Follow the money and you’ll soon work out who’s who in the climate industrial complex zoo. At the end of every massive wind and solar subsidy rainbow, you’ll find a crony capitalist eager to cash in.

Built upon a series of self-serving fictions, the grand wind and solar scam has been designed to allow the few to profit outrageously at the expense of the many. And the only reason that people are not rioting in the streets at the result, is that they have absolutely no idea what’s going on. The MSM and those in on the rort make damn sure of it. Bait and switch, barefaced lies and good old-fashioned propaganda has been doing the trick for a generation, now.

Demonising reliable and affordable energy – and those who would have it, if they could – a group of cynical elites enjoy obscenely energy-hungry lifestyles; flying everywhere they want in private jets and running a global fleet of fabulous mansions, all the while berating you for turning up the thermostat, just to stay alive.

Chris Morrison’s piece below outlines the work of Dr Wallace Manheimer, who understands that this cabal of well-healed virtue signallers would destroy your way of life in a heartbeat, whenever there’s an easy, government-guaranteed dollar to be made.

Net Zero Will Lead to the End of Modern Civilisation, Says Top Scientist
Daily Skeptic
Chris Morrison
10 January 2023

A damning indictment of the Net Zero political project has been made by one of the world’s leading nuclear physicists. In a recently published science paper, Dr. Wallace Manheimer said it would be the end of modern civilisation. Writing about wind and solar power he argued it would be especially tragic “when not only will this new infrastructure fail, but will cost trillions, trash large portions of the environment, and be entirely unnecessary”. The stakes, he added, “are enormous”.

Dr. Manheimer holds a physics PhD from MIT and has had a 50-year career in nuclear research, including work at the Plasma Physics Division at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. He has published over 150 science papers. In his view, there is “certainly no scientific basis” for expecting a climate crisis from too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the next century or so. He argues that there is no reason why civilisation cannot advance using both fossil fuel power and nuclear power, gradually shifting to more nuclear power.

There is of course a growing body of opinion that points out that the Emperor has no clothes when it comes to all the fashionable green technologies. Electric cars, wind and solar power, hydrogen, battery storage, heat pumps – all have massive disadvantages, and are incapable of replacing existing systems without devastating consequences.

Manheimer points out that before fossil fuel became widely used, energy was provided by people and animals. Because so little energy was produced, “civilisation was a thin veneer atop a vast mountain of human squalor and misery, a veneer maintained by such institutions as slavery, colonialism and tyranny”.

This argument hints at why so many rich, virtue-signalling celebrities argue not just for Net Zero but ‘Real’ Zero, with the banning of all fossil fuel use. King Charles said in 2009 that the age of consumerism and convenience was over, although the multi-mansion owning monarch presumably doesn’t think such desperate restrictions apply to himself. Manheimer notes that fossil fuel has extended the benefits of civilisation to billions, but its job is not yet complete. “To spread the benefits of modern civilisation to the entire human family would require much more energy, as well as newer sources,” he adds.

The author notes that the emphasis on a false climate crisis is becoming a “tragedy for modern civilisation”, which depends on reliable, affordable and environmentally viable energy. “The windmills, solar panels and backup batteries have none of these qualities,” he states. This falsehood has been pushed by what has been termed a climate industrial complex, comprising some scientists, most media, industrialists and legislators. Furthermore, he continues, this grouping 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.

In Manheimer’s view, the partnership among self-interested businesses, grandstanding politicians and alarmist campaigners, “truly is an unholy alliance”. The climate industrial complex does not promote discussion on how to overcome this challenge in a way that will be best for everyone. “We should not be surprised or impressed that those who stand to make a profit are among the loudest calling for politicians to act,” he added.

Perhaps one of the best voices to cast doubt on an approaching climate crisis, suggests the author, is Professor Emeritus Richard Lindzen of MIT, one of the world’s leading authorities on geological fluid motions:

What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.

Much of Dr. Manheimer’s interesting paper debunks many of the fashionable nostrums surrounding politicised ‘settled’ climate science. It is an excellent read. Discussing some of the contrary opinions that debunk obviously false claims, he says it is “particularly disheartening” to see learned societies make definitive claims when so much contrary information is readily available. He points out that over the last 10,000 years, the Earth has almost certainly been warmer. There have been warmer and colder periods, just like today.

To find the off-narrative information, even Google can be used, Manheimer says – though he does note that the company warns it will not provide information on “claims denying that long-term trends show that the global climate is warming”.
Daily Skeptic

Monday Open Thread

From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog

Cliff Mass

After over a month of torrential rain and massive mountain snow, the drought is over in California.

Yet with all the liquid bounty, some in the media and elsewhere don’t want to give up on it, as noted in the NY Times headline below.

And the U.S Drought Monitor has severe drought over much of the state.

I believe the evidence for the end of California drought is quite overwhelming. But consider the facts found below and decide for yourself.

Reservoirs and Snowpack

Let us start with the most critical measure of drought…the total water storage in the reservoirs plus the water that will be available from the snowpack (see below).

It is now WAY above normal.  

In fact, the total water available right now is greater than normally available in April after months of additional precipitation.

The previous deficit in California reservoir water storage is now gone.  For example, consider the huge Lake Orville Reservoir in northern CA” during the past month it went from roughly 60% of normal to 106%!  Wow.

Current snowpack, a critical water source for late spring, summer, and fall?

It is now over 200% of normal for all major Sierra regions…and nearly 300% for the south Sierra area.  Good skiing as well.

Soil Moisture and Rivers

The state has experienced flooding and highly saturated conditons from all the rain.   As you might expect, the soil moisture values arecurrently  very, very high (see below from NOAA National Integrated Drought Information System, NIDIS).  Green is above normal.  Dark green indicates the top 1% wettest period on record for the date.

Rivers around California are generally very high, with many running above the 90th percentile (top 10% flows for this period).

And the Palmer Drought Severity Index, which considers current and past precipitation plus temperatures, indicates wet conditions over the state.  No drought.

Making Up For Several Years of Precipitation Deficit

An important aspect of the massive amount of recent precipitation is that it has erased a multi-year deficit in precipitation.  Consider San Francisco, where the observed cumulative precipitation for the past two years is shown by green (and climatological variation indicated by the brown line)

For most of the past two years, San Fran has been behind normal precipitation, but the recent torrent has pushed it above normal!

A similar situation for Los Angeles.

But What About Lake Mead/Lake Powell and Ground Water?

The media has been fixated on Lake Mead/Lake Powell, whose water levels are both well below normal; both are fed by the Colorado River, not the Sierra Nevada reservoirs/snowpack  (see Colorado watershed below).   The water in these lakes supports water needs in southern CA and Arizona and provides electricity from Hoover Dam.

It is true that the water levels in the critical storage lakes/reservoirs (Mead and Powell) are dropping (see a plot for Lake Mead below).

But this decline is not from changes in meteorology/climate, but from increased usage to support a growing population and water-intensive agriculture.  You can see this by looking at the long-term trend in Colorado River Basin snowpack and water flow into Lake Mead (below).

Dropping groundwater levels in California are a similar story, with the largest drops during the past 20 years in agricultural areas of the southern Central Valley (see below).  We are mining too much sub-surface water to be sustainable.

The Bottom Line:   Much of California is a relatively arid, with little long-term trend in precipitation.  There is a reason that that Spanish did not move northward into California for two centuries:  the place was too dry for agriculture. Only a massive reservoir and water transportation system made a heavily populated state possible.

Much of California goes through natural periods of above and below normal precipitation, and we have just gone through such a cycle, moving from a few years of dry condition to a very wet winter.   

The recent meteorological drought is now over.  But California needs better long-term planning and infrastructure to sustainabley support the current and future pooulation and a huge agriculural industry.

 Blaming climate change as the primary cause for current problems and recent “drought” leads to not dealing with the real problems.