Climate Change

“Technology forcing is a regulatory strategy that establishes currently unachievable and uneconomic performance standards to be met at some future point in time. ... Basically, technology forcing sets regulatory standards and provides incentives for achieving the standards or disincentives for not achieving them.”

Existing new technologies are typically expensive as the result of limited manufacturing experience and low production volume. Non-existing new technologies will also be expensive, once developed, for the same reasons. Experience shows that new technology costs decrease as the technology is refined and as production volume increases.

Early applications of new technologies typically require significant subsidies and/or government mandates to offset the higher costs and help overcome market resistance to change. Current examples include solar and wind electric generation systems, biofuel production and hybrid and electric vehicles. These relationships have been extensively studied.

Initial cost is heavily influenced by the ratio of initial production capacity to initial production volume since manufacturing overhead is initially distributed over a production volume significantly below production capacity. The overhead portion of product cost declines as the production rate increases toward production capacity. The existence of incentives and mandates can accelerate the increase in production rate by offsetting market resistance.

The other major component of higher initial cost is technology maturity. This component is far less sensitive to incentives and mandates. Also, the extent to which technology maturity will ultimately reduce cost is indeterminant, as is the rate at which maturity will occur. However, since new technology initially bears higher costs, the rate at which the technology is incentivized / forced into the market contributes to the long-term cost of technology implementation, since a higher percentage of the technology installations will occur at the earlier higher costs.

A critical example of this rate of forcing issue is battery storage systems for electric vehicles and grid-scale battery storage systems to offset the intermittency of renewable generation facilities such as wind and solar. EV battery technology has advanced significantly over the past decade. However, the batteries are still the predominant cause of the cost difference between ICE vehicles and EVs. The EV batteries also require replacement within the expected life of the EV; and battery life is shortened by rapid charging. The EV’s batteries also limit vehicle range, both because of their limited capacity and because of the time required to recharge them.

Grid-scale battery storage systems are in the very early stage of implementation and their current applications are limited to grid stabilization and short-term intermittency compensation. However, as the fossil generators which provide power during periods of wind and solar unavailability are decommissioned in favor of additional intermittent generation, grid-scale storage will be required to power the grid for periods of one or more days. The quantity of energy which must be stored in such scenarios is massive. The current cost of the battery capacity required to support the national grid would approach $100 trillion. These battery costs will certainly decline as the technology advances and production capacity and production rate increase. However, the extent to which the cost will be reduced and the rate at which that will occur are uncertain; and, the shorter the implementation schedule for a net zero electric grid, the higher the system implementation costs will be.

TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing As a Free Lunch)

From: CO2 Coalition

By: Gregory Wrightstone

Date: May 27, 2021

Fact-checking the Fact-checkers

"What Climate Feedback gets wrong in its attempted takedown of CO2 Coalition commentary

On Earth Day this year, the Washington Times published an op-ed that I wrote titled “There is no climate emergency – We love CO2 and so should you.” Not long after publication, the paper’s Facebook post on the commentary was labeled “false and misleading” and their ad for it was rejected. This was based on a lengthy “fact-check” titled Washington Times presents list of false and misleading statements about the impacts of CO2 and climate change by Climate Feedback (CF). It was composed by eight scientists and upon detailed review of their “fact-check,” it became clear why they were not labeled “experts.”

In order to rebut this review, I asked six of the top experts in the world in various fields related to climate change to assess the statements by the Climate Feedback reviewers for accuracy and validity. All the scientists I consulted are members of the CO2 Coalition, a non-profit scientific coalition based in Arlington, Va. All agree that there is no man-made climate emergency.  

Since many of the sections contain duplicative statements alleging various supposed “false” claims and statements in my commentary, I have distilled them to eleven primary statements of supposed “fact” used to “debunk” the op-ed. Climate Feedback claims and quotes are in red.

In each case, we find that the Climate Feedback reviewers are the scientists providing muddled, misleading, and false information.

CF Claim #1" ...

Fact-checking the Fact-checkers

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Biden Administration has produced a new US INDC (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions) after rejoining the Paris Accords. The new INDC roughly doubles the “ambition” of the previous INDC offered by the Obama Administration, calling for a 50% reduction in US CO2 emissions relative to 2005 by 2030 and achievement of net zero emissions by 2050. Even though this new INDC has not satisfied some environmental activist groups, it is still a major expansion of the US commitment. However, the Paris Accords are not a treaty from the US perspective and likely will not be for the foreseeable future, since Senate ratification would be highly unlikely.

The Administration has discussed several areas of focus for its efforts, including eliminating CO2 emissions from the electric sector by 2035, incentivizing installation of 500,000 EV charging stations, converting the US school bus fleet to EVs, weatherizing large numbers of housing units, making rail travel as fast as air travel, and ultimately achieving net zero emissions by 2050 The Administration’s stated intent is to accomplish all of these objectives using equipment produced in the US, largely by union labor.

Shutting down the 70% of US electric generation powered by fossil fuels over a 14-year period while maintaining a reliable electric grid and providing the power required for the production of the necessary wind turbines and solar panels to replace that generation plus the electric storage facilities required to maintain reliable grid function during periods when wind and solar are unavailable will require careful coordination. The plan for this effort has not been made public and its current state of development is unknown. The incentives to be provided are also undefined.

The proposed locations and installation schedule for the EV charging stations are not yet public, nor is the proposed incentive schedule. The future incentives for electric vehicle purchases are also currently undefined. Two states have now elected to halt sale of new fossil fuel vehicles in 2035, which will force the schedule in those states, causing most vehicles to “age out” before 2050. It is unclear whether the Administration will follow this pattern or continue to move the market with incentives, or both.

The approach to converting the US school bus fleet and the schedule are not yet public. The Administration has the option of requiring all new school bus purchases be EVs after some date certain, since all school buses would “age out” before 2050, though the intent might be to accelerate the transition by mandating and incentivizing conversion of existing buses.

The technology for high speed electric rail exists, though only a few localized systems exist in the US and none approach the speed necessary to match point-to-point air flight times. A Japanese manufacturer has demonstrated a prototype magnetic levitation train capable of achieving 374 miles per hour, though the first commercial service is not scheduled until 2027.

Fully upgrading residential dwellings for improved energy efficiency and all electric operation is estimated to cost approximately $50,000 per dwelling unit. There is no definition of the Administration approach to selecting dwellings to be upgraded or the approach to assuring that the upgrades occur and are effective.

From: GWPF

By: Ralph Alexander

Date: April, 2021

EXTREME WEATHER IN 2020

Executive summary

"The most striking feature of weather extremes in 2020 was not the extremes themselves, but the use of socio-economic studies of natural disasters to link extreme weather to global warming. Two international agencies, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) – in conjunction with the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) – and the International Red Cross (IFRC), both issued reports claiming that climate-related disasters are currently escalating.

However, such claims are wrong, as clearly shown by data presented in the two reports. Two different sections of the CRED-UNDRR report state that since 2000 the annual number of disasters has either risen significantly or been ‘relatively stable’. But these statements are completely contradicted by data in the same report showing that the number of climate-related disasters fell by 11% from 2000 to 2020.

The CRED-UNDRR report also falsely contends that more disasters occurred between 2000 and 2019 than during the preceding 20 years. This assertion is mirrored in the IFRC report, which makes the erroneous claim that annual climaterelated disasters have risen almost 35% since the 1990s. Both spurious claims arise from a failure to account for the major increase in disaster reporting engendered by the arrival of the Internet in the late 1990s.

Not only has the annual number of global disasters over the last 20 years declined, but the number of people killed by weather extremes has also been falling steadily over the past century" ...

EXTREME WEATHER IN 2020

“Technology forcing is a regulatory strategy that establishes currently unachievable and uneconomic performance standards to be met at some future point in time. ... Basically, technology forcing sets regulatory standards and provides incentives for achieving the standards or disincentives for not achieving them.”

The Administration’s more ambitious INDC targets net zero CO2 emissions from all sectors of the US economy by 2050 would require the replacement of all existing residential and commercial end uses of coal, oil, natural gas, propane and other combustible hydrocarbon gases by electricity or biofuels.

In the residential and commercial markets, all oil and gas furnaces, boilers and water heaters would be required to be replaced with electric equipment, as would all fossil-fueled ranges, ovens, laundry dryers and outdoor grills. Emergency generators would be replaced by biofuel generators. A ban on the sale of fossil-fueled appliances and equipment effective in 2030 would likely result in “aging out” all existing equipment by 2050.

In the industrial markets, all production equipment and processes would also have to be replaced by electric alternatives, where possible. At present, there are numerous industrial processes for which no electric alternatives exist, for example in iron, steel and cement production. These processes would require application of equipment level carbon capture and storage (CCS) or equivalent CO2 removal from the atmosphere. CCS is not currently economically viable even at multi-megawatt scale. CO2 removal from the atmosphere is not available, no less economical, at any scale. Emergency generators would be replaced by biofuel generators while on-site generation might be provided by modular nuclear generators.

The transportation market would require comprehensive electrification or offsets provided by CO2 removal from the atmosphere. Electric vehicles are currently available for personal and light commercial applications, but are not economical and require significant incentives to support the market. Their higher cost is largely the result of the cost of the batteries required to provide acceptable vehicle operating range. Vehicle range is currently limited, restricting their use to local travel and commuting. This is coupled with limited availability of vehicle charging stations, which results in “range anxiety” and reduces vehicle appeal.

Electric buses are available for a variety of uses, but are also subject to battery-based range limitations. The Administration is currently focusing on school bus conversions, since school buses have more limited range requirements than transit buses and can conveniently be recharged between morning and afternoon operating schedules. The Administration plans to provide significant incentive funding for these school bus conversions.

Trucks large enough to require their operators to have commercial drivers’ licenses are not currently available with electric drive trains. The largest of these vehicles typically have operational weight restrictions and their net carrying capacity would be reduced by the incremental weight of the large battery systems required to provided needed range.

The application of electric motor drive in the railroad industry has a long history for passenger rail, though not for the far higher demand freight rail segment. Biofuel operation is also a possibility for freight rail.

Finally, aircraft would either require biofuels or offsetting CO2 removal from the atmosphere.

Note that the various potential applications of biofuels would require a major expansion of biofuel production, as well as the land area dedicated to the growing of the biofuel feedstocks. Note also that the various potential applications of electricity to replace fossil fuels would require major expansion of existing US generation, transmission and distribution capacity, as well as the installation of massive grid-scale electricity storage to compensate for the intermittent nature of solar and wind generation.

From: Bloomberg Green

By: Dave Merrill

Date: April 29, 2021

The U.S. Will Need a Lot of Land for a Zero-Carbon Economy

"At his international climate summit last week, President Joe Biden vowed to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. The goal will require sweeping changes in the power generation, transportation and manufacturing sectors. It will also require a tremendous amount of land.

Wind farms, solar installations and other forms of clean power take up far more space on a per-watt basis than their fossil-fuel-burning brethren. A 200-megawatt wind farm, for instance, might require spreading turbines over 19 square miles (49 square kilometres). A natural-gas power plant with that same generating capacity could fit onto a single city block.

Achieving Biden’s goal will require aggressively building more wind and solar farms, in many cases combined with giant batteries. To fulfill his vision of an emission-free grid by 2035, the U.S. needs to increase its carbon-free capacity by at least 150%. Expanding wind and solar by 10% annually until 2030 would require a chunk of land equal to the state of South Dakota, according to Bloomberg and Princeton University estimates. By 2050, when Biden wants the entire economy to be carbon free, the U.S. will need up to four additional South Dakotas to develop enough clean power to run all the electric vehicles, factories and more." ...

The U.S. Will Need a Lot of Land for a Zero-Carbon Economy

“Technology forcing is a regulatory strategy that establishes currently unachievable and uneconomic performance standards to be met at some future point in time. ... Basically, technology forcing sets regulatory standards and provides incentives for achieving the standards or disincentives for not achieving them.”

The recent changes in the US INDC in response to the Paris Accords commit to elimination of CO2 emissions from electric generation by 2035 and net zero CO2 emissions from all sectors of the US economy by 2050. These commitments and the legislative and regulatory actions which must flow from them are clearly technology forcing in that they will require both uneconomic decisions and the implementation of technologies which are either unavailable or uneconomic. The US “electrify everything” approach is the extreme case of government picking winners and losers, which in the past has not been a notable government skill.

Roger Pielke, Jr. has suggested a simple method for tracking progress toward the Administration’s 2035 target for electric generation emissions. His method identifies the need to close an average of 11 coal and natural gas generating stations each month, beginning immediately. Forcing the closing of “used and useful” generators before the end of their economic life is certainly uneconomic in that it results in a dead weight loss. Closing the generators is “easy”, though it might well become legally contentious.

Replacing the fossil generating capacity with renewable generating and storage capacity would not be “easy”, nor would it be economic since it would require financial and operational incentives. These renewable incentives would also disadvantage the remaining fossil generating fleet, as has already been the case when renewable generation has been installed. Financial incentives reduce the cost of renewable power and environmental dispatch provides delivery preferences for the renewable power, reducing demand for and consumption of fossil-generated power.

Siting of power generation and transmission facilities has become a long and difficult process as the result of requirements for environmental impact statements, protracted environmental and regulatory review and lawsuits filed by affected parties attempting to prevent the installation of the generation and transmission facilities. Maintaining the schedule required to achieve net zero electric generation emissions by 2035 would require immediate action to site and permit facilities. It would also likely require federal pre-emption and massive streamlining of the approval processes.

The Administration’s commitment to source the required generation and transmission equipment from within the US would require massive increases in wind turbine and solar collector manufacturing capacity, as well as massive increases in the production of the steel for the turbine unipoles and the support structures for the solar collectors and of the cement required for the concrete used to support the unipoles and solar collector mounting structures. The energy requirements for the steel and cement production would result in increases in US CO2 emissions before the new renewable generation could begin to displace existing fossil generation.

Achieving the Administration’s commitments, if even possible, would require a level of effort reminiscent of “Rosie the Riveter”

From: Watts Up With That

By: Rud Istvan

Date: April 26, 2021

Failed Climate Predictions

"I got to thinking about my now 10 years of occasionally contributed guest posts at WUWT and at Climate Etc. Lots of stuff provided over the years, ranging from NRDC Congressional deceit (my very first post here back in 2011, noted below, maise), to problems with climate models and their predictions, to the ‘fit for purpose’ of ARGO and Jason, to provable scientific misconduct (Marcott 2013, O’Leary 2013, and Seattle Times/Fabricius 2013 just to pick on that inauspicious AR5 publication year). Some but not all of these themes are also covered in eBook Blowing Smoke, with a gracious foreword from Dr. Judith Curry.

There are now a lot of newer active commenters here, a good sign for Anthony and Charles. They may not have dug deeply into the extensive WUWT archives. A way to shape their big picture dialogue is to look at some of the climate alarmist’s most fundamental failed predictions, and why they failed. Here are nine of my own BIG ones, grouped by three origins. Just reread Galois group theory." ...

Failed Climate Predictions

On-site power generation was common in the mid-20th century for large power users with the need for high reliability power supply. These users included industrial plants running continuous processes, plants with large steam consumption, and institutions such as asylums, prisons and hospitals required to have on-site generation in the event of a grid outage. These on-site generation facilities were typically either coal or oil fueled, depending on geographic location and the existence of other coal or oil end uses at the site.

Many of these generating facilities were closed later in the century as grid capacity and reliability increased and the need for on-site generation became less critical and emissions regulations more damanding. On-site generation is now making a comeback, using natural gas simple cycle turbines with heat recovery systems or high efficiency natural gas combined-cycle turbines.

Hospitals and some other institutions are required to have on-site power with either high priority natural gas supply contracts or on-site propane or diesel fuel storage adequate to continue operations for some number of days.

These classes of electricity customers will face new and growing challenges as federal programs require the electric grid and its suppliers to shift to non-fossil sources of power generation, most of which (solar, wind) are intermittent and non-dispatchable. Grid reliability is expected to suffer, as has been demonstrated in California and Texas. The grid operators currently stabilize power supply with hydro, geothermal, natural gas, coal and nuclear generation. However, the fossil fuel generators would be unacceptable after 2035 under the current Administration climate plan, unless equipped with carbon capture and storage (CCS) capability or converted to biofuel operation.

Grid operators are investigating the potential of battery storage to stabilize the grid. However, the current cost of grid-scale battery storage is extremely high and the availability of the required batteries is extremely limited.

The challenges for facilities required to possess on-site generation capability, either for continuous or emergency use, are more complicated. Very few of these facilities are large enough to economically continue to use fossil generation with CCS. They could conceivably be granted waivers to continue to operate fossil-fueled generators until the net zero requirement proposed for 2050. Beyond that, their choices would be limited to biofuel generators, on-site battery storage or on-site packaged nuclear power plants.

Many small to medium sized commercial establishments and many single and multi-family residences are currently equipped with automatic standby generators, typically fueled by natural gas, propane or diesel. Biofuels would currently appear to be the only alternative for these smaller users after 2050.

Net zero would also require replacement of all fossil-fueled thermal end use equipment with electric end equipment for applications such as space and water heating, cooking and baking, laundry drying and steam generation. These new electric end uses would require larger on-site generation or electricity storage systems to meet critical needs during grid outages.

While on-site solar and wind generators are compatible with a wind and solar-powered grid, they would be unacceptable as on-site emergency generators, since they would be expected to be affected by the same weather conditions which affected the grid power generation facilities.

The brave new world of net zero would have its challenges.

From: Watts Up With That

By: Willis Eschenbach

Date: April 25, 2021

Where Is The “Climate Emergency”?

"I listed some of the following in my previous post, and a commenter said they were important enough to deserve a post on their own … I agree.

Despite my asking over and over in a host of forums, to date nobody has been able to tell me just what this supposed “CLIMATE EMERGENCY!!” actually is and where I might find evidence that it exists. Here are some facts for the folks that think that the climate is a real danger to humanity.

Deaths from climate-related phenomena are at an all-time low. If you think deaths from climate-related catastrophes are an emergency, please point in the graph below to the start of the “emergency”.

Storminess has not gone up, and there’s been no increase in hurricane strength or frequency … no “emergency” there." ...

Where Is The “Climate Emergency”?

The graph below, from UAH, shows the entire history of satellite global temperature anomalies through March 2021.

Dr. Roy Spencer of UAH suggested in January 2021 that the significant decrease in the global average temperature anomaly in December 2020 was the beginning of the impact of the La Nina which began in May 2020 and has continued for the past 11 months, as shown in the graph below. The La Nina peaked in late October 2020 as a “strong” La Nina. While the La Nina has weakened since its October peak, it has persisted through the end of March 2021 and may continue. The global average temperature anomaly has decreased further since December 2020, to a low of -0.01°C at the end of March 2021. This represents a total decrease of approximately 0.4°C since the peak of the current La Nina. The delayed reflection of the La Nina in the satellite temperature anomaly data suggests that the anomaly will decrease further as the La Nina persists.

The current La Nina has been the strongest La Nina in the past 30 years, as shown in the graph below. However, it was significantly weaker than the super El Ninos in 1997-1998 and 2015-2016.

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) shifted to its cool phase in 2005 and is likely to remain in its cool phase until approximately 2040, as shown in the graph below. There are typically more frequent and stronger La Ninas during the cool phase of the PDO, so it is possible that there will be further reductions in the global average temperature anomaly over the next two decades triggered by additional strong La Ninas.

The super El Ninos of 1997-1998 and 2015-2016 each increased the global average temperature anomaly by approximately 0.5°C. These El Ninos pumped significant heat into the atmosphere which can take several years to dissipate.

Climate science does not yet understand what controls the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycles, nor is it able to predict their onset or intensity, nor how long it will take for their impact to dissipate. Climate science is also not able to predict the shift in the phases of the PDO, nor does it completely understand how this shift impacts weather and climate. The same is true for the other ocean cycles, such as the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, which is thought to have a significant impact on the frequency and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes.

Consensus climate theory attributes most, all and even more than all recent global warming to the increase in anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere. However, the relatively continual increase in atmospheric CO2 would be very unlikely to produce the rapid swings in the temperature anomaly shown in the satellite temperature graph above. Rather, these temperature anomaly swings are the result of a poorly understood combination of climate events such as the PDO switch and weather events such as the ENSO cycles.

From: National Review

By: Richard Lindzen & William Happer

Date: April 16, 2021

Climate ‘Emergency’? Not So Fast

Americans should not be stampeded into a disastrous climate crusade.

"By obligating the United States once more to the Paris agreement, and by signaling very clearly that “climate” will be central to its policies, the Biden administration has joined other governments in the crusade against a supposed “climate emergency.” We use the word “crusade” advisedly, since the frenzy over climate resembles the medieval crusades against foreign infidels and home-grown heretics. There is even a children’s climate crusade.

Medieval crusaders would chant Deus Vult, or “God wants it” — the ultimate virtue-signaling slogan. Few leaders of medieval Europe could resist the temptation to join the crusades. The medieval elite could count on earthly rewards to add to their heavenly treasures. The enemies of God — and the little people — paid the bills.

Some climate crusaders have invoked the mandate of heaven, and others use language all too reminiscent of millenarianism. But most claim to be following a mandate of science." ...

Climate ‘Emergency’? Not So Fast

The “Climate Crisis”, or “Climate Emergency”, or climate “Existential Threat” is an international political construct based on the projections of an ensemble of numerous, unverified climate models run with ranges of input factors, since the actual values of these input factors are unknown. The perception of crisis is a creature of political science, not hard science.

The principal factor on which the concern is focused is a reported increase in global average temperature of 1°C over the 120 year period since 1900 and the potential global adverse impacts of another 0.5-1.0°C increase beyond current levels over some undefined future period.

Very little effort has been put forth by the consensed climate science community to provide perspective regarding the current and projected future temperature increases. However, Dr. Richard Lindzen recently made a presentation on “The Imaginary Climate Crisis” in which he included the following graph focused on placing the purported temperature change in perspective. The graph shows the magnitude of regular, shorter term temperature changes in fourteen cities in the contiguous United States. Analysis of the same temperature changes in other cities globally would produce differing numbers but display the same general patterns.

The first segment on the horizontal axis shows the global average temperature anomaly over the period 1900-2020 as approximately 1°C.

The second segment on the horizontal axis shows the individual city and average temperature change which commonly occurs in these cities over the two-hour period from 8 am to 10 am on any given day, which ranges from approximately 1-5°C, or up to 5 times the global average temperature increase over the past 120 years of concern to global politicians.

The third segment on the horizontal axis shows the typical “sunrise to afternoon” temperature change in these cities on any given day, which ranges from approximately 7-17°C, or 7-17 times the global average temperature increase over the past 120 years.

The fourth segment on the horizontal axis shows the typical difference between the January average temperature and the July average temperature in each of the cities, which ranges from approximately 9-28°C, or 9-28 times the global average temperature increase of concern to climate alarmist politicians.

The fifth segment on the horizontal axis shows the typical temperature difference between a January morning and a July afternoon in each city, which ranges from approximately 18-40°C over the six month period, or 18-40 times the temperature increase of concern to climate alarmist politicians.

The sixth segment on the horizontal axis shows the typical temperature difference between the yearly average hottest and coldest temperature in each of the cities, which ranges from approximately 30-60°C over the average year, or 30-60 times the temperature increase of concern.

The seventh segment on the horizontal axis shows the temperature difference between the warmest and the coldest temperatures ever recorded for each of the cities, which ranges from approximately 38-75°C, or 38-75 times the maximum temperature difference of record.

Clearly, the reported global annual average temperature increase typically attributed to increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations pales in comparison to typical hourly, daily and seasonal temperature changes and to the record temperature difference for each city. Also, since approximately 60% of the reported global annual average near-surface temperature increase is an increase in the nightly low temperature while only approximately 40% is an increase in the daily high temperature, it seems unlikely that people would be unable to handle the future temperature increases of concern to climate alarmists.

From: Climate Etc.

By: Judith Curry

Date: April 10, 2021

How we fool ourselves. Part II: Scientific consensus building

“Like a magnetic field that pulls iron filings into alignment, a powerful cultural belief is aligning multiple sources of scientific bias in the same direction. – policy scientist Daniel Sarewitz

Statistician Regina Nuzzo summarizes the problem:

“This is the big problem in science that no one is talking about: even an honest person is a master of self-deception. In today’s environment, our talent for jumping to conclusions makes it all too easy to find false patterns in randomness, to ignore alternative explanations for a result or to accept ‘reasonable’ outcomes without question — that is, to ceaselessly lead ourselves astray without realizing it.”

Psychologists Richard Simmons et al. find that researcher bias can have a profound influence on the outcome of a study. Such ‘researcher degrees of freedom’ include choices about which variables to include, which data to include, which comparisons to make, and which analysis methods to use. Each of these choices may be reasonable, but when added together they allow for researchers to extract statistical significance or other meaningful information out of almost any data set. Researchers making necessary choices about data collection and analysis believe that they are making the correct, or at least reasonable, choices. But their bias will influence those choices in ways that researchers may not be aware of. Further, researchers may simply be using the techniques that work – meaning they give the results the researcher wants.

The objective of scientific research is to find out what is really true, not just verify our biases. If a community of scientists has a diversity of perspectives and different biases, then the checks and balances in the scientific process including peer review will eventually counter the biases of individuals. Sometimes this is true—but often this does not happen quickly or smoothly. Not only can poor data and wrong ideas survive, but good ideas can be suppressed.

How we fool ourselves. Part II: Scientific consensus building

The consensed climate science community has argued that previous climate warming and cooling events were the result of natural variability, but that the recent warming is the result of increased anthropogenic CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. They provide no support for the idea that natural variability has ceased, or at least greatly diminished, nor do they provide any proof that the recent warming is CO2 driven.

The graph below illustrates the measure US average temperature anomaly over the period 1880-2020. The temperature trend in the data corresponds to the ~1°C increase in the global average temperature anomaly over the same period, suggesting that the US has experienced average warming very similar to the global average warming.

The year 1950 is the year typically associated with the global warming driven by increasing anthropogenic CO2 concentrations. However, the trend in the anomaly data graphed above shows a temperature anomaly decline over the period from 1940-1970, followed by a temperature anomaly increase from 1970-2020. Note that the data graphed in blue above, from the US Historical Climatology Network, has been “adjusted”, while the data graphed in red, from the US Climate reference Network, is unadjusted or raw data. The USCRN uses remotely located, high accuracy and high precision measuring instruments, which are cross calibrated to detect instrument drift or failure.

The “adjusted” USHCN anomaly data match the unadjusted USCRN anomaly data over the period when the plotted data overlap. However, the earlier USHCN anomaly data have been affected by “unnatural variation”, as shown in the graph below produced by Tony Heller.

Note that the overall magnitude of the “adjustments” over the period shown is approximately 1.5°F (~1°C), or approximately all the recent warming attributed to increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The “adjustments” primarily cool the past, prior to the existence of the USCRN, which provides a high accuracy, high precision reference in the period after 2005 for the US anomaly data. The “adjustments” make the rate of increase of the temperature anomaly appear to be larger and essentially reverse the cooling trend apparent in the measured data. There is no global reference to constrain the “adjustments to non-US data and no possible reference for anomalies “infilled” where no data exists.

The first graph above clearly illustrates the magnitude of natural variability in the temperature anomalies, which ranges from approximately +4.2°C to -5.5°C, or approximately ten times the trend of the warming anomalies over the period. These anomalies do not include any seasonality, since the anomalies are the deviation from the same months in the 30-year climate reference period.

The variation in the anomalies is largely driven by longer term weather events, such as El Nino and La Nina, and by climate events such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
The fact that global temperature anomaly data have been subjected to “adjustment” over a period of more than 100 years raises serious questions about the validity of the reported warming anomaly and the entire anthropogenic climate change narrative.