Month: February 2020

Daily News 13 Feb 2020

Fabius Maximus: An autopsy of the climate policy debate’s corpse

Science has become a footnote in the mad rush to embrace so-called green energy policies, or so it seems. But is the climate likely to notice anything?
– – –
The climate policy debate has died. Its autopsy shows who killed it, says Larry Kummer @ Fabius Maximus.

Summary: The climate policy debate ran for 30 years but produced little action (it ranks #17 of the public’s top 18 concerns). Now it has died. The autopsy reveals not just who killed it but also disturbing insights about America.

This is post #404 in a series about climate change that I began 12 years ago.

Bottom line: the climate activists are decisively winning. The science no longer matters in the public policy debate. Activists have moved beyond it and the major science institutions no longer defend it against the activists’ exaggerations and misrepresentations. There are rumors that the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report will break with the past and fully embrace the hysteria.

Meanwhile, skeptics are talking to themselves, like characters in Alice in Wonderland – vocal but effectively locked out of the news media.

The climate wars are in the “pursuit” phase of battle, during which the victorious side runs down and destroys their broken foe.

Understanding how we got here reveals much about America’s dysfunctionality (i.e., its broken OODA loop).

But first, know that this was not inevitable.

Full article here.

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February 13, 2020 at 09:54AM

Daily News 13 Feb 2020

An autopsy of the climate policy debate’s corpse

Reposted from The Fabius Maximus website

By Larry Kummer, Editor / 12 February 2020

Summary: The climate policy debate ran for 30 years but produced little action (it ranks #17 of the public’s top 18 concerns). Now it has died. The autopsy reveals not just who killed it but also disturbing insights about America. This is post #404 in a series about climate change that I began 12 years ago.

ID 27423027 © Tom Wang | Dreamstime.

Bottom line: the climate activists are decisively winning. The science no longer matters in the public policy debate. Activists have moved beyond it and the major science institutions no longer defend it against the activists’ exaggerations and misrepresentations. There are rumors are that the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report will break with the past and fully embrace the hysteria. Meanwhile, skeptics are talking to themselves, like characters in Alice in Wonderland – vocal but effectively locked out of the news media.

The climate wars are in the “pursuit” phase of battle, during which the victorious side runs down and destroys their broken foe. Understanding how we got here reveals much about America’s dysfunctionality (i.e., its broken OODA loop). But first, know that this was not inevitable. See this remarkable op-ed in the BBC: “Science must end climate confusion” by eminent climate scientist Richard Betts on 11 January 2010.

“Of course, we know that these things {extreme weather} happen anyway, even without climate change – they may happen more often under a warmer climate, but it is wrong to blame climate change for every single event. Climate scientists know this, but still there are people outside of climate science who will claim or imply such things if it helps make the news or generate support for their political or business agenda. …

“{D}o climate scientists do enough to counter this? Or are we guilty of turning a blind eye to these things because we think they are on ‘our side’ against the climate sceptics? …Climate scientists need to take more responsibility for the communication of their work to avoid this kind of thing. Even if scientists themselves are not blaming everything on climate change, it still reflects badly on us if others do this.”

But Betts, and his fellow peers who are dedicated to science, remained mostly silent in the public policy debate – other than the occasional quiet remark. Of course, they were smart to do so. This is a moral panic. Once the leaders of society embrace it (for their own purposes), it becomes a virulent epidemic. Like a zombie apocalypse, those scientists in its path had only three good options: flee, collaborate, or hide. The ugly consequences to those (e.g., Pielke Sr. and Jr., Judith Curry) who chose a fourth option – carefully and selectively fighting the panic – are described below.

I have personally seen this dynamic play out as I have documented this increasing dysfunctional debate since 2008. But few cared in 2008. In 2015 I wrote one of the early critiques of the RCP8.5 scenario (perhaps the first): Is our certain fate a coal-burning climate apocalypse? No! I followed with Manufacturing climate nightmares: misusing science to create horrific predictions. Afterwards, I tried to find a climate scientist to coauthor an article in EOS or WSJ op-ed about the misuse of RCP8.5 – when it might have had an impact. But the ones I contacted were too smart to do so.

Now even Nature and the hard-core alarmist BBC says this. But RCP8.5 – and more broadly, climate science – no longer matter. The debate has moved beyond science to the exaggerations of the Climate Emergency and the fictions of the Extinction Rebellion. It is all politics and mass hysteria.

The climate policy debate is interesting as an example of our society’s growing dysfunctionality. Larger political forces (e.g., who wins the presidency in 2020) will determine who wins the debate. On a longer time horizon, the weather will choose the winning side. Meanwhile, the American people watch their screens and chatter.

An example shows how we got here

“The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.”
— G.W.F. Hegel in the Preface to The Philosophy of Right (1820). See Wikipedia.

Roger Pielke Jr. has written an article adding to my favorite genre: forensic pathology, examing the climate policy debate’s corpse to determine the causes of its death. His article describes the creation of shock troops for climate activists, using the Skeptical Science website (SkS) as their base. These people attack the opponents of activists – using lies and smears to discredit these eminent scientists. These are people whom activist scientists can support without getting their own hands dirty by smearing their peers.

The troops at SkS have been immensely successful in a narrow sense, helping activists dominate the public spaces in America. But when you read this, remember the big truth which explains the gridlock in US climate policy.

This is not what scientists do when they have
decisive evidence of an imminent global threat.
This is how they act when they do not have decisive evidence,
but for professional or political reasons want the public to believe them anyway.
Many Americans understand that, at some level.

Pielke describes the dramatis personae of this sad story.

The writers at Skeptical Science – A massive donation supported website. Like most good propaganda mills, it mixes useful information with misinformation. Very few of its authors are climate scientists.

Pielke describes its authors’ smearing of Roger Pielke Sr. and Judith Curry. See this debunking of the SkS page about Pielke. See his publications, also his positions held. His publications have an H-Index of 95. See Curry’s publications; they have an H-Index of 67. Compare that to media darlings James Hansen (96), Michael Mann (83), and Katharine Hayhoe (47). It is how science crashes during a moral panic.

Conclusions

“It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.”
— Voltaire in his The Age of Louis XIV.

Simple and sensible measures could have been taken long ago with broad public support to prepare for a better future and break the policy gridlock (perhaps gaining support for bigger bolder actions). But that requires our involvement to make it happen – since neither the leaders of climate science nor US elites have any interest in either. We do not appear to be up to this challenge.

For More Information

Ideas! For some shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about our future: Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.

If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information see The keys to understanding climate change, all posts about the RCPs, and especially these …

Activists don’t want you to read these

Some unexpected good news about polar bears: The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened by Susan Crockford (2019).

To learn more about the state of climate change see The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change by Roger Pielke Jr., professor for the Center for Science and Policy Research at U of CO – Boulder (2018).

Available at Amazon.

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February 13, 2020 at 08:42AM

Daily News 13 Feb 2020

AEP’s Latest Fossil Fuel Rant

By Paul Homewood

AEP is off on one of his usual rants again:

We know what a stranded fossil state looks like. It took five years for the halving of oil prices to defund Venezuela’s rentier petro-regime and reduce what used to be Latin America’s richest country to a humanitarian basket case.

Once the downward spiral began, it became self-feeding and unstoppable. The economy has contracted by two thirds. Nearly five million people have left the country since 2018. It is the world’s largest refugee crisis after Syria.

Brent oil prices today far exceed Venezuela’s extraction costs, but that is irrelevant. What matters is the ‘fiscal break-even cost’ needed to sustain the socialist Chavista machine. The International Monetary Fund thinks this is over $200 a barrel.

The Orinoco tar sands – the world’s largest crude reserves on paper – produce high-cost dirty crude that will never be viable in the post-Paris era of decarbonisation. They are worthless.

Venezuela is the first to go of RBC Capital’s ‘fragile five’, but several others are heading towards social collapse and sovereign insolvency.

Behind them in this grim parade come the big beasts of the Persian Gulf, and arguably Russia since it depends on fossil revenues to cover 60pc of its budget.

The timing of this massive geopolitical upset is subject to hot dispute. Yet there can no longer be any doubt that the twin-pincers of draconian carbon curbs and plummeting renewable costs will sweep away much of the old energy order, and that markets will bring this forward demolition job soon enough with Schumpeterian ferocity.

BLAH BLAH!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/02/12/stranded-fossil-states-next-traumatic-chapter-great-energy-shift/

I think you can guess the rest!

Back in the real world fossil fuel consumption has been rising in leaps and bounds:

BP Energy Review

Despite the rapid rise of renewable energy 49 to 561 Mtoe a year, it has been dwarfed by an increase of 3620 Mtoe in fossil fuel consumption.

It has nothing to do with cost or carbon tax, nothing else has been found to replace fossil fuels, and is highly unlikely to in the next couple of decades.

Beyond that, who knows what the world will look like?

AEP still clings to the belief that citizens will demand an end to fossil fuels. But he is evidently confusing a handful of eco rag, tag and bobtails with real people, who need to travel to work, heat their homes and even have a job to go to. They certainly won’t be happy when the reality of the green agenda hits home.

Indeed, we only have to look at the gilets jaune to see that.

As with all of his fossil fuel rants, AEP fails to explain just how modern economies can run on highly intermittent and unreliable wind and solar power. He has ths child like belief that we can get all of the energy we need from batteries!

But perhaps he might believe what the Committee on Climate Change had to say in its Net Zero Plan a few months ago:

Exhibit 1

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/06/16/net-zero-power-scenarios/

Even the CCC accept that we will still need a large amount of gas fired power in 2050. Indeed actually more than now, as it is currently running at 119 TWh.

It can only be classified as “Carbon Free” because it is assumed to be be fitted with carbon capture technology. Regardless of whether that can work or not, we will still need lots of natural gas.

Exhibit 2

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/06/16/net-zero-power-scenarios/

We will also still need large amounts of natural to convert to hydrogen, for heating our homes and industrial use. Again this will require CCS technology. The CCC recognise that the power grid simply would not be able to cope with the winter peak demands for heating, if all heating was electrified.

Other countries also recognise the realities. That is why Germany is so desperate for the new Nordstream 2 gas pipeline, which will enable it to double volumes of imported gas from Russia.

What I find strangest in AEP’s rants is his confusion. At one level he is claiming that renewables will become so wonderfully cheap that the bottom will fall out of the oil market. But then he will go on to talk about the need for draconian carbon taxes, politically enforced divestments and St Greta.

Well, which is it?

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February 13, 2020 at 08:25AM

Daily News 13 Feb 2020

Delingpole: Sorry, Gove, But Americans Don’t Accept Your Climate Obsession

Unilaterally decarbonising it — as seems to be Boris Johnson’s and Michael Gove’s wizard plane — must surely count among the most suicidally pointless plan ever devised by any government in history, especially by one wearing the ‘Conservative’ tag.

Michael Gove – the most powerful figure in the UK government after Boris Johnson – has made a speech berating President Donald Trump for not doing enough about ‘climate change.’

But Trump is unlikely to notice, let alone care. Most Americans just don’t see climate change as a credible problem.

Here is the evidence: a 2019 poll showing that for the 13th year running, ‘dealing with global climate change’ comes right near the bottom of Americans’ political priorities.

Top three concerns, according to the Pew Research Center were:

Strengthening the economy
Reducing health care costs
Improving the education system

Climate change, Donna Laframboise reminds us, came in at 17, second from bottom of a long list including terrorism, a financially sound social security system, Medicare, and dealing with the poor and needy. It will be the same when Pew releases its annual poll this year. Every time, climate change comes either bottom or second from bottom.

Laframboise concludes:

Moral of the story: There has never been any evidence that climate change is a top concern for most Americans. This is not a crowd pleaser or a vote getter.

This, in turn, has massive implications for the post-Brexit Special Relationship between Britain and the US.

If, as seems most likely, it will be a case of four more years of President Trump trying to forge links with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, then the two men are going to be pulling in opposite directions.

One, Trump, will be leading a fossil fuel economy — the world’s largest by energy production — benefiting from the massive competitive advantage of using cheap, abundant energy, freed (thanks to Trump) from the shackles of the Paris Climate Accord.

The other, Johnson, will be leading an economy which has chosen to prioritise virtue-signalling over efficiency, hobbled by any number of green targets, regulations, misallocations of capital and crony-capitalist boondoggles; crippled by needlessly high energy costs. And with his most able minister Michael Gove in charge — and rumoured to be the man chosen, inter alia, to head Britain’s hosting of the COP26 climate summit — it’s a racing certainty that Britain’s green-managed decline will be handled with great efficiency.

I’m really not sure that this was quite the post-Brexit vision Trump had in mind when he promised Britain a ‘fantastic’ and ‘very big’ trade deal once it managed to extricate itself from the European Union.

I’m fairly sure he had in mind that Britain would become a freebooting, free-market player in the manner of Trump’s America.

What I’m most certain he didn’t have in mind is that he’d be at the receiving end of finger-wagging lectures from Boris’s Chief Operating Officer Gove, as delivered at a conference of the mostly hard-left eco-loon gathering, the Green Alliance.

According to the Guardian‘s report:

Using his speech to call for concerted global action on the climate emergency at the summit, Gove noted the lack of efforts on the issue by President Trump and the Brazilian leader, Jair Bolsonaro.

“I shan’t mention any world leaders by name in a critical fashion,” he began. “However, it’s important in the United States and in Brazil that we recognise that there will be people, at the state and at the city level, who can play a vital role in driving change that we all need to see.”

Predicting that nonetheless COP 26 would be a success, Gove pointed to what he called “politically, a realisation of the scale of the challenge and the emergency” across the globe.

Trump’s America produces approximately 14 per cent of global CO2 emissions; Brazil about 1.5 per cent; India 7 per cent; and China nearly 30 per cent. Since none of these economies has any intention of “driving change” on the CO2 production front any time soon, it will put Boris Johnson’s attempts to take Britain’s economy Net Zero by 2050 into tragic, painful and embarrassing perspective.