I’m not sure about you, but the last thing I want to talk about is elections. When I think of how much of my precious time has been wasted hearing about politics in the last year, I want to puke. No more from pollsters, talking heads, or statisticians.
Well, maybe I’d like to talk about statisticians, as in the old joke about the one that drowned because he forded a river that was only three feet deep, on average. See, isn’t that better than politics already? However, as funny as a drowned statistician may be, there is a serious side to the problem with relying on averages. You really can die, for starters.
Before getting back to death and/or politics again (redundancy, I know), let’s think about the use of averages. A car may be designed for the average – one doesn’t find the tallest person on earth and design an interior to accommodate them. The exceptions get to either bang their shins or dangle their feet, but that’s the way it has to be.
In other areas, it can’t work that way. Do you insulate your house for average conditions? No, of course not. Do you install an air conditioner for average conditions? Same. And on it goes. When the risk of harm goes up, we design for the extremes, not the averages. Or we should.
A whole world of trouble will come your way if your plans are built on averages but you cannot live with the extremes. Or even with substantial variations. Europe, and other progressive energy parts of the world, are finding this out the hard way.
In the race to decarbonize the energy system, wind and solar have taken a dominant lead. Nuclear is widely despised. Hydrogen has potential, but is a long way out, as a major player. On the assumption that Hydrocarbons Must Go At Any Cost, wind and solar are the winners. Bring on the trillions. Throw up wind turbines everywhere. Blanket the countryside in solar panels.
The media loves the wattage count as fodder for headlines; big numbers dazzle people. “The United States is on pace to install record amounts of wind and solar this year, underscoring America’s capacity to build renewables at a level once considered impossible…The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects the U.S. will install 37 gigawatts of new wind and solar capacity this year, obliterating the previous record of almost 17 GW in 2016,” bleated the ironically named Scientific American website. Wow, gigawatts. No idea what those are but they sound huge.
What is the problem with all that capacity? Well, how good is it? Let’s see…at a 33 per cent capacity factor (used by the US government as apparently reasonable), that 37 GW is just over 12 GW of power contributed to the grid, on average. The assumption seems to be then that 12 GW of dirty old hydrocarbons have been rendered obsolete, and, for the energy rube, the number is an even more righteous 37 GW, because, you know, some days it is really windy all over.
But, what happens when that load factor is…zero? Because it happens.
The current poster child for the issue is Great Britain. The UK has 24 GW of wind power installed. The media loves to talk about total renewable GW installed as proof of progress, and the blindingly rapid pace of the energy transition.
However over the past few weeks wind dropped almost to zero, and output from that 24 GW of installed capacity fell to about 1 or 2 GW.
Ordinarily, that would be no problem – just fire up the gas fired power plants, or import power from elsewhere.
But what happens when that isn’t available?
More pertinently, what happens when the likelihood of near-zero output happens to coincide with the times when that power is needed most – in heat waves, or cold spells? That brings us to the current grave situation facing Europe as it heads towards winter. Gas storage is supposed to be filling rapidly at this time of year, but it’s not, for a number of reasons.
Natural gas isn’t supposed to be on anyone’s roadmap, though. The culturally hip website Wired talked (in early September) about the imperative to limit global warming: “To make the switch we need to switch to renewable energy, such as solar, wind and geothermal, right now. We’re making good progress on this; solar and wind energy are now cheaper than fossil fuels, and renewable energy was responsible for around a third of global electricity production in 2020.” The first glimmer into the damage of relying on averages starts to show.
A few weeks later, Wired shows that a few light bulbs may be going on: “There’s a tendency for the government to say the power sector is done, the sector has been decarbonised, the renewables transition is going at pace and all of that good stuff,” the article quotes the head of Energy UK.
The article’s author, after musing that seven UK energy supply firms have gone out of business so far this year (a result of having to pay more to generate/acquire power than their locked in sales values), makes one of those profound British understatements of the my-arms-are-cut-off-and-I-appear-to-be-in-a-spot-of-trouble-old-chap variety: “And we’re reliant on gas more generally than we thought.” No, foul dullard, we are more reliant than you thought. Anyone in the business of providing energy could have told you that, but the simpleton army wouldn’t listen. And now you pay.
They could easily have asked experts, like providers of hydrocarbons. But those people are today’s lepers. No one is interested in their opinion for fear of the appearance of collaboration. (Trudeau set up a “Net Zero Advisory Body” with the mandate to identify net-zero pathways; NZAB has posted the records of meetings to date (24); only once – once – has ‘oil and gas’ been mentioned in the records, and the context is dumbfounding: “Members received a foundational briefing on the oil & gas sector from federal officials.” FROM FEDERAL OFFICIALS. Meanwhile, the NZAB also heard a presentation directly from the David Suzuki Foundation. This should end well.)
Let’s drive this energy conundrum home a little better for all these people who are, as Principal Skinner put it on the Simpsons, “furrowing their brows in a vain attempt to comprehend the situation.”
The world has been sold a faulty bill of goods, based on a pathetically simplistic vision of how renewable energy works. A US government website highlights the problem with this example: “The mean turbine capacity in the U.S. Wind Turbine Database is 1.67 megawatts (MW), At a 33% capacity factor, that average turbine would generate over 402,000 kWh per month – enough for over 460 average U.S. homes.”29dk2902lhttps://boereport.com/29dk2902l.html
Thus armed, bureaucrats and morons head straight to the promised land by multiplying the number of wind turbines by 460 and shocking-and-awing themselves with the results. Holy crap, we don’t need natural gas anymore (as they tell me in exactly those words).
So they all start dismantling the natural gas system – not directly by ripping up pipelines, but indirectly by blocking new ones, by championing ‘fossil-fuel divestment campaigns’, by taking energy policy advice from Swedish teenagers – and then stand there shivering in dim-witted stupor when the wind stops blowing, and the world’s energy producers are not in any position to bring forth more natural gas.
It’s not just Britain that is squirming. A Bloomberg article (which I cannot link to as I will never willingly send Bloomberg a cent) notes the following unsettling news: “China is staring down another winter of power shortages that threaten to upend its economic recovery as a global energy supply crunch sends the price of fuels skyrocketing. The world’s second biggest economy is at risk of not having enough coal and natural gas – used to heat households and power factories – despite efforts over the past year to stockpile fuel as rivals in North Asia and Europe compete for a finite supply.”
It is profoundly important to recognize that these comments come from Bloomberg – a ‘news’ institution that is going far, far out of its way to demonize, deprecate, and decapitate the hydrocarbon industry. That hydrocarbon industry, by the way, is making major inroads in ways these demonizers deem impossible – developing carbon capture/storage, reducing methane emissions, working on hydrogen solutions, and even succeeding at First Nations inclusion such as demonstrated by groups like Project Reconciliation (trying to buy TransMountain) and the recent purchase of an oil sands pipeline by 8 local First Nations and Suncor. That same hydrocarbon industry is working overdrive to solve emissions problems and engage First Nations.
A lot of the global energy-transition-now madness stems from such a basic inability to grasp certain fundamentals, which are not at all hard to understand if one wants to, but are impossible for those who require an energy villain to add righteousness to their campaign. You can install all the wind and solar you want, but if their output can go to zero, and more importantly if their output is more likely to go to zero when most needed (extreme heat (low wind, inefficient solar panels) or extreme cold (low wind, obvious solar shortcomings)), then you don’t have an energy system at all. And don’t put up your hand to say batteries are coming someday soon. The math on that as a NG replacement is even more laughable.
Yeah, yeah, I can hear it already, how terrible, coming down so hard on a bunch of hapless bandwagon-jumping commentators. Yeah, about that. That bandwagon is cutting off the world’s fuel supply at its knees. There will be consequences. Serious ones.
Hundreds of millions of people without adequate heating fuel in the dead of winter is not particularly funny. If a cold winter strikes, all the yappiest energy-transition-now dogs will fade into the woodwork, distancing themselves from the disinformation they’ve propagated and the disaster they’ve engineered. People in position of responsibility will have no choice but to speak out loud the words they’ve dared not utter for a decade: you need hydrocarbons, today, tomorrow, and for a very long time yet. So start acting like it.
Buy it while it’s still legal! Before the book burnin’ starts…pick up “The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity” at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com. Thanks for the support.
The Week That Was: 2024 09-21 (September 21, 2024) Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org) The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week:“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”– Richard Feynman [H/t William Readdy]
Number of the Week: 40%
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: Due to a bout with the flu, the This Week section will be shorter than usual. Two important issues are addressed. First, Ross McKitrick’s demonstration that many papers claiming that increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) was responsible for rare weather events do not meet the statistical conditions to make such a claim. Second, the work of Norman Loeb and the CERES research team shows that for the past two decades, Earth’s energy flows have been out of balance. Not from increasing CO2 but from decreasing cloudiness.
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Probabilities: In 2023 the two recipients of the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award from SEPP were Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick who shared equally the $10,000 prize. They were given the award for exposing the shoddiness of the infamous Hockey-stick by Mann, et al. Both McIntyre and McKitrick have gone on to do other significant work. This Week will discuss some of the work by Ross McKitrick.
For those familiar with statistics and probability theory, one of the more disturbing efforts by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its collaborators is assigning probabilities that a certain rare event occurred because of increases in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. This assignment of probabilities received a huge boost from a paper by Allen and Tett published in the journal Climate Dynamics in 1999.
The paper claimed that the authors formulated a procedure that was BLUE – Best, Linear, Unbiased, Estimator. They assert that the procedure met the conditions of a normal distribution, namely the Gauss-Markov conditions, If so, that allowed the extensive use of probability theory, based on that test. The paper was then cited in hundreds of papers, assigning probabilities that carbon dioxide was the cause of various rare weather events. This issue was expanded when others claimed that rare weather events will become more frequent if CO2 concentrations increase. The procedure was embodied in the work of the UN IPCC in the Third Assessment Report (TAR, 2001). It was called Optimal Fingerprinting and used to blame changing weather on CO2 emissions.
Twenty years later Ross McKitrick found an error in the work of Allen and Tett. The Climate Models are not BLUE. Allen and Tett did not test their procedure against the specific Gauss-Markov conditions that need to be fulfilled if a model is BLUE. Allen and Tett proposed a different test called RC, Residual Consistency, without offering any mathematical statements of what it tests. In 2021 the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) published a report by McKitrick explaining the issue. On page 8 of the report, McKitrick writes:
“So, in summary, Allen and Tett’s [AT99] method failed to ensure the GM [Gauss -Markov] conditions were met, and so failed to assess whether their estimates were reliable. In fact, as I argued in my paper, the Allen and Tett method, as set out in their paper, automatically fails at least one GM condition, and probably more. So, the results must be assumed to be unreliable.
In the years since its publication, however, no-one noticed the errors in the AT99 discussion of the GM conditions, no-one minded the absence of a derivation of the RC test, and none of the subsequent applications of the AT99 method were subject to conventional specification testing. That means we have no basis for accepting any claims that rely on the optimal fingerprinting method.”
The section in the GWPF titled “Replying to responses begins:
“Optimal fingerprinting has been heavily used in the climate literature for establishing attribution; studies applying it have been cited thousands of times, and it has been prominently featured by the IPCC since it first appeared. There has been nearly exclusive reliance on the RC test to defend fingerprinting analysis results. A number of commentators on my paper have tried to shrug off my criticism as unimportant or irrelevant. But if none of the issues raised in my paper ‘matter,’ then we might as well say nothing in the climatology literature matters.
More specifically, in considering any response to my paper, it will be important to note whether it actually disagrees with or disproves my arguments, or simply tries to change the subject. I anticipate that a lot of respondents will implicitly concede that my paper is correct but argue it doesn’t matter because so much time has gone by. However, as a matter of the scientific record it is important to understand and acknowledge if Allen and Tett made errors in their mathematical presentation, and whether the subsequent literature corrected them or simply carried them forward. As far as I have seen, they were carried forward, in the sense that people still to this day rely on the RC test and they still use AT99-type regression models without testing for specification errors associated with the GM conditions.
Also, and more generally, if major errors in the methodology went unnoticed for so long, it calls into question how much confidence we can have in other statistical methodologies that have been developed by climate scientists in subsequent years. Having worked on paleoclimate reconstruction methods, trend estimation and comparison methods, and now on optimal fingerprinting, I conclude that climate journals, unlike statistics or econometrics journals, seem to rely on referees who don’t know how to ask the right questions when confronted with a novel statistical method. My paper is, in effect, the referee report that Allen and Tett would have received had they submitted their paper to a statistics or econometrics journal.” [Boldface added]
See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Earth Out Of Balance: Beginning with Nimbus 7 Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) in 1978, NASA has engaged in a number of satellite programs designed to measure solar radiation, global albedo, and outgoing longwave radiation (infrared). The latest effort was begun in 1997 by CERES satellites. Norman G. Loeb heads the CERES Science Project team at the Langley Research Center. In describing CERES data, the website states:
“CERES is the only project worldwide whose prime objective is to produce global climate data records of ERB from instruments designed to observe the ERB.”
The problems faced are significant. It requires finding the difference between two huge numbers to find a small number. A small percentage error in either incoming radiation or outgoing radiation can result a huge percentage error in calculating Earth’s Radiation Budget. As discussed by Howard Hayden on the SEPP website in 10 brief essays titled Basic Climate Physics, it is the imbalance between incoming and outgoing radiation that determines whether a planet is warming or not. Short-term imbalances are not important, but imbalances lasting a decade, or more, are.
In his newsletter, The Energy Advocate, Howard Hayden pointed out that carbon dioxide-caused global warming advocate Kevin Trenberth has tried to shift his position on the issue, asserting global heating is different from global warming. Hayden’s essay is posted on the SEPP website under Scientific Papers under “A Startling Revelation” dated May 11, 2024.
Kenneth Richards of No Tricks Zone states the Loeb et al. paper “Observational Assessment of Changes in Earth’s Energy Imbalance Since 2000” was published online by Surveys in Geophysics on May 7, 2024. The abstract states: [the electronic version is lightly edited for meaning]
“Satellite observations from the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System show that Earth’s energy imbalance has doubled from 0.5±0.2 Wm−2 during the first 10 years of this century to 1.0±0.2 Wm−2 during the past decade. The increase is the result of a 0.9±0.3 Wm−2 increased absorbed solar radiation (ASR) that is partially offset by a 0.4±0.25 Wm−2 increases in outgoing longwave radiation (OLR). Despite marked differences in ASR and OLR trends during the hiatus (2000–2010), transition-to-El Niño (2010–2016) and post-El Niño (2016–2022) periods, trends in net top-of-atmosphere flux (NET) remain within 0.1 Wm−2 per decade of one another, implying a steady acceleration of climate warming. Northern and southern hemisphere trends in NET are consistent to 0.06±0.31 Wm−2 per decade due to a compensation between weak ASR and OLR hemispheric trend differences of opposite sign. We find that large decreases in stratocumulus and middle clouds over the sub-tropics and decreases in low and middle clouds at midlatitudes are the primary reasons for increasing ASR trends in the northern hemisphere (NH). These changes are especially large over the eastern and northern Pacific Ocean and coincide with large increases in sea-surface temperature (SST). The decrease in cloud fraction and higher SSTs over the NH sub-tropics lead to a significant increase in OLR from cloud-free regions, which partially compensates for the NH ASR increase. Decreases in middle cloud refection and a weaker reduction in low-cloud refection account for the increase in ASR in the southern hemisphere, while OLR changes are weak. Changes in cloud cover in response to SST increases imply a feedback to climate change; yet a contribution from radiative forcing or internal variability cannot be ruled out.”
The Article Highlights state:
•” Satellite observations reveal that global mean net flux (NET) at the top-of-atmosphere (or equivalently, Earth’s energy imbalance) has doubled during the first twenty years of this century. The increase is associated with a marked increase in absorbed solar radiation (ASR) that is partially offset by an increase in outgoing longwave radiation (OLR)
• While ASR and OLR changes within sub-periods corresponding to the hiatus (03/2000–05/2010), transition-to-El Niño (06/2010–05/2016), and post-El Niño (06/2016–12/2022) vary substantially, NET flux changes are remarkably stable (within 0.1 Wm−2 per decade), implying a steady acceleration of climate warming
• The increase in ASR is associated with decreases in stratocumulus and middle cloud fraction and refection [? The meaning of the word is unclear] in the Northern Hemisphere and decreases in middle cloud refection in the Southern Hemisphere. The cloud changes are especially large in areas with marked increases in sea-surface temperature, such as over the eastern and northern Pacific Ocean
• Continued monitoring of Earth’s radiation budget and new and updated climate model simulations are critically needed to understand how and why Earth’s climate is changing at such an accelerated pace “
The Summary and Conclusions state:
“CERES observations show that Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) has doubled from 0.5±0.2 Wm−2 during the first 10 years of this century to 1.0±0.2 Wm−2 during the past decade. This has led to accelerated increases in global mean temperature, sea level rise, ocean heating, and snow and sea ice melt. The increase in EEI is the result of a 0.9±0.3 Wm−2 increases absorbed solar radiation (ASR) that is partially offset by a 0.4±0.25 Wm−2 increases in outgoing longwave radiation (OLR). Since most of the energy added to the climate system associated with EEI ends up as heat storage in the ocean, changes in TOA radiation and ocean heat uptake (OHU) derived from in situ ocean data should track one another. Indeed, recently published analyses indicate that when in situ ocean measurements are supplemented with other data to fill in sparsely sampled regions, there is good agreement between variations and trends in OHU and CERES EEI for the Argo period between 2005 and 2019 (Loeb et al. 2021a; Hakuba et al. 2024, this collection).
Regional patterns of CERES ASR, –OLR and SST trends are similar, particularly over the North Pacific, off the east coast of North America and west coast of South America. Time series of global mean anomalies in SST, ASR, and –OLR also share similar features. In each case, twelve-month running average anomalies are relatively constant prior to 2010 (“hiatus” period), increase markedly (decrease for –OLR) prior to the 2015–2016 El Niño event (“transition-to-El Niño” period), and remain relatively flat after this event (“post-El Niño” period). Despite marked differences in global ASR and global –OLR trends between these sub-periods, NET trends remain strikingly within 0.1 Wm−2 per decade of one another. Since climate stabilization requires the climate forcing or net radiative imbalance to restore to zero, an increase in Earth’s radiative energy imbalance implies an acceleration of climate change rather than a continued, steady heating implied by a constant imbalance (e.g., von Shuckman et al. 2023). However, we note that NET radiation exhibits appreciable internal variability at interannual time scales. A longer observational record is needed to determine how robust these findings are.
We compare global trends in TOA fluxes of CRE alongside an alternate approach that uses the CERES FluxbyCldTyp (FBCT) product to isolate the cloudy and clear-sky contributions to all-sky TOA flux trends. While the trend in net CRE is weak due to compensation between –SW and –OLR components, the trend for the cloudy sky contribution is appreciable due to a large positive trend in –SW (i.e., reduced cloud refection) and negligible –OLR trend. The latter is comparable to what is obtained using the PRP method and thus provides a better framework than CRE for assessing the radiative impacts of cloud changes. Further refinement would be required to account for cloud masking contributions in cloudy areas. Isolating the cloud contribution also requires removing the contribution from effective radiative forcing (aerosol-cloud indirect effects and greenhouse gas adjustments), which is highly uncertain.
When the cloudy sky contribution is stratified by cloud type, we find that decreases in low and middle cloud fraction and refection [? meaning] and reduced refection from cloud-free areas in mid-high latitudes are the primary reasons for increasing ASR trends in the NH. Low cloud changes are primarily from Sc between 20° and 42°N; while Sc, SCT and Cu [? meaning] all contribute to the low cloud ASR increase between 42° and 60°N. In the SH the increase in ASR is primarily from decreases in middle cloud refection and a weaker reduction in low cloud refection. Increased thermal emission in cloud-free conditions combined with high cloud changes contribute most to the increase in OLR.
Climate model AMIP simulations suggest that the larger ASR increase observed during the CERES period is due to additive contributions from effective radiative forcing (ERF) and climate response to warming and its spatial pattern; while the weaker OLR change is associated with compensation between increasing ERF from continued emission of well-mixed greenhouse gases and increased infrared cooling to space relating to the radiative response to warming (Raghuraman et al. 2021; Hodnebrog et al. 2024). Model-based attribution of the CERES results are limited in number because the CMIP6 protocol ends in 2014. The new atmospheric model intercomparison project (AMIP) simulations proposed as part of CERESMIP (Schmidt et al. 2023) will provide updated model simulations through 2021 and will use input data sets, greatly expanding opportunities to assess model performance and attribution of the observed EEI trend.”
So, Earth has been out of balance for the past two decades, not from CO2 but from changes in cloudiness. The reduction in cloud cover explains deep ocean warming better because infrared energy from radiative warming does not penetrate the ocean’s surface beyond one millimeter. However, due to mixing the ocean surface is generally taken to mean the first 10 meters of depth.
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Number of the Week: 40% When Mark Mills interviewed John Ardill, the Vice President of Global Exploration at ExxonMobil, Mills revealed an important statistic: today 40% of global oil output is from offshore wells, and deepwater wells are the fastest growing source of new oil production. Ardill addressed the steps that ExxonMobil is taking to assure its massive undertaking in Guyana, South America, is done safely. To address energy concerns, Ardill emphasized the well-run oil companies need clearly stated problems, not solutions imposed on them by governments.
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Censorship
Gag on Climate Reporting Is Another French Obscenity
By Vijay Jayaraj, CO2 Coalition, Sep 11, 2024
Challenging the Orthodoxy — NIPCC
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science
Idso, Carter, and Singer, Lead Authors/Editors, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2013
By Ross McKitrick, Global Warming Policy Foundation, 2021
Satellite Observations Confirm 2000-’22 Warming Has Been Due To An Increasing Solar Radiation Trend
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Sep 10, 2024
Link to new paper: Observational Assessment of Changes in Earth’s Energy Imbalance Since 2000
By Norman G. Loeb, et al., Surveys in Geophysics, May 7, 2024
A Short Political History of Climate Change
By Bill Ponton, Princeton Venture Advisory, WUWT, Sep 15, 2024
We often attribute the longevity of communist states in the 20th century to the repression practiced by those regimes. This is undeniably true, but we grossly underestimate the fact that many people living under those repressive regimes derived meaning from being part of those socialist experiments.
[SEPP Comment: Climate Change is a political movement falsely claiming science.]
96% of climate policies are a waste of money says Science paper
Jo Nova, Her Blog, Sep 13, 2024
Link to paper: Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades
By Annika Stechemesser, et al., AAAS Science, Aug 22, 2024
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 18, 2024
The causes of this boon are many. But not being cold, hungry and vulnerable to disease is a key element, and the availability of abundant and inexpensive energy fuels has played a critical role in making people warmer and better-fed.
New Study: CO2 May Only Be Responsible For 17% Of The 2000-2023 Global Warming Trend
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Sep 20, 2024
Link to paper: The 2023 Record Temperatures:
Correlation to Absorbed Shortwave Radiation Anomaly
By Antero Ollila, Kilmarealistene, Accessed Sep 20, 2024
Defending the Orthodoxy
A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature
By Emily J. Judd, et al. AAAS Science, Sep 20, 2024 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
[SEPP Comment: Blame any problems on the Ukraine war. What is the cost of subsidies, the cost of making unreliable electricity reliable? Energy subsidies eats the cash flow of reliable producers. The author ignores the damage being done to traditional energy.]
Global economic impact of weather variability on the rich and the poor
By Lennart Quante, et al., Nature Sustainability, Sep 13, 2024 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Mills: Most people don’t know this, but offshore oil production accounts for about 40% of global oil output, with deepwater being the fastest-growing source of new oil production in the world.
Ardill: The key takeaway here is energy density. This whole challenge is predicated on that concept, regardless of whether we’re talking about oil, gas, hydrogen, ammonia, or lithium. We operate in all of these spaces.
Ardill: The best way to solve these challenges is this: Rather than telling energy companies what the solution is, tell them what the problem is. If you tell us that the solution is green hydrogen, an engineer can build you an electrolyzer, but you probably can’t afford it, and you certainly can’t afford to run it at scale. You’ll get your green hydrogen, but the economy will be bankrupt by then, and it can’t be scaled with today’s technologies.
‘Spoiled Brats’: Greenpeace Co-Founder Supports Pipeline Tycoon’s Campaign To Punish His Old Group
By Nick Pope, Daily Caller, Sep 10, 2024 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Video, John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 6, 2024
#CheerfulCharts #6: US vehicle miles traveled versus carbon monoxide emissions
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 11, 2024
Studies That ‘Confirm’ Humans Cause Climate Rely On Imaginary-World Conditions In Their Calculations
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Sep 12, 2024
[SEPP Comment: An array of past papers]
Price check
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 18, 2024
The late great P.J. O’Rourke once wrote, in The Atlantic in April 2002, that: “Beyond a certain point complexity is fraud…. when someone creates a system in which you can’t tell whether or not you’re being fooled, you’re being fooled.” Which brings us to wind energy and its complicated contractual arrangements with modern electricity grids. It’s not just a simple matter of bidding on contracts and supplying power when needed. No, it’s become a mare’s nest of renewables mandates, portfolio standards, feed-in-tariffs, first-to-the-grid rules, dispatch, curtailment, hype, blame and losses that somehow no one saw coming. And yes, you’re being fooled.
Ryan Maue on Climate Attribution
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Sep 18, 2024
From the Annals of “Back off, man, I’m an Academic”
By Staff Government Accountability & Oversight, Sep 20, 2024
“fair & equitable”
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Sep 15, 2024
Jet-Setting Academics Branded Hypocrites For Lecturing the Rest of us About Climate Change
By Toby Young, The Daily Sceptic, Sep 18, 2024
Conservatives and the Private Sector Deserve a Seat at the Climate Week Table
By Danielle B. Franz, Real Clear Energy, Sep 19, 2024
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 18, 2024
The latest, greatest exercise in absurd climate-modeling hubris is the frankly preposterous project to create “Digital Twins of the Earth” inside the models, to overcome their hopelessly limited power to simulate the actual climate by, um, PR or something
[SEPP Comment: The modelers cannot get the original correct.]
Changing Weather
2024 hurricane season: the worst climate prediction ever?
But don’t be fooled by the calm. Some forecasters, determined that the future will see more storms, absurdly say that this season is a ‘lens’ into the more volatile storm behavior of the future. That’s not a fully justified viewpoint, as it’s unclear if a warming world will produce more hurricanes. It hasn’t so far.
The hurricane bust
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 11, 2024
Link to paper: Last millennium hurricane activity linked to endogenous climate variability
By Wenchang Yang, Nature Communications, Jan 27, 2024
From abstract: Numerical simulations using a hurricane-permitting climate model suggest that hurricane activity was likely driven by endogenous climate variability and linked to anomalous SSTs of warm Atlantic and cold Pacific.
MSM Climate Alarmists Stumped After ‘Boiling Oceans’ Result In Very Quiet Hurricane Season
By Tyler Durden, His Blog, Sep 15, 2024 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 11, 2024
More on clouds and climate
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 18, 2024
P.S. While we like sunny and warm weather more than cloudy and cool, it would be worth witnessing such a reversal just for the perverse enjoyment of seeing the climate crowd blame that too on greenhouse gases and claim they’d actually predicted it all along. Heck, why not another man-made global cooling scare?
September Snowmageddon… Winter Outbreak In Alps Later This Week…Up To 3 Meters Of Snow!
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Sep 10, 2024
“Shock To System”: Europe Hammered With Cold Blast & Snow
By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, Sep 14, 2024 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
The world’s largest hot desert, the Sahara, is being hit with unusually heavy rain. Scientists are unclear why, but it may be linked to a subdued Atlantic hurricane season
[SEPP Comment: Shifting of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) has resulted in climate change for thousands of years and we don’t know why it shifts. Is it a solar influence or internal to Earth? It is not the result of human-caused climate change.]
Strong regional trends in extreme weather over the next two decades under high- and low-emissions pathways
By Carley E. Iles, et al. Nature Geoscience, Sep 9, 2024 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
More Horror Pictures Emerge Showing Locations of Met Office “Extreme” Record Temperatures
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Sep 13, 2024
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Climate change is already forcing millions of people to migrate – Bill Gates’ Telegraph Says
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 7, 2024
More Solar Silliness In The New York Times
David Wallace-Wells claims solar energy is getting so cheap it could be “effectively free.” But solar prices aren’t falling, they’re rising. And solar’s being left in the shade by natty.
Projections of accelerating sea level rise from NOAA were failing badly, so NOAA quietly changed their projections to push the divergence date from 2000 out to 2030.
“Permanent Shift” In Antarctic Sea Ice
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Sep 16, 2024
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
BBC AMOC Myth Exploded
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 11, 2024
Can We Please Have More Science and Less Propaganda?
By Kip Hansen, WUWT, Sep 19, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Addressing the UN World Health Organization.]
Expanding the Orthodoxy
New AI Partnership to Invest in Data Centers and Supporting Power Infrastructure
$100 billion investment potential will enhance American competitiveness in artificial intelligence (AI) while meeting the growing need for energy infrastructure to power economic growth
Modified Press Release from Microsoft, Power Mag, Sep 19, 2024
[SEPP Comment: Relying on unidentified sources of reliable electricity.]
SEC’s Climate Rules Will Crush Markets
By Paul Tice, National Center for Energy Analytics, Via Real Clear Energy, Sep 11, 2024
There is: “no empirical data showing that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will lead to better financial performance for individual companies or investors.”
[SEPP Comment: Another government agency using a false climate crisis to exceed its legal limits to damage or destroy American prosperity.]
Questioning European Green
The problem with Labour’s green energy plan-Ross Clark
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 17, 2024
Green Deal Cuts EU Emissions, Doubles Them Elsewhere
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Sep 20, 2024
Link to: European Green Deal: A double-edged sword for global emissions
Greenhouse gas emissions will fall in the EU, but rise even more elsewhere
Press Release, University of Groningen, Sep 20, 2024
Editor’s Note: For forty years, U.S. courts have deferred to unelected bureaucrats for the interpretation of ambiguous statutes. The principle of “Chevron deference” is the legal basis of the administrative state, the extra-constitutional rule by experts that provides the legal framework and the workaday operations of the group quota regime.
Expert opinion filed Hague Court of Appeals in Shell v. Milieudefensie
By Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and Steven Koonin, Sep 10, 2024
Link to entire opinion, The above authors, Nov 30, 2024
“Exxon Knew”: More Rebuttal (again)
By Randal Utech, Master Resource, Sep 19, 2024
The contrived sense of accomplishment in history matching is spurious correlation for an infinitesimally small period of time. Using Exxon’s internal analysis of CO2 climate forcing is little more than a propaganda tool. Current climate models, much more sophisticated, face the same problem of unknown, false causality.
Endangered Species Act Decision Endangers Gulf of Mexico Oil and Gas Production
Press Release, Institute for Energy Research (IER), Sep 26, 2024
[SEPP Comment: The judge was Deborah L. Boardman, District Judge of US District Court, District of Maryland.]
Courts revoking permits for oil and gas projects creates chilling effect on investors, experts say
The Sierra Club and others successfully sued federal agencies to block offshore oil drilling and a liquified natural gas terminal. The judges sided with plaintiffs but went further. They revoked the project permits.
The Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) takes millions of dollars from the same entities bankrolling climate change cases against energy providers. Activist academics who shape CJP programming also advise the climate plaintiffs on the side or support them in amicus filings.
Subsidies and Mandates Forever
Is reality tricky?
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 11, 2024
A Heatmap newsletter warns about an Inflation Reduction Act program which supposedly installed 50,000 solar projects in “Low-Income Communities” yet “New data provided exclusively to Heatmap shows just how complicated it is to get money where it needs to go.”
It’s what happens as you move from the “what” to the “how” and go oh, the plan is bankruptcy all round and still the oceans rise or whatever.
Not only that, developers get the tax breaks you aimed at the poor, who don’t have accountants for some reason.
New Paper Shows the Problem with Power Subsidies
Wind and solar receive the lion’s share while producing less power
By Paige Lambermont, Catalyst, The Independent Institute, Sep 4, 2024
Link to paper: U.S. Federal Renewable Energy Subsidies are Driving the Energy Transition
By Bill Peacock, Energy Alliance, Accessed Sep 12, 2024
Heat Pump Subsidies: Never Enough
By Mark Krebs, Master Resource, Sep 18, 2024
EPA and other Regulators on the March
Supreme Court Showdown: EPA Defends Carbon Capture Amid Power Industry Backlash
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has doubled down on its stance that carbon capture is “adequately demonstrated” in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court as part of a bid to urge the high court to allow the agency’s contentious Carbon Pollution Standards to remain in effect while legal challenges continue.
At dispute is the case, West Virginia v. EPA (No. 24-1120) and its 16 consolidated cases, which concern the EPA’s May 9, 2024–finalized so-called “Carbon Pollution Standards.”
Energy Issues – Non-US
Britain spending record £250m a month on electricity imports
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 11, 2024
It is actually astonishing that imports are double wind and solar power, even despite the tens of billions in subsidies thrown at renewables. It is also very scary that we are now so reliant on power from Europe, over which we have no control.
The battle over net zero has only just begun
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 15, 2024
Energy experts call for Whitehall to correct ‘preposterous’ renewables claims
By year-end 2023, they had total wind and solar nameplate electricity generation capacity of 148 GW, which is about 2.5 times average demand (of about 60 GW) and about 1.5 times peak demand (of about 100 GW). So surely, the days of fossil fuels in Germany must be numbered.
New Baroness Brown revelations show scale of green lobbying
From Rose: In the realm of science, few politicians are more powerful than Baroness Brown. As the chair of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, her remit is to consider the boundaries of Britain’s future: from AI to medicine, from biotechnology to climate change.
[SEPP Comment: A new definition of integrity?]
Ed Miliband’s Net Zero agenda will leave Britain in the dark
Energy companies are already warning their customers about the power cuts to come.
At $567 per kilowatt-hour, the recent average cost of new non-residential energy storage, that works out to more than $1.3 trillion in new costs, or about $68,000 per New Yorker.
Fool’s Gold Rush: The Unimpressive, Superlative Failures of California’s Energy Policy
By Matthew Gonzalez, Real Clear Energy, Sep 16, 2024
Yet, as a recent report from Consumer Energy Alliance found, both new and used EVs are far more expensive than traditional vehicles, cost more to insure, and charging infrastructure inherently favors wealthier homeowners over working-class renters. Several studies have shown how inequitable the EV market is, with lower penetration in Hispanic communities in California, lower rebate rates, and poorer charging infrastructure in their neighborhoods.
In the meantime, it has become harder to build a new natural gas plant because of updated EPA emissions rules that place weighty and expensive requirements on developers, making them think twice about building any new plants.
‘Inevitable And Foreseeable’: Grid Operators Beg Court To Nix EPA Rules To Save Electricity System From Collapse
The Biden administration on Tuesday granted a gas export terminal the authority to ship fuel abroad after a court blocked its efforts to delay such permissions.
Oil and Natural Gas – the Future or the Past?
Gulf of Mexico Oil Production to Approach 2 Million Barrels per Day by 2026… Unless
By David Middleton, WUWT, Sep 20, 2024
Nuclear Energy and Fears
ACU Secures NRC Permit to Build Research Molten Salt Nuclear Reactor
“No one, including BOEM, has an understanding on how wind development will impact the fragile marine environment,” [Tribal Council Chair Brad] Kneaper said.
East Anglia 1 Generation
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 11, 2024
This is of course only one site, and wind conditions may have been different elsewhere, such as around Scotland. Nevertheless, this part of the North Sea is where most of the new capacity planned is going to be located. Wind conditions will be probably similar there to the North Sea coasts of Denmark and Germany, so wind droughts may affect their wind farms too.
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Other
A groundswell I tell you
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 11, 2024
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Storage
DOE Announces $125 Million in Funding to Support Energy Storage Research
[SEPP comment: One sided journalism. Norway has a small domestic auto industry. No tariffs or VAT on EVs costing below 500,000 Norwegian Kroner, about $47,200 USD. For gasoline cars the VAT is 25% (Purchase price plus Freight expenses plus Insurance cost to the Norwegian border).]
Hotels in China start to ban EVs and electric scooters from underground parking lots
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Sep 17, 2024
EV Sales Collapse In Germany
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 19, 2024
Second-hand electric car prices falling at faster and faster rate
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 17, 2024
Carbon Schemes
Carbon Capture Projects at Gas-Fired Cane Run 7, Coal-Fired Four Corners Get Federal Awards
We need more water supply infrastructure. But we also need environmentalists and the regulators they control to acknowledge that decades of mandating ever more “unimpaired flows” has not resulted in more salmon or more smelt.
Cold dead handles
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 11, 2024
“After the courts squashed its first-in-the-nation natural gas ban, the city of Berkeley, California, has emerged with a new strategy to curb the planet-warming fossil fuel: taxing large buildings that use it.” [Boldface in original]
Health, Energy, and Climate
Study finds higher heart attack risk days after cold exposure
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 9, 2024
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
BBC Blame Child Marriage in Bangladesh On Climate Change
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 11, 2024
Thank Gaia, a hurricane
John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 18, 2024
ARTICLES
1. Lights Out in La La Land
Blackouts hit Los Angeles as climate policies wilt in the heat.
“Meet modern life in Los Angeles. On Sunday night the Hollywood Bowl had to cancel a concert because of a city power outage. On Saturday a brief blackout disrupted a University of Southern California football game. Why aren’t La La Land’s progressive leaders upset? Maybe because they’re partly responsible.
Heat waves with triple-digit temperatures are unpleasant, though not unusual during the summer in the South and West. Yet Los Angeles’s electric power system suffered widespread failures this weekend as temperatures surged, causing more than 70,000 utility customers in the city and surrounding neighborhoods to lose power, including the Los Angeles Coliseum and Hollywood Bowl.
Tens of thousands of Californians in other parts of the state also lost power, but L.A.’s grid meltdown was the worst. Its municipal utility, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), faulted overloaded cables and overheated equipment. Customers were told they might not get power back for more than 24 hours. Better crash at a friend’s place—and hope it doesn’t lose power.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass blamed the outages on ‘extreme heat.’ But the electric systems in Arizona, Texas and Nevada withstand sizzling temperatures without buckling. Why can’t L.A.? Perhaps because the municipal utility has prioritized the city’s climate goals over hardening its system and replacing aging equipment.
Former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2021 announced plans to put the city ‘on the fast track to a 100% renewable energy future.’ He was joined by LADWP leaders and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who declared the city’s ‘study’ would be ‘proof that the clean energy transformation is not only possible, but preferable.’ Sure, if you don’t mind blackouts.”
After stating that Los Angeles is spending heavily on green energy, the editorial concludes with:
“The utility has skimped on grid repairs to prevent rates from surging even more than they have. Since January 2021, electric prices in the Los Angeles metro area have climbed 36%.
Los Angeles is a portent of the not-so-bright green future that awaits America if today’s climate policies continue.”
Iowa Climate Science Education 