wryheat

The Broken Greenhouse – Why Co2 Is a Minor Player in Global Climate

A Summary of Earth’s Climate History-a Geologist’s View

Problems with wind and solar generation of electricity – a review

The High Cost of Electricity from Wind and Solar Generation

Impact of the Paris Climate Accord and why Trump was right to drop it

Six Issues the Promoters of the Green New Deal Have Overlooked

Why reducing carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuel will have no effect on climate ☼

CLIMATE ARTICLES FOR JANUARY

U.S. Climate 2023 Year in Review – In one word: NORMAL (link) ☼

2023 US wildfire season sees total acreage burned under 3 million, far below 10-year avg. & lowest since 1998 (link) ☼

Paleoclimate Reconstructions Continue To Document A Much Warmer-Than-Today Holocene (link) ☼

Beijing records longest cold wave in modern history (link) ☼

Antarctic Sea Ice Volume Greater Than The Early 1980s (link) ☼

Impacts and risks of “realistic” global warming projections for the 21st century

by Nicola Scafetta. This paper demonstrates that realistic emissions scenarios and climate sensitivity values & scenarios of natural climate variability produce more realistic, non-alarming scenarios of 21st century climate. (link) ☼

61 Articles On Studies, Datasets From 2023 Show Climate Models Are Rubbish (link) ☼

Collapsing Antarctic Scare Narrative…4 NEW Papers Find Antarctic Ice Is MORE STABLE Than Thought (link) ☼

An Egregious Failure of Scientific Integrity (link) ☼

CLIMATE DYSTOPIA: How Life Would Get Worse If Climate Alarmists Carry Out Their US Agenda (link) ☼

Climate Alarmist Claim Fact Checks by Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, Jan 17, 2024 (link) ☼

Nearly 160 Scientific Papers Detail The Minuscule Effect CO2 Has On Earth’s Temperature (link) ☼

New Study Concludes ‘CO2 Can Have No Measurable Effect On Ocean Temperatures’ (link) ☼

Unpacking Climate Lies (link) ☼

Global Warming: Observations vs. Climate Models

by Dr. Roy Spencer

Warming of the global climate system over the past half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy policy. In the United States during summer, the observed warming is much weaker than that produced by all 36 climate models surveyed here. While the cause of this relatively benign warming could theoretically be entirely due to humanity’s production of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning, this claim cannot be demonstrated through science. At least some of the measured warming could be natural. Contrary to media reports and environmental organizations’ press releases, global warming offers no justification for carbon-based regulation. (Read full paper) ☼

Astrophysicist Nukes The Entire ‘CO2 Drives Climate Change’ Narrative

by Vigilant Fox

“The whole problem of this global warming is a complete nothing,” Dr. Willie Soon told Tucker Carlson. He says he’s 90% sure the sun, not carbon dioxide, is causing climate change and that the climate czars are so out of their minds that they are misleading the public. (Read more and watch video) ☼

Related from the Jo Nova blog: “They didn’t tell us, the term “fossil fuels” might be wrong too.

Dr Willie Soon unleashes on the failures of climate change and modern science for 40 minutes with Tucker Carlson. As an opening he explained how one of Saturn’s moons has more liquid fuel than all the oil and gas deposits of Earth, which rather pokes a hole in the idea that fossil fuels are only ever made from fossils.” (Read more) ☼

New Study Finds No Evidence Of A CO2-Driven Warming Signal In 60 Years Of IR Flux Data

by Kenneth Richard

“The real atmosphere does not follow the GHG [greenhouse gas] GE [greenhouse effect] hypothesis of the IPCC.” – Miskolczi, 2023

CO2 increased from 310 ppm to 385 ppm (24%) during the 60 years from 1948 to 2008. Observations indicate this led to a negative radiative imbalance of -0.75 W/m². In other words, increasing CO2 delivered a net cooling effect – the opposite of what the IPCC has claimed should happen (Miskolczi, 2023).

Also, there is “no correlation with time and the strong signal of increasing atmospheric CO2 content in any time series,” which affirms “the atmospheric CO2 increase cannot be the reason for global warming.” (Read more) ☼

Models, Myths, And Misinformation Undergird Climate Models And Energy Policy

by Paul Driessen

It’s mystifying and terrifying that our lives, livelihoods, and living standards are increasingly dictated by activist, political, bureaucratic, academic, and media elites who disseminate theoretical nonsense, calculated myths, and outright disinformation.

Not only on pronouns, gender, and immigration – but on climate change and energy, the foundation of modern civilization and life spans.

We’re constantly told the world will plunge into an existential climate cataclysm if average planetary temperatures rise another few tenths of a degree from using fossil fuels for reliable, affordable energy, raw materials for over 6,000 vital products, and lifting billions out of poverty, disease, and early death.

Climate alarmism implicitly assumes Earth’s climate was stable until coal, oil, and gas emissions knocked it off-kilter, and would be stable again if people stopped using fossil fuels.

In the real world, climate has changed numerous times, often dramatically, sometimes catastrophically, and always naturally. (Read more) ☼

What Is Climate?–Richard Lindzen

Read this essay and look at the figures (link). Lindzen points out that: “Averaging Mt. Everest and the Dead Sea makes no sense. Instead, we average what is called the temperature anomaly. We average the deviations from a 30-year mean. The figure shows an increase of a bit more than 1°C over 175 years. We are told by international bureaucrats that when this reaches 1.5°C, we are doomed. In all fairness, even the science report of the UN’s IPCC (i.e. the WG1 report) and the US National Assessments never make this claim. The political claims are simply meant to frighten the public into compliance with absurd policies. It remains a puzzle to me why the public should be frightened of a warming that is smaller than the temperature change we normally experience between breakfast and lunch….Earth has dozens of different climate regimes…at any given time, there are almost as many [weather] stations cooling as are warming.” ☼

ENERGY ISSUES

Coal’s Life-Saving Role Ignored By Climate-Obsessed Media

by Vijay Jayaraj

Billions of people all over the world do not have access to secure sources of heat and electricity. For these, winter can be a death blow. A political war against fossil fuels is making matters worse for those unprotected from frigid temperatures. Winter’s icy chill claims far more lives than scorching summer heat, according to global analyses of fatalities caused by various natural hazards. In fact, a 2023 health study conducted across 854 European cities reveals that an estimated annual excess of 203,620 deaths were due to cold while just 20,173 were attributed to heat. In comparative terms, only 1 in 10 excess deaths from extreme temperatures were attributable to heat while a majority were due to cold. (Read more) ☼

Energy at a Glance: Ethanol and Biodiesel

from the Heartland Institute

Biofuels produce more harm than benefits after accounting for their negative impacts on fuel economy, air quality, land use, and food prices.

Quick Bullets:

Ethanol has a lower energy density than gasoline, which means vehicles get fewer miles per gallon.

Per unit of equivalent energy, ethanol produces more carbon dioxide (CO2) than normal gasoline.

Ethanol fuels produce more nitrogen oxides (NOx) and other air pollutants, which contribute to worsening air pollution, especially in summer months

(Read more – read PDF version) For other topics from Energy at a Glance go here.☼

The Cult of Darkness

by Edward Hudgins

“Energy is not for conserving; it is for unleashing to serve us, to make our lives better, to allow us to realize our dreams and to reach for the stars, those bright lights that pierce the darkness of the night.” (Read more) ☼

New report highlights Green failure in Europe and warns America (link) ☼

Today’s Materialistic World Cannot Survive Without Crude Oil

by Ronald Stein, Heartland Institute

The elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss is that crude oil is the foundation of our materialistic society as it is the basis of all products and fuels demanded by the 8 billion on this planet.

As a reality check for those pursuing net-zero emissions, wind and solar do different things than crude oil. Unreliable renewables, like wind turbines and solar panels, only generate occasional electricity but manufacture no products for society.

Crude oil is virtually never used to generate electricity but, when manufactured into petrochemicals, is the basis for virtually all the products in our materialistic society that did not exist before the 1800s being used at these infrastructures like transportation, airports, hospitals, medical equipment, appliances, electronics, telecommunications, communications systems, space programs, heating and ventilating, and militaries.

Most importantly, today, there is a lost reality that the primary usage of crude oil is NOT for the generation of electricity but to manufacture derivatives and fuels, which are the ingredients of everything needed by economies and lifestyles to exist and prosper. (Read more) ☼

California’s War On Fossil Fuels Is Having Less-Than-Stellar Consequences

by Nick Pope

California has gone after the fossil fuel industry with vigor, but those efforts do not seem to have made much impact on climate change while proving detrimental to the state’s economy. California’s anti-fossil fuel push also has not moved the needle much on climate change, which alarmists continue to insist is accelerating at a dangerous pace, but it has raised energy costs for Californians, diminished grid reliability, and disincentivized corporate investment that would create or maintain jobs in the state. (Read more) ☼

A Federal Power Grid Would be Everyone’s Worst Nightmare (link) ☼

Caving To Climate Alarmists, Biden Jams Brakes On Massive Natural Gas Projects (link) ☼

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

The Electric Car Con Explained

By William Levin

Is electricity a source of energy? Most people will answer yes, which is incorrect. Electricity carries energy but it is not itself a source of energy, which in the U.S. is supplied 60% by natural gas and coal, 18% nuclear and 22% renewables (hydro, solar and wind).

The related question is whether cars are a major consumer of energy and hence a significant contributor of Co2 emissions? Again, most people believe both statements are self-evidently true, hence the importance of moving to electric cars.

In fact, cars (light-duty transportation) account for less than 5% of global energy demand, with U.S. cars accounting for 19% of the global car fleet, declining to under 15% by 2050 as car demand grows faster outside the U.S.

Putting these facts together, and they are indisputable facts, provides a stunning insight.

The U.S. car fleet accounts for a mere 1.0% of global energy demand (5% x 19%), declining to 0.8% by 2050. So even if the U.S. shifts 100% to electric-powered cars, the maximum climate impact in 2050 is a meaningless 0.2% (22% x 0.8%) reduction in global Co2 emissions from the current electric grid, up to a maximum of 0.5% assuming solar, wind, and hydro can, implausibly, power 60% of electric demand.

In other words, there is no factual basis to claim that the government mandate to switch to electric cars will have any material impact on global Co2 emissions. (Read more) ☼

EV’s Manganese Future

by Pat Risner

Manganese, a federally designated critical mineral and one of five minerals to earn increased focus under the Defense Production Act in 2022, is emerging as a potential gamechanger in the future of Evs. The problem: the United States has not actively mined manganese in fifty years, and more than 90% of the current market for manganese processing is currently done in China.

In Southern Arizona, we are looking to change that.

South32’s Hermosa project, located in a historic mining district in the Patagonia Mountains, is currently the only advanced mine development project in the United States that could produce two federally designated critical minerals—manganese and zinc. Both are critical to the clean energy transition. (Read more) ☼

Freeze Frame: Cold Weather Shuts Down Evs (link) ☼

‘Bunch Of Dead Robots’: Charging Stations Turn Into EV Graveyards Thanks To Frigid Temps (link) ☼

ENVIRONMENT

Lake Mead Recovery Stuns Climate Change Zealots

by Rick Manning

The water levels of Lake Mead had dropped more than 45 feet in the three years from January of 2020 to December of 2022. Knowing ‘scientists’ worried that the Lake could approach ‘dead pool’ levels in the near future ending the electricity generation from the dam. A catastrophic event for the Las Vegas and Phoenix population centers.

But something unexpected happened in 2023. It rained and snowed a lot in the California Sierra Nevada mountain range, but more significantly, the Rocky Mountains in Utah and Colorado also received above average rainfall and snow — increasing run off throughout the year. Now, Lake Mead’s water level is a whopping 23 feet higher than a year prior, cutting the effects of the three-year drought in half. (Read more) ☼

ECONOMY

MINERAL COMMODITY SUMMARIES 2023

Source U.S. Geological Survey:

https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023.pdf

Arizona was #1 in production of cement, copper, molybdenum, mineral concentrates, sand and

gravel (construction), stone (crushed). Value: $10.1 billion.

Arizona was the leading copper-producing State and accounted for approximately 70% of

domestic output.

Domestic gemstone production included agate, beryl, coral, diamond, garnet, jade, jasper, opal, pearl, quartz, sapphire, shell, topaz, tourmaline, turquoise, and many other gem materials. In descending order of production value, Arizona led the Nation in natural gemstone production,

followed by Oregon and Nevada.

The top 10 ranked States (based on total value including withheld values) were, in descending order of production value, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, California, Minnesota, Alaska, Florida, Utah, Michigan, and Missouri. ☼

STATE OF THE UNION

These 22 States Urge High Court to Allow Biden Admin, Big Tech to Censor Online Speech

(link)

Commentary: Biden Admin Wants To Promote Green Energy By Destroying 4 Hydroelectric Dams (link)

Past Time to Undo Obama’s ‘Fundamental Transformation’

by Clarice Feldman

Two decades of Obama policies have led to wars in the Middle East, the destruction of our educational systems, the danger to our lives from poor management, and a substantially weakened military capability. (Read more) ☼

Naked Power: Now Gov Wants to Regulate Our Clothes — in Climate’s Name (link) ☼

Biden admin failing to track Chinese ownership of US farmland: govt watchdog (link)

“This report confirms one of our worst fears: that not only is the USDA unable to answer the question of who owns what land and where, but that there is no plan by the department to internally reverse this dangerous flaw that affects our supply chain and economy,” Congressional Western Caucus Chairman Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., said. “Food security is national security, and we cannot allow foreign adversaries to influence our food supply while we stick our heads in the sand.” ☼

Can Texas Constitutionally Engage in War and Protect Itself From Imminent Danger?

by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.

“No State shall, without the Consent of Congress … engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.” — Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution

“As each state will expect to be attacked and wish to guard against it, each will retain its own militia for it own defense.” — James Madison, speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788

“This is not over. Texas’ razor wire is an effective deterrent to the illegal crossings Biden encourages. I will continue to defend Texas’ constitutional authority to secure the border and prevent the Biden Admin from destroying our property.”

That’s the message sent via X (formerly Twitter) by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. (Read more) ☼

——————————————————————————————-

“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” —Thomas Jefferson (1824)

“No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.” – Robert A. Heinlein

END

SCIENCE, CLIMATE, ENERGY AND POLITICAL NEWS ROUNDUP 2023 OCTOBER

A monthly review of climate, energy, environmental, and political policy issues

Articles compiled by Jonathan DuHamel

You may post comments at the end of this post or send them to wryheat@cox.net

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” – H. L. Mencken

Climate policies are more dangerous than climate change.

CLIMATE SCIENCE BACKGROUND:

by Jonathan DuHamel

For more on climate science, see my Wryheat Climate articles:

The Nonsense of “Net-Zero”

Climate Change in Perspective

The Broken Greenhouse – Why Co2 Is a Minor Player in Global Climate

A Summary of Earth’s Climate History-a Geologist’s View

Problems with wind and solar generation of electricity – a review

The High Cost of Electricity from Wind and Solar Generation

Impact of the Paris Climate Accord and why Trump was right to drop it

Six Issues the Promoters of the Green New Deal Have Overlooked

Why reducing carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuel will have no effect on climate ☼

You may remember that early this summer the media were touting “the hottest day ever” but the data show otherwise. The graph below from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that the 1930’s and 2012 were warmer in the U.S.

US Max summer temps 1895-2023

Do We Really Know That Human Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cause Significant Climate Change?

by Francis Menton

It’s by far the most important scientific question of our age: Do human emissions of CO2 and other such “greenhouse gases” cause significant global warming, aka “climate change”? Based on the belief that an affirmative answer to that question is a universally accepted truth, our government has embarked on a multi-trillion dollar campaign to transform our economy by, among other things, eliminating hydrocarbon fuels from electricity generation (without any demonstrated workable plan for the replacement), outlawing the kinds of vehicles we currently drive, suppressing fossil fuel extraction, banning pipeline construction, making all your appliances work less well, and much more. Express any doubt about the causal connection between human activities and climate change, and you could very well get labeled as a “climate denier,” fired from your academic job, demonetized by Google or Facebook, or even completely ostracized from polite society. But is there actually any real proof of the proposition at issue? In fact, there is not. (Read more) ☼

New Study: ‘Atmospheric CO2 Is Not The Cause Of Climate Change’ … The Next Glaciation Has Begun

by Kenneth Richard

New research published in the MDPI journal atmosphere by Dr. Stuart A. Harris asserts past and modern climate changes are natural and not driven by variations in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Some key points from the paper include:

• Past and modern climate change is driven by solar cycle (Milankovitch) variations and their affect on ocean circulation and heat transport.

• Throughout the last hundreds of thousands of years, temperature changes precede the lagging changes in CO2.

• The UN IPCC position that atmospheric CO2 is the cause of the warming since the onset of the Industrial Revolution is only an assumption that is “not consistent with studies involving changes in temperature in rural areas of the northern [NH] hemisphere.”

• The natural 23 thousand year (23 ka) Milankovitch cycle has begun to reduce insolation in the NH “starting in 2020,” and this “heralds the start of the next glaciation.”

• CO2 is essential for life on Earth (photosynthesis), and a reduction in CO2 would be harmful to the biosphere. On the other hand, there “seems to be no connection between carbon dioxide and the temperature of the Earth.” (Read more) ☼

What Our Oceans Say about Global Warming

by Guy K. Mitchell, Jr.

[Oceans constitute 71% of Earth’s surface. Mitchell shows that the “greenhouse effect” does not warm the oceans because radiative heat from greenhouse gases can’t penetrate oceans. He also notes that “The primary heat transfer mechanism to cool the Earth’s surface is convection.” ]

(Read more) See also Mitchell’s article: Global Warming and the Earth’s Land Mass (link) discusses problems with data collection.☼

Climate Sensitivity to Carbon Dioxide

Spencer and Christy’s new climate sensitivity paper has been published – and its LOWER.

From Dr. Roy Spencer:

If we assume ALL *observed* warming of the deep oceans and land since 1970 has been due to humans, we get an effective climate sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 of around 1.9 deg. C. This is considerably lower than the official *theoretical* model-based IPCC range of 2.5 to 4.0 deg. C.

https://www.drroyspencer.com/2023/09/our-new-climate-sensitivity-paper-has-been-published/

Via a Phys.org article:

Spencer and Christy’s climate model, based upon objective measured data, found carbon dioxide does not have as big of an effect of warming of the atmosphere when compared with other climate models.

“For over 30 years, dozens of highly sophisticated computerized climate models based upon theory have been unable to agree on an answer. That’s why we developed our own one-dimensional climate model to provide an answer,” says. Dr. Spencer. (Read more) ☼

New paper submission: Urban heat island effects in U.S. summer temperatures, 1880-2015

by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

The bottom line is that an estimated 22% of the U.S. warming trend, 1895 to 2023, is due to localized UHI effects, not climate change. (Read more) ☼

New Studies: Dataset Selection Bias Advances False Narrative Sun Has No Climate Impact

by Thomas Richard

Solar forcing may have a 4 to 7 times greater effect on climate change than current climate models indicate, which may mean modern climate change is predominantly natural rather than anthropogenic. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) attribution may be significantly dependent on the choice of dataset.(Read more) ☼

The fables about greenhouse gases, especially about methane

by Mark Adams

“Climate change” is in the news daily, with each featured story getting an attention-grabbing sensationalist headline. The frenzy is at its peak now because it’s the time of year for tropical storms and wildfires. However, to appreciate that these stories are pure narratives, it’s a good time to consider the facts behind the so-called “greenhouse gases.”

Several atmospheric gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor, absorb light in the infrared region. These are collectively known as the “greenhouse gases” because absorbing infrared energy warms up the air—hence the name greenhouse effect.

Carbon dioxide, on a per-molecule basis, is six times as effective an absorber as water is. However, that’s offset by the fact that carbon dioxide is only about 0.04% of the atmosphere (400 parts per million). This means that, overall, it’s much less important than water vapor in terms of its ability to warm the atmosphere.

And then there’s methane. Pound-for-pound methane can trap 25 times more heat than carbon dioxide. However, there are two reasons why scientists say it will never significantly contribute to global warming. Primarily, it is by far the rarest of the green house gases.

But there is another reason why we will probably never have to worry about methane being a major contributor to global warming: Methane’s narrow absorption bands, at 3.3 microns and 7.5 microns , perfectly match…water’s! Did you catch that? It’s worth emphasizing: “The ratio of the percentages of water to methane is such that the effects of methane are completely masked by water.” Nor is methane a cow problem that humans can remediate by going meatless. Instead, wetlands and termites are the real methane producers: “When it comes to methane, another greenhouse gas, termites are responsible for 11 percent of the world’s production from natural sources. Seventy-six percent comes from wetlands…” (Read more) ☼

The Full Judith Curry Interview: Climate Scientist Says World Isn’t Ending

Climate scientist Judith Curry bravely says climate change isn’t a “crisis.” She explains how the scientific community became corrupted by “fame and fortune.”

Watch full video, 40 minutes: https://youtu.be/U0PQ1cOlCJI ☼

IPCC Global Warming Reports Underestimated Role of Sun in Warming: Study

by Paul Homewood

Reports on global warming issued by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) underestimate the role of the Sun in the warming process while falsely laying blame on human beings…(Read more) ☼

MORE ARTICLES:

Climate Models Wrong on East Pacific… “We Don’t Know Why This Cooling Is Happening” (link)

Greenhouse Gas Primer, 32 pages (link)

Stuff you’re not allowed to know #6: global greening (link)

How trees influence cloud formation (link) [emissions of VOCs – volatile organic compounds]

Solar researcher warns of solar activity decrease, imminent MINI ICE AGE and GLOBAL FAMINE by 2030 (link)

Climate Expert: ‘Decidedly Unscientific Justifications’ Used To Keep Worst-Case Scenario Alive (link)

CLIMATE MADNESS

Latest Climate Craze: Geoengineering The Sky (link)

Climate Activists Defend Spreading Computer Malware to Educate Skeptics

by Eric Worrall

It started a month ago, when a group of climate activists invited kids to deceive climate skeptic family members into downloading malware disguised as a cookie recipe. (Read more) ☼

10 Reasons Not To Own An Electric Vehicle (link)

Global warming will wipe out all mammals in 250 million years, new study claims (link)

UN’s Climate Porn Ignores Climate Reality of Empirical Evidence

from C3Headlines

In their effort to persuade the public that CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels are broiling the planet, UN chief, Antonio Guterres, and his globaltarian comrades spread a narrative of fringe climate porn, such as Climate Breakdown, Climate Chaos, or Global Boiling.

However, they are all ignoring actual scientific empirical evidence that powerfully contradicts this narrative propaganda.

Importantly, throughout the past 8+ years, climate expert projections and their climate models of the global warming trend have been grievously inaccurate. This incredible inaccuracy is hidden from the public by the UN, by the government-funded scientists, and by the mainstream legacy press. (Read more) ☼

THE SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY PROJECT REPORTS

[SEPP provides a weekly roundup of news available every Monday as The Week That Was (PDF) and reprinted as a blog post here as Weekly Climate and EnergyNews Roundup. Click on date for full reports.]

September 30:

Calling this summer, the hottest summer in the US may have been a misinterpretation of data. The questioning of the goals of net zero (no increase in carbon dioxide emissions) appears to be increasing in the UK. Washington continues to clamp down on oil and electricity production and may lead to sharply increasing oil prices and inflation.

“A new research study from The University of Alabama in Huntsville, a part of the University of Alabama System, addresses a central question of climate change research: how much warming can be expected from adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through fossil fuel burning and other activities as standards of living increase around the world? Spencer and Christy’s climate model, based upon objective measured data, found carbon dioxide does not have as big of an effect of warming of the atmosphere when compared with other climate models.

October 7:

This TWTW will discuss the abrupt warming of the atmosphere as presented by the University of Alabama, Huntsville Global Temperature Report which is attributed to an El Nino event.

Contrary to many reports, there is no sudden increase in carbon dioxide concentrations. If not CO2, which is increasing gradually, what caused the sudden warming.? We do not know. Possibilities need to be sorted out. As Christy and Spencer write, the El Niño contributed, but the data are not sufficiently clear. The uncertainty allows for a good deal of speculation, and below TWTW will engage in some. See links under Measurement Issues – Atmosphere.

Speculating on Abrupt Atmospheric Warming: There is little question that strong El Niños in 1998 and 2016 put a large amount of water vapor into the atmosphere and were the dominant cause of atmospheric warming in those years, usually with a lag of 4 to 6 months. But the current El Niño has not peaked. Is there something else that can be contributing to the unusual warming?

The report goes on to discuss solar cycles which are ignored by the IPCC.

October 14:

Scope: This TWTW discusses what Europe calls Net Zero, and what Washington calls the Green New Deal. Michael Kelly of the UK gives an analysis of the costs and feasibility for the US to implement the current energy transition undertaken by Washington. This fall, there are few alarming reports on Western wildfires or droughts. At the suggestion of reader Bud Bromley, TWTW addresses some of the problems of changing definitions in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.

October 21:

Scope: These items will be discussed below. The International Energy Agency [EIA] came out with a report questioning the ability of the western countries to meet their goal of Net Zero carbon dioxide emissions. Atomic, Molecular, and Optical (AMO) physicist Howard Hayden wrote an essay emphasizing the foolishness of claiming climate change causes X. Roy Spencer and John Christy submitted a paper estimating the Urban Heat Island effect on US surface temperature data from 1880 to 2015. There appears to be a conflict of visions among principal players in the UN upcoming Conference of Parties (COP 28). The problems of the storage of electricity are reviewed, with no affordable, reliable solution in sight. Francis Menton discusses the latest fashionable idea from the US Department of Energy, green hydrogen.

The International Energy Agency [EIA] said this week that 49.7 million miles of transmission lines—enough to wrap around the planet 2,000 times—will have to be built or replaced by 2040 to achieve the climate lobby’s net-zero emissions goal. The report goes on to discuss the money and metals needed for a “green energy grid.”

Bottom line: climate change is a result, not a cause.

ENERGY

Offshore wind turbines are proving to be an economic and environmental disaster, see these articles:

Update On Offshore Wind Projects Off The Mid-Atlantic And New England (link)

Offshore Wind Is A Dangerous Pipe Dream Costing Taxpayers Billions (link)

Offshore Wind is an Economic and Environmental Catastrophe (link)

Expensive Cheap Energy

Willis Eschenbach

Well, our beloved US Gummint, in the form of the Energy Information Agency, just released the latest data on the horrendously large taxpayer subsidies for unreliable, intermittent renewable energy. So I thought I should boil all the numbers down to make sense out of them. Here’s the result. (Read more) ☼

The Green Energy Subsidy Lie

by I&I Editorial Board

Environmentalists have long complained about oil and gas industry subsidies.

But we don’t hear from them regarding the subsidies paid out for politically favored renewable energy programs, even though the supposedly green sources are dining sumptuously on taxpayers’ dollars.

In fact, renewables are more heavily subsidized than fossil fuels, and it would be difficult if not impossible for them to exist without the support.

From 2016 to 2022, “energy-specific subsidies and support” totaled $183.3 billion, according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration report.

While “wind and solar power account for about 21% of domestic electricity production,” they nevertheless took in “a staggering $83.8 billion in subsidies, by far the largest share compared to any other category,” says Fox News.

The EIA says that over that period, “nearly half (46%) of federal energy subsidies were associated with renewable energy,” with “federal support for renewable energy of all types” more than doubling, from $7.4 billion in fiscal 2016 to $15.6 billion in fiscal 2022.

Meanwhile, “natural gas and petroleum-related tax expenditures” – which are not direct government spending nor tax loopholes – were $2.1 billion in fiscal 2022. (Read more) ☼

The dangerous delusion of a global transition to “just electricity”

by Ronald Stein

Eliminating crude oil, before a replacement is in place, would rid the world of planes, airports, ships, medical, social media communications, toilets, and more. Fossil fuels make products for humanity and support more bountiful harvests and a measure of food security that allowed time and energy for innovation and the onset of the Industrial Revolution that allowed the world to populate from 1 to 8 billion in 200 years because oil can be manufactured into thousands of usable, life-enhancing and life-saving products.

On the other hand, renewables can only generate occasional electricity but cannot manufacture anything for humanity, while fossil fuels manufacture everything for humanity. (Read more) ☼

Shifting Electricity Mix Will Challenge the Nation’s Power System, Says NERC

by Tim Benson

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) released the 2023 edition of its biannual ERO Reliability Risk Priorities Report, in August. The report aims to “identify key risks to the BPS [bulk power system] that merit attention and to recommend mitigating actions that align with those risks.”

The report highlights five “risk profiles” to the nation’s electrical grid’s resiliency and dependability, including “security risks,” “resilience to extreme events,” “critical infrastructure interdependencies,” “grid transformation,” and “energy policy.”

“Energy policy” was featured in this year’s report for the first time as a risk, “given the increased legislation focus and mandates on decarbonization, decentralization, and electrification.” A “changing resource mix,” that is, the continuing shift from nuclear- and fossil fuel-sourced electricity such as coal and oil to “renewable” sources like wind and solar, was ranked as the highest risk factor to the nation’s electric grid. (Read more) ☼

Biden’s Mad Dog EPA Gone Rogue

by Ron Clutz

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. EPA last year was a historic defeat for the Environmental Protection Agency. Not only did the Court rule that the 2015 Clean Power Plan, President Obama’s signature climate regulation, was unconstitutional; it also dramatically limited EPA’s power to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act (CAA) moving forward.

That left the agency with two courses of action. It could take its lumps and focus on proposing regulations with a high chance of surviving federal court review. Or it could stake everything on a final desperate attempt to decarbonize America’s power sector, and go for the win in keeping with President Biden’s commitment to net zero carbon emissions.

On May 23, 2023, EPA chose the latter, proposing carbon emissions standards

for power plants far more ambitious than those struck down by the Supreme Court last year.

Like other EPA climate regulations, the proposed emissions standards under Section 111 of CAA are not designed to reduce emissions from standard power plants, but rather to force a rapid transition away from reliable and affordable sources of dispatchable power—natural gas and coal—to intermittent renewables and new kinds of power plants that don’t even exist yet. Together with EPA’s electric vehicle mandates, the proposed rule would be a train wreck for the American electricity grid and society as a whole, endangering economic competitiveness and energy security while yielding no measurable climate benefit. (Read more) ☼

Electric bus breakdowns cripple Wyoming transit

by Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

By replacing its fleet of diesel-powered buses with sleek (and taxpayer-subsidized) electric buses, the transit system run by Jackson and Teton County, Wyoming, was set to transition to a green, “climate-friendly” future.

Instead, all eight electric buses purchased by Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit (START) have broken down, and when any of the vehicles will be up and running again is anyone’s guess. Help is not going to be on its way anytime soon because California-based Proterra, the company that manufactured the defective buses, has declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Once a darling of the Biden administration’s vaunted “energy transition,” the company cannot say when – if ever – spare parts will come to the rescue. (Read more) ☼

MORE ARTICLES:

Biden’s Attack On Electricity Will Ruin America’s Power Grid, Hike Prices (link)

Report: The six ways renewables increase electricity bills (link)

Largest EV Charging Station In World Powered By Diesel-Powered Generators (link)

Biden WH Quietly Released Study Showing Green Energy Gets Far More Subsidies Than Fossil Fuels (link)

The Energy Transition is Social Vandalism (link)

EV Battery Factory Will Require So Much Energy It Needs A Coal Plant To Power It (link)

Extraordinary Costs Of Green Energy Creeping Slowly Into Public Awareness (link)

Reality Dawns On Lefty Outlet Over Biden Draining The Strategic Oil Reserves (link)

STATE OF THE UNION

“You know why there’s a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.” ~ Rush Limbaugh

The Democrats Broke The Constitution In 2020, But There’s An Upside (link)

Medical Examiner’s Office Source: “Only 1 to 2%” of “COVID Deaths” Were Really COVID (link)

The Federal Government Spent $3.3 Billion on Office Furniture as Employees Worked From Home (link)[DOD uses 23 percent of its office space.]

How Government Spending Causes Inflation

By David Lanza

The federal government, under both parties, has printed trillions of dollars to fund its “stimulus” packages and other projects. This spending greatly increased during the COVID era. Basic economics teaches that the government printing press is not only the cause, but the very definition of inflation. Over the past 30 + months, prices of all consumer goods have risen dramatically. Real estate has achieved similar highs. Prices have appeared to stabilize only after action by the Federal Reserve system to restrict the money supply. The supply of money has been the key both to inflation and to its temporary taming. Of course, raising interest rates is not the real solution. Only the end of government printing would stop inflation. (Read more) ☼

Goldwater Urges U.S. Supreme Court to Take Up Homelessness Case

by Goldwater Institute

The Goldwater Institute filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court urging the justices to review a Ninth Circuit ruling that—at least according to Phoenix city leaders—makes it harder for local governments to address the ongoing homelessness crisis. In its brief, we argue that the Supreme Court must overturn the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in order to take away Phoenix’s excuse for refusing to enforce the law in “The Zone,” the sprawling encampment of hundreds of homeless people in downtown Phoenix, which is riddled with violent crime, public drug use, and social instability. (Read more) See also more about “The Zone” ☼

Climate Coup Alert: CEQ Proposes to Transform NEPA

by Marlo Lewis

In recent comments to the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), 24 state attorneys general led by Iowa AG Breanna Bird warn that CEQ’s July 31 Proposed Rule to revise National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) implementing regulations would unlawfully “turn an informational, procedural, outcome-neutral statute into a transformative tool to shape our economy and society to the Administration’s chosen policy goals.” (Read more) ☼

Do We Really Need DEI?

A comprehensive new study shows that focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion harms precisely the students it’s meant to help. (Read more) ☼

Thoughts to Ponder

“In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the prediction of a specific future climate state is not possible.” — Final chapter,Third Assessment Report, IPCC.

“Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.” —Alexander Hamilton (1788)

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”— Richard Feynman

END

SCIENCE AND POLITICS NEWS ROUNDUP 2023 JANUARY

A monthly review of climate, energy, and environmental policy issues

Eating bugs, atmospheric rivers, our turbulent climate past, and bad energy policies are just a few of the subjects we cover this month.

Articles compiled by Jonathan DuHamel

CLIMATE ISSUES

A note on climate alarmism:

by Jonathan DuHamel

Climate alarmists claim that if Earth’s temperature rises more than 2°C, life will perish. However, most people do not realize that we are in an interglacial period of an ice age and that it is much cooler than normal. Geologic evidence shows that for much of the past 600 million years, global temperature was as much as 13°C warmer than it is now and life flourished.

“Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle

requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don’t practice these tough

habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us, and we risk

becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.” —Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Climate & Human History

from the CO2Coalition

There exists a fascinating relationship between the rise and fall of temperature and the rise and fall of great civilizations and empires. We find that the facts are opposite to the prevailing “consensus” predictions of apocalyptic doom from modest warming.

Nearly all great advances occurred during warm periods. Before climate science became politicized, the warm periods were called “climate optima” by those studying such things because both the Earth’s ecosystems and humanity benefited from the blessed warmth.

Conversely, the human condition declined during cold periods–and markedly so.

Wolfgang Behringer, in his book A Cultural History of Climate, reveals that “even minor changes in climate may result in huge social, political and religious convulsions.”

“Cooling has always resulted in major social upheavals, whereas warming has sometimes led to a blossoming of culture. If we can learn anything from the history of culture, it is that, even if humans were ‘children of the Ice Age,’ civilization was a product of climatic warming.” ☼

What Climate Crisis? A Primer On Earth’s Turbulent Climatic Past

by Ian Plimer

“For more than 80 percent of the time, Earth has been a warm wet greenhouse planet with no ice. We live in unusual times when ice occurs on continents. This did not happen overnight.”

In this essay professor Plimer examines climate history on a large scale and examines plate tectonics and the position of Earth relative to the sun. He notes: “No past warming events have been driven by an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. No past cooling events were driven by a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

“On a scale of tens of millions of years or more, the Earth’s climate is driven by plate tectonics. On a scale of hundreds of thousands of years, the Earth’s climate is driven by orbital cycles which bring Earth closer to or more distant from the Sun. On a scale of thousands of years to decades, the Earth’s climate is driven by variations in energy emitted from the Sun.”

He concludes the essay this way: “We are putting all our efforts and wasting trillions of taxpayers’ dollars into trying to prevent mythical human-induced global warming, yet we still don’t prepare for the inevitable annual floods, droughts, and bushfires, let alone longer-term solar – and orbitally–driven global cooling.

We have a crisis of single-minded stupidity exacerbated by a dumbed-down education system supported by incessant propaganda, driven by financial interests and political activist authoritarianism.” (Read full article) (See also Plimer’s book “Green Murder”)☼

Scientist: ‘There Is No Climate Crisis’ And ‘No Particular Correlation Between CO2 And Temperature’

By Kenneth Richard

The modern notion that human CO2 emissions are equivalent to a “deadly poison” may one day be viewed as “the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world.”

In a new paper published in the Journal of Sustainable Development, Manheimer (2022) summarizes some of the evidence for the lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature in the paleoclimate as he rips apart the claim that humans are driving a changing climate.

About 4000 years ago the limit of Northern Hemisphere tree growth extended 322 km (200 miles) farther north than it does today, as it was much warmer back then.

During Medieval times the Vikings were able to grow barley for centuries. Today Greenland is too cold to grow this crop.

The Romans grew wine grapes in northern Britain, indicating the climate was much warmer than today about 2000 years ago. Wine vineyards cannot flourish at these latitudes today (unless the new “hybrid” grapes, bred to survive in colder climates, are used).

Observing paleo temperature and CO2 concentration charts for the last hundreds of millions of years, it can be affirmed there is “no particular correlation between CO2 and temperature.”

In the paper abstract, Manheimer writes: “The emphasis on a false climate crisis is becoming a tragedy for modern civilization, which depends on relible, economic, and environmentally viable energy. The windmills, solar panels and backup batteries have none if these qualities. This falsehood is pushed by a powerful lobby which Bjorn Lomborg has called a climate industrial complex, comprising some scientists, most media, industrialists, and legislators. It has somehow managed to convince many that CO2 in the atmosphere, a gas necessary for life on earth, one which we exhale with every breath, is an environmental poison. Multiple scientific theories and measurements show that there is no climate crisis.” (Read more) ☼

The Case Against Human Caused Climate Change

by David Robb

[This is an excerpt from a much longer article.]

There is no question that climate change is happening. What is still open is whether the change is due to human use of fossil fuels, or is it something natural? Climate activists and even government authorities have tried to claim that the science is settled, and there is consensus that human activities are the cause. Aside from the fact that science doesn’t rely on consensus, there is considerable evidence that the change is natural.

Consider, …just two bits of evidence. First, in the mid 1600s, Europe was in the depths of the Little Ice Age. It was so cold that the Thames river froze over – something that has not happened since. About 1650, temperatures began to rise, and that rise has continued at about the same rate until just recently. Use of fossil fuels didn’t begin until about 1850 when coal began to replace wood for heating, cooking, and industrial applications such as steam power. In other words, the temperature rise began two hundred years before the use of fossil fuels and the corresponding rise of CO2. The rise in CO2 followed the temperature rise; how can the effect precede the cause?

A second bit is that the historical record is clear. Carbon dioxide levels in prehistory were over 20 times the level we have today, yet there was no catastrophic heating or runaway greenhouse effect. Indeed, all the evidence points to that period as one of lush forests, a benign climate across all the continents, and no tipping points.

Part of the evidence is found in the massive limestone deposits found across the world. Close examination of limestone shows it to be the fossil remains of uncountable creatures who thrived in the warm seas, drew dissolved carbon dioxide from the water around them, used it to form calcium carbonate for their shells, which then fell to the ocean floor to form the limestone we see today. All that prehistoric CO2 is now found locked up in limestone, and we are left with dangerously low levels in our atmosphere today. (Read more) ☼

What are atmospheric rivers?

In Janurary, California and other parts of the west coast were inundated with heavy rain and snowfall. Alarmists blamed “climate change.” However, the weather was produced by an “atmospheric river” which is a common phenomenon.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “Atmospheric rivers are relatively long, narrow regions in the atmosphere – like rivers in the sky – that transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics. These columns of vapor move with the weather, carrying an amount of water vapor roughly equivalent to the average flow of water at the mouth of the Mississippi River. When the atmospheric rivers make landfall, they often release this water vapor in the form of rain or snow. A well-known example is the “Pineapple Express,” a strong atmospheric river that is capable of bringing moisture from the tropics near Hawaii over to the U.S. West Coast. Atmospheric rivers are a key feature in the global water cycle and are closely tied to both water supply and flood risks — particularly in the western United States.” (Read more from NOAA) ☼

IPCC Climate Models Grossly Exaggerate ‘Global Warming’

By Jerome Corsi

Several recently published studies have provided methodological objections to alarmist IPCC global climate models that predict catastrophic global warming will result from anthropogenic CO2 atmospheric concentrations from burning hydrocarbon fuels. These studies indicate that a more accurate reading of the earth’s surface temperatures suggests global climate warming over the next few decades will be moderate. The studies further indicate that more precise surface temperature readings would seriously dampen the hysterical mass media demand for radical public policies requiring radical decarbonization to achieve Net Zero Emissions (NZE) as quickly as possible.

In November 2022, meteorologist Roy Spencer, Ph.D., a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, published a ground-breaking study demonstrating that 36 climate models used to guide national policy may have exaggerated “global warming” over the last 50 years by as much as 50 percent. Spencer’s research shows that increased urbanization, not increased CO2, is responsible for exaggerating the temperature measurements recorded in the NOAA homogenized surface temperature dataset.

In August 2022, meteorologist Anthony Watts found that 96 percent of the temperature stations in the United States used to measure global warming and climate change did not “meet what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) considers to be ‘acceptable,’ uncorrupted placement.” (Read more) ☼

To End Climate Lunacy, Stop Treating Warming & C02 Hysterically

by David Simon

Those who oppose economically destructive “climate” policies – like those promoted by the Biden administration and at the recent United Nations COP27 conference – will continue to fail to stop the advance of these policies so long as they continue to accept the false claim that warming of the planet and carbon dioxide emissions are harmful.

They are not. On balance, global warming and CO2 emission are beneficial.

Before getting to why that is, however, it is crucial to understand why accepting the false climate claim is so harmful.

When the destructiveness of climate policies is shown, the response is that the policies nevertheless are necessary to address what President Biden refers to as the “existential threat” of global warming and increased CO2 emissions.

When it is noted that these climate policies will at most microscopically and insignificantly reduce temperatures and CO2 emissions, climate policy mandarins push for even more draconian policies.

The result has been that since the 1990s, climate policies have become increasingly destructive and wasteful. Even worse, their continued intensification appears unlikely to be stopped until the public and policymakers are persuaded that global warming and CO2 emissions are not harmful. To win this argument, it is necessary to focus on the scientific facts. (Read more) ☼

Antarctica Has Not Warmed For Over 70 Years

By Kenneth Richard

New studies affirm Antarctica has not been cooperating with either the global warming or “polar amplification” narratives. The Antarctic continent has not warmed in the last seven decades, despite a monotonic increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. (Read more) ☼

Top Ten 2022 Media Climate Stories – Fact Check

This summary serves as a fact check on the top ten disasters that mainstream media attributes to climate change. (link) ☼

According to media reports, 2022 was the Hottest coldest driest wettest year ever (link) ☼

Despite Media Hype, 2022 Global Wide Hurricane Season Ends with Weakest Storm Levels of the Last 42 Years

According to NOAA, measured worldwide hurricane season science data for all year 2022 tropical storms shows that global wide storms were at their lowest strength levels in the last 42 years. Additionally, NOAA’s science measured tropical storm data through year 2022 clearly demonstrates that global hurricanes are not trending stronger in numbers, duration or intensity. The number and strength of tornados were also below average. (Read more) ☼

Record Agricultural Yields Should Allay Climate Fear

by Vijay Jayaraj

Countries all over the world are surpassing previous records for production of food crops. This is good news that stands in stark contrast to the apocalyptic picture that the media paints daily in reports on climate and weather. (Read more) ☼

CLIMATE MADNESS

Let Them Eat Bugs!

By Janet Levy

Give up cheeseburgers, and eat bugs instead. That’s what the Davos elite want you to do, while they dine on $50 burritos and slabs of steak. They would even have you feel good about being a meat- and diary-free insectivore. To this end, they have carefully manufactured the cult of environmental alarmism, whose virtue-signaling adherents have been duped into thinking an ecological disaster is at hand. The cult’s latest scapegoat is agriculture. The wise global leaders of the World Economic Forum (WEF) have decreed that farming must be restricted to “save the planet.” By 2030, they dictate, plebs must adopt the ecologically sound practice of entomophagy, or insect-eating. (Read more) ☼

A Rebuttal From Doctors for Disaster Preparedness

Eating bugs can be dangerous

Using insects as a main source of animal protein is a big part of the World Economic Forum’s plans for us. But that may have some bad side effects on your body (Read report) ☼

ENERGY ISSUES

NRC Certifies First U.S. Small Modular Reactor Design

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has certified NuScale Power’s small modular reactor (SMR). The company’s power module becomes the first SMR design certified by the NRC and just the seventh reactor design cleared for use in the United States. The design is an advanced light-water SMR with each power module capable of generating 50 megawatts of emissions-free electricity. (Read more) ☼ [Note: these installations should be used to replace wind and solar generation which is unreliable and require huge land footprints.]

The Gas Stove Gambit

by Ron Clutz

Is it really a “bait and switch” gambit so that government can monitor indoor air quality and/or get rid of fossil fuels? (Read more) ☼

Biden admin quietly admits canceling Keystone XL Pipeline cost thousands of jobs, billions of dollars

by Thomas Catenacci

The Biden administration published a congressionally mandated report highlighting the positive economic benefits the Keystone XL Pipeline would have had if President Biden didn’t revoke its federal permits.

The report, which the Department of Energy (DOE) completed in late December without any public announcement, says the Keystone XL project would have created between 16,149 and 59,000 jobs and would have had a positive economic impact of between $3.4-9.6 billion, citing various studies. A previous report from the federal government published in 2014 determined 3,900 direct jobs and 21,050 total jobs would be created during construction which was expected to take two years.

But immediately after taking office in January 2021, Biden canceled the pipeline’s permits, effectively shutting the project down. (Read more) ☼

China to accelerate approval of new coal projects to ensure energy supply

By Global Times

China reiterated its focus on energy security, vowing to ensure the supply of energy and electricity, coordinate resources and accelerate approval of new coal projects, while asking coal enterprises to expand production as peak season approaches. Power generation companies should store more high-quality coal to ensure power generation during peak times. (Read more) ☼

Let’s Take the Final Step to Reshore U.S. Mining for Battery Metals

By Danny Ervin

The U.S. depends on China for more than half of the minerals and metals deemed critically important for our nation’s economic health and military readiness. While China has made mineral production and processing a strategic priority, the U.S. has done the reverse. Mining in the U.S. has been pushed to the margins.

As recently as the 1990s, the U.S. was the world’s largest producer of rare earth minerals. Today we have just one rare earth mine remaining and the U.S. must ship its ore to China for processing. Demand for rare earths is massive and growing. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology says a wind turbine rated at 3.5 megawatts of electricity contains 1,300 pounds of rare earths.

There is just one lithium mine left in the U.S., one for nickel, one for cobalt, one for manganese. These raw materials are vital to the manufacture of batteries used in electric vehicles and the transmission of solar and wind power on the nation’s electricity grid.

The problem isn’t a lack of mineral resources in the U.S. The National Mining Association says the U.S. is home to $6.2 trillion worth of mineral reserves.

Despite the enormous stakes, nothing has been done to make America’s own minerals on public lands more accessible to mining companies. A complex permitting process is the problem, requiring companies to wait 10 years or more to get government approval to mine in public lands. This is shackling the transition to EVs and clean energy technologies with huge, growth-killing costs. (Read more) ☼

Green Energy Failed To Meet Power Demand During Winter Storm

by Jack McEvoy

Renewable energy was unable to generate sufficient power to meet elevated energy demand during Christmas Eve snowstorms, forcing utilities in the northeastern U.S. and Texas to burn more fossil fuels to prevent outages.

Although wind turbines, solar panels and other forms of green energy have been consistently touted by the Biden administration as reliable alternatives to fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, renewables accounted for a small percentage of grids’ power output after snowstorms and a “bomb cyclone” nearly caused power outages in New England and Texas. Grid operators in both areas were forced to burn oil, a fuel that is significantly less efficient than natural gas, to avoid power outages as renewable energy sources were stymied by the harsh weather. (Read more) ☼

A Quiet Refutation of ‘Net Zero’ Carbon Emissions

Two energy reports show the U.S. is burdening and dismantling its grid to achieve an impossible goal.

By Steve Milloy

‘Net zero by 2050” is more than a slogan of climate activism. It has become a chief organizational principle for multinational corporations and the BlackRock-led cartel pushing environmental, social and corporate governance investing.

In September, the Electric Power Research Institute, the research arm of the U.S. electric utility industry, released a report titled “Net-Zero 2050: U.S. Economy-Wide Deep Decarbonization Scenario Analysis.” The EPRI report concludes that the utility industry can’t attain net zero. “This study shows that clean electricity plus direct electrification and efficiency . . . are not sufficient by themselves to achieve net-zero economy-wide emissions.” In other words, no amount of wind turbines, solar panels, hydropower, nuclear power, battery power, electrification of fossil-fuel technologies or energy-efficiency technologies will get us to net zero by 2050.

The other recent report is “2022 Long-Term Reliability Assessment” from the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a government-certified grid-reliability and standard-setting group. NERC concluded that fossil-fuel plants are being removed from the grid too fast to meet continuing electricity demand, and that is putting most of the country at risk of grid failure and blackouts during extreme weather. The U.S. just got another taste of this during the Christmas electric grid emergency. So there you have it: We are dangerously dismantling our electric grid while burdening it with more demand in hope of attaining the goal of “net zero by 2050,” which the utility industry has admitted is a fantasy. (Read full article) ☼

ENVIRONMENT

The Recycling Religion Is Garbage

by John Stossel

For decades, we’ve been told: recycle! “If we’re not using recycled paper, we’re cutting down more trees!” says Lynn Hoffman, co-president of Eureka Recycling. Recycling paper (or cardboard) does save trees. Recycling aluminum does save energy. But that’s about it. The ugly truth is that many “recyclables” sent to recycling plants are never recycled. The worst is plastic.

Even Greenpeace now says, “Plastic recycling is a dead-end street.” Most of the material ends up in landfills. (Read more) ☼

ECONOMY

How to tell that the climate alarmists aren’t serious

By Maker S. Mark

[The “globalists” want western nations to decrease/eliminate carbon dioxide emissions, but are okay with China increasing emissions.]

“….allowing China to increase emissions at a time that you are asking other countries to sacrifice with proposed reductions is a totally ridiculous and unserious solution to the man-made climate change problem. The real question then becomes, why are Western nations being asked to sacrifice in this way? I think we have to “follow the money” to find out. China increases manufacturing capability to produce the green products needed by the West. It increases this capacity while significantly increasing emissions of the very gases the rest of the world are trying to cut. Cutting Western energy consumption will hurt Western economies, and allowing China to increase energy consumption will allow its economy to expand. This solution to man-made climate change is nonsensical, unless this solution is really a financial reordering. China seems to be the only country truly benefitting from the current green plans.” (Source) ☼

THE EPA

EPA Reinstates Dubious Waterway Regulation

Joe Biden’s bureaucrats bring back an Obama-era power grab just for fun. The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers effectively resurrected the dubious redefinition of the “waters of the United States” found within the 1970 Clean Water Act. The EPA broadly expanded the definition of “waters of the United States” to include nearly any body of water — virtually down to the size of a puddle. (Read more) ☼

The Supreme Court Case That Could Upend the Clean Water Act

If SCOTUS finds in favor of a small-town Idaho couple in Sackett v. EPA, it could end the federal government’s jurisdiction over millions of acres of land. (link) ☼

State Attorneys General, Other Groups, File Petition Opposing U.S. EPA Greenhouse Gas Rule

by Bethany Blankley, Heartland Institute

Sixteen state attorneys general, 15 state associations, and multiple organizations are fighting against another Environmental Protection Agency rule they argue jeopardizes American energy and national security. The AGs, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to halt the EPA from implementing “radical climate regulations.” At issue is the EPA’s “Revised 2023 and Later Model Year Light Duty Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards.” (Read more) ☼

PROPERTY RIGHTS

Environmental Groups Deal Another Blow To Key Alaska Mine, Undermining Biden’s Green Energy Dreams

by Jack Mcevoy, Daily Caller

Two environmental groups spent $20 million to make lands and waters close to Southern Alaska’s Bristol Bay off-limits to economic development, a move that will hinder the construction of a mine that produces minerals that are needed to expand renewable energy production. Pebble Mine sits on top of 80.6 billion pounds of copper and 5.6 billion pounds of molybdenum, highly conductive metals which are crucial to producing solar panels, wind turbines and geothermal energy facilities.(Read more) ☼

WATER

Desalination of Sea Water Can Augment Our Water Supply Without Harming Sea Life

by Jonathan DuHamel

Desalination of sea water can produce the freshwater we need to augment our natural supplies. The most common method is reverse osmosis where the sea water is forced through a semi-permeable membrane which removes the salt. However, the process is energy intensive which some environmentalists claim will put more dread carbon dioxide into the atmosphere if the electricity comes from fossil-fuels. That can be solved by powering the plants with small, dedicated nuclear generators. The other claim by some environmentalists is that the effluent from the desalinization process, very salty brine, is harmful to wildlife. A new study shows this concern is overblown. A seven-year study, jointly conducted by Southern Cross University and the University of New South Wales at the Sydney (Australia) desalination plant found that when the plant was in operation, fish population in the area almost tripled. (Read more) The state of Arizona is currently considering building a desalination plant in Sonora, Mexico.☼

California’s Mega Water Wasters

by Edward Ring

Californians are squandering millions of acre-feet of storm runoff at the same time as they face permanent water rationing. (Read more) ☼

STATE OF THE UNION

“Stability in government is essential to national character and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief blessings of civil society.” —James Madison (1788)

The Economic Cost Of The Pandemic: State By State

by Eric Hanushek, Hoover Institution

Abstract: Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) now shows the significant impact of the pandemic on learning. The abstract nature of test score declines, however, often obscures the huge economic impact of these learning losses. NAEP results indicate large differences in learning losses across states, and this analysis provides state-by-state estimates of the economic impacts of the losses. Students on average face 2-9 percent lower lifetime incomes depending on the state in which they live. By virtue of the lower skilled future workforce, the states themselves are estimated to face a GDP that is 0.6 to 2.9 percent lower each year for the remainder of the 21st Century compared to the learning expectations derived from pre-pandemic years. The present value of future losses for states depends directly on the size of each state’s economy. At the extreme, California is estimated to have lost $1.2 trillion dollars because of learning losses during the pandemic. These losses are permanent unless a state’s schools can get better than their pre-pandemic levels. (Read full paper, 12 pages)

How Green Investors Pay the Media to Promote ‘Climate Change’

by Daniel Greenfield

The Associated Press revealed last year that it had scored $8 million to promote claims of global warming. The AP impartially described this massive conflict of interest as an illustration of “how philanthropy has swiftly become an important new funding source for journalism”.

“This far-reaching initiative will transform how we cover the climate story,” its executive editor claimed. That is no doubt true. And an incredibly damaging admission.

The philanthropic quid-pro-quo saw five organizations fund the AP’s dedicated team of “more than two dozen journalists” to cover “climate issues” that the wire service would then plant in papers around the country to terrify Americans into supporting ‘green’ taxes and subsidies.

The Associated Press did not bother to explain to its readers or the newspapers that run its stories why these organizations were impelled to throw millions at it except sheer benevolence.

Nor did it explain why they might be particularly interested in convincing Americans that the climate sky is falling and that our economy must be dismantled and ‘greened’: raising energy prices and putting millions out of work. (Read more) ☼

Citizens! The Declaration of Independence: Now Read It, and Learn

By Frederick Melchiorre

The Declaration of Independence makes clear points regarding tyranny, points now particularly applicable to the Biden administration given the current state of the federal government.

The very first American document reads:

All men… are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security. The sole role of the government, to secure our unalienable rights, is no longer the goal. Our “civil servants” show no concern for our safety, they trod on our civil rights and decry human rights for the most vulnerable, and desecrate our economic rights for affordable property-ownership. Where is “the pursuit of happiness?” There remains no vestiges of the ideals the founders created, especially that pertaining to “the laws of nature and nature’s God.” God is an anachronism and anathema to modern society; especially to progressive Democrats. (Read more) ☼

Biden Throwing Taxpayer Dollars Down The Climate Change Rathole

by James Rogan

President Joe Biden pledged to the United Nations in 2021 that the U.S. would give $11.4 billion annually to international climate change funds. Biden repeated that pledge at the recent COP27 climate conference. Biden’s climate change pledges are hot air, and he knows it.

Under the Constitution, Biden does not have the authority to commit U.S. funds to overseas development projects. In fact, under the Constitution, only Congress can commit such funds and only Congress has the authority to make binding international agreements. (Read more) ☼

5 Infuriating Ways People Got the First Amendment Wrong in 2022

As free speech becomes an increasingly important part of the culture war, people won’t stop misinterpreting—and outright violating—the First Amendment.

by Emma Camp, Reason Magazine

1. Yes, you can yell “fire” in a crowded theater.

2. The Stop WOKE Act stops speech.

3. No, it is not a First Amendment right to shut down your critics.

4. Filming police is a First Amendment right.

5. Heckler’s vetoes are not protected speech.

Read an explanation of each point. ☼

ESG’s Perverse, Narrow, Fraudulent Ethical Principles

by Paul Driessen

Warning: Your retirement fund may have been Shanghaied by BlackRock or other Wall Street asset managers who’ve unilaterally decided that the tens of trillions of dollars of other people’s money they control should be used to advance political causes they favor – to “make the world a better place.”

As most people know, ESG stands for Environmental protection, Social justice, and Governance of corporate and societal affairs. They’re all noble-sounding causes.

However, under ESG they’re centered around progressive, woke agendas, with the prevention of “man-made climate cataclysms” uppermost. Fund assets are used to drive “net zero” climate agendas and punish or de-fund fossil fuel companies.

That narrow focus creates serious problems. (Read more) ☼

The War Against We the People

By Jeff Crouere

In the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, our Founding Fathers declared that the brilliant centerpiece of our government was created by “We the People of the United States.” It was clearly not, “We the Politicians” or “We the Bureaucrats.”

Unfortunately, our federal government has utterly abandoned “We the People.” It was never more apparent than in the disgusting spectacle of the recently passed $1.7 trillion monstrosity known as the omnibus spending bill. (Read more) ☼

INTERESTING EDITORIALS

Under Wokeism, Animal Farm Comes to Life (link) ☼

The Globalist Scourge (link) ☼

Our government ‘protectors’ are releasing savages onto our streets! (link) ☼

A Mandate for the GOP House (link) ☼

TUCKER CARLSON: World Economic Forum exists to ‘destroy national economies’

Tucker Carlson compares attendees of the World Economic Forum to ‘supervillains’ (link) ☼

CLIMATE SCIENCE BACKGROUND:

by Jonathan DuHamel

For more on climate science, see my Wryheat Climate articles:

Climate Change in Perspective (30 pages)

The Broken Greenhouse – Why Co2 Is a Minor Player in Global Climate

A Summary of Earth’s Climate History-a Geologist’s View

Problems with wind and solar generation of electricity – a review

The High Cost of Electricity from Wind and Solar Generation

Impact of the Paris Climate Accord and why Trump was right to drop it

New study shows that carbon dioxide is responsible for only seven percent of the greenhouse effect

Six Issues the Promoters of the Green New Deal Have Overlooked

Why reducing carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuel will have no effect on climate ☼

END

SCIENCE AND POLITICS NEWS ROUNDUP 2022 DECEMBER

A monthly review of climate, energy, and environmental policy issues

STATE OF THE UNION

“I sometimes wonder if our leaders are very smart and just putting us on, or very stupid and mean it.” – Mark Twain

As we leave 2022, how could we characterize the happenings of the year? We lost energy independence, but gained many new pronouns; the president declared our southern border secure, but that security seemed to apply only to illegal entrants; and political “woke” rhetoric deemed that men could get pregnant, and let elementary school children witness “drag queen” performances etc.

Perhaps 2022 was not so different from the year described by Charles Dickens in the introductory paragraph of his novel: “A Tale of Two Cities” (1859):

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Thomas Jefferson’s words, written in 1822:

“Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck.” [This could apply to the current climate scam.]

“The worst ideas in Congress never die; they just get sneaked into unrelated bills.” – Elizabeth Nolan Brown

How to Destroy the United States

by Victor Davis Hanson

It would be hard to imagine any planned agenda to destroy America that would have been as injurious as what we already suffered the last two years. Read the ten points mentioned by Hanson. ☼

Who’s Really Facilitating America’s Border Crisis? Biden Isn’t Acting Alone

by Rob Bluey

Catholic Charities and other non-governmental organizations are working in concert with the Biden administration to facilitate the worst border crisis in American history, according to an investigation that examined the movement of 30,000 mobile devices in the United States.

The shocking report is a snapshot of the border crisis over the course of just one month and it shows how the mass resettlement of illegal aliens is impacting nearly every congressional district in America.

Using the movement patterns of anonymized cell phones, The Heritage Foundation investigation reveals how tens of thousands of illegal aliens are making their way to the U.S. interior thanks to the aid and comfort of a network of private organizations. (Read more) ☼

Waste, Fraud, and Abuse: Rand Paul Releases His 2022 Festivus Report

by Spencer Brown

U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) kept up his holiday tradition of releasing an annual “Festivus Report”, shining a light on the ways in which the federal government wasted Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars on frivolous, woke, and absurd projects during the year. In his 2022 issue of the Festivus Report, Paul logged $482,276,543,907 worth of wasteful spending, “including a steroid-induced hamster fight club, a study to see if kids love their pets, and a study of the romantic patterns of parrots.” Yes, really. “No matter how much money’s already been wasted, politicians keep demanding even more,” Paul noted in this year’s report. (Read more) ☼

CLIMATE ISSUES

The world is being subjected to a great scam concerning climate and energy. The purpose is to impose global governance by elitists.

Dr John Christy, distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville discusses climate.

Christy interview video: https://youtu.be/qJv1IPNZQao 49 minutes

Summary:

By using data sets built from scratch, based on satellite and other data, Christy, with other scientists including NASA scientist Roy Spencer, have been testing the theories generated by climate models to see how well they hold up to reality. Their findings? On average, the latest models for the deep layer of the atmosphere are warming about twice too fast, presenting a deeply flawed and unrealistic representation of the actual climate. 100% of climate models produce more warming than physical observations. There is no climate crisis. There has been no increase in extreme weather events during the past 140 years. According to satellite data, Earth has warmed 0.5°C during the past 40 years. None of that warming is reliably attributable to human activity. Carbon dioxide invigorates the biosphere. Energy production from fossil fuels has a much lower environmental footprint than wind and solar energy production.

Political policies have no effect on climate.☼

Misperception and amplification of climate risk

by Judith Curry

“Something frightening poses a perceived risk. Something dangerous poses a real risk.” – Swedish physician Hans Rosling et al.

This post is a follow up to my recent post Victims of the faux climate ‘crisis’. Part I: Children. The issue of psychological trauma of children is one that I am continuing to work on, to identify root causes and a way forward.

The theme of this particular post is how our perceptions of risk differ from the actual risk itself. Understanding this difference provides insights to understanding these fears, as well as providing insights into how these differences are manipulated by propagandists. (Read more) ☼

Climate and CO2 Hysteria Is Optional

by Ron Clutz

They are not. On balance, global warming and CO2 emission are beneficial.

Before getting to why that is, however, it is crucial to understand why accepting the false climate claim is so harmful.

When it is noted that these climate policies will at most microscopically and insignificantly reduce temperatures and CO2 emissions, climate policy mandarins push for even more draconian policies.

The result has been that since the 1990s, climate policies have become increasingly destructive and wasteful. Even worse, their continued intensification appears unlikely to be stopped until the public and policymakers are persuaded that global warming and CO2 emissions are not harmful. As Margaret Thatcher famously said: “First you win the argument, then you win the vote.”

To win this argument, it is necessary to focus on the scientific facts. (Read more) ☼

The Top FIVE Climate Change LIES

by Laurence Fox

Laurence Fox breaks apart the lies repeatedly fed to the public and details the manipulation by the billionaire-funded lobby groups and activists.

Climate Lie Number One: Wind Power Is NINE Times CHEAPER Than Gas

Climate Lie Number Two: Island Countries Are SINKING Into The Sea

Climate Lie Number Three: Net Zero WILL Make YOUR Bills Cheaper

Climate Lie Number Four: Storms Are Getting MORE Frequent And MORE Intense

Climate Lie Number Five: Climate Change Is KILLING People

For details watch this video. 13 minutes. ☼

MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen rejects ‘climate change’ as ‘a quasi-religious movement predicated on an absurd ‘scientific’ narrative’

Richard Lindzen’s new paper: An Assessment of the Conventional Global Warming Narrative

Some highlights noted by Climate Depot:

CO2 is a particularly ridiculous choice for a ‘pollutant.’ Its primary role is as a fertiliser for plant life. Currently, almost all plants are starved of CO2. Moreover, if we were to remove a bit more than 60% of current CO2, the consequences would be dire: namely death by starvation for all animal life. It would not likely lead to a particularly cold world since such a reduction would only amount to a couple of percent change in the radiative budget. After all, a 30% reduction of solar radiation about 2.5 billion years ago did not lead to an Earth much colder than it is today, as we earlier noted in connection with the Early Faint Sun Paradox.

The Earth’s climate has, indeed, undergone major variations, but these offer no evidence of a causal role for CO2. For the glaciation cycles of the past 700 thousand years, the proxy data from the Vostok ice cores shows that cooling precedes decreases in CO2 despite the very coarse temporal resolution (Jouzel et al.,1987, Gore, 2006). Higher temporal resolution is needed to show that warming preceded the increase in CO2 as well (Caillon et al, 2003). For earlier variations, there is no suggestion of any correlation with carbon dioxide at all, as shown in Figure 9a, a commonly presented reconstruction of CO2 levels and ‘temperature’ for the past 600 million years or so.

This all leaves us with a quasi-religious movement predicated on an absurd ‘scientific’ narrative. The policies invoked on behalf of this movement have led to the US hobbling its energy system (a process that has played a prominent role in causing current inflation), while lifting sanctions for Russia’s Nordstream 2 pipeline, which was designed to bypass the existing pipeline through the Ukraine used to supply Germany. It has caused much of the European Union to ban exploitation of shale gas and other sources of fossil fuel, thus leaving it with much higher energy costs, increased energy poverty, and dependence on Russia, thus markedly reducing its ability to oppose Mr Putin’s aggressions. …

Unless we wake up to the absurdity of the motivating narrative, this is likely only to be the beginning of the disasters that will follow from the current irrational demonization of CO2. Changing course will be far from a simple task. As President Eisenhower noted in his farewell address in 1961: The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. ☼

CLIMATE SCIENCE BACKGROUND:

For more on climate science, see my Wryheat Climate articles:

Climate Change in Perspective

The Broken Greenhouse – Why Co2 Is a Minor Player in Global Climate

A Summary of Earth’s Climate History-a Geologist’s View

Problems with wind and solar generation of electricity – a review

The High Cost of Electricity from Wind and Solar Generation