This commentary is the 500th in a series of climate change commentaries which began in the Fall of 2015 with the preparation of a climate change overview report for publication at www.therightinsight.org. The commentaries are archived and searchable on the website. Beginning in August, 2022 the commentaries are also cross-published at Climate Change Conundrum (edreid.substack.com) and at Energy Central (energycentral.com).

The commentaries have focused on climate, climate change, climate change policy and the implications of climate change policy, as well as on the actions of climate scientists, climate science aggregators (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Conferences of the Parties and the actions of federal and state government bodies. The commentaries have assiduously avoided partisan politics, though in an area of science as politicized as climate, it is difficult to ignore the actions of political actors, whether politicians acting as politicians, politicians attempting to act as scientists or scientists attempting to act as politicians.

Commentaries have dealt with the comprehensiveness and accuracy of temperature data collection, including selection, calibration, siting, installation and maintenance of temperature measuring instruments and stations. They have also dealt with issues of measuring site contamination by site alterations, urban sprawl and the Urban Heat Island Effect.

Commentaries have discussed the significant differences between the near-surface temperature records and the satellite temperature records, as well as the differences between the tide gauge sea level records and the satellite sea level records. These remain two clearly unsettled scientific issues. There are also issues of data analysis, unreasonable precision of data reporting and the inconsistency of climate models.

Commentaries have discussed the development of the catastrophic anthropogenic climate change (CACC) narrative from the selection of the science to be considered by the IPCC Working Groups to the IPCC Summary for Policymakers to the UN Secretariat to national political actors and finally to the media and the aggressive defense of the narrative by its creators and cheerleaders. They have also discussed the efforts by certain scientists and scientific organizations to discourage funding of skeptical scientists, inhibit or prevent publication of research which does not support the climate crisis narrative, force retraction of unsupportive papers and harm the careers of skeptical scientists.

Commentaries have also discussed federal and state government programs intended to transition the national energy economy from reliance on fossil fuels to reliance on renewable generation plus storage, including subsidies and dispatch preferences for local and grid-scale renewable generation, subsidies for local and grid-scale electricity storage, subsidies for electric vehicles and charging stations, subsidies for electric heat pumps and heat pump water heaters and for residential and commercial building decarbonization.

Commentaries have calculated the costs of the proposed energy transition, including the capital costs of redundant renewable generation and the storage required to render renewable generation dispatchable. They have discussed the unavailability of intermediate-duration and long-duration storage systems, including the challenges associated with increased pumped hydro storage and with “Green Hydrogen” production, storage, transmission and distribution. They have also discussed the apparently essential role of Dispatchable Emission-Free Resources (DEFRS) to support a renewable-based grid.

Finally, they have discussed the plethora of climate change goals, the dearth of climate change plans and the required but unavailable technologies to achieve Net Zero ever, no less by 2050.