From ClimateREALISM

By H. Sterling Burnett

Recently, multiple media outlets picked up a wire story from the Agence France-Presse (AFP) wire service claiming human caused climate change threatens the viability of Indonesia’s clove production. Data tell a different story. Clove production in Indonesia, other top clove producing countries, and globally in general, has increased during the recent period of slight global warming, in part due to the carbon dioxide fertilization effect and in part due to better growing conditions in general.

Daily Sabah and Arab News, among other regional media outlets, ran the AFP story, respectively titled, “Indonesia’s clove industry on brink as climate change worsens,” and “Climate change takes spice from Indonesia clove farms.” AFP’s story is a series of anecdotes relayed by select farmers detailing the recent problems they’ve had with their clove harvests in recent years. Indonesia is the largest clove producing country. AFP writes that U.N. “Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] data from the past two decades shows Indonesia’s clove yields vary significantly, more than rival producers,” assuming the varying yields, and recent declines are due to climate change.

Yet, yields vary from year to year in every country and for every crop, and AFP provides no evidence, meaning hard data, showing that rainfall patterns have either become more infrequent, indicate heavier rainfall and flooding, or have become more erratic and unpredictable over the past 30 years of climate change.

Rather than relying solely on some farmers self-reporting on hardships and drawing general conclusions about clove production, AFP should have looked at the underlying data from the FAO. Had it done so, it would have found, during the recent modest warming, since 1990:

• Indonesia’s clove yields increased more than 46 percent;
• Indonesia’s clove production expanded by more than 102 percent.

What’s true for Indonesia is true for world clove yields and production as well over the same time period:

• Global clove yields grew by more than 67 percent;
• Global clove production increased by more than 126 percent. (See the figure, below)

Data from the global data research firm, Tridge, shows that what is true for Indonesia is equally true for each of the top ten clove producing countries – varying yearly production but overall growth between 2007 and 2021, the last year for which Tridge provides data. (See the graph, below)

As Climate Realism has repeatedly shown before, here, here, and here, for example, AFP seems wedded to reporting the narrative that humans are causing dangerous climate change, even when the data repeatedly debunks such assertions. Sadly, that seems to be an accurate reflection not just of AFP, but of the state of mainstream media climate reporting today.

H. Sterling Burnett

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News. In addition to directing The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, Burnett puts Environment & Climate News together, is the editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and the host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.

I was chatting with a friend on Friday, about the various dynamical state variables, as opposed to external drivers, that might need to be incorporated into my new Theory of Climate Resilience. Ultimately, I want a quantitative model, that can test various hypothesis including that the tropical Pacific Ocean never gets particularly hot — never more than about 30C — because of tropical convection that is also moving energy to the poles.

He is doing this thinking for me under some duress. At least, he readily admits that he would rather be ‘eradicating the old theory’ and attacking all the propaganda from the IPCC and the World Economic Forum (WEF). Alas.

All the while he agrees with me, that ultimately, rebuttals never win. If we are to win in this fight against the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming propaganda —as though the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the Sun, is warming the oceans — we need our own new theory of climate change. For sure, as I have written over and over, the history of science shows that failed paradigms are never disproven until they are replaced.

This will all be resisted, of course, until it shifts like the house of cards that it is. Hopefully. One day. Before they begin the geo-engineering.

Meanwhile they are making a fortune out of the ‘old theory’ that was always good politics. As I have written in my first piece for the new Counterpoint section at my Substack that will be published tomorrow, it is mostly a summary of the global dimming that is already underway, but I have included some comment about motivations:

World Economic Forum estimate says they only need globally about $125 trillion total by 2050 for climate investment to achieve net-zero (roughly $4.2 trillion annually). Of course, there is some variability in regional projections depending on scope and assumptions and costs of geo-engineering.

Never mind that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide follow temperature increase; that has been the case at least for the last many hundreds of thousands of years— but perhaps not always. Since at least the last 400,000 years, temperature has led any change in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, because of Henry’s Law and the extraordinary reserve of carbon in our oceans.

Did you know carbon reserves in the ocean are in the order of 40,000 gigaton, the annual flux between the oceans and the atmosphere is naturally in the order of 90 gigaton, and they make a fuss about some 6 gigaton from so-called fossil fuels that as far as I can tell is mostly breathed in by forests and so there is measurable global greening. The latest figures confirm robust global greening, with 55–75% of land areas showing increased vegetation since the 1980s, driven primarily by carbon dioxide fertilization (70–76% attribution). This has also boosted crop yields that are up 13%.

It is my plan to post a well-researched article at Substack each Monday, as a Counterpoint to what may be making news. It won’t make me a fortune, but it will help me pay the bills, if you could consider taking out a Substack subscription, CLICK HERE.

Of course, I will continue mainly working on my New Theory of Climate Resistance that will be published elsewhere. In part, because, as I was reading at Substack, just this morning, every writer is misunderstood.

Apparently, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle considered his Sherlock Holmes stories ‘a lower stratum of literary achievement’ and thought his novels were far better. (Can you name any?) Borges once remarked, ‘I think of myself as a poet, though none of my friends do.’ (Didn’t even know he wrote poems.) Sylvia Plath derided The Bell Jar as ‘a pot boiler’ (that is, a piece of art produced to keep the heat on). Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote poems about slavery and politics, but now the only poem anyone remembers is the one about how much she loves her husband (You know it: ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways’). After he published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn spent the rest of his life arguing with his critics (and—purportedly—throwing ashtrays at them).

In the meantime there is something already at Substack from me, not in the new Counterpoint section with a first post already written and scheduled for tomorrow, but on my Substack homepage, as I resurrect my work from long ago, much of it never published, on the sea dykes that have destroyed the Murray River’s estuary, ClICK HERE.

From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog

Cliff Mass,

Many weather scientists have noted that NOAA’s global weather prediction model, the GFS, is now in fourth place, behind the European Center, the UK Meteorology Office, and the Canadians.   

This is pretty depressing considering the U.S. spends more on weather prediction research and development than all those groups combined.  This NOAA global model is the foundation of U.S. operational weather prediction efforts; thus, Americans are experiencing inferior weather forecasts as a result.  

But it is worse than that.  

NOAA global predictions have a severe “drop out” problem in which there are sharp, precipitous declines in forecast skill.  Major declines in skill not shared by other major weather prediction centers.

Let me show you.

Below are the skills of various modeling systems from April over the northern hemisphere.  

It evaluates the ability of models to get things right in the middle of the troposphere…around 18,000 ft (500 hPa pressure)–for a day 6 forecast.    1 indicated perfect score.  Above about .8 the forecast is quite useful.  Below ~.65 not so much.

The best forecast is the European Center (red line), while the US model (black line) is generally much less skillful.

Note that sometimes the US model skill drops like a rock to below .7 and on one date to below .6.  These are drop outs…and represent severe loss of skill.

Note that the European model almost never does the same.

During the past few days (May 3-4), the U.S. model had another loss of skill (day 5 is shown in this graphic, with red being the US model, blue and black the European Center).  Very bad.

Certain atmospheric flow patterns appear to give the US model a hard time.   One of them is an omega block, in which a ridge (high) has two troughs (lows) on both sides.

In fact, we had a version of this during the past week (see below)

Important:  this dropout problem has been going on for years and has nothing to do with budget cutbacks, fired personnel, or some weather balloons not being launched. 

Let us be clear.   The U.S. needs a vital, state-of-science NOAA, with weather prediction capabilities that are the best that weather science can provide.

Many of us in the weather community understand what is wrong with NOAA and have concrete ideas on how to fix this unfortunate situation.    I have written two published papers on the topic and have served on several national committees that provided strong recommendations.

The current administration wants to fix NOAA and make American weather prediction “great again.”   But during the first months of their tenure, it has made serious errors, such as mindlessly firing junior staff.  

Will they talk to the meteorological community to develop a science-informed plan that could greatly improve U.S. environmental prediction and do so at a lesser cost than today?

I hope so.  It would be a home run for the American people.

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