Climate Change

The global climate is changing, as it has over the entire period we have been able to study using a variety of proxies. The consensed climate science community attributes most or all of the climate change which has occurred since 1950 to anthropogenic CO2 emissions, as if the natural causes of all previous climate change had ceased to function at that time.

The global community has been encouraging reduction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions to slow or halt climate change since the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. The most recent and most visible step in this direction was the adoption of the Paris Accords in 2015 and the subsequent submission of Intended Nationally determined Contributions (INDCs) by the signatory nations. These INDCs vary significantly from nation to nation.

The progression of events required to achieve a reduction of atmospheric CO2 concentrations is intuitive and obvious. Nations must first stop increasing their annual emissions of anthropogenic CO2, then begin reducing their annual emissions to zero and finally begin removing some existing CO2 from the atmosphere until some stable concentration is achieved.

The UN Secretariat, the UN FCCC and the IPCC along with numerous NGOs and environmental activist groups are very vocal in their complaints that the developed nations in Europe, the Americas and Australia are sufficiently serious about their commitments under their INDCs and are not taking the steps necessary to reduce their annual emissions to net zero by 2050, even though the INDCs do not include net zero by 2050 commitments.

The UN Secretariat and the other groups mentioned above appear to be far less concerned about the fact that major developing nations which are also major emitters, including China and India, have made no commitments to reduce or even stabilize their emissions and are currently increasing their annual emissions at a rapid pace. China is not only planning and constructing large numbers of new domestic coal-fired electric power plants, but is also funding construction of large numbers of coal-fired power plants in Africa and elsewhere through its “Belt and Roads” program. The pace of construction of these power plants assures that their annual emissions will dwarf the annual emissions reductions committed to by the developed nations, thus preventing a stabilization, no less a reduction, of global annual emissions.

The coal-fired generating stations currently under construction and planned would be expected to continue operation for 40-60 years, or well beyond the net zero by 2050 goal. These plants are intended to meet the growing electricity demand in the nations in which they are being built. None of these nations appear to have any significant interest in risking their future economic development in the interest of halting or reversing climate change.

There are also new coal fired generating stations planned or under construction in Europe and Japan, intended to replace the generating capacity of existing nuclear generators which are being decommissioned as a matter of government policy in Europe, or which were destroyed or severely damaged by a tsunami in Japan. These coal plants will replace existing zero emission generators, thus also increasing emissions regardless of the commitments in the INDCs developed in 2016.

The developed nations are being encouraged to participate in a race to reduce their emissions faster than the developing nations are increasing their emissions. It appears that this is a race which is a lose-lose proposition for the developed nations and a win-win proposition for the developing nations. It also appears to assure that stabilizing global annual emissions will not happen any time soon.

By: Clear Energy Alliance

Numerous individuals and organizations, including Clintel and the Copenhagen Consensus Center, have calculated the potential effect of US CO2 emissions reductions on global average temperatures or temperature anomalies in the future. These calculations have produced very low estimates of temperature or anomaly reductions, typically on the order of 0.1° or less and, in one case, 0.03°C. In making these calculations, these individuals and organizations have fallen into the trap of acknowledging and arguably accepting the narrative of the consensed climate science community regarding anthropogenic CO2 emissions and climate change. This from individuals and organizations which are otherwise skeptical of the consensus narrative and dismissive of the alarmist narrative.

These calculations require numerous assumptions about future global annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions and about the impact of those emissions on global climate. Commonly a ceteris paribas assumption might be used regarding other nations future actions, since they are unpredictable and beyond real control. However, in the current case, the ceteris paribus is not appropriate because numerous countries are not obligated to limit their emissions under the Paris Accords and are currently increasing their emissions.

These calculations rely on the selection of a climate model, a climate sensitivity value and a cloud feedback value. The climate model projected temperature anomalies in 2050 vary from approximately 0.8-2.5°C, so selection of the climate model has a significant impact on the calculation. Climate sensitivity estimates used by the IPCC range from 1.5-4.5°C, so selection of the climate sensitivity to be used in the calculation also has a significant impact. There is still uncertainty regarding whether cloud feedback is positive or negative, so the selection of the forcing value is also critical.

These uncertainties render a realistic estimate of the potential impact of a US move to net zero emissions by 2050 implausible, if not impossible. They certainly render future temperature anomaly estimates expressed to one or two decimal places ridiculous. Interestingly, none of the estimates of the potential impact of US net zero by 2050 provide any information regarding the uncertainty of the estimate, probably because the uncertainty is far larger than the estimated effect.

These calculations are not science because they cannot be falsified, now or in 2050. The impact of US net zero on US emissions would certainly be measurable, but its impact on global emissions would not be measurable. The range of estimates of the potential future impact of US net zero by 2050 certainly do not suggest a climate “crisis”. The willingness of the UN and the global community to accept continued emissions increases by numerous developing nations including China and India do not suggest that continued anthropogenic emissions constitute an “existential threat”. The willingness of these developing countries to continue to increase their emissions does not suggest that they view the globe as being subject to a climate “emergency”.

From: CO2 Coalition

By: Richard S. Lindzen and John R. Christy

Date: December 2020

The Global Mean Temperature Anomaly Record - How it works and why it is misleading

Preface

"The purpose of this paper is to explain how the data set that is referred to by policy-makers and the media as the global surface temperature record is actually obtained, and where it fi ts into the popular narrative associated with climate alarm."

Executive Summary

"At the center of most discussions of global warming is the record of the global mean surface temperature anomaly—often somewhat misleadingly referred to as the global mean temperature record. This paper addresses two aspects of this record. First, we note that this record is only one link in a fairly long chain of inference leading to the claimed need for worldwide reduction in CO2 emissions. Second, we explore the implications of the way the record is constructed and presented, and show why the record is misleading.

This is because the record is often treated as a kind of single, direct instrumental measurement. However, as the late Stan Grotch of the Laurence Livermore Laboratory pointed out 30 years ago, it is really the average of widely scattered station data, where the actual data points are almost evenly spread between large positive and negative values.

The average is simply the small diff erence of these positive and negative excursions, with the usual problem associated with small diff erences of large numbers: at least thus far, the approximately one degree Celsius increase in the global mean since 1900 is swamped by the normal variations at individual stations, and so bears little relation to what is actually going on at a particular one.

The changes at the stations are distributed around the one-degree global average increase. Even if a single station had recorded this increase itself, this would take a typical annual range of temperature there, for example, from -10 to 40 degrees in 1900, and replace it with a range today from -9 to 41. People, crops, and weather at that station would fi nd it hard to tell this diff erence. However, the increase looks signifi cant on the charts used in almost all presentations, because they omit the range of the original data points and expand the scale in order to make the mean change look large.

The record does display certain consistent trends, but it is also quite noisy, and fluctuations of a tenth or two of a degree are unlikely to be significant. In the public discourse, little attention is paid to magnitudes; the focus is rather on whether this anomaly is increasing or decreasing. Given the noise and sampling errors, it is rather easy to “adjust” such averaging, and even change the sign of a trend from positive to negative.

The common presentations often suppress the noise by using running averages over periods from 5 to 11 years. However, such processing can also suppress meaningful features such as the wide variations that are always being experienced at individual stations. Finally, we show the large natural temperature changes that Americans in 14 major cities must cope with every year. For example, the average diff erence between the coldest and warmest moments each year ranges from about 25 degrees Celsius in Miami (a 45 degree Fahrenheit change) to 55 degrees in Denver (a 99 degree Fahrenheit change). We contrast this with the easily manageable 1.2 degree Celsius increase in the global mean temperature anomaly in the past 120 years, which has caused so much alarm in the media and in policy circles." ...

The Global Mean Temperature Anomaly Record - How it works and why it is misleading

Dichotomy 1 : a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities

Future US climate policies currently face a clear dichotomy. The policies which will be pursued depend on the outcome of a still contested presidential election between two candidates with grossly different perspectives on the potential future impacts of climate change and the appropriate responses to climate change.

President Trump acknowledges that climate changes but has referred to the characterization of anthropogenic climate change as a “crisis”, or an “emergency”, or an “existential threat” as a “hoax”. He views the Paris Accords as unnecessary and as unfair to the United States and other developed nations. He withdrew the US from the Paris Accords and halted US funding of the UN Green Climate Fund.

President Trump’s EPA administrators ended the EPA practice of “sue and settle”, which was used to impose regulations which might otherwise have been unacceptable. The EPA administrators also began a review of the 2009 EPA Endangerment Finding regarding automotive CO2 emissions, which they believed was unsupported by the science.

These policies would be expected to continue in a second Trump Administration.

President Elect Biden and the Democrat Party have a very different perception regarding climate change and very different policy approaches to addressing the issue. President Elect Biden has described climate change as a “crisis”, an “emergency” and an “existential threat”. He has stated his intention to rejoin the Paris Accords “on day one” and to recommit to funding the UN Green Climate Fund.

He has committed his Administration to a $2 trillion plan to transition the US electricity grid to renewable generation by 2035 and to move the US energy economy to “net zero” CO2 emissions by 2050. This $2 trillion plan would provide financial incentives for a variety of programs, but would compel private investments and expenditures, through legislation and regulation, an order of magnitude greater. The Biden plan is very similar to elements of the Green New Deal and the Blue / Green New Deal, though the President Elect has not officially adopted either.

The President Elect has taken several inconsistent positions regarding oil and gas exploration on public lands and the use of hydraulic fracturing, at one time stating that he would ban hydraulic fracturing on both public and private lands. The position on oil and gas pipelines has been less clear, but new construction would not likely be encouraged and might be actively opposed. This would be consistent with the efforts of environmental activists and several Democrat controlled states to prevent pipeline construction; and, of several Democrat controlled cities to ban new natural gas services.

There are already indications that “sue and settle” would return to EPA and other federal agencies as an approach to rapidly deploying regulations which might face a long and tortuous path to implementation otherwise.

President Elect Biden has expressed a general willingness to use Executive Orders to reverse the Trump Executive Orders which reversed numerous Executive Orders issued by former President Obama. These Executive Orders could be expected to follow rapidly after his inauguration.

The potential futures for the US energy economy and the overall US economy are clear, but which future will eventuate remains uncertain.

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." -H. L. Mencken

From: Science Direct

By: Bjorn Lomborg

Date: July 2020

Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies

"Climate change is real and its impacts are mostly negative, but common portrayals of devastation are unfounded. Scenarios set out under the UN Climate Panel (IPCC) show human welfare will likely increase to 450% of today's welfare over the 21st century. Climate damages will reduce this welfare increase to 434%.

Arguments for devastation typically claim that extreme weather (like droughts, floods, wildfires, and hurricanes) is already worsening because of climate change. This is mostly misleading and inconsistent with the IPCC literature. For instance, the IPCC finds no trend for global hurricane frequency and has low confidence in attribution of changes to human activity, while the US has not seen an increase in landfalling hurricanes since 1900. Global death risk from extreme weather has declined 99% over 100 years and global costs have declined 26% over the last 28 years.

Arguments for devastation typically ignore adaptation, which will reduce vulnerability dramatically. While climate research suggests that fewer but stronger future hurricanes will increase damages, this effect will be countered by richer and more resilient societies. Global cost of hurricanes will likely decline from 0.04% of GDP today to 0.02% in 2100.

Climate-economic research shows that the total cost from untreated climate change is negative but moderate, likely equivalent to a 3.6% reduction in total GDP." ...

Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies

“The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men, Gang aft a-gley, And leave us nought but grief and pain, For promised joy.”, Robert Burns

The past year has been a rollercoaster ride for the issue of climate change. The year began with the expectation of an effort to rescind the 2009 EPA Endangerment Finding; and, of expanded hydraulic fracturing supporting continued reductions of US CO2 emissions as natural gas combined cycle power plants replace aging coal generating stations.

The emergence of the COVID19 pandemic in January “sucked all the oxygen out of the room”, refocusing attention from a variety of issues including climate change. Climate activists complained loudly that the focus on their issue had been overwhelmed by the pandemic. A group of approximately 400 media outlets concluded that the climate issue was not receiving sufficient attention to convince the US public that climate change was  a “crisis”, or “emergency” or “existential threat” and began a coordinated effort to provide more intensive coverage.

The US House of Representatives Democrat majority established a Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. The Democrat presidential candidates established positions regarding climate change, many of which drew heavily on the Green New Deal and the Blue Green New Deal. These positions then evolved into the Democrat Platform for the 2020 election; and, into multi-trillion-dollar climate change action plans and commitments to replace fossil fuels for power generation in the US by 2035.

The IPCC proceeded with development of the Sixth Assessment Report and the CMIP6 ensemble of climate models. The IPCC continued its unofficial policy of excluding research results which do not support the IPCC and consensed climate science community narrative. The consensed climate science community also continued its unofficial effort to prevent non-conforming research results from publication in peer reviewed journals. Several of the CMIP6 climate models project even higher temperature anomalies by the end of the century, despite the fact that the CMIP5 models almost universally over-project future temperature anomalies.

Research continued to suggest that the actual climate sensitivity to CO2 was close to, or even below, the lower end of the climate sensitivity range used by the climate models. These research results suggested that climate change is not now, nor is it likely to be, a “crisis”.

Major aspects of the “settled science” remain far from settled, including:

•     differences between near-surface and satellite temperature measurements;
•     differences among various sea surface temperature measurements;
•     differences between tide gauge and satellite sea level rise measurements;
•     differences among the projections of the ensemble of climate models; and,
•     differing positions on the impact of climate change on extreme weather events.

The UNFCCC cancelled its Conference of the Parties 26 because of the COVID pandemic.

The US withdrawal from the Paris Accords became official on November 4th.

The UN Secretary General has called on the leaders of member nations to declare “Climate Emergencies” in their countries.

Numerous organizations have begun calling for restrictions on citizen freedoms like those imposed in response to the COVID19 pandemic to control climate change.

From: The Honest Broker Newsletter

By: Roger Pielke Jr.

Date: November 30, 2020

The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science

Much of climate research is focused on implausible scenarios of the future, but implementing a course correction will be difficult

"A 2015 literature review found almost 900 peer-reviewed studies published on breast cancer using a cell line derived from a breast cancer patient in Texas in 1976. But in 2007 it was confirmed that the cell line that had long been the focus of this research was actually not a breast cancer line, but was instead a skin cancer line. Whoops.

Even worse, from 2008 to 2014 — after the mistaken cell line was conclusively identified — the review identified 247 peer-reviewed articles putatively on breast cancer that were published using the misidentified skin cancer cell line. A cursory search of Google Scholar indicates that studies continue to be published in 2020 mistakenly using the skin cell line in breast cancer research.

The lesson from this experience is that science has momentum, and that momentum can be hard to change, even when obvious and significant flaws are identified."...

The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science

The effect of CO2 in the globe’s atmosphere on global temperature is the result of the absorption of infrared radiation emitted from the surface of the globe toward space. The quantity of radiation emitted by the surface of the globe is finite. CO2 absorbs infrared radiation only in limited portions of the radiation spectrum. As the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the fraction of the radiation in those portions of the spectrum absorbed by CO2 increases, within the limits of the total radiation emitted in those portions of the spectrum. Therefore, as the CO2 concentration increases, the quantity of radiation available to be absorbed by the next increment of CO2 decreases logarithmically, as shown in the graph below.

AMO physicists William van Wijngaarden and William Happer have recently completed an extremely detailed study of radiation absorption by the principal “greenhouse” gases including water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), ozone (O3), nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4). Their paper has been released as a preprint entitled “Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases”. Their research regarding CO2 determined that the wavelengths at which CO2 absorbs radiation from the surface of the globe are essentially “saturated”, meaning that the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is sufficient to absorb virtually all the radiation emitted at the wavelengths in which CO2 absorbs.

This is an extremely important conclusion, since it indicates that emission of additional CO2 into the atmosphere will have little or no effect on global temperatures, confirming the logarithmic relationship shown in the graph above, but based on far more detailed research. The conclusion confirms that there is no climate “crisis” now and that there would be no climate crisis in the future, regardless of the quantity of additional anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

The conclusions of this study are obviously inconsistent with the consensed climate science community’s narrative and with the political science narrative of the UN and numerous national governments and NGOs. They would be even less consistent with the revised narrative being prepared for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and with the projections embodied in the CMIP6 ensemble of climate models.

The authors released the report as a preprint after it was rejected for publication by three peer reviewed journals. These rejections of the work of two renowned scientists recall the efforts of the consensed climate science community to prevent publication of research which does not support the consensus narrative, as revealed in the Climategate emails in 2009 and 2010. It is extremely likely that this research will not be included in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report for the same reason.

It is long since time for the consensed climate science community to transition from defending the narrative to advancing the science. This cannot occur in an atmosphere in which serious scientific research is ignored or worse buried. The consensed climate science community is aware of the weaknesses of its narrative and the public is becoming increasingly aware as well, due to the history of failed predictions of imminent calamity.

From: Climate Etc.

By: Andy West

Date: November 19, 2020

Cultural Motivations for Wind and Solar Renewables Deployment

“For me the question now is, now that we know that renewables can’t save the planet, are we going to keep letting them destroy it?”. – Michael Schellenberger

Introduction

"There have been many technical analyses of Wind and Solar energy, covering a raft of issues from energy density and efficiency, through subsidies and land usage, to maintenance, grid impacts, intermittency and more. The angle examined here is in no way intended to replace such necessary views, whether they lean to the pessimistic or the optimistic or anywhere in-between. Rather, a complementary view is provided regarding an aspect that such technical analyses cannot address, albeit it often features in the conclusions and questions these analyses raise at the end. Right here at Climate Etc, the first of the excellent analyses by ‘Planning Engineer’ (on his retirement revealed to be Russ Schussler, ex-VP of Transmission Planning at Georgia Transmission Corporations), laudably highlighted the limitation of technical analyses with his very first line: “Power System Planners do not have the expertise or knowledge to say whether or not the benefits of reducing carbon emissions are worth the costs. However they should be respected as experts for obtaining a better understanding of what the implications and costs of such programs are.”...

Cultural Motivations for Wind and Solar Renewables Deployment

A recent article in the journal Nature suggested five fundamental rules for evidence communication which apply well to science communication, though they are not always followed, particularly in climate science.

• Inform, not persuade
• Offer balance, not false balance
• Disclose uncertainties
• State evidence quality
• Inoculate against misinformation

Evidence communication in climate science (IPCC) occurs at multiple levels, beginning with the scientists who conduct the research, followed by selection of the research to be included in the Working Group reports, then summarization in the Working group report summary, then summarization in the Summary for Policymakers, and finally reporting in the media and utilization by policymakers (politicians). Arguably, this process flows from inform to persuade, culminating in scare headlines and proclamations of an imminent crisis which must be avoided at all costs.

The IPCC process has largely avoided any effort at balance by excluding research which does not support the IPCC narrative that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are causing climate change which is having deleterious effects on the global population. This process largely “buries” research by skeptical scientists, regardless of the merits of their research, offering a false balance by including research which only supports some elements of the consensus narrative.

The IPCC Working Group reports are relatively careful to disclose the uncertainties regarding the research upon which they report. However, recognition of the uncertainties effectively disappears in the Summary for Policymakers and is obliterated by false certainty in the media reporting of the conclusions. The media reporting almost exclusively uses words like “will” rather than “might” to discuss future scenarios, though the futures they describe are highly speculative.

Climate science typically avoids discussions of evidence quality. Increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations are blamed for temperature increases, sea level rise and weather event frequency and severity, though there is no direct evidence for causation. The accuracy of the global near-surface temperature anomaly is typically reported to two decimal places, ignoring the facts that the temperature measurements used to develop them are measured to one decimal place, are “adjusted” to resolve expected or known inaccuracies in the measurements, and are “infilled” where no data are available.

Climate science currently ignores the discrepancies between the satellite temperature anomaly products and the near-surface temperature records. Climate science also currently ignores the difference between tide gauge and satellite sea level rise data.

Climate science also currently ignores the differences among the projections of future temperatures of the climate models and the differences between the climate model projections and the observations provided by both the satellite and near-surface temperature anomaly products.

The climate science community effectively inoculates the media, politicians and the public against “misinformation” by suppressing research which does not support the consensus narrative, effectively classifying it as “misinformation” and attacking the authors of non-conforming studies as “deniers” or “anti-science”.

Much of the evidence of anthropogenic climate change is circumstantial, resting on the conclusion that science has discovered no other satisfactory explanation for the changes which have occurred.

“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell”  -Carl Sandburg

skepticism

1 : an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object
2a : the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain
2b : the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics
scientific skepticism: an impartial attitude of the mind previous to investigation

Merriam-Webster

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI) has renewed his threats to hold “star chamber” hearings in the US Senate to expose and attempt to humiliate those he describes as “climate deniers”. He appears willing and anxious to harass anyone who does not accept the “climate crisis” and support heroic actions to diffuse the “crisis”. The senator is a “climate hawk” who has delivered more than 250 speeches on the subject on the Senate floor. His choice of the descriptor “denier” in reference to such individuals characterizes his attitude toward them.

The senator is highly unlikely to find a true “climate denier”, or a true “climate change denier” or even a true “anthropogenic climate change denier” to harass in his “star chamber”, though he will likely find numerous serious climate scientists who possess and profess a healthy skepticism of a climate “crisis” or “existential threat”. Numerous climate scientists understand that climate science is hardly “settled” and can speak with authority regarding the numerous areas of uncertainty regarding our understanding of earth’s climate.

Skeptical scientists would point to the ensembles of climate models which produce “spaghetti diagrams” projecting future temperatures which differ by a factor of five among themselves; and by a factor of 2-3 from numerous actual observed temperature records over 30 or more years. Skeptical scientists would also note that the model mean in these “spaghetti diagrams” is merely the mean of an ensemble of model outputs, at least all but one of which, if not all, are incorrect. They would point out that not one of those models has ever been verified.

Skeptical scientists would point out the use of a range of estimated values for climate sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 (3+/-1.5) which has been in use for more than 30 years without resolution. They would also note that the majority of recent studies of climate sensitivity have reported values close to or even below the range of values used by the IPCC.

Skeptical scientists would also note that measurements of the rate of sea level rise taken by satellites show rates of rise twice the rate measured by tide gauges located at geologically stable sites; and, the current inability of the climate science community to explain and rationalize this difference.

Skeptical scientists would note the differences between global temperature measurements made by satellites and those made by near-surface measurement systems; and, they would note the differences among the various near-surface temperature anomaly products. They would also point out the ongoing need to “adjust” the near-surface data to resolve suspected data inaccuracies; and, the need to “infill” temperature estimates where no data exist.

Skeptical scientists would also point out the differences between assertions of increases in hurricane, tornado, drought and flood frequency and severity and actual observations and data. They would also note the inaccuracies of “attribution” studies which purport to show a climate change contribution to the frequency and intensity of severe weather events.

In summary, skeptical scientists would express doubt about particular aspects of the climate science consensus, highlight the uncertainty of current climate knowledge and would suspend judgment regarding the existence of a climate “crisis”. Skeptical scientists would recognize that, based on current knowledge, assertions of a “climate crisis” or an “existential threat” are political constructs unsupported by the science.

Those such as Senator Whitehouse who attack scientific skepticism are “anti-science”.

Guest Post

From: International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC)

By: Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris

The power disaster unfolding in California will soon occur across the country, if Joe Biden gets his way. The Golden State has been sweeping away the forms of energy that have provided reliable electricity for decades, under the same agenda the former Vice-President is planning for America as a whole.

Power outages are now commonplace in California. Last summer, the state suffered its first rolling blackouts in nearly 20 years. Imagine if this happened in Chicago in the middle of winter.

California’s trouble is explained by officials who now openly admit to an over-reliance on wind and solar power. The governor said there was not enough wind to keep the turbines going, while cloud cover and nightfall restricted solar power. The Los Angeles Times recognized the root of the problem:

“… gas-burning power plants that can fire up when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing have been shutting down in recent years, and California has largely failed to replace them …”

Consequently, the state has fallen thousands of megawatts behind its needs. Governor Gavin Newsom admitted, “we failed to predict and plan for these shortages” and took (nominal) responsibility for the rolling blackouts. Now he wants everyone to conserve power, while the state looks for new sources of energy, most likely fossil fuel-generated power from neighboring states.

All this is happening while California continues its intention to transition to 60% renewable energy by 2030 and 100% “climate-friendly energy” by 2045, as required by state law.

Indeed, in their October 6 open letter to Newsom, the heads of the California’s Energy Commission, Independent System Operator and Public Utilities Commission wrote: “We are unwavering in our commitment to meeting California’s clean energy and climate goals.”

Team Biden plans to go even further, committing to making the entire nation 100% renewable within 15 years. The United States would fall tens of millions of megawatts behind on its electricity needs.

Like the California government, the incoming Biden-Harris administration is acting entirely under the unfounded belief that climate change is a manmade calamity that can be stopped by eliminating fossil fuel use. They are clearly unaware of the Climate Change Reconsidered series of reports of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

These documents summarize thousands of studies from peer-reviewed scientific journals that either refute or cast serious doubt on the climate scare. They conclude that we are not causing a climate crisis.

Yet, in their October 6 report, Preliminary Root Cause Analysis – Mid-August 2020 Heat Storm, the same heads of California’s Energy Commission, Independent System Operator and Public Utilities Commission highlighted the “climate change-induced extreme heat storm across the western United States” as the first cause of the blackout.

In their view, apparently, shutting down coal, gas and nuclear power plants in California and in states from which California imports electricity played only minor roles.

California’s determination to shift to so-called “green” energy – which is actually anything but clean, green, renewable and sustainable – is being echoed by politicians across the nation. The result, especially in states that don’t enjoy California’s mostly benign weather, is going to be that those in the poorest neighborhoods and those on fixed incomes may be forced to choose between heating and eating.

It also means people trying to run their homes, offices, factories, hospitals and schools on intermittent, weather-dependent, much more expensive wind and solar power will have to get used to never knowing when or for how long their electricity will be on or off. Now in California; soon in the entire USA.

Coherent energy systems are designed with the understanding that portions of the system will be offline from time to time. Power companies compensate for this with reserve power at the ready. However, California has closed its margin for error in response to anti-nuclear and anti-fossil fuel sentiments and climate change concerns. Team Biden intends to do this for the entire United States.

Power outages cannot always be avoided and are more common than one may think. For example, between 2008 and 2017, Illinois had 871 outages, the tenth most by state. Texas had nearly twice as many, giving it the dubious distinction of ranking number two in the list.

But these pale in comparison to California which has the least reliable electrical power system in the nation. It leads in power outages every year. Between 2008 and 2017, it had 4,297 power outages!

The origin of the problem is partly California’s Senate Bill 1368, which in 2006 established the state’s emission standards to reduce greenhouse gases from power plants. Following that year, eleven coal-fired power plants were closed and three were converted to biomass. Only one coal-fired plant remains.

The state also reduced its normal reliance on energy from out of state coal plants.

Yielding to anti-nuclear activists, the state also closed all but one nuclear plant, Diablo Canyon. That plant generates about 18,000 Gigawatt-hours of reliable electricity every year, fully 8.6% of California’s total generation.

But Diablo Canyon will soon be closed too. Not surprisingly, during its construction and operation, anti-nuclear protests were common; nearly two thousand people were arrested for civil disobedience during a two-week period in 1981. In response, in 2016, the California Public Utilities Commission approved a Pacific Gas & Electric Joint Proposal to phase out the state’s remaining nuclear power. That means the operating licenses for Diablo Canyon’s two units will not be renewed when they expire in 2024 and 2025.

Ironically, the Commission did not approve Pacific Gas & Electric’s proposal for resources to replace the station’s output. It does not appear to matter that nuclear reactors produce no greenhouse gas emissions during operation. They are hated by the enviro-radicals who drive California’s energy policy and are steadily putting the state even further behind the 8-ball.

It gets worse. California now requires that all new homes be nearly entirely electric. It wants citizens to switch their natural gas stoves to electric, as part of their global warming initiatives. More than 30 cities have already enacted bans on gas appliances, including San Francisco. The state also hopes to eliminate all gasoline and diesel cars in favor of plug-in electric automobiles.

This means demand for reliable, affordable electricity will rise by leaps and bounds, just as supplies are steadily reduced, and partially replaced by expensive, intermittent, weather-dependent power.

Just as Mr. Biden promises for the nation as a whole, California is sacrificing reliable electrical power as part of its impossible crusade to “stop climate change.” Of course, this will have no impact on our planet’s climate, because (a) climate change is mostly natural and not driven by carbon dioxide, and (b) all those wind turbines, solar panels and backup batteries will be manufactured overseas, mostly in China, using fossil fuels and simply moving the source of ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

However, it will certainly spur sales of candles, flashlights, propane heaters, and natural gas, gasoline and diesel generators.

So, welcome to America’s future under a Biden-Harris-Kerry- AOC Administration. America, the blackouts are coming.

_______________________________________________________

*Ohio-based Dr. Jay Lehr is Senior Policy Advisor to the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC). Tom Harris is Executive Director of ICSC.

From: Watts Up With That

By: Paul Driessen

Date: November 22, 2020

Preventing Future Forest Infernos

"The 2020 fire season is nearing its end. But monstrous wildfires continue to rage across America’s western states, devastating towns and habitats, and killing hundreds of people and millions of animals. Politicians and environmentalists continue to rage that climate change is the primary factor, allowing few responsible, commonsense forest management actions that could actually reduce the risks.

Manmade climate change is a convenient scapegoat, but it cannot be separated from natural climate fluctuations and effects. Moreover, even assuming fossil fuel emissions play a dominant role in the human portion of this equation – and even if the Pacific Northwest or entire USA eliminated coal, oil and natural gas – China, India and scores of other nations will not do so anytime soon.

And they will certainly be using fossil fuels to manufacture the wind turbines, solar panels and batteries envisioned by Green New Dealers – and to mine and process the raw materials those technologies require.

The key ingredient in these monstrous, devastating forest fires is fuel. A century of Smokey the Bear fire suppression, coupled with half-century bans on timber harvesting, tree thinning and even insect control has filled western forests with dense concentrations of brush, fallen branches, needles and leaves, skinny young trees and huge older trees – many of them dead or dying – ready to be turned into conflagrations under hot, dry summer and autumn conditions that prevail most years in California and other western states." ...

Preventing Future Forest Infernos

The consensed climate science community has consensed on the hypothesis that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are largely or totally responsible for the recent increase in global average surface temperature. Some even refer to CO2 as the climate “control knob”. The climate alarmist community and numerous progressive politicians perceive the recent increase in global average surface temperature as an “existential crisis”, which they assert would ultimately leave the earth uninhabitable.

The ensemble of climate models project widely varying increases in global average surface temperature, almost all of which have been higher than the observed global average surface temperature. If one accepts the hypothesis that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations are responsible for recent warming, while there are numerous factors which contribute to the variations in the model projections, the two most influential factors would be the future CO2 concentration and the sensitivity of the climate to increasing CO2 concentrations.

Future atmospheric CO2 concentrations are a function of both anthropogenic and natural CO2 emissions and are unknowable. The consensed climate science community deals with this issue by using a set of four Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6 and RCP8.5) which project atmospheric CO2 concentrations into the future.

Much of the concern regarding an “existential crisis” is driven by studies based on RCP8.5, though many climate scientists now believe this concentration pathway is unreasonable or even unachievable based on resource constraints.

The sensitivity of the climate to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations is currently unknown. The IPCC uses a range of 1.5 – 4.5°C per doubling (nominally to 540ppmv). A recent analysis by David Middleton of climate sensitivity estimates based on instrumental data from 40 studies conducted since 2002 concludes that the estimates of climate sensitivity resulting from these studies are declining over time, as shown in his graph below. Note that the values range from a low of 0.5 to a high of 4.8, or 2.65+/-2.15.

The graph above displays the mean values established in the various studies. The graph below shows the range of high and low estimates for most of the mean values displayed.

While most of the studies displayed identify significant uncertainty, the uncertainty in numerous studies is enormous, such as the second 2009 study displayed above. This study has a mean of 3 with uncertainty of -2 and +7.

Clearly, if CO2 is the “climate control knob”, our knowledge regarding climate sensitivity to CO2 concentration hardly qualifies as “settled science”. However, as shown in the graphs above, recent instrumental studies suggest an equilibrium climate sensitivity toward the low end of the IPCC range of estimates. Such a relatively low sensitivity suggests that climate change, as it has been occurring over the past ~70 years, does not represent an “existential crisis” now, nor is it expected to represent such a crisis in another ~70 years when the doubling of the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would be expected to occur.

Efforts to accurately determine climate sensitivity, climate forcings and feedbacks are climate science. Proclamations of an “existential crisis” are political science, intended to obfuscate rather than advance climate science.