Quote of the Week:
“I belong to those theoreticians who know by direct observation what it means to make a measurement. Methinks it were better if there were more of them.
– Erwin Schrödinger: Life and Thought (1989, 1998),
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President,
Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Summary:
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has not upset the scheduled barrage of UN reports claiming fossil fuels are dangerous to humanity. In time for the World Economic Forum, where the wealthy fly into Davos, Switzerland, in their private jets to lament how the use of fossil fuels by the poor and middle class is a threat to humanity, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released a report claiming that four threats from fossil fuels have reached record levels. TWTW will address each of these four threats with physical evidence.
Craig Idso has an essay on how increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) improves water use efficiency. The essay is supported by hundreds of studies of the physical world, both in laboratories and by observations. In proclaiming threats from CO2, the UN ignores the benefits.
Before he started his series of videos “The Big 5 Natural Causes of Climate Change,” ecologist Jim Steele had another series titled “How Pressure Systems Control the Climate.” Several episodes will be discussed including “The Decline in Extreme Weather” which contradicts many of the claimed threats from carbon dioxide.
As Richard Feynman wrote:
“If there is something very slightly wrong in our definition of the theories, then the full mathematical rigor may convert these errors into ridiculous conclusions.” Unfortunately, in many organizations, ridiculous conclusions from using mathematics are accepted as science. TWTW will discuss a few new ones.
Scholar and writer Vaclav Smil wrote: “Four materials rank highest on the scale of necessity, forming what I have called the four pillars of modern civilization: cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia are needed in larger quantities than are other essential inputs.” To this list, TWTW adds reliable energy. All are under attack by the UN and its followers. Discussed below are Smil’s estimates of what is needed in the near future, not the far away land of climate modelers.
... In the pursuit of green dreams, some American politicians and their supporters are showing the judgement of drunken sailors. Francis Menton has an essay exposing the judgement of a California think tank asserting California can go to 85% carbon free energy by 2030.
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World Meteorological Organization's Four Fake Climate Fears:
On January 6, 1941, in his annual message to Congress (State of the Union Address) Franklin Roosevelt made the case for American involvement in helping Britain in World War II. According to the FDR library the address articulate “four freedoms: the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear.”
“The ideas enunciated in the Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms were the foundational principles that evolved into the Atlantic Charter declared by Winston Churchill and FDR in August 1941; the United Nations Declaration of January 1, 1942 [the UN did not exist until 1945]; President Roosevelt’s vision for an international organization that became the United Nations after his death; and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948 through the work of Eleanor Roosevelt.”
Now the UN and its World Meteorological Organization (WMO) are articulating four fears from human emissions of CO2.
“Greenhouse gas concentrations, sea-level rise, ocean heat and ocean acidification -- all of which have been established to be significantly impacted by human activity -- set new records in 2021, according to the State of the Global Climate 2021 report released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) this week.”
Four Fears – 1:
CO2 and Temperature:
Humanity is to fear greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, for no clear reason. The WMO report shows increasing surface temperatures from six sources since 1850. Largely these are land based, highly scattered records from the US and Europe. The record begins in a time of cold weather marked by great famines from changing weather and drought. For example, during the Taiping Rebellion, drought, and famine from 1850 to 1873 an estimated 60,000,000 people died in China. The Finnish famine from 1866 to 1868 took about 15% of the population. (Church records are good there.) From 1876 to 1879 a famine took 15,000,000 to 19,000,000 in Northern China, India, and Brazil.
Supported by an extensive database of experiments
and observations Craig Idso writes:
“And as CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use continue to increase in the years and decades ahead, the observed positive enhancements to plant water use efficiency will increase even more, as the authors of this Nature Communications study further report a 10% increase in atmospheric CO2 induces a 14% increase in global water use efficiency. “So it is that nature truly benefits from rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Far from being a pollutant, atmospheric CO2 is necessary for enhancing life.”
In a previous essay Idso wrote:
“Over the past five decades literally thousands of laboratory and field-based studies have been conducted to examine growth-related responses of plants at higher levels of atmospheric CO2. These CO2-enrichment studies, as they are called, are near unanimous in what they have found— increased levels of CO2 significantly enhance plant photosynthesis and stimulate growth.”
“Based on the numerous experiments listed there, I can tell you that, typically, a 300-ppm increase in the air’s CO2 content (note that the planet has already experienced approximately half of such increase since the Industrial Revolution began and will complete this full 300 ppm increase before the end of this century) will raise the productivity of most herbaceous plants by about one-third, which stimulation is generally manifested by an increase in the number of branches and tillers, more and thicker leaves, more extensive root systems, and more flowers and fruit.”
According to the WMO we are to fear that which gives freedom from want?
The second fear discussed in the WMO document is increasing ocean heat content. As discussed by Jim Steele in his essays on “How Pressure Systems Control Climate- Part 3. How the Sun and Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) Controlled Climate and Civilization Collapse” the infrared energy bouncing around in the atmosphere from the greenhouse effect does not penetrate ocean depths. It penetrates about 0.000001 meter (one micron). [It is indisputable, that it’s all absorbed within a millimeter.] The greenhouse effect does not significantly add to ocean heat content. Sunlight does. The WMO has its physics wrong.
Further, as Steele discusses the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is not properly understood. El Niños are the exception. The normal periods are nothing or El Niñas. El Niños release stored heat from the oceans and make the earth’s surface and atmosphere warmer. This can be seen in the atmospheric temperature records, where temperatures spiked during El Niños.
By contrast, although WMO claims that La Niñas are unusual cooling events, they are normal events during which sunlight warms the eastern Pacific, off South America, and prevailing winds blow the warm water across the Pacific to what Steele calls the “Maritime Continent” (the islands of Indonesia and the western Pacific.) This is where water builds up by as much as a meter or more (3 feet). It is here in the western Pacific and eastern Indian Oceans that heat energy is normally released.
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Four Fears – 3: Sea Level Rise:
On page 9 of its report the WMO displays a standard trick of climate propagandists – it shows three rates of sea level rise taken by three different types of satellite instruments. The first covers Jan 1993 to Dec 2002 and has a rate of rise of 2.1 mm/year (8 inches per century). The last covers Jan 2013 to Jan 2022 and has a rate of rise 4.5 mm/yr (18 inches per century). This increasing rise is used to claim acceleration in sea level rise. There is no effort to standardize or calibrate measurements from different types of instruments or from geologically stable tidal gauges. WMO does not address the quality of its measurements.
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Four Fears – 4: Ocean Acidification:
To justify that oceans are becoming acidic, the WMO shows a range of estimates from the Met Office based on data from the Copernicus Marine Service. TWTW was unable to locate the data at Copernicus, but the WMO cited its offspring, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its latest report. (AR6, 2021).
Page 75 of the Technical Summary of AR6 has a graph showing a decline in ocean pH from about 8.2 in 1850 to as low as 7.7 in 2100. Of course, the concept of pH was not conceived in 1850 so the earlier number is a sheer guess. Contrary to the claim of acidification, a pH of 7.7 is still alkaline, though the graph indicates it is high acidity. Further, the “acidification” is dependent on the absorption of carbon dioxide in a warming ocean? When water warms it gives of gases. Further, as CO2 is a weak acid it does not ionize well.
Thus, the natural occurring buffering compounds such as chloride and sodium from salt, as well as calcium, hydrogen carbonate (bicarbonate) and carbonate ions will minimize any lowering of pH. The White Cliffs of Dover and the marine calcifying organisms are safe. Most of the organisms evolved in an environment far richer in CO2 than today.
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Questionable Award:
David Attenborough misled the public into believing that climate change was forcing walruses to fall off cliffs when polar bears actually pursued them. There is far too much of the type of propaganda. The two parent organizations to the UN IPCC are the UN WMO and UN Environmental Program (UNEP). Last month UNEP gave a ‘Champion of the Earth’ award to Attenborough for his programs on the natural world. Apparently, it is not the natural world that UNEP is concerned with, but support for its version of nature, no matter how far off it is.
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Mathematical Malpractice?
The Lancet and GeoHealth published studies on estimates of how many people die from air pollution. The abstract of the GeoHealth article states:
“In this study, we estimate health benefits resulting from the elimination of emissions of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides from the electric power, transportation, building, and industrial sectors in the contiguous US. We use EPA's CO-Benefits Risk Assessment screening tool to estimate health benefits resulting from the removal of PM2.5- related emissions from these energy-related sectors.”
EPA has no physical evidence that PM2.5 causes respiratory damage. It is all based on speculation and belongs in a group of studies that should be called mathematical absurdities.
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Four Important Materials Needed!
Scholar and writer Vaclav Smil wrote: “Four materials rank highest on the scale of necessity, forming what I have called the four pillars of modern civilization: cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia are needed in larger quantities than are other essential inputs.” To this list, TWTW adds reliable energy.
Largely unnoticed, ammonia is critical for artificial fertilizer. As Jo Nova posts, Smil writes further:“The world now produces annually about 4.5 billion tons of cement, 1.8 billion tons of steel, nearly 400 million tons of plastics, and 180 million tons of ammonia. But it is ammonia that deserves the top position as our most important material: its synthesis is the basis of all nitrogen fertilizers, and without their applications it would be impossible to feed, at current levels, nearly half of today’s nearly 8 billion people.”
These materials require intensive energy. If there is a global threat to modern population it is from those who fear fossil fuels and the benefits they deliver.
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NASA Knew?
Writing in WUWT, David Dibbell mentions an essay posted on the NASA website in 2009 on climate and the earth’s energy budget by Rebecca Lindsey.
The NASA post begins:
“The Earth’s climate is a solar powered system. Globally, over the course of the year, the Earth system—land surfaces, oceans, and atmosphere—absorbs an average of about 240 watts of solar power per square meter (one watt is one joule of energy every second). The absorbed sunlight drives photosynthesis, fuels evaporation, melts snow and ice, and warms the Earth system.
“The Sun doesn’t heat the Earth evenly. Because the Earth is a sphere, the Sun heats equatorial regions more than polar regions. The atmosphere and ocean work non-stop to even out solar heating imbalances through evaporation of surface water, convection, rainfall, winds, and ocean circulation. This coupled atmosphere and ocean circulation is known as Earth’s heat engine.
“The climate’s heat engine must not only redistribute solar heat from the equator toward the poles, but also from the Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere back to space. Otherwise, Earth would endlessly heat up. Earth’s temperature doesn’t infinitely rise because the surface and the atmosphere are simultaneously radiating heat to space. This net flow of energy into and out of the Earth system is Earth’s energy budget.”
Without identifying it, the essay discusses the Stephan-Boltzmann law discussed by Howard Hayden in his lessons on Basic Climate Physics.
Temperature doesn’t infinitely rise, however, because atoms and molecules on Earth are not just absorbing sunlight, they are also radiating thermal infrared energy (heat).
The amount of heat a surface radiates is proportional to the fourth power of its temperature. If temperature doubles, radiated energy increases by a factor of 16 (2 to the 4th power). If the temperature of the Earth rises, the planet rapidly emits an increasing amount of heat to space. This large increase in heat loss in response to a relatively smaller increase in temperature—referred to as radiative cooling— is the primary mechanism that prevents runaway heating on Earth.
The atmosphere and the surface of the Earth together absorb 71 percent of incoming solar radiation, so together, they must radiate that much energy back to space for the planet’s average temperature to remain stable.
However, the relative contribution of the atmosphere and the surface to each process (absorbing sunlight versus radiating heat) is asymmetric. The atmosphere absorbs 23 percent of incoming sunlight while the surface absorbs 48.
The atmosphere radiates heat equivalent to 59 percent of incoming sunlight; the surface radiates only 12 percent. In other words, most solar heating happens at the surface, while most radiative cooling happens in the atmosphere. How does this reshuffling of energy between the surface and atmosphere happen?
“Why doesn’t the natural greenhouse effect cause a runaway increase in surface temperature? Remember that the amount of energy a surface radiates always increases faster than its temperature rises—outgoing energy increases with the fourth power of temperature. As solar heating and “back radiation” from the atmosphere raise the surface temperature, the surface simultaneously releases an increasing amount of heat—equivalent to about 117 percent of incoming solar energy. The net upward heat flow, then, is equivalent to 17 percent of incoming sunlight (117 percent up minus 100 percent down).
“Some of the heat escapes directly to space, and the rest is transferred to higher and higher levels of the atmosphere, until the energy leaving the top of the atmosphere matches the amount of incoming solar energy.
Because the maximum possible amount of incoming sunlight is fixed by the solar constant (which depends only on Earth’s distance from the Sun and very small variations during the solar cycle), the natural greenhouse effect does not cause a runaway increase in surface temperature on Earth.”
After discussing the different absorption properties of water vapor and CO2, the paper concludes:
“The changes we have seen in the climate so far are only part of the full response we can expect from the current energy imbalance, caused only by the greenhouse gases we have released so far. Global average surface temperature has risen between 0.6 and 0.9 degrees Celsius in the past century, and it will likely rise at least 0.6 degrees in response to the existing energy imbalance.
“As the surface temperature rises, the amount of heat the surface radiates will increase rapidly [as the 4th power of T, discussed above.] If the concentration of greenhouse gases stabilizes, then Earth’s climate will once again come into equilibrium, albeit with the “thermostat”—global average surface temperature—set at a higher temperature than it was before the Industrial Revolution.
“However, as long as greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise, the amount of absorbed solar energy will continue to exceed the amount of thermal infrared energy that can escape to space. The energy imbalance will continue to grow, and surface temperatures will continue to rise.”
Hayden’s papers show that there is little imbalance. Further, as Hayden, Happer, and Lindzen have made clear, cloudiness is an issue that needs resolving.
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California 85% carbon free electricity = triple needed capacity?
Using a model called RESOLVE, a couple of think tanks published a study on how California can go to 85% carbon-free electricity by 2030. Francis Menton goes through the calculations and concludes:
“So, what will be the cost of all of this? Building capacity to a level that is triple peak usage; keeping an entire back-up natural gas system fully maintained but idle at least 85% of the time; and adding sufficient storage to deal with the seasonality of wind and solar? Three times the cost of the current system would seem conservative. Five times is more likely. And of course, this Report does not address the cost issue.”
Cost of implication is totally lost to green grand planners, as well as feasibility (or what TWTW terms "proof of concept").
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Number of the Week: One per 10,000.
The headlines said: “Extreme heat linked to rise in US death rates: study.” The abstract said: “In this cross-sectional study using a longitudinal analysis of county-level monthly all-cause mortality rates from all counties in the contiguous US from 2008 to 2017, each additional extreme heat day in a month was associated with 0.07 additional death per 100 000 adults.”
According to the CDC the death rate in the US in 2017 was 731.9 per 100,000. Looking at mortality rates, by county, these doctors could pick up one additional death per 10,000 deaths as being from heat? And JAMA published it? The funding was from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the American Heart Association. Talk about mathematical malpractice!