Some recent climate news:
Fake Scary Sea Level Rise Predictions
NOAA has provided its own version of Grimms Fairy Tales with its “2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report.”
As all too usual, it finds sea level rise where land is subsiding, and, strangely, where land is not subsiding.
One can say that melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica may not cause sea level rise, depending on where one lives.
Writing in ICECAP, Joseph D’Aleo explains the mystery:
“However, the new satellite and radar altimeter data lacked the resolution to accurately measure sea levels down to the mm [millimeter] level.
Moreover, the raw data from this technology also conflicted with Alarmists’ claims.
As a result, adjustments to this data were also made - most notably a Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA).
GIA assumes that basically all land is rebounding from long ago glaciations and oceanic basins are deepening.
The assumption is that this rebounding is masking the true sea level rise.
Alarmists continue to proclaim that their models project a rapid acceleration of sea level rise over the next 30 to 70 years,
when those same models have failed to even come close to accurately predicting the past 25 years.”
Nothing like adjusting data to suit one’s needs.
In a 2014 debate sponsored by the American Physical Society, William Collins of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and an IPCC modeler
stated it was common procedure to adjust (tune) global climate models to (pas, actual) surface temperatures, then to discard the adjustments when making predictions / projections.
This is nonsense, but none-the-less it is done.
Still, the question of how good the surface temperature record is remains.
Tony Heller and others have demonstrated that the US data has been heavily manipulated by lowering past temperatures.
There appears to be no clear record of the adjustments, thus the data are meaningless.
The next largest area for which data of reasonable density exists is Europe.
The journal Atmosphere just published an article describing an investigation by independent scientists into the European surface temperature data and the results show that the data are poor – unreliable.
The abstract states:
“A remarkable inconsistency in the identified breakpoints (and hence adjustments applied) was revealed.
Of the adjustments applied for GHCN [Global Historical Climatology Network] Version 4, 64% (61% for Version 3) were identified on less than 25% of runs, while only 16% of the adjustments (21% for Version 3) were identified consistently for more than 75% of the runs.
The consistency of PHA [“Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm] adjustments improved when the breakpoints corresponded to documented station history metadata events.
However, only 19% of the breakpoints (18% for Version 3) were associated with a documented event within 1 year, and 67% (69% for Version 3) were not associated with any documented event.
Therefore, while the PHA remains a useful tool in the community’s homogenization toolbox, many of the PHA adjustments applied to the homogenized GHCN dataset may have been spurious.”
The Global Historical Climatology Network is the responsibility of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).
Francis Menton quotes NOAA and writes:
“’NOAAGlobalTempv5 is a reconstructed dataset, meaning that the entire period of record is recalculated each month with new data.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-2-18-the-greatest-scientific-fraud-of-all-time-part-xxix
Based on those new calculations, the new historical data can bring about updates to previously reported values.
These factors, together, mean that calculations from the past may be superseded by the most recent data and can affect the numbers reported in the monthly climate reports.’
“Yes, ‘calculations from the past may be superseded by the most recent data.’ Huh?”
This simply and plainly rewriting history and has absolutely no basis in facts.
Simply put, we don’t know how good the data record is and have no way of knowing.
NOAA’s NCEI cannot be trusted with keeping records.
Fake Greatest Drought Scaremongering
Nature Climate Change published a paper using a new method for measuring drought, soil moisture deficit, which was used to claim the US Southwest is experiencing the worst drought since 800 AD.
Meteorologist Cliff Mass points out that the duration of the greatest drought is unusual.
The IPCC usually considers that for climate change to take effect, it takes at least 30 years, anything less can just be a shift in weather.
Mass writes:
“Now, I am not a little surprised that none of the "curious" media stopped for a moment and asked: why did these researchers pick 22 years?
Why not 25 years, 30 years, or 50 years?
“The answer is that their whole narrative, their whole claim of unusual drought, would have weakened greatly if they had used 25 years or 30 years or anything longer.”
“A NOAA website just came up and using it I have plotted the Palmer Drought Severity Index for the whole Southwest.
I put a line on the year 2000.
You will see that the Williams et al study selected the driest period for analysis, the optimally dry period, with a much wetter period preceding.
Such a rapid transition is not the expected impact of global warming, which would tend to change temperature/moisture gradually.”
Simply put, journalists who accept what scientists say without questioning and doing their own research can mislead the public.
Borrowing from Hollywood publicity, the UN has begun a propaganda blitz for its upcoming, politically negotiated, final Summary for Policymakers of its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6, 2021 & 2022).
It promises horrors so extreme that they don’t know what they are, yet.
Keeping up with the tall tales, NOAA released a report on sea level rise along the Atlantic coast.
This was quickly demolished by facts, a quaint concept that parts of NOAA have abandoned.
Also discussed are further revaluations of manipulation of the European temperature record, supposedly kept in secret by NOAA.
The Journal Atmosphere published a paper by a group of independent scientists, including SEPP director Willie Soon, who exposed unjustified manipulation of temperature records entrusted to NOAA.
This manipulated surface data is used by climate modelers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the ill-named NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA-GISS).
A paper published by Nature Climate Change proclaimed that the US Southwest is experiencing the driest period in 1,200 years.
It depends on what their definition of what the period is.
Benefits of Carbon Dioxide:
Matt Ridley has an excellent essay on some of the benefits of human emissions of carbon dioxide causing a modest warming. https://elonionbloggle.blogspot.com/2022/02/why-global-warming-is-good-for-us-by.html
The benefits include the general greening of the Earth, as shown by NASA satellites, with new green leaves encompassing an area equal to three Great Britains each year.
Also, there are far fewer deaths in Britain from extreme cold, a greater killer than hot weather.
Globally, extreme weather deaths, heat and cold, are declining, daytime highs in the tropics are increasing very slowly.
“Globally, deaths from droughts, floods and storms are down by about 98 per cent over the past 100 years
– not because weather is less dangerous
but because shelter, transport and communication (which are mostly the products of the fossil-fuel economy) have dramatically improved people’s ability to survive such natural disasters.”
Rather than condemning the fossil fuels industries, the Biden and other administrations in western countries should be thanking them.
Instead, they are doing whatever they can to damage these industries and the economies of their nations.
Unfortunately, the IPCC and its followers forget the benefits of warming and carbon dioxide emissions in their attempts to frighten the public, especially children.
Finally, the Biden White House has come out with a “fact sheet” on industrial energy use.
It is long on promised subsidies and short on facts.
Biden Lack of Climate Fact Sheet
Illustrating how divorced it is from reality the White House produced a “fact sheet.”
The highlights include:
“...major clean hydrogen initiatives
...first-ever Buy Clean Task Force
...carbon-based trade policies to reward American manufacturers of clean steel and aluminum
...guidance on responsible deployment of Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Sequestration (CCUS) technologies
...Initiative for Interdisciplinary Industrial Decarbonization Research...”
“$8 billion for Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs
...$1 billion for a Clean Hydrogen Electrolysis Program
...$1 billion for a Clean Hydrogen Electrolysis Program...”
What stood out was:
“To further support DOE’s Hydrogen Shot to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen by 80% to $1 for one kilogram in one-decade,
last week DOE announced $28 million for R&D and front-end engineering design projects to advance clean hydrogen in industrial uses, as well as the transportation and electricity sectors.”
Apparently, the “experts” behind the Hydrogen Shot do not understand that the Apollo “Moon Shot” required scientists and engineers to rigorously test their concepts against physical evidence, solid data, not manipulated fluff which is used as data today.
The “fact sheet” is the stuff that pipe dreams are made of.
Of course, some industry executives will take all they can get.
Battery Storage Costs Number of the Week:
$1289/kWh v. $0.1059/kWh.
Moss Landing, California, is the largest battery storage facility in the US at 400MW/1,600MWh capacity.
A commercial facility, according to its website:
“As of February 2022, the average storage system cost in Moss Landing, CA is $1289/kWh.
Given a storage system size of 13 kWh, an average storage installation in Moss Landing, CA ranges in cost from $14,246 to $19,274, with the average gross price for storage in Moss Landing, CA coming in at $16,760.”
According to the latest figures from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), in 2020 the average cost of generating electricity in the US was $0.1059/kWh and California with high penetration of solar power at $0.1800/kWh.
Those who talk about costs of solar and wind power coming down never get around to talking about costs of storage.
Now we know why."