Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

I’ve been on a most curious quest this last week.

I wanted to download all of my WUWT posts so I could make them into ebooks on various subjects. Of course, to do that I need to review some of my earliest posts. Bear in mind, this current analysis is the 1,051st post I’ve put up on WUWT, so it’s not surprising to me that I’ve totally forgotten writing some of them. This makes for an interesting journey into the past. Some of them made theoretical conjectures of mine that at the time I didn’t have the data and the computer skills and specialized functions that I have now to both do and display a whole host of data analyses in the computer language “R”.

My first post for WUWT was The Thermostat Hypothesis. A version of it was later published as a journal article named ” The Thunderstorm Thermostat Hypothesis: How Clouds And Thunderstorms Control The Earth’s Temperature.”

It’s available here, just say no thanks to the offers to join. In that post and journal article, I laid out my thoughts about how tropical thunderstorms and cumulus cloud fields worked to thermoregulate the tropical and thus the global temperature. In succeeding years, I realized that this was my first glimpse of what, down the line, I came to see as a much larger variety of individual overlapping “emergent” climate phenomena acting to oppose temperature variations.

And what is an “emergent” phenomenon when it’s at home? Let me auto-plagiarize from my post “Emergent Climate Phenomena“, which I encourage you to take a moment to read.

One common property of emergent phenomena is that they are flow systems that are far from equilibrium. As a result, they need to evolve and change in order to survive. They are mobile and mutable, not fixed and unchanging. And locally (but of course not globally), they can reverse entropy (organize the local environment). Indeed, another name for emergent phenomena is “self-organized phenomena”.

Another key to recognizing emergent phenomena is that they arise spontaneously when conditions are right. They don’t have to be artificially generated. They emerge from the background in response to local conditions (temperature, humidity, etc.) passing some threshold.

Next, they often have a lifespan. By a “lifespan”, I mean that they come into existence at a certain time and place, generally when some local natural threshold is exceeded. Thereafter, they are in continuous existence for a certain length of time, and at the end of that time, they dissipate and disappear. Clouds are an excellent example, as is our finite lifespan.

Another characteristic of emergent phenomena is that they are not cyclical, or are at best pseudo-cyclical. They do not repeat or move in any regular or ordered or repetitive fashion. Often, they can move about independently, and when they can do so, their movements can be very hard to predict. Predictions of a hurricane track are an example.

Another feature of emergent phenomena is that they are often temperature threshold-based, with the threshold being a certain local temperature difference. By that, I mean that they rarely emerge below that threshold, but above it, their numbers can increase very rapidly.

Another attribute of emergent systems is that they are often associated with phase changes in the relevant fluids, e.g. clouds occur with a phase change of water.

One final attribute of threshold-based emergent systems is crucial to this discussion—they exhibit “overshoot” or hysteresis. In the Rayleigh-Bénard circulation shown below, it takes a certain threshold temperature difference from top to bottom to cause the emergence of the circulation pattern. But once that circulation is established, it will persist even though you turn the heat down far below the initiation threshold temperature. And this kind of “overshoot” hysteresis is a requirement for successful regulation of lagged systems, system where the response to a change in inputs or conditions doesn’t occur immediately.

So those are some of the characteristic features of emergent phenomena.

• They are flow systems far from equilibrium that arise spontaneously, often upon crossing a critical threshold that is temperature-based.

• Their properties are not predictable from the properties of the condition they emerge from. There’s nothing in the atoms of water and air that would predict that they could spontaneously create lightning.

• They move and act unpredictably

• They are often associated with phase changes, and

• They often exhibit “overshoot” (hysteresis)

• They have a lifespan from their initiation to their dissolution

• Their patterns arise from many small interactions

To me, this is a two-fold explanation of why modern state-of-the-art weather models are only reliable a few days out. First, we’re dealing with emergent phenomena, and by their very nature, their future actions can’t be reliably predicted. And second, modern weather and climate models don’t feature spontaneously emerging tropical thunderstorms. They’re short on spontaneous emergence of any kind.

And that leaves them analyzing something that doesn’t exist, a world without emergent phenomena. And to attempt that analysis, they are using methods unsuited for the world that does exist, a world dominated by emergent phenomena. See my post The Details Are In The Devil for why this simply won’t work.

But I digress … reading some of these early posts, I realized that I now could further test the accuracy and understanding of the claims I made there about clouds and thunderstorms. My hypothesis back then was that clouds act to oppose both upwards and downward swings of the temperature. I said that they are a governor rather than a simple feedback.

Climate scientists talk about “cloud feedback”. But what clouds do is not just simple linear feedback of the type discussed by the IPCC scientists. For example, negative feedback just opposes warming—the warmer it gets, the more it opposes the warming.

But clouds are not like that. Clouds and thunderstorms function as a thermoregulatory governor. They don’t just slow down warming. Instead, they warm the surface when it’s cold, and they cool the surface when it’s warm.

And the reason for this post is that today I thought of another way to show that is true. Let me explain.

The CERES dataset has gridded 1° longitude by 1° latitude data of the “Surface Cloud Radiative Effect”, or “Surface CRE”, hereinafter just “CRE”. The CRE is the difference in radiation hitting the surface between when the clouds are or aren’t present. There are two kinds of cloud radiative effects, shortwave (solar radiation) and longwave (thermal radiation from the atmosphere). The net of the two is the total effect of the clouds, which depending on conditions and type of clouds can either be cooling or warming of the surface..

A negative CRE value in a given area indicates that the presence of clouds cools that part of the planet, and a positive value means the presence of clouds warms the surface.

Let me start with a global look at the surface cloud radiative effect, to determine where clouds warm or cool the surface and by how much.

Figure 1. Global surface cloud radiative effect (net of longwave and shortwave radiation). Negative is cooling, positive is warming.

This shows the net cooling effect of about -19 W/m2. But what it doesn’t show is how the surface net cloud radiative effect varies when the temperature in any location gets warmer or cooler than the average temperature for that area. That’s what the IPCC calls “cloud feedback”. They claim it is positive, meaning that when the surface warms, the clouds change to increase that warming. Me, I’ve always thought that claim was highly improbable for several reasons.

For my new way to show how clouds change with temperature, I looked by latitude at the difference between the seasonal CRE (winter and summer) and the annual average CRE. I took the global maps of mid-summer and mid-winter CRE, and from each of those I subtracted the map shown in Figure 1 above. Then I took averages by each 1° latitude band. The result is below.

Figure 2. Latitudinal by 1° bands of the difference between mid-summer/mid-winter surface CRE and the average CRE for that given latitude.

For me, the greatest joy in science is the moment of seeing graphically the result of some new, unknown analysis method. And in this case, I didn’t expect the outcome. The difference in cloud radiative effect is large, regular, and stark. The difference between mid-summer and mid-winter CRE is up to 110 W/m2 in the northern hemisphere and 160 W/m2 in the southern hemisphere.

In addition, in mid-summer in both latitudes the clouds on average cool the entire summer hemisphere compared to average conditions, pole to Equator. And the opposite is true. In mid-winter, clouds in the entire winter hemisphere show increased warming compared to annual averages.

In other words, compared to the local annual average values, when it is warmer than usual, clouds cool the surface, and when it is cooler than usual, clouds warm the surface.

Encouraged by this finding, I decided to look at those summer/winter changes versus annual averages as maps of the earth.

Figure 3. As in Figure 2, showing summer and winter changes from the average conditions.

This gives us another view of how the surface cloud radiative effect changes with the seasons. In winter it gives extra warming, and in the summer it gives extra cooling.

The scientific test of a hypothesis is whether it makes successful, testable predictions. The figures above verify exactly the testable prediction based on what I hypothesized fifteen years ago, that clouds and thunderstorms warm the earth when it is cool and cool it when it is warm … what’s not to like?

My best to all, and please … no personal attacks.

w.

As I’ve said before … when you comment, please quote the exact words you are discussing. It avoids endless misunderstandings and disputes.

Opinion by Kip Hansen 

On June 28, 2021, a 65-year-old woman,  Juliana Leon,  was murdered while driving home to Ferndale, Washington from her doctor’s appointment in Seattle.   It was a hot day, over 100 °F, and she had pulled her non-air-conditioned car to the side of the highway and rolled her car’s windows down when the murderer struck. 

Now her daughter is seeking justice, not in the criminal courts, which have failed to act, but in a wrongful death suit in a Washington State civil court. 

According to David Gelles  in the New York Times [ here ],   Misti Leon, the daughter, told him in an interview:

“I never would have in a million years guessed that a heat dome and climate change would be what killed my mother and what took her from me. There’s no way to comprehend that and to kind of even rationalize it.”

But, now that Misti knows that climate change murdered her mother, she has filed a wrongful death suit against  … The Climate?  Climate Change Inc.?  The Weather? 

No, she has filed the suit against “Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66 and Olympic Pipeline Company ( a subsidiary managed by BP).”

How did Misti Leon  find out who the murderer  was?  Did she hire a Sam Spade to investigate the crime? 

No, according to the Times:

“Ms. Leon was first approached in late 2023 by a nonprofit group, the Center for Climate Integrity, which helps assemble and promote cases against big oil and gas companies.”

Who is the Center for Climate Integrity?

Richard Wiles. 

And who is Richard Wiles?

Let me quote InfluenceWatch:

“Richard Wiles is an environmental activist who supports pushing litigation against energy and fossil fuel companies due to the cost of climate change.   Wiles oversees the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), a project of environmental advocacy group Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD). In addition, Wiles heads pro-climate litigation news site Climate Liability News and started the anti-fossil fuel social media campaign #ExxonKnew. ”

“Richard Wiles,  Alyssa Johl, and Kert Davies sit as the board of Climate Communications and Law, the nonprofit that funds Climate Docket. Wiles previously worked as senior vice president at Climate Central. Wiles also started #ExxonKnew, a social media initiative organized by the environmentalist advocacy group 350.org that promoted legal action against the conventional energy industry for alleged environmental damages. Wiles also works as executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity [CCI] , an initiative of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development [IGSD]  that supports litigation against energy companies.”

Is Richard Wiles just a well-meaning fighter for right and justice, just another of the many working men and women donating their time and efforts to forward the things they believe in?   No, actually  Richard Wiles is listed on IGSD’s 2017 Federal Tax Form 990 as receiving compensation of $295,311 in that year.   In 2023, Richard Wiles received a salary of over $ 380,000 as President of Center for Climate Integrity, very near the current salary of the President of the Untied States, from a non-profit with total revenue of $7,570,000 for 2023.  He may receive salaries and payments from other groups and organizations as well. 

And where does CCI’s money come from?

In 2023 (the latest data available):  the first 5 million dollars came from:

Rockefeller Family Fund Inc. , $3,500,000

Silicon Valley Community Foundation , $500,000

Tides Foundation , $1,000,000

[Note:  The Tides Foundation distributes money from anonymous donors to other organizations, often politically progressive, through donor advised funds and other grantmaking programs.   Disclosure:  I am President of a very small non-profit which in the past has received small individual grants via the Tides Foundation.]

What is the evidence against Climate Change? Where does it come from?

The evidence meant to prove the guilt of the oil companies will be provided by CCI and other member groups of the climate lawsuit cabal – recycling more than a decade of boilerplate anti-fossil fuel claims used in  filings before courts all over the United States.

But the smoking gun evidence will come from  World Weather Attribution [ WWA ], a group which was formed for the specific purpose of creating evidence to be used in law suits against fossil fuels companies. I have stated that correctly – WWA does not find evidence but creates it through purpose-built pseudo-scientific models using algorithms whose sole intention is to “find” that the chosen weather events have been “caused” by climate change, thus allowing the propagandists to blame “climate change” for any damage from the weather.  In their odd world, “climate change” is the result of burning fossil fuels, thus, using this twisted line of “logic”, the fossil fuel industry is directly responsible for any and all weather damage.

I apologize for the use of so many scare quotes but, unfortunately, they are necessary because the very meanings of these words and phrases have been changed by these activist organizations to have definitions only suited for use in their propaganda.  

“Unlike every other branch of climate science or science in general, event attribution was actually originally suggested with the courts in mind,” Friederike Otto said.[ source ]

Weather, extreme or not, is not caused by climate change – climate is a cumulative average of effects, attributes, of weather.  Climate change is noticing that the average weather has changed compared to some past period.  Climate Change is not and cannot be a cause. 

WWA and its pronouncements are pseudo-science and scientific BS.

[BS – asserted nonsense, rubbish and/or assertions that are insincere or untruthful ].

Don’t take my word for it, see Roger Pielke Jr.’s extremely valuable and informative series on weather attribution:

Weather Attribution Alchemy

Attribution Stealth Advocacy at the NAS – Weather Attribution Alchemy, Part 2 – Climate Science Plays by Special Rules

Tricks of the Trade – Weather Attribution Alchemy, Part 3

Climate Science Whiplash – Why we misinterpret climate science — Weather Attribution Alchemy, Part 4

Is Single Extreme Event Attribution Even Possible? – Weather Attribution Alchemy, Part 5

Behind the Curtain – Inside World Weather Attribution – Weather Attribution Alchemy, Part 6

But that’s ridiculous!  Such a case could never be won!

Quite right, in a criminal court the case would be thrown out in a minute for lack of evidence, there would be no way to overcome the requirement of “beyond reasonable doubt “.  (Actually, the evidence would be entirely speculative).

But in a civil wrongful death suit, the standard of evidence is far lower.

“The standard in civil cases is the “preponderance of evidence,” meaning the plaintiff must prove that their claims are more likely valid than not.

According to the Legal Information Institute, “51% certainty is the threshold” for meeting the preponderance of evidence standard in most civil cases.

This contrasts sharply with criminal cases, where the burden of proof is “beyond a reasonable doubt,” a much higher standard to meet.” [ source ]

In a civil case,  this comes down to spinning a good story to a jury, and a jury that says to itself, “Yeah, it could be like that.”   Easy to win  if you pick a judge and a venue already biased against the defendant.  

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The Climate Litigation movement started in a series of semi-secret meetings, the first in La Jolla, California in 2012 followed up four years later with a meeting in New York at which the attendees formulated legal approaches that might be used against energy manufacturers (oil companies) to garner huge monetary payouts for the plaintiffs and their lawyers.  There is a detailed report on this, very thorough, named:  “Beyond the Courtroom: A Closer Look at Climate Litigation in the United States ” [also as a .pdf here ]

But, Climate Homicide?  Where does that idea come from?

It comes from a paper first written in 2023 and published in 2024 in the Harvard Environmental Law Review written  by David Arkush of Public Citizen and Donald Braman of George Washington University – Law School’s Justice Innovation Lab.  The title:  “Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate Deaths” [ as .pdf here ]  Its abstract states:

“The Article finds that in jurisdictions across the United States, fossil fuel companies could be prosecuted for every type of homicide short of first degree murder, a charge it does not evaluate. It also concludes that prosecutions could offer highly effective remedies and that prosecutors should be motivated to seek them.”

Bottom Line:

The Climate Homocide lawsuit is a blatant activist effort to extort vast sums of money out of the fossil fuel industry – using cooked up evidence – shamelessly using  a poor woman whose mother  died of heat exhaustion while driving a non-air conditioned car in Washington state during a heat wave.  

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Author’s Comment:

For more than a dozen years, anti-fossil fuel activists and issue-driven predatory law firms have been colluding to reap huge profits by staging various novel law suits against oil producing companies with defendants ranging from groups of youths, cities, counties and individuals.  

It might be worthwhile to consider whether the interactions of these incestuous activist groups and organizations might be held liable under RICO laws for  attempting to use the courts to coerce, extort and defraud oil companies out of vast sums of money.  Any lawyers out there?  (I know there are a few….)

Thanks for reading. 

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