Climate Change

The reliability of the electric utility grid depends upon the availability of generation output equal to grid demand at all times. Historically, this has been accomplished by operating numerous generators at somewhat below full capacity, so that the output of those plants could be rapidly increased in the event of a significant increase in grid demand or the loss of a generator due to equipment failure. The reliability issue is most critical during periods of peak demand. Electric utilities typically have maintained a capacity reserve margin of approximately 15-20% relative to their peak demand to assure that grid demand could be met in the event of the loss of a generator.

Nuclear generators are typically base-loaded because of their low operating costs and their limited suitability for load following. Coal generators have typically been used for both base load and intermediate load applications. Natural gas combined-cycle generators offer flexible response to load changes and are the first to be adjusted to match changing demand. Natural gas simple-cycle turbines offer even faster response, but are rarely operated except during periods of peak demand because of their lower efficiency and thus higher operating costs.

The introduction of intermittent renewable generation to the existing electric utility grid requires several changes in the historical approaches to grid management. Unlike conventional generation systems, the output of intermittent renewable generators such as wind turbines and solar collectors can change frequently and uncontrollably throughout the day, requiring more rapid and somewhat less predictable response from conventional generation assets. Intermittent renewable generation can also be unavailable for periods of hours or days as the result of weather conditions.

Conventional generation assets must be available to meet grid demand during periods when either solar or wind output is unavailable or significantly reduced by weather conditions. At current levels of solar generation market penetration, the predictable unavailability of solar generation from late afternoon until morning is only an issue in the late afternoon / early evening period when the grid experiences what is referred to as the ”duck curve”, when solar generator output drops as residential and small commercial demand increases. This issue is beginning to be addressed with the introduction of 4-hour battery storage systems. Otherwise, grid demand is low when solar generation is unavailable.

Most electric utilities experience peak demand in summer, though many are now developing somewhat smaller winter peaks. Solar is generally available during the summer peak, though it is less available during winter peaks due to reduced insolation resulting from lower sun angles, shortened daylight hours, increased cloudiness and snow accumulation on the collectors. Wind may become unavailable for periods of days when the weather is hot and still. Wind turbines may also become unavailable in winter due to icing of the blades, unless they are equipped with blade heating capability.

Utility regulation currently requires renewable generator output to be used when available, but utilities must be prepared to meet grid demand regardless of renewable generation availability. This issue becomes more critical as the market penetration of intermittent renewable generation increases.

From: Climate Etc.

By: Judith Curry

Date: September 6, 2022

Climate scientists & politics: Simpleton versus wicked scientists

In which wicked scientists are the good guys.

Activism by climate scientists has been the topic of numerous prior blog posts at Climate Etc.  Such activism is generally focused on eliminating fossil fuels.  This post presents a new framing for the activism issue. While many scientists prefer to remain in the ivory tower, others desire to engage in the messiness of politics and policy making.  Why most scientists reject admonitions to “stay in their lane,” there are more and less useful ways for scientists to engage with politics.

Simpleton climate scientists

I’m defining ‘simpleton climate scientists’ to be academics, mostly in disciplines that are far afield from the core discipline of climate dynamics, who think that both the climate problem and its solutions are simple.  Their preferred modes of activism are twitter rants, demonstrations and increasingly civil disobedience.

The issue of simpleton scientists was brought to the forefront last week by a publication in Nature Climate Change entitled Civil disobedience by scientists helps press for urgent climate action.   The authors are faculty members in the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Cardiff: (continue reading)

Climate scientists & politics: Simpleton versus wicked scientists

Society employs incentives and disincentives in numerous ways to influence the actions of various members of society. Sometimes these incentives and disincentives are soft and subtle, while at other times they are brutal and explicit.

The US federal government’s effort to force the transition of the US energy economy from a mixed-fuel economy to an “all-electric everything” energy economy based on renewable electricity generation and storage is becoming a brutal and explicit combination of incentives and disincentives.

Developers of renewable electricity generation projects are provided a variety of federal and state incentives which accelerate their development, reduce their installation costs, offset a portion of their operating costs; and, provide generation priority when renewable generation is available. Government also touts that these renewable generators produce lower cost energy and will result in reduced energy costs, to encourage the public to support the transition to renewables. Similar incentives are available for the purchase of electric vehicles; and, the federal government has begun supporting development of the public fueling infrastructure for electric vehicles.

While these various incentives have encouraged the adoption of renewable generation and electric vehicles, the Administration has determined that the process is not proceeding as rapidly as necessary to support the US “commitments” under the Paris Accords. Therefore, government has imposed numerous disincentives to coal production, consumption and export; and, taken numerous steps to limit exploration for and production of domestic oil and natural gas.

The federal government has established a schedule for the elimination of coal-fired electric generation, as well as a schedule for the elimination of all fossil-fueled electric generation. It has also established a schedule for elimination of all fossil fuel consumption in the US. These schedules would ultimately result in the elimination of the coal, oil and natural gas industries, with the questionable exception of oil and gas for use as chemical feedstocks. These schedules would also end production of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines (ICE), requiring full conversion to electric vehicle production by 2035.

Significant questions remain regarding the practicality of heavy-duty electric vehicles, including over-the-road tractors, construction equipment, farm equipment, railroad engines, ships and aircraft. There are suggestions that these applications could be fueled with renewable fuels such as bio-diesel, ethanol or hydrogen.

The federal government is also currently proposing incentives for the installation of electric heat pumps and for the replacement of gas appliances with electric appliances, to achieve an “all-electric everything” energy economy by 2050. These replacements would impose significant costs over and above the cost of the replacement appliances and equipment, including building electric service upgrades, building electric wiring modifications and utility grid capacity expansion. The “all-electric everything” grid conversion combined with expected energy demand and consumption growth through 2050 would require the electric grid to expand by a factor of approximately four by 2050.

Growing public resistance to industrial wind farms, industrial solar collector arrays and electric transmission infrastructure might require more aggressive federal and state government involvement in siting approvals, including eminent domain actions.

        Beatings will continue until morale improves.

From: Watts Up With That

By: Andy May

Date: August 30, 2022

Are fossil-fuel CO2 emissions good or bad?

This is the transcript, with minor edits to get it into blog post format, of my keynote speech to the Division of Professional Affairs, at the second International Meeting for Applied Geoscience and Energy Convention in the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston on August 30, 2022.

In the great climate change debate between Princeton Professor, emeritus, William Happer and University of Melbourne Professor David Karoly, they were asked the following question by the moderator, James Barham:

“The IPCC’s official position may be summarized as making four claims: global warming is a well-established fact; it is anthropogenic; it is a major problem for humanity; and concerted global governmental action is required to combat it.”

James Barham and TheBestSchools.org

In this talk we will only cover a portion of the second and third parts of the question, which we rephrase as “Is burning fossil fuels and emitting CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere a good thing, or a bad thing for humanity.” The other facets of the question are well covered in my latest book. Much of this talk is from Chapter 10.

In answer to the question, Professor Happer wrote:

“There is no scientific evidence that global greenhouse gas emissions will have a harmful effect on climate. Quite the contrary, there is very good evidence that the modest increase in atmospheric CO2 since the start of the Industrial age has already been good for the Earth and that more will be better.” (continue reading)

Are fossil-fuel CO2 emissions good or bad?

China is aggressively pursuing economic development, including construction of numerous coal generating stations, steelmaking facilities and cement kilns. These actions, while inconsistent with the goal of the Paris Accords, are consistent with China’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). China proposed to achieve maximum carbon intensity by about 2030 and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. The current construction programs are intended to massively increase carbon intensity by 2030, while the developed economies are aggressively reducing carbon intensity. China would thus become the globe’s primary producer of steel and cement.

China has also positioned itself as the primary supplier of many of the rare earth minerals required for the fabrication of the renewable generation and battery storage equipment essential to the development of a renewable plus storage electric grid. They are also enhancing this position through their “Belt and Road” initiative, funding and building infrastructure projects across Asia and Africa, including countries which also possess large deposits of the same rare earth minerals.

China would likely continue to be a willing supplier of critical raw materials, processed materials and finished renewable energy generation and storage equipment as the developed nations expand their dependence on these systems as they pursue Net Zero CO2 emissions by 2050. However, after about 2040, the developed nations will begin to face the necessity to replace wind turbines, solar collectors and electric storage batteries to keep their electric grids functioning. The greatly reduced availability of conventional electric generation capacity and the increased dependence on renewables and storage in the developed economies would provide China with substantial geopolitical leverage. (The approaches followed by Russia in dealing with energy supplies to Europe and the UK provide some indication of potential Chinese approaches to dealing with the renewable generation and storage materials and equipment needs of the developed nations.)

The developed nations of Europe and the UK have played into the hands of Russia by closing coal and nuclear generation facilities and becoming dependent on renewables and Russian natural gas, rather than developing their own natural gas reserves. They are currently paying the price for those decisions. Those nations, plus the US, Canada and Australia are playing into the hands of China by allowing themselves to become dependent on Chinese materials and equipment, rather than developing their own domestic resources and materials processing and equipment manufacturing capabilities.

The availability of lower-cost steel, glass and cement from China discourages investment in competing facilities in the developed nations. That availability, combined with energy shortages in Europe and the UK, is already leading to closures of heavy industry facilities in numerous European countries. Tightened CO2 emissions regulations in the developed nations will also discourage heavy industry continuation and expansion in those nations, leading to further dependence on China and other developing nations which are continuing to rely upon and expand coal consumption.

The US is currently playing into China’s hands by limiting domestic oil and gas exploration and production opportunities, thus squandering its energy independence.

China, meanwhile, can pursue its “long game”, developing geopolitical leverage to be used at its convenience. With sufficient leverage, it could simply choose to ignore its INDCs and assume global governance.

From: Climate Depot

By: Jordan Peterson - The Daily Telegraph

Date: August 15, 2022

Jordan Peterson: Peddlers of environmental doom have shown their true totalitarian colors

Corporations and utopians are offering authoritarian solutions to crises only democracy and free markets can solve

Deloitte is the largest “professional services network” in the world. Headquartered in London, it is also one of the big four global accounting companies, offering audit, consulting, risk advisory, tax and legal services to corporate clients.

With a third of a million professionals operating on those fronts worldwide, and as the third-largest privately owned company in the US, Deloitte is a behemoth with numerous and far-reaching tentacles.

In short: it is an entity we should all know about, not least because such enterprises no longer limit themselves to their proper bailiwick (profit-centred business strategising, say), but – consciously or not – have assumed the role as councillors to believers in unchecked globalisation whose policies have sparked considerable unrest around the world.

If you’re seeking the cause of the Dutch agriculture and fisheries protests, the Canadian trucker convoy, the yellow-jackets in France, the farmer rebellion in India a few years ago, the recent catastrophic collapse of Sri Lanka, or the energy crisis in Europe and Australia, you can instruct yourself by the recent pronouncements from Deloitte.

Whilst not directly responsible, they offer an insight into the elite groupthink that has triggered these events; into the cabal of utopians operating in the media, corporate and government fronts, wielding a nightmarish vision of environmental apocalypse. (continue reading)

Jordan Peterson: Peddlers of environmental doom have shown their true totalitarian colors

Timing is not a particular issue in market-driven product, process or service transitions. The existing technology applications remain in the market and the new technology applications enter the market and replace them over time. The new technology applications might experience supply constraints early, depending on the consumer demand for the new technology, but the existing technology remains available if required.

However, in the case of non-market driven product, process or service transitions, timing can become a critical issue. This is currently the case with the government-driven transition to “net-zero” CO2 emissions and an “all-electric everything” energy market. The federal government has established hard goals for elimination of coal-fired electric generation (2030), elimination of all fossil-fueled electric generation (2035) and elimination of all fossil-fueled energy end uses (2050). Meeting these hard goals without major economic disruption requires that the new products, processes and services that would replace the existing fossil-fueled applications be fit for their intended uses and available in sufficient quantities to replace existing applications and satisfy the demands of new applications.

Replacing coal-fired generation over the next 8 years would require installation of renewable generation with at least twice to more than 3 times the rating plate capacity of the coal-fired generators, depending on the renewable generators selected for the application, plus the long-duration storage infrastructure necessary to make the renewable generation capacity dispatchable. That long-duration storage is not currently commercially available, and it is not certain that it would be available in sufficient quantities to support renewable plus storage replacement of all of the existing coal-fired generation by 2030. In the absence of such storage, the coal-fired powerplants cannot be shut down without causing major economic disruption due to grid unreliability.

Replacing natural gas generating plants by 2035 faces the same challenges regarding the availability of long-duration storage; and, those challenges would be even greater if current nuclear generation stations are not permitted to continue operating or are not replaced.

The economy will face additional challenges, beginning immediately but growing most rapidly in the period from 2035 to 2050 as all remaining fossil-fueled end uses are transitioned to electric end uses. This process has already begun with the introduction and incentivization of electric vehicles, but would accelerate rapidly after 2035 due to federal prohibitions on the manufacture of vehicles with internal combustion engines. The process has also already begun with local prohibitions on the use of natural gas in new buildings, which then requires all-electric construction.

Finally, the renewable plus storage grid must also grow to match the energy demands of a growing population and economy and, must do so economically.

There are current fossil-fueled industrial processes for which there are currently no electric alternatives, including iron and steel production and the calcining of limestone to produce cement. These processes, in particular, are essential to the production and installation of renewable generators, so acceptable alternative processes must be developed and tested. Offshoring the current processes would accomplish nothing from a climate change standpoint, since the CO2 emissions would still occur.

From: Climate Etc.

By: Judith Curry

Date: August 9, 2022

Apocalyptic versus post-apocalyptic climate politics

The Inflation Reduction Act that has passed in the US Senate contains a healthy dose of funding for energy and climate initiatives.  There is much discussion as to why this bill looks like it will pass, when previous climate bills (carbon tax, carbon cap and trade) failed.

The Senate bill includes billions of dollars in tax credits and subsidies for clean energy and electric vehicles. In addition to renewable-energy funding, there is also commitment to federal oil and gas expansion, albeit with fines for excessive methane leakage. The bill includes climate resiliency funding for tribal governments and Native Hawaiians and other disadvantaged areas disproportionately impacted by pollution and climate warming. Funds are also allocated to tackle drought remediation in the West.

I’ve received requests to write on this topic, here are some bits and pieces that I’ve pulled together.  My main points:

• Post-apocalyptic climate politics have a much better chance of succeeding than fear-driven apocalyptic climate politics
• Energy policy should be detached from climate policy to make a robust transition to a 21st century energy system that emphasizes abundant, cheap, reliable and secure power with minimal impact on the environment (including land use). (continue reading)

Apocalyptic versus post-apocalyptic climate politics

There are fundamentally two approaches to the adoption of new technology. The more common approach has been to introduce and market the product, process, or service embodying the new technology and allow the market to adopt the new technology based on its functional and/or economic advantages. The speed of the adoption process is a function of the relative importance and cost of the equipment or process and/or its relative desirability. The rise of air travel and the decline of rail travel is an example of this approach, as is the growth of air freight relative to rail freight. The rapid growth of package delivery services at the expense of the US. Postal Service is another example, as is the transition from snail-mail to e-mail.

The second approach combines law and/or regulation, government incentives, building codes and other non-market drivers. This approach is used by government to drive the adoption of new technology which is not perceived by the intended customers to offer sufficient functional and/or economic advantages to achieve market acceptance. DOE Appliance Efficiency Standards, DOT Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards, vehicle emission standards are examples of this approach. In some cases this approach has been used to remove existing technology from the market before the replacement technology is “ready for prime time”, frequently referred to as technology-forcing requirements or standards.

A more aggressive version of the second approach is being pursued to transition the US energy economy from reliance on oil for transportation, natural gas and coal for power generation, natural gas and electricity for residential, commercial space heating, water heating, food preparation and coal, natural gas and electricity for industrial process heating. The federal government has established timelines for the elimination of coal and later natural gas use for electric power generation, and for the elimination of fossil fuel for all other uses.

The government is pursuing a goal of “all-electric everything” by 2050 to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions. In the process, government is forcing the installation of redundant intermittent renewable generation, which displaces a portion of the output of the remaining fossil-fueled generation without replacing that generation capacity, since it is needed to support the grid when the intermittent generation is not functioning or is operating below rated capacity. This addition of redundant capacity increases overall generation investment and thus increases electricity cost, as does the management of the intermittent redundant capacity.

The ”all-electric everything” energy economy would require an electric grid with 3-4 times the capacity of the current grid, and with storage capacity sufficient to replace the conventional generation which currently supports the renewable portion of the generation fleet as well as to provide support for the additional renewable generation serving the greatly expanded “all-electric everything” grid. This approach is technology-forcing, in that the storage technology necessary to replace conventional generation as support for renewable generation is not currently commercially available. It is also technology-forcing since a reliable renewable plus storage grid without conventional generation support has not been demonstrated.

From: Climate Realism

By: Heartland Institute

Date: July 27, 2022

STUDY: 96% OF U.S. CLIMATE DATA IS CORRUPTED

MEDIA ADVISORY:

Official NOAA temperature stations produce corrupted data due to purposeful placement in man-made hot spots

Nationwide study follows up widespread corruption and heat biases found at NOAA stations in 2009, and the heat-bias distortion problem is even worse now

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (July 27, 2022) – A new study, Corrupted Climate Stations: The Official U.S. Surface Temperature Record Remains Fatally Flawed, finds approximately 96 percent of U.S. temperature stations used to measure climate change fail to meet what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) considers to be “acceptable” and  uncorrupted placement by its own published standards.

The report, published by The Heartland Institute, was compiled via satellite and in-person survey visits to NOAA weather stations that contribute to the “official” land temperature data in the United States. The research shows that 96% of these stations are corrupted by localized effects of urbanization – producing heat-bias because of their close proximity to asphalt, machinery, and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects. Placing temperature stations in such locations violates NOAA’s own published standards (see section 3.1 at this link), and strongly undermines the legitimacy and the magnitude of the official consensus on long-term climate warming trends in the United States.

“With a 96 percent warm-bias in U.S. temperature measurements, it is impossible to use any statistical methods to derive an accurate climate trend for the U.S.” said Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Anthony Watts, the director of the study. “Data from the stations that have not been corrupted by faulty placement show a rate of warming in the United States reduced by almost half compared to all stations.” (continue reading)

STUDY: 96% OF U.S. CLIMATE DATA IS CORRUPTED

President Biden spoke about his approach to destroying the US oil industry during a primary campaign debate in 2020. The approach focused on depriving the industry of supply through a combination of banning new exploration and drilling on federal lands and the application of new laws and regulations making industry operations more difficult and more expensive.

The Biden Administration has aggressively pursued this approach over the past 18 months, as documented here. The actions taken by the Administration have had a predictable effect on both gasoline and Diesel prices and availability. It is ludicrous to assume that a commitment by the federal government to destroy an industry would not create turmoil within the industry and among its customers.

The Administration has reacted to the resulting price increases and supply shortages by blaming the US oil industry and accusing it of price gouging; and, seeking production increases from OPEC. The Administration has even approached Venezuela and Iran about supplying additional oil. Only after these approaches to foreign suppliers has the Administration begun encouraging the US industry to increase production, while still maintaining the intent to put the industry out of business.

The US oil industry has modestly increased production from existing fields, but has been reluctant to invest in new E&P activity in the face of the Administration’s actions and threats of future actions. The Wall Street Journal recently described the industry’s approach as an “orderly liquidation” of current assets, including using increased revenues resulting from higher demand and prices to fund share buybacks and distributions to stockholders. This approach by the industry appears to be a reasonable exercise of fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders.

It seems likely that this “orderly liquidation” approach will spread to other energy industry participants under similar Administration threats to their futures. The owners and operators of coal mines and coal-fired power plants are faced with termination of their operation by 2030 and are unlikely to make any significant investments in their facilities in the interim. They would also likely terminate operations if faced with the necessity of major facility repairs or deteriorating market conditions. It is also unlikely that state utility commissions would approve incremental investments in coal facilities owned by utilities under their jurisdiction.

It also seems unlikely that either utility or non-utility generators would invest in new natural gas combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) generators, since their operations would be required to cease by 2035 to comply with the Administration’s goals. New CCGT generator facilities would have to be fully depreciated over 10 – 12 years, or 25-30% of their useful lives. Such rapid depreciation would further increase the cost of the electricity they generated.

There is no indication that such orderly liquidations would be offset by orderly installation of replacement facilities, particularly since the long-duration electricity storage technology necessary to render renewable generation facilities dispatchable is not currently commercially available, nor is there any schedule for its commercial availability of any indication of its likely cost and performance.

From: Watts Up With That

By: Paul MacRae

Date: July 18, 2022

A ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’ Coming Up? Crunching the Numbers

In a popular textbook on writing creative non-fiction, the authors echo a familiar claim of global-warming alarmists: that thanks to our carbon emissions, we are creating a “sixth mass extinction” that will wipe out most of the planet’s animals and possibly humanity itself. The authors write:

Your [the reader’s] life has witnessed the eclipse of hundreds of thousands of species, even if they passed out of this world without your awareness. (The current rate of species extinction is matched only by that of the age of the dinosaurs’ demise.)[emphasis added][1]

This belief in a “current” mass extinction (usually blamed on climate change but also, much more plausibly, on habitat encroachment) is widely held and often cited by the environmental and anti-global-warming movements.

For example, eco-crusader and former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, in his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, contended that we are losing 100 species a day, or almost 40,000 species a year.[2] Gore took this figure from a book by biologist Norman Myers; where Myers got his numbers is discussed below.

In his 2006 film and accompanying book, An Inconvenient Truth, Gore makes a similar although slightly vaguer claim:

Global warming, along with the cutting and burning of forests and other critical habitats, is causing the loss of living species at a level comparable to the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That event was believed to have been caused by a giant asteroid. This time it is not an asteroid colliding with the Earth and wreaking havoc; it is us. (continue reading)

A ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’ Coming Up? Crunching the Numbers

The United Nations and several national governments have begun referring to climate change as an existential threat, meaning a threat to the future existence of life on earth. This is a political position intended to draw attention to the issue and incite fear in the population. Several national polls suggest that the effort has not been particularly successful, as the general population rates climate change as a relatively low-level concern, despite a coordinated government and media campaign.

You would think that, if global governments actually believed that climate change driven by CO2 emissions represented an existential threat, they would be united in aggressive efforts to eliminate CO2 emissions. However, numerous nations, led by China and India, are embarked on concerted efforts to build new coal-fired generating stations, which would increase their CO2 emissions and global CO2 emissions as well. Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam are also pursuing new coal power plant construction, as are Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Clearly, these countries believe that failure to develop their economies is a greater threat than climate change.

The EU and the UK, which have been at the forefront of the “global” CO2 emissions reduction efforts, are reviewing their plans to close coal-fired generators and are considering reopening some closed coal-fired generators. Several of these nations are also reconsidering their plans to close nuclear generating facilities in the face of growing energy shortages and rapidly rising energy prices.

The US is still pursuing an effort to eliminate coal-fired generation by 2030 and to eliminate all fossil-fueled generation by 2035. However, there is growing concern in the US that fossil-fueled generating capacity is being eliminated far faster than it is being replaced with renewable generation and storage. This issue is projected to result in increased rolling blackouts in the US this summer, as cooling demand increases. This issue will only become of greater concern as electricity demand increases as a result of the effort to electrify the entire economy and completely eliminate the burning of fossil fuels for any purpose.

The efforts in the developed nations to eliminate fossil fuel use in favor of renewables plus storage is an existential threat to industries in those nations, which are already faced with rising energy prices and reduced energy availability. Many industrial plants in the UK and the EU have closed or significantly reduced production as the result of increased energy costs and restricted energy availability. This issue is likely to expand to the US, Canada and Australia if current national policies remain unchanged.

Meanwhile, China is investing heavily in the metals and cement industries, which are major fossil fuel users and CO2 emitters. The increased availability of low-cost coal-generated electricity to power the metals industries in China and the availability of coal for cement production would render those industries in nations reducing CO2 emissions uncompetitive in global markets with lower-cost Chinese metals and cement.

These developments would leave the US, the UK, the EU, Canada and Australia heavily dependent on China for metals and cement, as well as for the rare earth minerals necessary for wind generators and solar cells. Arguably, this growing dependence on China is a greater existential threat than climate change.

From: Watts Up With That

By: edmhdotme

Date: July 10, 2022

Global Man-Made CO2 emissions 1965 – 2021: BP Data

Introduction

Every summer BP publish their statistical review of world energy.

https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy/co2-emissions.html

One element of their comprehensive set of spreadsheets is a table of CO2 emissions country by country since 1965.  For the purposes of this post, the CO2 emissions data provided by BP here is assumed to be valid.  This post reviews the 2022 update to the BP data.

The 2022 dataset accounts for the 2020 effect of the Covid-19 epidemic, the CO2 emissions resulting in the aftermath of the epidemic, its impact on Global economic activity and the outcome for the recovery of Man-made CO2 emissions in 2021.

The progress of the proportions of CO2 emissions since 1965 is shown above, with the  Developed world now being responsible for about 37% of Man-made CO2 emissions as opposed to as much as 86% back in 1965. (continue reading)

Global Man-Made CO2 emissions 1965 – 2021: BP Data

Definition of information

1a(1) : knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction
    (2) : intelligence, news
    (3) : facts, data

Definition of misinformation

: incorrect or misleading information

Definition of disinformation

: false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth

Source: Merriam-Webster

Society is awash in information, but not all of that information is factual, even when it has been asserted as such. The desire to separate the factual from the non-factual and the counter-factual has led to the establishment of fact-checking organizations and fact-checking functions within media organizations. However, recent revelations regarding dossiers and laptops, among others, have demonstrated that several of the fact-checkers were not actually checking facts, but rather reinforcing narratives and commenting on failure of narrative compliance by those whom they were checking.

The US federal government, through the Department of Homeland Security, has now established a Disinformation Governance Board (“Ministry of Truth”) to function as the “official” fact-checker. DHS has stated that the Disinformation Governance Board would be focused on foreign disinformation which threatens national security. The Board got off to a rocky start when the individual appointed as its director was identified as a hyper-partisan liberal who had propounded narrative affirming disinformation regarding dossiers and laptops; and, when the Administration had to admit to being the source of two instances of disinformation  Reportedly, two hyper-partisan liberals have now been selected to review the mission of the Board.

While the Board’s mission is supposed to be foreign-focused, it seems highly likely that the Board will rapidly experience “mission creep” (mission leap?) to two high profile issues which have been the focus of the self-appointed fact-checkers: Covid and climate. Ironically, the federal government has been a primary source of information, misinformation and disinformation on each of these issues.

Perhaps the most obvious and egregious examples of government climate disinformation are the repeated assertions that climate change has produced a “crisis”, or that there is a climate “emergency”, or that climate change is an “existential threat”. These assertions are not scientifically factual, but rather are political posturing to influence public opinion. These government assertions are based on the outputs of unverified and unvalidated climate models which project a variety of potential future climate scenarios, no more than one of which could possibly be accurate, if any. Simply put, there is no such thing as a future fact, though something might become a fact in the future. While climate change might become a “crisis”, or an “emergency”, or an “existential threat” at some undefined point in the future, it certainly is none of those things now.

The production of scary scenarios based on totally unrealistic projections of future GHG concentrations is also disinformation, intended to influence public opinion.

Asserting that sea level is rising at the rate measured by the various satellite instruments when those measurements are inconsistent with the far longer tide gauge history and the reasons for the inconsistency are not understood is, at the very least, misinformation.

Asserting that global average near-surface temperature or global average sea surface temperature anomalies are known to two decimal place accuracy is also at least misinformation. The measurements on which those assertions are based have been “adjusted”, and are therefore no longer data, but merely estimates and thus not factual.

Assertions that the science is settled are at least misinformation, since science is never settled. The assertion of a consensus of 97% of climate scientists in the absence of a clear description of the subject of the consensus is disinformation.

Arguably, the reporting of these issues in the media constitutes misinformation, since the media did not create the information but is merely reporting the disinformation provided to them.