The recent piece by Conrad Black titled “Washing away the climate lunatics: Canada at risk of turning into Europe” offers a poignant commentary on the current state and potential pitfalls of climate change policies, especially those aimed at achieving net zero carbon emissions. It provides a stark warning to Canada, drawing on the troubles Europe has experienced with similar policies. Black’s article, which references Dr. Benny Peiser’s address to the Friends of Science Society in Calgary, delves deep into the socio-economic and political upheavals triggered by these policies, particularly in Europe, and forecasts the implications for Canada if it follows suit.
The Illusion of Net Zero and the Reality of Economic Backlash
One of the central themes in Black’s argument is the critique of Europe’s aggressive climate policies, which, although initially wrapped in the guise of environmental stewardship, have rapidly led to significant public dissent and economic disruption. This is vividly illustrated by the farmer protests across Europe, a reaction to policies perceived as economically damaging and impractical. Governments, faced with mounting opposition, have begun to retreat from their ambitious climate goals, highlighting a crucial disconnect between political agendas and public acceptance.
“As long as the heavy costs of displacing fossil fuels by so-called renewable energy were carefully disguised and diffused, everybody could wallow in collective self-praise for doing the healthy and environmentally responsible thing,”
Black notes, shedding light on the initially obscured financial burdens that later became unbearable for the taxpayers.
Technological Transitions and Economic Consequences
The article also tackles the impact of forced technological shifts, such as the transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles (EVs) in Germany, France, and Italy. This move, although aimed at reducing carbon emissions, has led to unintended economic consequences, including diminished auto sales and increased competition from cheaper Chinese EVs. This situation underscores the potential risks of rapid policy-driven economic transformations without considering global market dynamics and consumer behavior.
“Once they had fully committed themselves to the boondoggle of electric vehicles (EV’s), and forced the powerful automobile industries of Germany, France, and Italy into conversion of gas powered vehicles to EV’s, sales of EV’s plummeted after the customary faddish start, just as much cheaper Chinese EV’s flooded into Europe,”
Black elaborates, emphasizing the unintended outcomes of these policy-driven market disruptions.
Judicial Overreach and the Misinterpretation of Climate Science
A particularly alarming development cited by Black is the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling against the Swiss government, which was found to have violated human rights by not adequately addressing climate change. This judicial decision exemplifies the overreach of legal frameworks into democratic processes and scientific domains, where the nuances of climate science are still under debate.
“The European Court of Human Rights crossed the jurisdictional Rubicon by overruling the voters of a democratic country,”
Highlighting the problematic encroachment of judicial bodies on national sovereignty and democratic decision-making.
The Role of CO2: A Misunderstood Element
The narrative that CO2 is solely a harmful greenhouse gas ignores its critical role in photosynthesis and its beneficial effects on agricultural productivity, especially in arid regions. The argument that increased CO2 levels could actually bolster food production is a facet often overlooked in mainstream climate debates. Furthermore, the assertion that net zero policies could lead to an increase in global starvation by reducing nitrogen fertilizer availability is a stark reminder of the complex trade-offs involved in climate policy decisions.
“CO2 as essential to food, and thus to life on earth, and that the more there is of CO2, the more food there will be, especially in drought-stricken areas,”
Thus presenting a contrarian view that challenges the prevailing narrative on CO2 emissions.
Conclusion: A Call for Rational Climate Policy
Black’s article serves as a cautionary tale about the potential pitfalls of hasty and ideologically driven climate policies. It calls for a more nuanced, scientifically grounded approach to environmental stewardship. The backlash in Europe provides a clear indication of the need for democratic engagement and economic pragmatism in policy formulation. As Canada faces its own environmental policy decisions, it would do well to heed the lessons from across the Atlantic, ensuring that policies are both scientifically sound and economically viable, thereby avoiding the socio-political turmoil experienced by its European counterparts.
In sum, the debate around climate change and the measures proposed to combat it is far from settled. A balanced approach that considers both environmental goals and economic realities is crucial. Policies must be based on rigorous scientific analysis and broad-based consensus to ensure that they are sustainable in the long term and are embraced rather than imposed on the populace. As the discourse evolves, it remains imperative that policy decisions are guided by pragmatic and scientifically validated insights rather than alarmist and economically detrimental prescriptions.
Time to put the great(?) climate attribution con game to bed permanently. By assuming what it’s trying to prove it becomes seriously unconvincing. Talk of ‘fingerprints of climate change’ is more like waffle than science.
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A few media outlets, including CNN and BBC, have run recent articles talking about flooding in Dubai, claiming that climate change made the storms worse. This is false, says Climate Realism (via Climate Change Dispatch).
There is no evidence that climate change made the rain more extreme, instead, evidence indicates that El Niño and even cloud-seeding may have contributed.
Both the BBC’s article, “Deadly Dubai floods made worse by climate change,” and the one posted by CNN, “Scientists find the fingerprints of climate change on Dubai’s deadly floods,” reference a study done by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group, which claimed that climate change made the rain events 10 to 40 percent more intense than if global warming was not occurring.
CNN’s writer says global warming is the likely driver of heavy rainfall in Dubai “because the atmosphere in a 1.2-degree warmer world can now hold 8.4% more moisture, which is making extreme rain events more intense.”
These claims are nonsense, and worse, non-scientific, for the simple reason that not only does data not show that heavy rainfall is becoming more intense or common, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) doesn’t even claim that any sign whatsoever will even begin to emerge, according to their own projections, until well into the future.
. . .
The best description of how these attribution studies work was given by statistician Dr. William Briggs in a paper compiled by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Dr. Briggs wrote:
All attribution studies work around the same basic theme. … A model of the climate as it does not exist, but which is claimed to represent what the climate would look like had mankind not ‘interfered’ with it, is run many times. The outputs from these runs is examined for some ‘bad’ or ‘extreme’ event, such as higher temperatures or increased numbers of hurricanes making landfall, or rainfall exceeding some amount. The frequency with which these bad events occur in the model is noted. Next, a model of the climate as it is said to now exist is run many times. This model represents global warming. The frequencies from the same bad events in the model are again noted. The frequencies between the models are then compared. If the model of the current climate has a greater frequency of the bad event than the imaginary (called ‘counterfactual’) climate, the event is said to be caused by global warming, in whole or in part.’
Fundamentally, attribution science cannot be proof of human influences on the weather via climate change because it begins with the assumption that any given weather event is being influenced by climate change.
In other words, the model is designed with the outcome in mind, making it impossible for them to “discover” anything to the contrary.
Full article here.
– – – Image: Dubai – Sharjah’s King Abdul Aziz Street [credit: BBC News]
Money Mail can today reveal a timebomb looming in the second-hand market for electric vehicles (EVs).
Our investigation found that many EVs could become almost impossible to resell because of their limited battery life.
Experts said that the average EV battery guarantee lasts just eight years. After this time, the battery may lose power more quickly and so reduce mileage between charges.
Many EVs will lose up to 12 per cent of their charge capacity by six years. Some may lose even more.
Yet the cost of replacing an EV battery is astonishingly high, our research found.
A five-year-old Renault Zoe costs £9,100 but a new battery will set you back £24,124
In some cases, the cost of a replacement battery is as much as £40,000. For certain EVs, the cost of replacing the battery could be ten times the value of the vehicle itself on the second-hand market.
That means used EVs have a limited lifespan — which makes them a bigger and bigger risk as the years go by.
Research into EV batteries is yet to be conclusive and the second-hand EV market is new, given the first popular EVs were rolled off the production line in 2009.
Last night, one motoring expert said customers should be wary of buying a used electric car beyond its warranty (typically eight years), as after that timespan there is no easy way of measuring how much the battery will degrade before it needs replacing.
This may mean you end up needing to pay for an expensive new battery.
Motor expert Shahzad Sheikh, who runs the YouTube channel Brown Car Guy, said: ‘With a decaying battery, the range will be poor and you may find it becomes increasingly hard to resell the vehicle after eight years.
Buyers will know that they’ll only get a small amount of life out of the car so will pay only a small sum, if anything at all.’
This problem is exacerbated by the fact all new cars coming onto the market by 2035 will be electric and motorists will have to get used to paying around £10,000 more than it’s petrol equivalent, for a vehicle which is not built to last as long.
Take a new petrol-driven Renault Clio — it costs around £20,000, while its all-electric opposite, the Renault Zoe, costs closer to £30,000.
While you can drive a traditional petrol or diesel car for around 200,000 miles over 14 years before the engine needs fixing or replacing, by comparison a new EV is typically guaranteed under a warranty for 100,000 miles over eight years.
Should your petrol engine need replacing you can expect to pay around £5,000, but replace the battery on your EV outside warranty and you’re looking at an eye-watering £13,000 to £40,000, depending on the make of your car, if you fit a manufacturer’s new unit.
And there are external factors at play with battery degradation — including use of fast chargers and even a colder climate.
The high cost of EV batteries is a result of it being difficult to mine metals such as nickel, cobalt, lithium and manganese that are used in the lithium-ion batteries.
They are also in demand for the production of other electronics, including mobile phones and laptops.
In the most extreme cases, such as with a 12-year-old Nissan Leaf that cost £2,000 to buy, you can pay as much as £24,000 for a brand-new replacement 24kWh battery.
However, most owners would upgrade to a newer 40kWh Nissan battery costing £12,780 before garage installation fees of around £2,000. This later battery has a bigger capacity but can still be fitted into older models.
These high costs to maintain an electric car do not bode well for a fledgling second-hand market believes Shahzad Sheikh, who points out: ‘Early adopters have already bought electric cars while the next wave of buyers are looking for value for money — and struggling to find it.
‘The second-hand market might seem a natural place to look for an EV but unfortunately it is fraught with danger as the batteries are worth more than the car. If the battery stops working, the vehicle becomes almost worthless.’
Vehicle trading website AA Cars agrees and says that nearly half of all potential second-hand EV buyers are put off because of concerns about battery life.
This is not just a problem for eight year old cars, because it will cascade back up the supply chain.
For instance, if you buy a 5 year old petrol car now, you can reasonably assume you will still get a couple of thousand back when you trade it in in three years time. Buy a 5 year old EV, and and you probably won’t get a penny back. That in turn therefore devalues that 5-year old EV, as buyers cannot afford to buy one otherwise. And so on up the chain.
This four year old presentation by Dr. John Robson investigates the unsound origins and fundamental inaccuracy, even dishonesty, of the claim that 97% of scientists, or “the world’s scientists”, or something agree that climate change is man-made, urgent and dangerous.
There are so many empty slogans out there I wish we could tackle all of them at once. But the “97% of scientists agree” is surely the elephant in the room. Lots of people have tried to rebut it by dismissing the notion of consensus itself, or by praising the historical examples of renegade scientists who went against a prevailing consensus and turned out to be right. But that unnecessarily concedes the major claim itself, which the evidence shows is simply not true. I hope you enjoy the video, and that you’ll share it widely. -JR
Narrator
The claim that 97% of the world’s scientists agree is pretty much the ace of trumps in the whole climate debate. After all, who’s going to argue against a consensus that strong, backed by so many experts. But what exactly are they supposed to agree on? If you look behind the curtain, no one seems sure what the experts actually said. Or who they are. Or… anything.
John
At first glance it seems straightforward enough. In 2013 President Barack Obama famously tweeted that “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”
In 2014, his Secretary of State John Kerry said 97% of “the world’s scientists tell us this is urgent.” And that same year, CNN said “97% of scientists agree that climate change is happening now, that it’s damaging the planet and that it’s manmade.”
Narrator
That’s pretty much what most people think when they hear the 97% slogan: Every scientist believes man-made climate change is an urgent crisis.
But there are millions of scientists in the world. How many exactly were surveyed? When were they surveyed? Who did it? And what exactly did they agree on?
John
Let’s find out. I’m John Robson and this is a Climate Discussion Nexus Fact Check on the 97 percent consensus slogan.
To begin with, there are some ideas that pretty much all scientists accept. For instance that birds are descended from dinosaurs, though that idea was once dismissed as highly eccentric. And when it comes to climate, you don’t need a poll to tell you that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, meaning it likely has some overall warming effect. That’s been known since the mid-1800s. And if you did do a survey, you would find overwhelming scientific agreement on that point.
Also, there are lots of indications that the world is somewhat warmer now than it was in the mid-1800s, the end of a natural cooling period called the Little Ice Age.
Finally, virtually nobody disputes that humans have changed the environment of our planet, by releasing emissions into the air, changing the land surface, putting things in the water, and so forth.
These aren’t controversial ideas, and they’re accepted even by most climate skeptics. What we don’t accept is that any of them prove that humans are the only cause of global warming, or that climate change is a dangerous threat.
If 97% of scientists believed that, it would be troubling. Though even so, we’d still have to find some plan whose benefits outweighed its costs. In any event, that level of consensus that the problem was manmade and urgent would certainly be noteworthy. But the thing is, they don’t agree on that.
A close look at what survey data we have, and there isn’t much, tells us, yes, there is a great deal of agreement that CO2 is a greenhouse gas to some degree, that the Earth has warmed in the last 160 years, and that humans affect their surroundings. But that survey data also tell us there’s far less agreement on everything else including whether we face a crisis.
So where did this 97% claim come from and why is it so widely repeated?
Narrator
The 97% claim seems to have begun with a historian of science named Naomi Oreskes who, in 2004, claimed she’d looked at 928 articles about climate change in scientific journals, that 75% of them endorsed the “consensus view” that “Earth’s climate is being affected by human activities” and that none directly disputed it.
By 2006, in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, this finding had somehow morphed into “a massive study of every scientific article in a peer-reviewed journal written on global warming for the last 10 years and they took a big sample of 10%, 928 articles, and you know the number of those that disagreed with the scientific consensus that we’re causing global warming and that it’s a serious problem? Out of the 928, zero.”
John
That was a fib. Gore took a study that found 75% endorsed the idea that humans have some effect on climate and turned it into proof that 100% of scientists believe it’s a serious problem. It does no such thing.
Narrator
And nor do the handful of other surveys on the subject. For instance five years later, in 2009, a pair of researchers at the University of Illinois sent an online survey to over 10,000 Earth scientists asking two simple questions: Do you agree that global temperatures have generally risen since the pre-1800s? and Do you think that human activity is a significant contributing factor? [Note: They asked some other questions too, but didn’t report the questions or results in the publication.]
John
They didn’t single out greenhouse gases, they didn’t explain what the term “significant” meant and they didn’t refer to danger or crisis. So what was the result?
Narrator
Of the 3,146 responses they received, 90 percent said yes to the first question, that global temperatures had risen since the Little Ice Age, and only 82 percent said yes to the second, that human activity was a significant contributing factor.
Interestingly, among meteorologists only 64 percent said yes to the second, meaning a third of the experts in the study of weather patterns who replied didn’t think humans play a significant role in global warming, let alone a dominant one.
What got the most media attention was that among the 77 respondents who described themselves as climate experts, 75 said yes to the second question. 75 out of 77 is 97%.
John
OK, it didn’t get any media attention that they took 77 out of 3,146 responses. But that’s the key statistical trick. They found a 97 percent consensus among 2 percent of the survey respondents. And even so it was only that there’d been some warming since the 1800s, which virtually nobody denies, and that humans are partly responsible. These experts didn’t say it was dangerous or urgent, because they weren’t asked. [Note: or as noted above, if they were the results weren’t reported.]
So far the claim that 97% of “world scientists” are saying there’s a climate crisis is pure fiction. But wait, you say. There must be more. Yes, there is. But not much.
Narrator
Another survey appeared in 2013, by Australian researcher John Cook and his coauthors, in which they claimed to have examined about 12,000 scientific papers related to climate change, and found that 97% endorsed the consensus view that greenhouse gases were at least partly responsible for global warming. This study generated headlines around the world, and it was the one to which Obama’s tweet was referring.
John
But here again, appearances were deceiving.
Two-thirds of the papers that Cook and his colleagues examined expressed no view at all on the consensus. Of the remaining 34%, the authors claimed that 33% endorsed the consensus. Divide 33 by 34 and you get 97%. But this result is essentially meaningless, because they set the bar so low.
The survey authors didn’t ask if climate change was dangerous or “manmade”. They only asked if a given paper accepted that humans have some effect on the climate, which as already noted is uncontroversial. It could mean as little as accepting the “urban heat island” effect.
So a far better question would be: How many of the studies claimed that humans have caused most of the observed global warming? And oddly, we do know. Because buried in the authors’ data was the answer: A mere 64 out of nearly 12,000 papers! That’s not 97%, it’s one half of one percent. It’s one in 200.
And it gets worse. In a follow-up study, climatologist David Legates read those 64 papers and found that a third of them didn’t even say what Cook and his team claimed. Only 41 actually endorsed the view that global warming is mostly manmade. And we still haven’t got to it being “dangerous”. That part of the survey results was simply invented, by politicians and activists.
Other researchers have condemned the Cook study on other grounds too. For instance economist Richard Tol showed that over three-quarters of the papers counted as endorsing even the weak consensus actually said nothing at all on the subject. And evidence later emerged that the authors of the paper were drafting press releases about their findings before they even started doing the research, which indicates an alarming level not of warming or of consensus but of bias.
The reality is that neither this study, nor a handful of others like it, prove that 97% of scientists believe climate change is mostly manmade, let alone that it’s a crisis. The fact that people who claim to put such stock in “settled science” accept such obvious statistical hocus pocus is both astounding and disappointing.
Narrator
So what do climate experts really think? The year before Obama sent out his tweet, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) surveyed its 7,000 members. They got about 1,800 responses. Of those, only 52% said they think global warming over the 20th century has happened and is mostly manmade. The remaining 48% either think it happened but is mostly natural, or it didn’t happen, or they don’t know. And while it’s possible that the three-quarters who didn’t answer split the same way as those who did, it’s also possible that committed alarmists are more likely to answer such surveys. In any case, it’s a small sample, even of AMS members, let alone of the world’s scientists.
John
There was one more survey a few years later by the Netherlands Environment Agency that claimed 66% of climate experts believed humans were mostly responsible for warming since 1950. Which falls far short of 97% even if it outperforms the other studies.
A social psychologist named Jose Duarte, who specializes in survey design, published an analysis of that one, pointing out that they diluted the sample by including large numbers of psychologists, philosophers, political scientists, and other non-experts, making their results meaningless as a measure of what scientists think. Just as you’ll find that the people who cite that 97% number are overwhelmingly not trained scientists, certainly not trained statisticians.
Narrator
So we’re no farther ahead than when we began. Most experts agree on the basics, namely that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and probably causes some warming and that humans have some impact on climate probably including some warming. But they actively debate the rest: How much warming will there be? Is it a problem? Should we try to stop it, or adapt, or wait and see? These are all important questions and we need good answers.
John
And there’s the claim that many of the world’s national science academies, representing hundreds of thousands of scientists across the globe, have issued statements supporting the consensus about global warming and demanding government efforts to cut emissions. The problem is, not a single one of those societies took a survey of their members before issuing their statements in the name of their members. The statements were put out by a small number of activists using their committee positions to make it look as though their views are shared by all the world’s experts. But if they are, why didn’t these authors survey their members before publishing the statements?
There are a couple of other studies that claimed to prove a consensus. But they run into the same problems. All they show is wide agreement on the uncontroversial bits. They offer no information about whether a majority of scientists think global warming is a crisis. And then they’re spun wildly by non-scientists to tell us things they don’t begin to say, often about questions they didn’t even attempt to investigate .
The problem isn’t just that we don’t know what percentage of scientists agrees with this or that statement about global warming. It’s something much worse. All this talk of a 97% consensus amounts to a dishonest bullying campaign to stifle scientific debate just when we need it most because the question looms so large in public policy.
As physicist Richard Feynmann once said, “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.” And that’s especially true when we’re asked to take drastic action based on those answers.
Not long ago that survey expert I mentioned earlier, Jose Duarte, warned his fellow scientists about the negative consequences of claiming consensus. He said:
“It is ill advised to report a consensus as though it is an aggregation of independent judgments. Humans are an ultrasocial species, and dissent is far costlier than assent to a perceived majority… A scientist who contests the prevailing narrative on human-caused warming, or merely produces smaller estimates, will likely end up on a McCarthyite blacklist of ‘deniers’. Self-described mainstream climate scientists refer the public to such lists, implicitly endorsing the smearing of their colleagues. This is disturbing, and unheard of in other sciences.”
The unfortunate truth is that there is strong political pressure for climate experts not to question claims of impending doom. Those who do so face steep personal and professional costs, including a barrage of abuse that can be highly unpleasant for people who mostly wanted to devote their lives to the quiet pursuit of knowledge not to noisy polemics. And that means we should listen carefully to them when they feel compelled to speak out anyway.
Whether they represent 50%, or 10%, or 3% of experts, what matters is the evidence they bring and the quality of their arguments.
And on that, I would hope we have 100 percent agreement.
For the Climate Discussion Nexus, I’m John Robson.
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