Richard Greene
Bingham Farms, Michigan
BS, State University of New York, at Albany
MBA, Stern School of Business, at New York University
TBW, Trained By Wife
Audiophile
my favorite song today:
"Since I Don’t Have You"
by Art Garfunkel
Saturday, August 21, 2021
"Fossil Fuels Are the Key To Raising Quality of Life for All"
Source:
"The AR6 Climate Change 2021Report just released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an intergovernmental body of the United Nations, has called out a “code red for humanity“
that “must sound a death knell for…
fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet.”
The report from the IPCC has failed to acknowledge that the introduction of oil, just over 100 years ago,
has been overwhelmingly beneficial for the prosperity of the world’s population growth to 8 billion from about 1 billion ...
The IPCC goal to banish fossil fuels will place most of the world’s population at risk, like the medieval times.
The members of the IPCC seem oblivious to the facts of how life was without the fossil fuels industry just 120 years ago when we had:
NO medications and medical equipment.
NO vaccines, the same vaccines that need refrigeration, and refrigeration needs electricity, especially in the hospital sector where redundant generation capacity is a mandate.
NO water filtration systems.
NO sanitation systems.
NO fertilizers to help feed billions.
NO pesticides to control locusts and other pests.
NO communications systems, including cell phones, computers, and I-Pads.
NO vehicles.
NO airlines that now move 4 billion people around the world.
NO cruise ships that now move 25 million passengers around the world.
NO merchant ships that are now moving billions of dollars of products monthly throughout the world.
NO tires for vehicles.
NO asphalt for roads.
NO militaries.
NO space program.
All the above infrastructures are made with products made from oil derivatives.
Before the 1900’s we had NONE of the 6,000 products from oil and petroleum products.
By ceasing oil production and fracking, the supply chain to refineries will be severed and production of various fuels for transportation, and the derivatives to make products would be terminated.
The IPCC is a pseudo-religious and political organization that is systematically driven to catastrophize fossil fuels’ climate impacts and ignore fossil fuels’ benefits.
The IPCC’s predictions and prescriptions are unconscionable in that they are reflecting support for the 11 million children dying every year being experienced in poorer countries.
Those infant fatalities are from the preventable causes of diarrhea, malaria, neonatal infection, pneumonia, preterm delivery, or lack of oxygen at birth
as many developing countries have no, or minimal, access to those products from oil derivatives enjoyed by the wealthy and healthy countries.
The latest report by the IPCC totally ignores the massive benefits, and by almost exclusively focusing on negative side-effects,
the IPCC report totally denies the fact that fossil fuels are making the world better and better than life was before 1900,
including human’s beings safer than ever from climate.
The rate of climate-related disaster deaths—deaths from extreme temperatures, droughts, wildfires, storms, and floods—has decreased by 98 percent over the last century.
Cold is a far greater danger to humans than heat–and thus, we should expect warming to save more cold-related deaths than it causes heat-related deaths.
People continue to move to the Palm Springs Desert, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, but nobody is moving to Siberia.
After oil, we created various modes of transportation, a medical industry, and electronics and communications systems.
Oil reduced infant mortality,
extended longevity from 40+ to more than 80+,
and gave the public the ability to move anywhere in the world via planes, trains, ships, and vehicles,
and virtually eliminated deaths from most diseases and from all forms of weather.
The IPCC message to abolish oil would reverse all of that “progress”.
There are now nearly eight billion of us, with most people living much longer and more prosperous lives than the one billion people who were around when coal use took off two centuries ago.
Moreover, the richer we are, the greener most parts of the planet become.
Indeed, plastics and fossil fuels benefit both humanity and our environment.
We are born and live surrounded by plastics and countless machines created with and powered by fossil fuels.
The IPCC is comprised of educated men and women that must surely comprehend that electricity alone,
especially intermittent electricity from breezes and sunshine, has not, and will not, run the economies of the world,
as electricity alone is unable to support the prolific growth rates of the medical industry, military, airlines, cruise ships, supertankers, container shipping, and trucking infrastructures to meet the demands of the exploding world population.
Getting off fossil fuels would negatively impact the following industries and infrastructures that have supported the existence of the IPCC:
The almost 20,000 private jets for the elites of our world.
The almost 10,000 superyachts over 24 meters in length, again for the elites of our world.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin sub-orbital spaceflight services company, for the very wealthy want-to-be astronauts.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic sub-orbital spaceflight services company, for the very wealthy want-to-be astronauts.
Commercial aviation, with 23,000 commercial airplanes worldwide that have been accommodating 4 billion passenger annually.
The 56,000 merchant ships burning more than 120 million gallons a day of high sulfur bunker fuel moving products worldwide worth billions of dollars daily.
The military equipment from each country consisting of aircraft carriers, battleships, destroyers, submarines, planes, tanks and armor, trucks, and troop carriers.
The more than 300 cruise liners, each of which consumes 80,000 gallons of fuels daily, that have been accommodating more than 25 million passengers annually worldwide.
The IPCC fails to recognize that at least 80 percent of humanity, or more than 6 billion in this world are living on less than $10 a day, and billions living with little to no access to electricity.
These poor folks need abundant, affordable, reliable, scalable, and flexible electricity while the healthier and wealthier are pursuing the most expensive ways to generate “secondary” intermittent electricity from breezes and sunshine.
The future adaptation to climate changes may be challenging as the world may have difficulty supporting 8 billion inhabitants without the thousands of products manufactured from oil derivatives.
Oil has provided the healthy and wealthy countries with a quality of life that the poorer and less healthy developing countries desire
but ridding the world of fossil fuels will drive humanity back to medieval times and place most of the world’s population at risk."
"Electric Trucks: Can They Get the Job Done?"
Source:
"My father-law is a purveyor of custom iron work—a blacksmith, in other words—who designs, forges, and installs his wares across Southern California.
It’s labor-intensive, hands-on, and, given the density of iron, involves moving very heavy loads.
... As is sometimes called for in business, my father-in-law is currently re-balancing his hardware inventory and sold several of his machines and tools to a fellow smith in Northern California. ...
I had the pleasure of joining him over the weekend to deliver and assist in unloading the goods.
On the 1,000-mile excursion from San Diego to Santa Cruz and back, ... (we) ruminated on how different the trip would be
if instead of driving his 2012 Nissan Frontier SV we were driving the ballyhooed new electric pickup from Ford, the F-150 Lightning.
... Key stats on the real trip:
In the bed of the half-ton Frontier rested the forge, the welder and accompanying tank, iron tools, standard tools (housed within built-in toolboxes), and sundry scrap iron.
On the trailer (6’ by 12’ interior dimensions) rested the power hammer.
Forge weight estimate: 100 lbs.
MIG welder/tank weight estimate: 340 lbs.
Tools weight estimate: 300 lbs.
Scrap iron weight estimate: 100 lbs.
Power hammer weight estimate: 3,500 lbs.
Trailer weight estimate: 1,730 lbs.
All told that’s an 840-pound payload in the truck bed
and 5,230 pounds being towed
(with serious drag due to the dimension of the power hammer).
The Frontier has an 18-gallon fuel tank and on the loaded outward portion of the journey through the heart of Los Angeles, into the Central Valley, up the Salinas Valley, and then over to Santa Cruz we averaged about 12 miles to the gallon.
This necessitated pitstops for fuel in Castaic (180 miles north of our origin) and in King City (215 miles north of Castaic).
Given the rapid nature of liquid refueling, neither stop took more than 10 minutes to get us back up to a full tank.
After several hours in Santa Cruz unloading the delivery, we refueled again and got back on the road with the goal of returning back to San Diego as soon as safely possible.
Pulling the empty trailer, but with increased speed, our fuel-economy numbers looked modestly better at a bit over 14 miles per gallon.
On the return, we stopped twice for fuel after leaving Santa Cruz with a full tank, once in Los Alamos (we took the 101 on the return, rather than going through the Central Valley) and once in Laguna Niguel for a top-off on the home stretch.
The convenience of liquid refueling on this journey can hardly be overstated.
It enabled us to venture from San Diego to Santa Cruz, make a valuable delivery, and (factoring in a bit of a dinner mishap in San Luis Obispo) return home in 21 hours.
Could the same trip be made in Ford’s electric F-150 without missing a night of sleep in our own beds?
Absolutely not.
The range and re-charging problems that plague electric vehicles make even the powerful new Ford pickup option a non-starter for a proprietor who needs to make delivery runs such as ours.
When hauling significant loads, these problems become insurmountable.
The consumer-oriented Car and Driver and the commercial- and industrial-oriented Fleet Forward have each made this point in recent months.
In optimal, unloaded conditions, Ford claims the base model of their electric truck will get 230 miles per charge.
That’s a troubling number, even without factoring in the machinery.
The added load cuts severely into EV range.
And these numbers are not factored into sellers claims or EPA range ratings.
Referring to interviews with Ed Sanchez, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, and Adam Berger, president of Doering Fleet Management, Fleet Forward informs readers:
(T)owing reveals how extreme weights and aerodynamic impacts affect EV range.
Although we’re still in the early days of commercial EVs, as a broad rule of thumb any substantial towing or payload will effectively cut the vehicle’s rated range in half, Sanchez says.
In some circumstances, Berger says towing can cut EV range by as much as 80%.
“At this point, the industry is concerned about peak numbers, not realistic performance,” Mark Hanchett, CEO and founder of Atlis Motor Vehicles, told the publication.
Car and Driver strikes a similarly dire tone, writing that even with the extended-range battery that Ford claims will provide 300 miles per charge,
“Towing anywhere near the 10,000-pound maximum rating … at highway speeds, we believe you’d be hard-pressed to exceed double-digit miles.”
So Fleet Forward says to expect an (up to) 80-percent loss of claimed range under load and Car and Driver says you’ll lose at least 66 percent.
We’ll be generous with our estimate and use the Car and Driver number, assuming that at a full charge under our iron-mongering load the base model F-150 Lightning will eke out one-third of Ford’s claimed mileage and travel 80 miles per full charge.
Remember, though, achieving a full charge takes hours with a standard charger, so for this road trip, we’ll assume we’re using the “fast” chargers that can give us 80 percent charge in half an hour.
That’ll mean our range is actually just 64 miles per charge (one-third of 80 percent of the full 240-mile unloaded range.)
With our range limited to just over sixty miles per charge and a charge time of at least 30 minutes (not accounting for waits in increasingly common charger queues), this 500-mile delivery sounds quite dicey already.
Planning pit stops ahead is essential under such circumstances, and the website Charge Hub can help us with that, showing charger locations throughout the U.S.
As far as EV trips go in the United States, the San Diego to Santa Cruz corridor is as plausible as they get,
as the state government’s regulations and mandates have saturated California with EVs and EV infrastructure to a greater degree than any other state.
Breaking our trip into 60-mile segments under these load conditions even makes it difficult here in California, however, requiring a few shorter intervals to bridge what would otherwise be perilous stretches.
That said, it’s doable, with stops at chargers in:
San Clemente,
Los Angeles,
Castaic,
Grapevine,
Bakersfield,
Lost Hills,
Paso Robles,
King City, and
Salinas on the outward journey,
then a charge in Santa Cruz
before reversing course
with more range due to lighter load.
A few of those outbound legs are under 40 miles, but three are of 59, 60, or 61 miles, so the number of stops is certainly not overly cautious.
Given the weight of the trailer itself, the Lightning would still not get full value out of a charge on the return.
We’ll just ballpark it and say we’ll lose 20 percent of range vs the 66 percent loss we assumed outbound.
That yields about 150 miles per charge and means we would only need to stop at Paso Robles, Grapevine, and Irvine.
Counting those up gives us 9 charging stops on the journey out and 4 on the way back.
13 total.
At 30 minutes per stop using a “fast” charger, that’s 6 hours and 30 minutes of charging on top of our drive time of more than 16 hours and our roughly 5 hours of unloading, etc.
What with the old Nissan Frontier was an up-and-back jaunt would be in the new Ford F-150 Lightning an odyssey taking up the better part of two days,
accounting for the same non-driving, non-fueling activities and getting some shut-eye overnight.
F-150 Lightning boosters will likely have two rebuttals to my argument in mind:
one is that during charging intervals drivers can “get other work done”
and the other is that the 1,000-mile trip in a gasoline pickup will cost hundreds of dollars more in fuel costs than in the Lightning.
The first claim is untenable.
The same argument—that you can “get other work done”—could be made for any unnecessarily slow, passive process that impedes productivity.
If my web browser takes 10 times longer than another option, I’m not benefiting.
Small chunks of time are worth less than the sum of their parts, particularly for creative thinkers who do deep work.
At best, the 30-minute minimum charge time means fuel, meals, and “relief” can now be fully synced.
The cost argument is more compelling.
There wasn’t a single station we encountered that was selling gasoline for under $4.50 per gallon, meaning the cumulative cost was around $300 for fuel.
But let’s remember that a good chunk of that price is policy-based (state and federal gas tax, refining requirements in the state, and so on).
Also, if cost is our primary decision-making input, we should also consider that the base model Ford F-150 Lightning has a sticker price of $42,000—double that of a Frontier on Car Max with 31,000 miles.
A base model 2021 F-150 with a 3.3-liter V-6 engine was priced at under $31,000, it should also be noted.
And that model would likely get better mileage than our weathered Nissan.
Moreover, relative to spending another entire day out on the road in an electric truck, gas money is well spent in that it frees up more time for other valuable pursuits.
Unless extraordinary advances in battery capabilities are made, EVs—electric pickups included—will remain niche vehicles that can only serve suburban commuters.
The Ford F-150 Lightning may also work for some corporate fleets that are looking for brownie points, but that don’t have hauling and distance as meaningful variables in their bottom lines.
For slinging machinery up the coast, we’ll stick with the trusted internal-combustion engine."
"GM extends recall to cover all Chevy Bolts due to fire risk" -- total cost of almost $2 billion
Source:
"General Motors said Friday it is recalling all Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles sold worldwide to fix a battery problem that could cause fires.
The recall and others raise questions about lithium ion batteries, which now are used in nearly all electric vehicles.
Ford, BMW and Hyundai all have recalled batteries recently.
President Joe Biden will need electric vehicles to reach a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half 2030 as part of a broader effort to fight climate change.
The GM recall announced Friday adds about 73,000 Bolts from the 2019 through 2022 model years to a previous recall of 69,000 older Bolts.
GM said that in rare cases the batteries have two manufacturing defects that can cause fires.
The Detroit-based automaker said it will replace battery modules in all the vehicles.
In older versions, all five modules will be replaced.
The latest recall will cost the company about $1 billion, bringing the total cost of the Bolt battery recalls to $1.8 billion.
GM said owners should limit charging to 90% of battery capacity.
The Bolts, including a new SUV, also should be parked outdoors until the modules are replaced.
The original recall was blamed on a manufacturing defect at a South Korean factory run by LG Chemical Solution, GM’s battery supplier.
But the company said an investigation showed that the defects are possible in batteries made at other sites.
Most newer Bolt batteries are made at an LG plant in Holland, Michigan.
GM issued the first Bolt recall in November after getting reports of five of them catching fire.
Two people suffered smoke inhalation and a house was set ablaze.
At first the company didn’t know what was causing the problem, but it determined that batteries that caught fire were near a full charge.
It traced the fires to what it called a rare manufacturing defect in battery modules.
It can cause a short in a cell, which can trigger a fire.
GM said it began investigating the newer Bolts after a 2019 model that was not included in the previous recall caught fire a few weeks ago in Chandler, Arizona.
That raised concerns about newer Bolts.
That fire brought the total number of Bolt blazes to 10, company spokesman Dan Flores said.
GM says it is working with LG to increase battery production.
The company says owners will be notified to take their cars to dealers as soon as replacement parts are ready.
Flores said he is not sure when that will be.
The company said it will not produce or sell any more Bolts until it is satisfied that problems have been worked out in LG batteries, Flores said.
“Our focus on safety and doing the right thing for our customers guides every decision we make at GM,” Doug Parks, GM product development chief, said in a statement.
Batteries with the new modules will come with an eight year, 100,000 mile (160 kilometer) warranty, the company said.
GM will replace all five battery modules in 2017 to 2019 Bolts.
Defective modules will be replaced in newer models.
GM said it will pursue reimbursement from the LG.
The Bolts are only a tiny fraction of GM’s overall U.S. sales, which run close to 3 million vehicles in a normal year.
But they are the first of an ambitious rollout of electric models as GM tries to hit a goal of selling only electric passenger vehicles by 2035.
Other automakers are also announcing additional electric models worldwide to cut pollution and meet stricter government fuel economy standards."
Environmental news from last week
August 16
– CNBC
(Pippa Stevens):
“The U.S. government… declared the first-ever water shortage at Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir by volume, after water levels fell to record lows amid a decades-long drought. Water cuts will go into effect in January for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico, the Bureau of Reclamation said... Arizona will take the biggest hit, with about 18% of the state’s annual apportionment cut.”
August 14
– Wall Street Journal
(Lindsay Huth and
Taylor Umlauf):
“As drought persists across more than 95% of the American West, water elevation at the Hoover Dam has sunk to record-low levels, endangering a source of hydroelectric power for an estimated 1.3 million people across California, Nevada and Arizona. The water level at Lake Mead, the Colorado River reservoir serving the Hoover Dam, fell to 1,068 ft. above sea level in July, the lowest level since the lake was first filled… in the 1930s… For dams to produce power, they rely on the immense pressure created by the body of water they are blocking. As water levels go down, less pressure is exerted and the dams in turn produce less hydroelectric energy, which means the dam can produce less power.”
August 16
– Bloomberg
(Mark Chediak):
More than a million acres of California landscape have been torched and Golden State firefighters are bracing for more conflagrations this week. Crews are battling 10 large blazes including the Dixie Fire, the second-biggest in state history, that has already scorched about 570,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,000 structures, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.”
August 19
– Reuters
(Karl Plume):
“There was barely a buzz in the air as John Miller pried the lid off of a crate, one of several ‘bee boxes’ stacked in eight neat piles beside a cattle grazing pasture outside Gackle, North Dakota. ‘Nothing,’ Miller said as he lifted a plastic hive frame from the box, squirming with only a few dozen bees. ‘Normally this would be dripping, full of honey. But not this year.’ A scorching drought is slashing honey production in North Dakota, the top producing state of the sweet syrup, and a shortage of bees needed to pollinate fruits and flowers puts West Coast cash crops like almonds, plums and apples at risk, according to more than a dozen interviews with farmers, bee experts, economists and farm industry groups.”
"Electric Cars Are Hot . . . Literally"
Source:
"When even The Washington Post begins to cover the electric car’s Fire Problem, you know the problem is becoming too big not to cover.
It has always been a problem
– but an under-reported problem –
in part because of the corporate media’s being very much a kind of marketing division for the electric car
and the subsidies and mandates upon which their existence depends and
– more so – on the “climate change” narrative, without which there would be little if any justification for the subsidies and mandates.
Since the corporate media is very much on board with the “climate change” narrative, it is natural it would be favorably inclined toward the electric car and this has been reflected in its coverage – or rather, the lack thereof.
Especially as regards the electric car’s deficits, including the built-in tendency of all electric cars – not just Teslas – to spontaneously combust.
As when not being driven.
As when parked in the garage – which has led in a number of cases to the garage (and the house attached) burning to the ground.
EVs have two unique problems that make them fire-prone when at rest – in addition to being more likely to burn when hit.
The first is a function of their high-voltage battery packs, which are a lattice-like maze of individual interconnected cells.
A defect in materials or workmanship in any one of these cells can result in a short circuit and what’s known as thermal runaway
– which can very quickly lead to a very high-temperature chemical fire that is extremely difficult to stop once it starts
and which can re-start, even if all the flames are extinguished –
for the same thermal runaway reasons.
An electric car battery fire is fundamentally different from a gasoline fire, which is sparked – literally – and which cannot happen without a spark.
A leaking gas tank merely leaks – unless there is a spark.
This is why it is less likely that a fire will happen when a gasoline-powered car is involved in an accident.
It is even less likely, because the tank must first leak – and that, too, is less likely.
Two things have to happen for a gasoline-powered car to catch fire.
First, the gas tank’s physical integrity must be compromised.
It is not enough to just damage it.
It can be bent, it can be smashed.
But for a fire to happen, it must be made to leak gas, as by hitting it hard enough to crack a seam or puncture it.
This is actually pretty hard to do as well as unlikely to happen.
First, because the gas tank is located in one part of the car, usually behind the rear axle – which serves as a physical bulwark protecting the gas tank if the vehicle is rear-ended.
If the car runs into something or is hit from the side, there is almost no chance the gas tank will be hit and so it is not likely to be damaged sufficiently to result in a leak.
Even if it is hit hard enough to result in a leak, there must then be a spark – to ignite any leaking gas/fumes.
If there is no spark, there will be no fire.
Gasoline does not spontaneously combust and for that reason is inherently safer.
This is why even the defective Ford Pinto very rarely caught fire.
More than 3 million were made; only a few ever caught fire.
Statistically, the fire risk was near-nil.
100 percent nil, if the Pinto was parked.
With electric cars, a fire can happen if there is just a leak – in between the individual cells, as a result of a material defect during manufacture or assembly of the battery pack.
Or caused by damage to the structure of the battery pack itself during a wreck.
Such damage is more likely to happen because there is much more battery than tank.
An electric car’s battery pack usually runs the entire length of the car’s floorpan.
It is installed, sandwich-style, like a layer of cheese in between the meat (the “meat” being the car’s floorpans).
This arrangement being necessary to spread out what would otherwise be a hugely bulky battery that would take up an enormous amount of vertical space,
which would eat up cargo or passenger space and render the car very impractical for carrying people or cargo.
By laying the battery pack out flat and wide and long, the battery pack takes up less vertical space and so doesn’t intrude upon the car’s interior passenger/cargo space.
But now you have the problem of greater fire risk arising from greater risk of the battery pack’s structural integrity being compromised in the event of any accident.
A hit from any angle can damage the battery pack, resulting in a short circuit, thermal runaway – and a runaway fire.
A very fast and very hot fire, much more so than a gas fire – which can engulf the entire car in flames – and extremely toxic fumes – so quickly that there is no time to get the people out in time.
There is also a third way electric cars can catch fire.
Thermal runaway risk increases during charging – in particular, what is styled “fast” charging (which takes many times as long as it takes to refuel a non-electric car).
Anyone familiar with electric devices knows that high heat attends high voltages, particularly when instilled from source to battery.
The “faster” you try to charge up a battery, the more likely the thermal runaway.
It is why electric cars have elaborate electronics to modulate the rate at which they are charged and why they cannot be fully “fast” charged.
At least, not safely.
It is necessary – for safety – to partially charge them, to avoid a thermal runaway – and also because it is harmful to the battery pack’s longevity to “fast” charge it to 100 percent of its capacity.
The usual top-off limit is 80 percent of capacity.
Which means, of course, that you are 20 percent shy of capacity – and lose 20 percent of whatever the electric car’s advertised maximum range is.
But that is another deficit for another time.
The point is that electric are inherently fire-prone.
Three times as prone to fires as non-electric cars.
They are more likely to catch fire from a defect during manufacture/assembly; if the battery pack is damaged in an accident – and while “fueling.”
They are much more likely to burn your house down when parked – and perhaps you along with it.
And the likelihood goes up as more and more electric cars are forced onto the “market” –
which is no longer allowed to discipline the manufacture of cars that are inherently more dangerous as well as more expensive and more restrictive.
This has happened, to a great extent, because the mainstream corporate press has declined to enlighten the public about the dangers and deficits of the electric car,
having committed itself to the “climate change” narrative that justifies the electric car.
It is of a piece with strange indifference to the harm being caused by the “vaccines,” which are also killing people ...
In both cases, it doesn’t seem to matter – because it’s not saving lives (or the environment) that matters.
I leave it up to you to ponder what does matter, as regards both."
Friday, August 20, 2021
"IPCC AR6: Extreme Rainfall, Unspun Edition"
Source:
"By now we are all used to the pattern associated with IPCC report releases.
The press coverage is an alarmist spin on the Summary, which is an alarmist spin on the Report, which is a selective and alarmist spin on the underlying science.
The best way to respond to a new IPCC report is to tune out all the press coverage and look at the Report, but it seems to be the last thing almost anyone thinks to do.
So over the next few weeks we will provide excerpts of the text of the new IPCC report where it pertains to the big topics of the day, especially apocalyptic extreme weather and the like.
Today we start with extreme rainfall.
AR6 Chapter 11 section 11.4 deals with changes in weather extremes.
Here are some verbatim quotes that cover key points regarding heavy rainfall events.
It is difficult to separate the effect of global warming from internal variability in the observed changes in the modes of variability (Section 2.4).
Future projections of modes of variability are highly uncertain (Section 4.3.3), resulting in uncertainty in regional projections of extreme precipitation.
Future warming may amplify monsoonal extreme precipitation.
Changes in extreme storms, including tropical/extratropical cyclones and severe convective storms, result in changes in extreme precipitation (Section 11.7).
Also, changes in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) alter land-sea contrast, leading to changes in precipitation extremes near coastal regions.
There has been new evidence of the effect of local land use and land cover change on heavy precipitation.
There is a growing set of literature linking increases in heavy precipitation in urban centres to urbanization (Argüeso et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2019f).
Urbanization intensifies extreme precipitation, especially in the afternoon and early evening, over the urban area and its downwind region (medium confidence).
Both SREX (Chapter 3, Seneviratne et al., 2012) and AR5 (IPCC, 2014 Chapter 2) concluded it was likely the number of heavy precipitation events over land had increased in more regions than it had decreased,
though there were wide regional and seasonal variations,
and trends in many locations were not statistically significant.
This assessment has been strengthened with multiple studies finding robust evidence of the intensification of extreme precipitation at global and continental scales,
regardless of spatial and temporal coverage of observations and the methods of data processing and analysis.
The average annual maximum precipitation amount in a day (Rx1day) has significantly increased since the mid-20th century over land (Du et al., 2019; Dunn et al., 2020) and in the humid and dry regions of the globe (Dunn et al., 2020).
The percentage of observing stations with statistically significant increases in Rx1day is larger than expected by chance, while the percentage of stations with statistically significant decreases is smaller than expected by chance,
over the global land as a whole and over North America, Europe, and Asia (Figure 11.13, Sun et al., 2020)
and over global monsoon regions (Zhang and Zhou, 2019) where data coverage is relatively good.
The addition of the past decade of observational data shows a more robust increase in Rx1day over the global land region (Sun et al., 2020).
Overall, there is a lack of systematic analysis of long-term trends in sub-daily extreme precipitation at the global scale.
Often, sub-daily precipitation data have only sporadic spatial coverage and are of limited length.
Additionally, the available data records are far shorter than needed for a robust quantification of past changes in sub-daily extreme precipitation (Li et al., 2018b).
Despite these limitations, there are studies in regions of almost all continents that generally indicate intensification of sub-daily extreme precipitation,
although confidence in an overall increase at the global scale remains very low.
In North America, there is robust evidence that the magnitude and intensity of extreme precipitation has very likely increased since the 1950s.
Both [one-day maxima] and [5-day maxima] have significantly increased in North America during 1950-2018 (Sun et al., 2020, also Figure 11.13).
There is, however, regional diversity.
In Canada, there is a lack of detectable trends in observed annual maximum daily (or shorter duration) precipitation (Shephard et al., 2014; Mekis et al., 2015; Vincent et al., 2018).
In the United States, there is an overall increase in one-day heavy precipitation, both in terms of intensity and frequency,
except for the southern part of the US (Hoerling et al., 2016)
where internal variability may have played a substantial role in the lack of observed increases."
"Hide the Decline: 2021 IPCC Edition"
Source:
"Viewers of our video on the IPCC “Hide the Decline” debacle will know that in 2001 the IPCC dealt with a problem of downward-sloping tree ring data in recent years
contradicting climate theory by failing to match rising temperature readings,
thus undermining the practise of using tree rings as a reliable climate proxy for previous periods where we don’t have temperature data,
by simply deleting the offending portion then smoothing the graph to conceal the change.
You’d think that with the criticism they received they’d have resolved not to do such things in the future.
But nay, the practise is back, if anything on a larger scale than before. At the Climate Audit website, Stephen McIntyre digs into the new 2021 IPCC hockey stick and finds,
as with the Mann hockey stick before it,
there is a weird disconnect between the underlying temperature proxy data and the final graph.
Very few proxy series go up in the 20th century, and some clearly go down.
Yet the graph in the IPCC report shoots through the roof in recent years with no hint of uncertainty.
Like last time, the trick is to hide the decline.
Or rather, the two tricks.
The first is called “pre-screening”.
It involves taking a large group of temperature proxies (tree ring records, lakebed sediment layers and so forth) and then weighting them based on how well they correlate to the temperature series they’re supposed to match.
So the series that don’t match temperatures at all get a weight of zero and disappear.
Which is… um… cheating.
The whole point of using proxies is that they’re supposed to tell you what temperatures were in the past when there were no thermometers.
If your theory is that tree ring series, sediments or something else can give you that information, but most of them don’t match modern thermometer records in the period when they do overlap,
you don’t get to just keep the ones that do and ignore the rest.
It’s like a medical researcher only reporting the patients who got better and claiming to have found a cure.
The second trick is to imagine that trees do act like thermometers but some trees experience a weird disease called “divergence”
which suddenly causes them to act differently in response to temperatures in recent decades.
Even though no one knows what causes it or why, the scientists assume that the tree ring data is perfectly fine in earlier years
but if the recent years are affected by “divergence”
those parts should be deleted.
Which makes selecting only entire proxies that fit look almost honest by comparison.
Sensing perhaps that his readers might not believe such a thing could be taking place, McIntyre links to a Canadian study where the authors proudly explain their reasoning.
The treatment is quite effective:
in the raw data at the top of the graph below, no hockey stick appears.
But after removing the divergent bits in the lower part, voila:
you too can be a climate scientist
and publish hockey sticks to your heart’s content.
But honest people will avoid you.'
"Unsettling the apple cart V: Koonin on Precipitation Perils", by Professor Ross McKitrick
Source:
"Continuing University of Guelph professor Ross McKitrick’s look at Steven E. Koonin’s landmark book Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t, and Why it Matters:
Prior chapters are here:
https://elonionbloggle.blogspot.com/2021/07/unsettling-apple-cart-i-koonin-on.html
https://elonionbloggle.blogspot.com/2021/07/unsettling-apple-cart-ii-koonin-on.html
https://elonionbloggle.blogspot.com/2021/07/unsettling-apple-cart-iii-koonin-on.html
https://elonionbloggle.blogspot.com/2021/07/unsettling-apple-cart-ii-koonin-on.html
https://elonionbloggle.blogspot.com/2021/07/unsettling-apple-cart-iii-koonin-on.html
Theoretical physicist Steven Koonin moved with his wife to Chevy Chase, Maryland in May 2009 to join the Obama Administration as Under Secretary for Science in the Department of Energy.
Seven months later the snowiest winter ever recorded hit the Capital area, including a storm dubbed “Snowmageddon”.
But in Chapter 7 of his book Unsettled, “Precipitation Perils – From Floods to Fires” Koonin resists the temptation to treat the event as proof (or disproof) of anything related to climate,
and instead presents a graph of Washington DC snowfall totals from 1889 to 2018,
within which it becomes clear that 2009 was an outlier against the context of a long, slow decline in average snowfall in the Washington area.
When talking about precipitation, it takes a lot of data to establish the context, and that gives plenty of openings for the cherry-pickers to engage in trickery.
The declining trend in DC snowfall leads Koonin into the larger topic of precipitation trends, and specifically questions related to trends in snowfall, rainfall, droughts, flooding and wildfires.
Here Koonin makes a radical departure from just about every other public commentator on the subject when he says (p. 130)
“We’ll turn to the data to answer those questions.”
And that approach makes it inevitable that this chapter would skewer yet another batch of alarmist slogans.
Anyone who works with precipitation data (as I have done) knows it is extremely variable and trends in one location may run counter to those in nearby locations.
And while one can easily cherry-pick data to tell a story, long term big-picture conclusions are extremely elusive.
Koonin begins his survey by explaining the physical basis of climate modelers’ view that global warming will intensify precipitation.
But he then shows long term (115 year) graphs of global and US precipitation rates, which show minor net increases but with very large natural variability and extended periods with trend reversals.
The view that there is no detectable trend is supported by published literature and past IPCC reports, both of which Koonin quotes.
He also shows data indicating that an increase in heavy precipitation events was observed in the US from 1910 to 2015.
But he notes the changes are uneven across regions (and John Christy and I have shown that the apparent trends disappear using longer datasets where available.)
Koonin further observes that the IPCC draws only a tepid conclusion regarding whether such increases are observable globally.
As for average Northern Hemisphere snow cover, season-specific data show reductions in Spring and Summer since the 1960s, but increases in Winter, with no annual trend after the late 1980s despite the observed warming.
Yet, as Koonin notes, the most recent US National Assessment states as one of its key findings, with no explanation or accompanying pesky data, that Northern Hemisphere snow cover snow cover metrics “have all declined.”
Turning to floods and droughts, Koonin again finds that the recurring pattern is the absence of a pattern.
US data on flooding indicates a wide variety of changes over time, as does global data, which leads the IPCC to have only “low confidence” even in the sign (positive or negative) of the trend globally.
Likewise with droughts:
Despite the repeated use of local drought events as journalistic “proof” of climate change, both US and global data show much variability but no long-term trend.
If anything, droughts in the 20th century appear to have been shorter and milder than those in past centuries.
Yet – as Koonin notes and his readers by now will have anticipated – this information is “entirely absent” (p. 141) from the 2014 US National Climate Assessment.
The 2017 report contained a brief mention of the evidence of the past millennium, but then devoted twice as much space to discussing the California drought then ongoing.
It is ironic that one of the false charges leveled against Koonin is that he doesn’t understand the difference between weather and climate.
Of course he does, and carefully distinguishes the two throughout his analysis driven by, of all things, data.
That charge should instead be leveled against the National Assessment authors, who ignored millennial-scale evidence in favor of a highlighting short-term local drought event (which reversed to wet conditions shortly after the report was published).
After also reviewing the evidence on wildfires (spoiler alert: they’re declining globally) Koonin ends his chapter by examining a 2015 speech by former Central Banker and now full-time UN climate guru Mark Carney,
in which the latter grabbed hold of a 2014 forecast by the UK Met Office and used it as a basis to warn his audience that UK winter rainfall would go up by 10 percent over the next 5 years.
The data show that it instead fell by almost 40 percent over the forecast interval.
Carney, of course, learned nothing from this episode.
But Koonin’s readers will by this point have learned that science bureaucracies, and their cheerleaders like Carney, are not to be trusted."
“The UN climate report pins hopes on carbon removal technologies that barely exist” or its desire to accomplish six impossible things before breakfast."
Source:
"In the midst of all this panic the New York Times reports that hydrogen is not clean fuel.
And while one might be tempted to groan “you people are just against everything, aren’t you?” we instead compliment them for taking a serious look at alternative energy options including their drawbacks.
And then we drag in Lorrie Goldstein from the pages of the Toronto Sun to recommend that they reconsider replacing fossil fuels with, yes again, nuclear power, but also with fossil fuels.
Because sometimes it is one’s duty to state the obvious, as in: “A serious solution is to replace one fossil fuel with another.
That is, replacing coal-fired electricity with a combination of natural gas-fired electricity — which burns at half the carbon intensity of coal — and nuclear energy, which does not emit greenhouse gases linked to human-induced climate change.”
It’s remarkable how bad the Times says hydrogen is.
Of course it’s just one news story even if it waves the juju about a new “peer-reviewed study”.
But it warns that “Most hydrogen used today is extracted from natural gas in a process that requires a lot of energy and emits vast amounts of carbon dioxide.
Producing natural gas also releases methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.”
One hopes the author, a climate scientist armed with a BA in International History from the London School of Economics and Political Science, knows that natural gas is, essentially, methane.
... The key point is that “while the natural gas industry has proposed capturing that carbon dioxide
— creating what it promotes as emissions-free, ‘blue’ hydrogen —
even that fuel still emits more across its entire supply chain than simply burning natural gas, according to the paper,
published Thursday in the Energy Science & Engineering journal by researchers from Cornell and Stanford Universities.”
And burning natural gas we know how to do.
Hydrogen has been touted by fanatics as the fuel of the future since 1836 which suggests, given all the advances in other energy sources, that the technical difficulties are considerable.
And while it may one day work, on climate we’re told there’s no time to lose.
Which brings us back to Goldstein, who is no “denier”.
At least, his piece includes the caveat that his argument “is not to suggest that a projected global temperature increase by 2100 double what the IPCC’s scientific advisors call for isn’t a serious problem,
one that will adversely impact human and planetary life.”
But he’s also no fool.
He rubbishes UN Secretary-General Guterres for saying “this report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet”
when there is no prospect whatsoever of destroying the planet and the IPCC makes no such claim. Instead, he notes, “the UN’s Sixth Assessment report
says it is now unlikely catastrophic events such as ice sheet collapse and abrupt changes in ocean circulation will occur.
It says we are unlikely to experience the most extreme temperature increases projected in earlier studies, although we’re on track for an increase of about 3C by 2100, double the IPCC’s goal of 1.5 C.”
Still, if you believe man-made climate change is both serious and urgent, you need to be willing to take readily available practical steps without delay.
It’s bad enough when, say, Britain’s “Climate Czar” Alok Sharma ... who is also the chair of COP26 was caught driving a diesel car this summer
and mumbled feebly that his next would surely be electric,
and was also caught flying 25 times in three months in the spring of 2021,
covering 73,853 miles and visiting 19 countries, with staff.
But these are personal hypocrisies by the self-important.
It’s worse on policy.
Thus a silly piece in Gerald Butts’ GZero SIGNAL newsletter said all we need to do is convince China, India and others to slash emissions,
pay African countries to do the same,
find common ground in domestic politics (a term here meaning everyone should admit Butts is right)
and get the private sector on board a term here meaning
“Businesses must come under intense pressure by both lawmakers and consumers to never put profits over the planet,
and that they too must all go ‘net zero.’
What’s more, they should all the technology they develop to curb emissions, particularly carbon capture and storage.”
This recommendation isn’t just fatuous because of an inauspicious item in MIT Technology Review noted pointedly,
“The UN climate report pins hopes on carbon removal technologies that barely exist” or its desire to accomplish six impossible things before breakfast.
It’s because what we really need to do, if doom looms and we must cut emissions now, is put the pedal to the metal not on unproven or unreliable things with huge hidden environmental costs,
from solar to wind to hydrogen,
or on will-o-the-wisps like carbon capture,
but as Goldstein notes on two technologies that do exist and work: nuclear power and natural gas generation.
Both are mature, dependable, safe technologies ready to go.
And if you believe one quarter of the yelling about extreme weather and social collapse and mass death if we don’t cut net emissions drastically within 30 years,
you’d be dropping all the other cutesy-poo vote-buying subsidies and programs and building those plants at top speed.
Nobody is."
IPCC Code Red snooze
Source:
"UN Secretary-General António Guterres issued a statement that was shrill even by his standards, including “Today’s IPCC Working Group 1 report is a code red for humanity.
The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse‑gas emissions from fossil-fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.
Global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible.”
Now this remark is rather obvious rubbish:
The report does not say anything about billions of people being at immediate risk.
On the contrary, as Roger Pielke Jr. notes, it walks back earlier IPCC statements that the ludicrous RCP8.5 scenario was “most likely” and now rates it as improbable (it is in fact impossible).
As Pielke also points out, to cover its flaming fundament the IPCC now claims not to estimate the likelihood of various scenarios (so much for settled science), then does anyway.
But Guterres knows people won’t read the report, which he probably hadn’t read either, so he doesn’t care what it says, only what he can get headlines by claiming it says.
Including a bit about how the fossil fuel industry is going to “destroy our planet”.
And sure enough, a news story promptly hailed “The end of the world according to the UN climate report” and presented all the worst-case scenarios as imminent.
And yet nobody really cares.
One gets the feeling that even the journalists are, in fact, bored with the subject.
There were huge screaming headlines for a day or two calling the audience greedy stupid monsters or some such, and then they went right back to other issues.
For instance the ultra-woke, all-climate-all-the-time Guardian’s “The Guardian today” email for August 12 featured “Exclusive / Gavin Williamson should be sacked over exam failures, says Keir Starmer”
followed by stories about Covid, child maltreatment, the sale of some icing from Charles and Diana’s wedding cake for £1,850 and the arrest of two boys for stabbing a man to death.
Climate?
What climate?
We got Diana’s cake to discuss.
It’s as though the whole thing were more in the nature of an obligatory ritual, like church attendance for the average person 50 years ago,
than something emotionally engaging let alone intellectually persuasive.
Even the Canadian Green Party’s “‘IPCC findings must strengthen our resolve to do all we can as a global community to avert the worst impacts of global warming,’ says Green Party Leader Annamie Paul” just feels like going through the motions.
Likewise after a fiery blast of press releases about saving the planet,
governments including Canada’s went back to the usual flurry of emails about handouts for this, that and the other,
some of them to be sure justified by the climate emergency but not on a scale to indicate urgency or serious intention to act, just to get reelected.
After which they will presumably act with steely-eyed determination.
Although not judging by the way they sauntered into action, announcing two days after AR6 was released that “Canadians are already witnessing and experiencing the devastating impacts of climate change”
and thus as “work continues toward the development” of our National Adaptation Strategy, a report building on “a first round of consultations”
with the usual checklist including aboriginals and youth paves the way for “launching adaptation advisory tables led by environmental organizations, adaptation experts, Indigenous Peoples, and other key partners, including youth, from across the country.
Those partners will have the mandate to create a framework for concrete adaptation action, with aspirational goals and advice on how to face climate change.”
Which at least beat the NDP’s indignant “REALITY CHECK: Climate crisis: Justin Trudeau worse than Harper” which suggests a bad case of insider baseball vision to anyone who cares, which they don’t.
If you really thought the world was ending, you wouldn’t be making a consultation layer cake or raving about some guy who was prime minister three elections ago.
And then there’s President Biden getting hit from both sides for being sufficiently committed to climate action as to attack the American oil industry,
only to call for more production by undemocratic regimes and,
to give it a Canadian angle, blocking pipelines from their friendly democratic northern neighbour into the bargain.
Whatever it is, it’s not serious on climate." ...
Glasgow COP26-in Red
Source:
"For another indication of the yawning gap between words and deeds, consider that a mere two days after the IPCC released its report Joe Biden publicly beseeched Saudi Arabia to boost oil production to help get US gasoline prices down.
Priorities you see.
Meanwhile the politicians are going to save us in three months when COP26 is to be held in Glasgow (high at time of writing 18C, with rain, but predicted to soar to 17C tomorrow).
And while those of us who play insider climate baseball toss around terms like IPCC and AR6 and COP26 as though they were important,
it’s worth pointing out that the 26 in the latter indicates that it will be the 26th lavish international gabfest by thousands of people who claim they know exactly what to do and always have.
In which case it is not unfair to ask why they are not doing it.
Can it be that you’re all about strutting and preening at taxpayer expense with the rest of the great and good because you don’t really think there’s a crisis requiring you to stay home, roll up your sleeves and do something difficult, painful and necessary?
There has been considerable palaver about whether to hold the conference online or in person.
But remarkably little about why to hold it at all.
... Seriously.
With all the policy proposals floating around (or like Britain’s gas boiler ban, sinking like the Titanic) or already implemented,
with all the ARs and COPs stretching back to 1990,
with the science apparently settled since at least that date subject to constant revision that always makes things worse,
what’s left to talk about?
What are they going to accomplish on the 26th try that has eluded them so far?
What do they not know, or not agree on, or not have plans to do, or actually mean it now, before or after AR6 WG1,
that they will know, or agree on, or have plans to do, or actually mean it, after a week and a half of high living and high aspirations in Glasgow from Nov. 1 through Nov. 12, 2021,
to which a lot of people will travel in jet airplanes?
And where, to underline the seriousness of the climate crisis, temperatures at time of writing are threatening to soar to 17C, but in November typically gets to about 10C with, believe it or not, rain more days than not.
Well, one goal that seems to be gaining momentum is to scrap the target of limiting increases to 1.5C and go instead with 2C to placate China,
which is apparently asserting climate leadership by burning immense amounts of coal and rejecting binding targets.
And one could not find a better example of Santayana’s “Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim”.
Or the process whereby diplomacy starts by seeking agreements to achieve goals and ends by seeking goals to achieve agreements."
IPCC AR6: "You can only say “We have just a decade to save the planet” so many times before people start thinking you have an irrational obsession"
Source:
"The big climate news is obviously the long awaited IPCC AR6.
Or more precisely the Working Group 1 full report “Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis”
(the rest of the “Sixth Assessment Report” will arrive in installments into 2022)
which said exactly what you’d expect and generated exactly the news stories and statements by politician-activists that you’d expect.
Basically “Journalists say scientists say world ends soon because evil humans want stuff.”
Not that they’d read it, of course; at 3,949 pages it’s not the sort of document you breeze through by deadline time.
Fortunately as a symptom of the unwholesome symbiosis between climate science, activism and lurid journalism, but we repeat ourselves,
the IPCC now conveniently offers not just a “Summary for Policymakers“ of the scary stuff
but a “Download Headline Statements” link.
(The American Association for the Advancement of Science put out a similar idiotic journalist’s guide to facile doomsaying, showing how far the corruption of inquiry has spread.)
And the IPCC’s Headlines tell us, predictably, that the projections on everything have gotten worse from ECS to drought and flooding,
and the settled science has settled further.
But anyway what do the details matter?
The planet is on fire and we’re all going to die unless we embrace socialism.
And very possibly even if we do.
And we all saw it coming.
It really is a problem that any intelligent observer of the debate, skeptical or credulous, could basically have written the report or at least the summary
without all the tedious mucking about with expert panels and committee review.
Indeed, the day before the report one of the self-appointed Guardians of the Galaxy, Kate Marvel, tweeted that “The IPCC report is coming out tomorrow.
As a climate scientist, I’d like you to know: I don’t have hope.
I have something better: certainty.
We know exactly what’s causing climate change.
We can absolutely
1) avoid the worst and
2) build a better world in the process.”
The New York Times’ “Climate Fwd.” took the same predictable shut-up-and-swelter tone:
“Over the three decades that scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been issuing major reports about the state of the climate,
they’ve gradually expressed more certainty about what is happening and why.
The latest report by the panel, which is convened by the United Nations, is the most certain yet.
The more than 200 scientists involved, who perused thousands of climate studies,
dispensed with even the slightest doubt that Earth’s climate is changing and that humans are the cause of it,
through emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.”
If we know exactly what’s happening and what to do about it, and already did, as they were certainly telling us a year ago and still seem to be, then what’s this report for?
What was worth waiting seven years for, spending all this money on, and delaying action
not least by having all the experts engaged in this elaborate bureaucratic exercise instead of on the front lines of policy?
What do we know now that we didn’t before, either about what’s happening or what to do?
Has anyone changed their tune even slightly?
To be fair we too are going to say more or less what you’d expect.
Starting with the fact that the IPCC is not, as journalists and politicians pretend, a scientific body.
It’s a governmental body.
Not just because its members are chosen by governments rather than their scientific colleagues.
Because its “Summary for Policymakers” is edited by the very same policymakers or their aides and appointees to whom it is ostensibly addressed, before being released.
And of course it says they must have more money and power or we’re all doomed.
As it has in every edition since 1990.
OK, there’s one significant change.
But not in a good way.
The WG1 papers are meant to be about physical science.
But this one is full of policy prescriptions.
The appetite grows with the eating.
Even the press release
(included as part of the “Outreach Materials“ included in the revealing massive propaganda operation around the report)
clearly indicates, it’s about the activism, from the headline “Climate change widespread, rapid, and intensifying – IPCC” to the recommendation that
“strong and sustained reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases would limit climate change.”
And it quotes IPCC chair Hoesung Lee that
“The innovations in this report, and advances in climate science that it reflects, provide an invaluable input into climate negotiations and decision-making.”
Fortunately, the release continues, “The report also shows that human actions still have the potential to determine the future course of climate.”
And it quotes WG1 Co-chair Panmao Zhai” that “Limiting other greenhouse gases and air pollutants, especially methane, could have benefits both for health and the climate.”
In a way the alarmists are trapped by their own rhetoric.
You can only say “We have just a decade to save the planet” so many times before people start thinking you have an irrational obsession.
You need to start counting down to five years, then three, then finally to say “Oops, we forgot to save the planet”.
And in fact, as Bjorn Lomborg reminds us, Maurice Strong said we had just a decade back in 1972 (the problem was different then, but the solution was the same).
But Prince Charles generously doled out 100 months in… 2009.
How time flies when you’re having apocalypse.
Can it really be a decade since Rolling Stone did a cover story on “the end of Australia”?
Why yes. As Judith Schwartz wrote in Cows Save the Planet back in 2013 (p. 32), when it seemed fresh and alarming not repetitive and ritualistic,
that noted science journal featured “a nightmarish piece that portrayed the countries struggle with heat, droughts, fires and floods, dying reefs, and parched riverbeds as a harbinger of the ravages that climate change has in store for the rest of the world.” Zzzzzzzzzz.
The fact is that you can just cut and paste from previous climate rhetoric.
It’s like Groundhog Day.
For instance, one commentator weighed in as follows:
“Everyone’s got similar stories these days.
The heat waves are hotter, the hurricanes heavier, the lack of snow more lacking.
The extreme and unusual – what weather pros call ‘hundred-year events,’ meaning that they come along but once a century – are now extreme yet usual.
… In news reports about extreme weather events it’s become de rigeur for the reporter to ask some highly credentialed authority, in that blithe tone of offhand curiosity we tend to favor in our newscasters, ‘whether this [fill-in-the-blank: heatwave, rash of tornadoes, relentless wildfire season] is a consequence of global warming.’
And the expert – no doubt mindful of the job-threatening controversy that could erupt upon connecting too many dots – will say something along the lines of,
‘Well, of course it is hard to attribute any particular occurrence to global warming but the statistics are showing a clear trend toward intensified storms/warming/instability that is consistent with the model of global climate change.’”
Who, when and on what evidence?
Actually it’s Schwartz again back in 2013 (p. 75).
Still, give AR6 WG1 credit for trying to get the thrill back.
Among the “Headlines” offered up for the convenience of journalistic peddlers of second-hand panic, the problem isn’t just that “Global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered.”
Apparently “Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level.”
But such rhetoric avoids the Scylla of complacency only to be sucked into the Charybdis of despair because if it’s really true, we’re cooked, probably through boiling, no matter what we do.
Might as well party like it’s 1999.
“Climate Fwd.” basically said yes, we missed the bus:
“the scientists then delivered some grim news.
Humans, they wrote in the report, made public on Monday, have poured so much of these gases into the atmosphere over the last century-plus
that no matter what happens now, the world will keep warming until at least until 2050, reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming,
the ambitious limit that was a goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement, well before that, perhaps even by the end of this decade.
The report detailed what that will mean:
For the next 30 years or longer, there will be more, hotter heat waves, longer and more intense droughts, and more episodes of heavy downpours that result in flooding.”
Which many newspapers argued had already happened.
For instance “A rise of 1.5C is generally seen as the most that humanity could cope with without suffering widespread economic and social upheaval.
The 1.1C warming already recorded has been enough to unleash disastrous weather….
Further warming could mean that in some places, people could die just from going outside.”
This claim is rather peculiar from a scientific basis.
Never mind the idea that warming beyond 1.1C could cause people to die just from going outside.
Where is it “generally seen” that a rise of 1.5C is the most humanity can cope with?
The last IPCC report, a mere 8 years ago, said warming of up to 3.0C is not likely to cause much if any overall harm at all.
Economists have long argued that limiting warming to 1.5C would do far more harm than good.
And Canada supposedly warmed 1.7C from 1948 to 2016 not only without “widespread economic and social upheaval “ but while growing and becoming prosperous.
It gets worse. Item B.1 in the Headlines for Instant Alarmism section also said
“Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.”
But hang on.
If the miserable weather is irreversible for centuries, nay millennia, but we can change the temperature within decades, then how hot it is can’t be an important aspect of bad weather or indeed of warming.
Unless, of course, the idea is that even a total warming since Victorian times of under 1.5C will still be catastrophic.
But that attempt to salvage something from the logical shipwreck is a cement life-preserver, since it says the climate is unbearably fragile,
almost unfit to sustain life, a position that cannot be reconciled with what we know about past warmings including in the Holocene Climatic Optimum, to say nothing of the Eemian.
(Which they don’t; neither these terms appears in the text of the report though the Eemian does appear in a number of footnote paper titles and Holocene Climatic Optimum is in the footnotes exactly once.
Though to our pleasant surprise there were 138 references to the Eocene.)
At least Twitter did correct its handy “Here’s what you need to know” claim that “UN scientists found that temperatures on Earth will rise by about 1.5C in around two decades.”
The real claim, itself dubious, was that within two decades it would have risen by that much since the 19th century.
Who, indeed, will guard these guardians?
(In this case, since you ask, it was Alex Epstein.)
Oh and again credit where due:
In its latest AR the IPCC has a process for reporting their errors to them.
And we might start with their belief that temperature has risen by 1.07C since 1850, just one of many absurdities highlighted by Fritz Vahrenholt.
Along with jacking up ECS from its previous 1.5-4.5 range, itself likely too high, to 2-5 with strong confidence that it’s between 2.5 and 4.
Which of course means that efforts to rein in models that even Gavin Schmidt had only two weeks ago called “insanely scary – and wrong” will fail,
as the models necessarily throw in endless ad hoc factors to prevent temperature from racing off the scale in both directions, overheating the future and overcooling the past.
This matter is no joke.
For twenty years now we’ve been told, nay browbeaten, with claims that the science is settled.
Year after year, decade after decade, we’ve been given model projections and told the debate is over.
And now they admit that, in fact, the models were out of control and getting worse.
(And yes, we told you so.)
But if so, if the models don’t work even when their creators, like Dr. Frankenstein late in the novel, are racing after them trying to stop them from running amok, what exactly is all this hoohah based on?
Note that it wasn’t just temperature.
Even their projections of greenhouse gas emissions, a crucial causal input at least inside the models, were no good.
Particularly the noxious RCP8.5.
Now it seems they have abandoned RCP for SSP.
But again, like an addict desperate to satisfy a craving, the SSP will make it worse not better.
The IPCC, and much both of the chattering classes and polite society, cannot now admit there’s no climate crisis because they’ve invested their credibility and moral worth in it for so long, so loudly and so intolerantly.
Which brings us to the most important point.
In the end, in the climate debate, the issue is not what some organization,
whose lucrative raison d’être is that there’s a looming man-made crisis,
says with repetitive, grating shrillness on the question of whether there’s a looming man-made crisis.
It’s whether ordinary people look out the window and see one.
For instance a CDN supporter notes on Facebook that “Here in Belgium, “experts” predicted a hot dry 2021 summer back in may.
Courtesy of climate change as you would expect.
It is the 5th coldest and wettest since 1833 and still climbing as more rain is predicted.
But now the rain is of course due... to climate change.”
For technical reasons we can’t link to that post, and of course anecdote is not evidence.
Either way, we might add.
But Belgium certainly did have a very cold spring and people notice that sort of stuff.
As older ones, at least, notice that Britain’s landmark really stinky hot summer was… in 1976.
And Tony Heller repeatedly points out that the incidence of severe heat waves in the United States has fallen erratically but steadily for some 90 years now,
while a new study says there has been “no temporal trend” in the frequency of compound weather disasters in Australia since 1966.
Meanwhile the NDP raved on that “While the Liberals drag their feet, Canadians have to endure the deadly and catastrophic impacts of the climate emergency.
In the past months alone, Canadians have struggled with record heat waves, droughts, flooding and other extreme weather conditions.
Lives have been lost, homes have been destroyed, and livelihoods endangered by the climate emergency.”
Bosh.
It matters whether those who take the data seriously see apparent evidence of ominous trends, of course.
And if you like that kind of thing, Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph just published a major paper saying the way the IPCC attributes climate change to greenhouse gases is mathematical nonsense, on which we will say more next week.
And plenty of other technical critiques of the Report, including its new and not improved hockey stick widely reprinted in otherwise reputable newspapers
that once again gives the business to the Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period, Dark Age cooling and Roman Warm Period,
are also available from technical analysts who actually did comb through AR6 with commendable speed and precision.
Of course the alarmists hope that it’s the “Code Red” shrieking that will carry the day.
But the real issue is that year after year, decade after decade, the warnings get shriller, like the addict needing more and more of a drug to “chase the dragon” of that first blissful high.
But the weather just stays weather.
Thursday, August 19, 2021
Thank You for 228,000 page views
Richard Greene
Bingham Farms, Michigan
BS, State University of New York, at Albany
MBA, Stern School of Business, at New York University
TBW, Trained By Wife
Audiophile
my favorite song today:
"People Make The World Go Round"
by The Stylistics