have improving at about 0.7% per year; this small gain comes mainly from reducing the number of turbines per acre leading to 50% increase in average land used to produce a wind-kilowatt-hour.
23. Over 90% of America’s electricity, and 99% of the power used in transportation, comes from sources that can easily supply energy to the economy any time the market demands it.
24. Wind and solar machines produce energy an average of 25-30% of the time, and only when nature permits. Conventional power plants can operate nearly continuously and are available when needed.
25. The shale revolution collapsed the prices of natural gas & coal, the two fuels that produce 70% of U.S. electricity. But electric rates haven’t gone down, rising instead 20% since 2008. Direct and indirect subsidies for solar and wind consumed those savings.
Energy Physics...Inconvenient Realities
26. Politicians and pundits like to invoke “moonshot” language. But transforming the energy economy is not like putting a few people on the moon a few times. It is like putting all of humanity on the moon - permanently.
27. The common cliche: an energy tech disruption will echo the digital tech disruption. But information-producing machines and energy-producing machines involve profoundly different physics; the cliche is sillier than comparing apples to bowling balls.
28. If solar power scaled like computer-tech, a single postage-stamp-size solar array would power the Empire State Building. That only happens in comic books.
29. If batteries scaled like digital tech, a battery the size of a book, costing three cents, could power a jetliner to Asia. That only happens in comic books.
30. If combustion engines scaled like computers, a car engine would shrink to the size of an ant and produce a thousand-fold more horsepower; actual ant-sized engines produce 100,000 times less power.
31. No digital-like 10x gains exist for solar tech. Physics limit for solar cells (the Shockley-Queisser limit) is a max conversion of about 33% of photons into electrons; commercial cells today are at 26%.
32. No digital-like 10x gains exist for wind tech. Physics limit for wind turbines (the Betz limit) is a max capture of 60% of energy in moving air; commercial turbines achieve 45%.
33. No digital-like 10x gains exist for batteries: maximum theoretical energy in a pound of oil is 1,500% greater than max theoretical energy in the best pound of battery chemicals.
34. About 60 pounds of batteries are needed to store the energy equivalent of one pound of hydrocarbons.
35. At least 100 pounds of materials are mined, moved and processed for every pound of battery fabricated.
36. Storing the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil, which weighs 300 pounds, requires 20,000 pounds of Tesla batteries ($200,000 worth).
37. Carrying the energy equivalent of the aviation fuel used by an aircraft flying to Asia would require $60 million worth of Tesla-type batteries weighing five times more than that aircraft.
38. It takes the energy-equivalent of 100 barrels of oil to fabricate a quantity of batteries that can store the energy equivalent of a single barrel of oil.
39. A battery-centric grid and car world means mining gigatons more of the earth to access lithium, copper, nickel, graphite, rare earths, cobalt, etc. - and using millions of tons of oil and coal both in mining and to fabricate metals and concrete.
40. China dominates global battery production with its grid 70% coal-fueled: EVs using Chinese batteries will create more carbon-dioxide than saved by replacing oil-burning engines.
41. One would no more use helicopters for regular trans-Atlantic travel - doable with elaborately expensive logistics - than employ a nuclear reactor to power a train or photovoltaic systems to power a nation.
Mark P. Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a McCormick School of Engineering Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University, and author of Work in the Age of Robots, published by Encounter Books.
Drivers will be forced off the roads in Ireland and the population packed into “higher density” cities under a long-awaited climate plan which will ‘revolutionise’ people’s lifestyle and behaviors, according to local media.
“Nudge” policies such as huge tax hikes, as well as bans and red tape outlined in the plan, will pave the way to a “vibrant” Ireland of zero carbon emissions by 2050 according to the government, which last year committed to boosting the country’s 4.7 million-strong population by a further million with mass migration.
In order to avert a “climate apocalypse”, the government plans to force people “out of private cars because they are the biggest offenders for emissions”, according to transport minister Shane Ross whose proposals - which include banning fossil fuel vehicles from towns and cities nationwide - are posed to cripple ordinary motorists, local media reports.
Launching the plan in Dublin, leader Leo Varadkar outlined his vision for an Ireland of ‘higher density’ cities consisting of populations whose lifestyles and behaviors have been totally transformed by ‘carrot and stick’ policies outlined in the climate plan.
“Our approach will be to nudge people and businesses to change behavior and adopt new technologies through incentives, disincentives, regulations, and information,” the globalist prime minister said.
“We are going to change how electricity is produced and consumed, how our homes and workplaces are heated; the way we travel; the types of vehicles we purchase; and how food is produced.
‘Put an Empty Space to Better Use’: Irish Urged to House Migrants in Spare Beds
Irish Urged to House Migrants in Spare Beds
Homeowners in Ireland have been asked to pledge spare rooms as part of the government’s Irish Refugee Protection Programme.
“It’s about vibrant, populated city centers, liveable, with excellent amenities and transport as we embrace higher densities.”
The document, which was unveiled on Tuesday, features more than 180 measures to decarbonize the Irish economy including making private car ownership prohibitively expensive - with petrol and diesel car sales banned by 2030, a date by which it says general carbon tax will be increased from Euro20 a tonne to “at least” Euro80.
In addition, the plans demand that coal and peat-fired power stations are replaced with wind farms and other “green” energy sources in order to meet the requirement that 70 percent of electricity will be generated from renewables by 2030.
Irish People Fear Country ‘Changing Too Quickly’, ‘Too Politically Correct’
While Ireland’s establishment backs “social justice” and open borders, a poll reveals most citizens feel uneasy about its transformation.
But plans to dramatically slash carbon emissions by ditching tried and tested energy sources such as coal and nuclear in favor of renewables will necessarily result in a collapse in living standards according to scientists including Cambridge engineering professor Michael Kelly, who has previously explained that such proposals “represent total madness”.
“In energy terms the current generation of renewable energy technologies alone will not enable a civilized modern society to continue,” he asserted in a peer-reviewed paper published in 2016, pointing out that renewables such as solar, wind, and hydropower supply just seven per cent of electricity needs globally while “the rate at which fossil fuels are growing is seven times that at which the low carbon energies are growing.”
The Hughes Medal-decorated physicist cautioned:
“The call to decarbonize the global economy by 80% by 2050 can now only be described as glib in my opinion, as the underlying analysis shows it is only possible if we wish to see large parts of the population die from starvation, destitution or violence in the absence of enough low-carbon energy to sustain society.”
------------------
See the effect of offshore wind farms off Ireland on bird populations here.
Isle Of Man Seabird Populations Plummet As Wind Farms Overwhelm The Irish Sea
Herring Gulls are down 82%, European Shag down 51%, Razorbills down 55%. The list goes on....
* The world’s biggest offshore wind farm is just a few miles away.
* Isn’t there a conspicuous connection?
The Isle Of Man wildlife charity Manx Birdlife has reported a shocking 40% decline in the populations of many species of sea birds around the island’s coast.
The worrying figures emerged following a comprehensive census that took place over two years. Whatever the reason for the sharp decline of the birds, it illustrates that something has gone very wrong.
I’ve noted with interest that this unprecedented drop in populations, of several of the island’s maritime species, coincides with the proliferation of wind farms in the Irish Sea - something which has worried me during the past few years, as I have witnessed the frenzied development of the wind industry in the waters off the western coasts of England and Wales.
World’s Biggest Offshore Wind Farm just a few miles away…
We know that offshore turbines kill birds and bats, though it is almost impossible to estimate the number of casualties because there are no retrievable carcasses to count at sea....
It is also highly likely that wind farms adversely affect many marine mammals.
The world’s largest offshore wind farm is now in operation off the Cumbrian coast at Walney, just 40 miles or so from the Isle of Man, and, with the news that nearby bird populations are in free-fall, we must seriously ask whether the huge turbines might be killing more birds than we ever anticipated.
The Isle of Man study was, ironically, partly supported by the Walney Extension Offshore Wind Farm Project. How paradoxical would it be to find that the project itself, with its giant 640 feet turbines, was responsible for the plummeting numbers of sea birds.
The report is full of depressing statistics. Herring Gulls are down 82%, European Shag down 51%, Razorbills down 55%. The list goes on.
Marine Protected Areas “may not necessarily be major barrier to new projects...”
I’ve been increasingly concerned at the feverish pace of industrial offshore wind farm development in this country and especially in the Irish Sea. Such a high density of turbines in a confined area - an area renowned for its wildlife - has been watched with dismay by many environmentalists, especially since large parts of the sea have been designated Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s), supposedly limiting the scale of industrial development in precious areas that provide important habitat for so many species.
Alas, development has been allowed in vast parts of the sea that fall just outside the protected zones - and there have even been hints that the MPA’s themselves may not be off limit for future wind farm expansion. Last year, a report carried out for the Welsh government suggested that ‘this protection may not necessarily be a major barrier to new projects”’ - which sounds shockingly irresponsible to me.
Isle of Man plans might seriously threaten birds’ survival
Though the Isle Of Man currently has none of its own offshore wind farms, their government is reportedly close to approving industrial wind development off the island’s coast as early as next year. Such plans might seriously threaten the survival of species already struggling to cope with the industrialization of their habitat.
Wind energy companies might flaunt their green ideologies for all to see - but their industry nevertheless hides a grim reality. Their ‘green’ energy kills wildlife.
Money Vs Wildlife…
Speaking about the alarming drop in bird populations, managing director of Manx Birdlife, Neil Morris, suggested that “there are a number of causes for these declines and the solutions, such as protecting nesting sites, restoring food chains and mitigating climate change, will be challenging.”
It will be interesting to see whether more research will be carried out into just how many birds are being killed by the Irish Sea wind farms. My hunch is that many people would rather keep that information under their hats. So much money invested in offshore wind means that bad publicity would be very unwelcome and it is common for critics of the industry to be ridiculed.
It seems likely that vast swathes of our coastal seas are likely to be further industrialized by the wind giants - even if it is at the expense of wildlife.
------------------
See how Washington plans for a carbon tax would affect you here:
https://cei.org/content/cei-releases-new-video-explaining-how-carbon-tax-would-punish-american-families
Note: see also this post Will The Democratic Candidates Ever Notice That The Climate Change Thing Is Over?
The general interest newsmagazines of the world have been in serious decline for years. Time, Newsweek, U.S. New and World Report - what ever happened to them? Although all of them still exist in some form, they are all shadows of their former selves.
But then there is The Economist of London. These people put out what at least looks on the surface to be a serious print edition every week. They devote real resources to gathering news from around the world. If you want to find out what’s going on in, say, Argentina or the Congo or Uganda, this is one of the few places that you can find it. But can you trust anything they say?
I’ve been a long-time subscriber to The Economist, and had long regarded them as relatively sensible, generally less infected by leftist groupthink than most mainstream sources. But then, a few years ago - I can’t pinpoint the exact date - they made what appears to be a corporate-level decision to go all in for global warming alarm. Henceforth, every issue would contain one or several global warming stories, always with the slant of trying to scare the readership about the allegedly terrible crisis at hand.
Since then, it’s been a steady downhill slide. But how low can this go? In the issue of May 25-31, 2019, we seem to have hit bottom, with an editorial headlined “How to think about global warming and war.” Yes, they have now descended to attempting to blame all world warfare and strife on the universal bogeyman of “global warming.”
How would that even work? Supposedly, through this obvious chain of logic:
[F]uture-gazers are right to warn that global warming has made some wars more likely than they would otherwise have been, and will make others more so in the future. It is never possible to pinpoint a specific war and say that it would not have happened in the absence of climate change, just as it is impossible to say that a particular flood or typhoon was caused by it. Rather, climate change is causing environmental upheaval that destabilizes regions and raises the risk of bloodshed.
Can you fill us in on what is the supposed “environmental upheaval”? The answer is, we will just repeat the usual mantras about “extreme weather” and droughts and floods, without bothering to check the underlying facts in any way:
Some things are clear. Accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme droughts and floods in some regions. Seasonal rains and monsoons are becoming more variable and less predictable. As one area grows parched, its inhabitants encroach on land traditionally farmed or used for grazing by others. Disputes erupt, some of which are already turning violent…
What is the supposed evidence of “increasing frequency and intensity of extreme droughts and floods”? The closest thing in this article to evidence is a single picture, presumably from the Sahel region of Africa, showing what looks like severe drought conditions:
Sahel photo.
But is there actually a measurable trend somewhere in the world showing that so-called “extreme” weather conditions are increasing? Of course, it’s the opposite. The people at AC (Alarmist Claim) Research have just updated their work on fact checking many of the usual alarmist claims about global warming, from droughts and floods to sea level rise to hurricanes and tornadoes and many others. The summary report, with a revision date of May 20, 2019, can be found here. The more detailed report as to the sub-topic of droughts and floods can be found here. (See this story on the flooding this spring and May tornadoes). From the introduction on the droughts and floods topic:
In testimony before Congress Professor Roger Pielke, Jr. said: “It is misleading, and just plain incorrect, to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally. Droughts have, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the U.S. over the last century.”
Go to the link for an abundance of charts and graphs showing U.S. and worldwide trends in droughts and floods, which universally are either flat or downward, not upward. The article in The Economist mentions specifically the Sahel region of Africa as one place where strife is supposedly increasing due to long-term drought. They seem completely unaware that the Sahel specifically has been experiencing increasing rainfall over the past several decades. Here is a 2011 Briefing Paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation specifically on the subject of that trend in the Sahel, titled ”The Sahel is Greening.” Excerpt:
The Sahara is actually shrinking, with vegetation arising on land where there was nothing but sand and rocks before. The southern border of the Sahara has been retreating since the early 1980s, making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa. There has been a spectacular regeneration of vegetation in northern Burkina Faso, which was devastated by drought and advancing deserts 20 years ago… Vegetation has also increased significantly in the past 15 years in southern Mauritania, north-western Niger, central Chad, much of Sudan and parts of Eritrea.
For more recent data on Sahel rainfall and greening, see this April 2019 article from Nature. But then, who needs facts when there’s a narrative to advance? The problem for The Economist is that the total abandonment of facts in favor of advancing a political narrative ultimately destroys their credibility on all issues.
