Developers of renewable energy generation installations frequently focus their marketing efforts on estimates of the number of homes the installations would serve. The developers’ estimates are not based on consistent assumptions and cannot be directly compared.

Orsted’s recently approved Ocean Wind 1 development, to be located off the New Jersey coast near Atlantic City and Ocean City, would consist of one hundred 11MW wind turbine generators, for a total capacity of 1,100 MW. This would suggest annual generation, at a 100% capacity factor, of 9,600 GWh. The International Energy Agency uses a capacity factor of 50% for offshore wind. We will use that figure here, since there is no offshore wind capacity factor data for the US East Coast. This suggests annual production of approximately 4,800 GWh for Ocean Wind 1.

Orsted projects that Ocean Wind 1 would serve 500,000 homes. The US Energy Information Administration reports average US residential electricity consumption as 10,600 kWh per year. Based on these numbers, Ocean wind would have to generate 5300 GWh per year, or a capacity factor of approximately 55%.

Dominion Energy’s proposed Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) development, to be located off the Virginia coast near Norfolk, would consist of one hundred seventy-six 15 MW wind turbine generators, for a total capacity of 2,600 MW. This would suggest annual generation, at a 100% capacity factor, of approximately 22,800 GWh, or approximately 11,400 GWh at a 50% capacity factor.

Dominion projects that CVOW would serve 660,000 homes, which would require generation of approximately 6,996 GWh based on the EIA residential consumption figure. That would suggest a capacity factor of approximately 30%, far lower than the IEA figure, and even lower relative to the Orsted estimate for Ocean Wind 1.

The estimates above are based on a number of averages: average wind resource; average capacity factor; average maintenance and repair allowances; and, average residential electricity consumption. The available wind resource varies on time scales from minutes to hours to days to seasons, as does residential energy consumption and demand. The use of averages loses a lot of the detail of the match between customer load and generator output.

Since each of these industrial wind installations would be connected to a grid with a far larger customer base than the claimed number of residential customers served, above average output would be absorbed by other loads on the grids, displacing a portion of the output from some form(s) of conventional generation. Below average generator output would require support from some form(s) of conventional generation.

Arguably, fluctuations in generator output and customer load could also be compensated for by additions to and withdrawals from some type of energy storage capacity. However, there is no energy storage capacity included in either of the wind projects discussed above. The issue of storage can be deferred as long as there is sufficient excess conventional generating capacity available to compensate for the fluctuation of the output of the wind facilities and maintain a capacity reserve margin. However, as conventional generating capacity is retired due to age or regulation, and additional intermittent renewable generating capacity is added, addressing the issue of storage cannot be avoided.

From: Real Clear Wire

By: John Murawski

Date: September 13, 2023

Here's the Climate Dissent You're Not Hearing About Because It's Muffled by Society's Top Institutions

As the Biden administration and governments worldwide make massive commitments to rapidly decarbonize the global economy, the persistent effort to silence climate change skeptics is intensifying – and the critics keep pushing back.

This summer the International Monetary Fund summarily canceled a presentation by John Clauser, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who publicly disavows the existence of a climate “crisis.” The head of the nonprofit with which Clauser is affiliated, the CO2 Coalition, has said he and other members have been delisted from LinkedIn for their dissident views.  

Meanwhile, a top academic journal retracted published research doubting a climate emergency after negative coverage in legacy media. The move was decried by another prominent climate dissenter, Roger Pielke Jr., as “one of the most egregious failures of scientific publishing that I have seen” – criticism muffled because the academic says he has been blocked on Twitter (now X) by reporters on the climate beat.

The climate dissenters are pressing their case as President Biden, United Nations officials, and climate action advocates in media and academia argue that the “settled science” demands a wholesale societal transformation. That means halving U.S. carbon emissions by 2035 and achieving net zero emissions by 2050 to stave off the “existential threat” of human-induced climate change. (continue reading)

Here's the Climate Dissent You're Not Hearing About Because It's Muffled by Society's Top Institutions

Cognitive dissonance is a term for the state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other. The clashing cognitions may include ideas, beliefs, or the knowledge that one has behaved in a certain way.  Psychology Today

Altruism
1: unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others
2: behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species
 - Merriam-Webster

The issue of climate change is a major cause of cognitive dissonance among the populations of the developed nations. The UN and the governments of the developed nations have asserted that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases have caused the earth to warm and sea levels to rise. They assert that the effects of these emissions represent an existential threat to the future of mankind and that the threat represents a crisis or constitutes an emergency. They have identified a global average temperature anomaly of 1.5°C as a level which should not be exceeded and have asserted that to avoid exceeding that temperature anomaly, global annual CO2 emissions must be reduced to Net Zero by 2050.

Polls indicate that the majority of the populations of the developed nations accept and support efforts to avoid the adverse effects of climate change projected by the UN and their national governments. These poll results are largely a function of human altruism. However, when the polls ask the members of these national populations how much they would be willing to spend to achieve the UN and national government net zero goals, acceptance of and support for these goals diminishes rapidly. The expenditures these populations are willing to make are trivial in comparison to the actual expenditures required to achieve the UN and national government goals.

This conflict between the intellectual willingness to support actions to limit climate change and the unwillingness to make the financial sacrifices required by that support results in cognitive dissonance. This dissonance has spawned passive and active resistance as the nature and magnitude of the sacrifices required has become obvious.

Increased energy prices, energy shortages, electric grid unreliability, mandates to replace fossil fueled devices such as boilers, water heaters, ranges, ovens, laundry dryers, etc. with electric devices, electric vehicle mandates and city travel restrictions and fees have increased citizen resistance to achieving emissions reduction goals. Proposals to reduce meat and dairy product consumption, to switch to vegetable protein-based meat analogs or to consume bugs as a source of protein have met with growing resistance and have increased dissonance.

National proposals to retire or expropriate productive agricultural land, to reduce meat animal and dairy herds, and to limit the use of synthetic fertilizers have led to farmer revolts because of the threat to their livelihoods, and to citizen resistance based on the anticipated increased food prices and reduced food availability.

People know they should be supportive of efforts to avoid the projected climate “crisis”, but:

Altruism dies when it costs.

By: Hoover Institution
Date: August 15, 2023

Dissonance: lack of agreement (the dissonance between the truth and what people want [you] to believe) – Merriam-Webster

Statements of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres regarding climate change:

• Latest IPCC climate report is “Code Red for Humanity.”
• Fossil fuels “incompatible with human survival”
• “The problem is not simply fossil fuel emissions.  It’s fossil fuels — period.”
• “We are hurtling towards disaster, eyes wide open –“
• “Now must be the time for ambition and action.”

These are assertions the Secretary-General, numerous governments of developed nations, climate activists and the global media want us to believe. Climate change is frequently referred to as a “crisis”, an “existential threat” or an “emergency”. This hyperbole is intended to spur action while ignoring the true situation.

Concerns regarding climate began with global warming, followed briefly in the 1970s by global cooling, then again in the 1980s and beyond with global warming and recently with global climate change. The shift to a focus on climate change was arguably the result of a pause in global warming over the period 1998-2012, which is currently being followed by another pause over the period from 2014 to the present. Climate change broadened the list of potential concerns beyond temperature to include sea level rise and potential worsening of weather phenomena including tropical cyclones, tornadoes, droughts, floods and wildfires.

The UN had established an arbitrary objective of keeping global temperature increase below 2°C, which was later arbitrarily reduced to 1.5°C. The current global temperature anomaly is approximately 1.0 (+/-0.2) °C. These anomaly objectives are based on the global near-surface temperature anomaly records. The concerns regarding further increases in near-surface temperature anomalies are based on the projections of unverified and unvalidated climate models, which have projected warming 2.5 - 3 times greater than observed changes. Continued temperature anomaly increases at the same rate as those over the past 140 years hardly constitute a crisis, especially since approximately 60% of the temperature increase has manifested as increased nighttime temperatures.

While the UN hierarchy, climate activists and the media have shifted their emphasis to concerns regarding more frequent, more intense and longer duration extreme weather events, the data regarding these events does not show any significant trends regarding any of these aspects for any of the extreme weather events. Several groups which provide attribution analyses for extreme weather events using unvalidated and unverified climate models have claimed that certain events could not have occurred were it not for climate change, or that events were “x” % stronger or more frequent as the result of climate change. These claims are currently impossible to verify.

Renewable energy generation equipment manufacturers and numerous national governments have claimed that the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy would reduce energy costs. However, there is no documented case in which the introduction of renewable generation, even with government subsidies and preferences, has reduced energy costs. The nations and states with the highest renewable generation percentages are also the nations and states with the highest energy costs.

In several European nations, the citizens have begun to realize that what their governments say and want them to believe is becoming further and further separated from reality.

Climate change dissonance is growing. Confidence in government is shrinking.

From: National Review

By: JOEL KOTKIN & HÜGO KRÜGER

Date: August 18, 2023

Adaptation Is the Answer

Humans have adapted to a changing climate before, and we can do it again.

The world is careening toward a climate crisis, and by that we do not mean nasty weather or impending human extinction. The real challenge lies in adapting to a changing climate without undermining an already stressed global order, not to mention imperiling democracy.

The West’s current policy agenda, based almost entirely on the promotion of “renewable” energy, seems likely to produce only marginal gains while (according to McKinsey) costing $6 trillion annually for the next 30 years, equal to a quarter taxes collected and half of all annual profits worldwide. The question is not so much how we can “fight” climate change but how to do so in a way that does not create other, arguably more disruptive, changes in society and the economy.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle lies in geopolitical realities. In China, India, Vietnam, and much of Africa, the demand for affordable and reliable power has clear priority over achieving “net zero” in the near future. Ultimately what the West does may matter more to its own self-righteousness than the planet itself. (continue reading)

Adaptation Is the Answer

There has not been a successful demonstration of a renewable plus storage grid, even with generation support from fossil, nuclear, geothermal and biomass generators. Previous commentaries (here, here and here) have described a conceptual demonstration of a renewable plus storage grid without support from fossil generation, its documentation and reporting. However, this demonstration began with installed and operational renewable generation and conceptual storage. There is growing concern that such a renewable plus storage grid, even with physical storage, would be unreliable and extremely expensive.

Recently, New York State Senator George Borrello proposed legislation in New York State which would prohibit the use of fossil fuels in the manufacturing of renewable energy equipment. This legislation would extend the conceptual demonstration discussed above one step upstream, requiring demonstration that the components of a renewable plus storage grid could be manufactured using predominantly renewable energy, without fossil fueled backup.

However, there is the potential to extend the conceptual demonstration several more steps upstream. The Administration proclaimed that the transition to renewables would result in millions of new, high-paying union jobs, presumably in the US. They also assured that this transition would result in dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Analyzing the success of the transition in achieving these goals requires starting at the beginning of the supply chain and expanding upon Senator Borrello’s proposed legislation.

The supply chain begins with the use of electric mining equipment to mine the raw materials required to fabricate the wind, solar and storage components of the renewable plus storage grid in US mines and the use of electric transportation to move these raw materials to the manufacturing facilities at which the components of the system would be fabricated. The fabrication of the components would occur in US plants using electric processing equipment.

The steel and cement required for installation of the system components would also be produced in US plants. In the case of the calcining of limestone to produce cement, carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems would be required to capture the CO2 released from the limestone.

Preparation of the installation sites for the wind and solar generators and the storage systems would be performed by US manufactured electric earthmoving equipment. The system components would be transported to the installation sites by US manufactured electric trucks or electrified trains and erected using US manufactured electric cranes.

The supply chain described above would be drastically different from the current supply chains for wind turbines, solar collectors and storage batteries, all of which currently require mining and processing of minerals in Asia and Africa and frequently rely on foreign manufacture, particularly of solar collectors and wind turbines. The current supply chain effectively limits US jobs to system installation and maintenance, and excludes mining, processing and manufacturing jobs. The mining and processing jobs exist mostly in Asia and Africa, while the manufacturing jobs exist in Asia and Europe.

The mining and processing jobs in Asia and Africa and the manufacturing jobs in Asia reputedly rely on child, forced and prison labor, which substantially reduces their costs.

From: Science Matters

By: Ron Clutz

Date: August 19, 2023

The Big Lie About Global Warming

The notion that CO2 from human activities causes global warming has multiple flaws, many of which have been dissected and rebutted here and elsewhere.  But The Big Lie is to fundamentally misrepresent how Earth’s climate system works. Richard Lindzen explains in the above interview with Jordan Peterson.  For those who prefer reading I provide a transcript from the closed captions in italics with my bolds and added images.

JP: When you started to object to the narrative, back say in ‘92, To what narrative were you objecting and on what grounds were you objecting?

RL: You’re touching on something that took me a while to understand. You know Goebbels famously said: If you tell a big enough lie and repeat it often enough, it’ll become the truth. there’s been a lot of that in this. But there are aspects of establishing the narrative, that is, what makes something the truth that I hadn’t appreciated.

So the narrative was the climate is determined by a greenhouse effect
and adding CO2 to it increases warming. And moreover besides CO2
the natural greenhouse substances–water vapor, clouds, upper level clouds–
will amplify whatever man does.

Now that immediately goes against Le Chatelier’s principle which says: If you perturb a system and it is capable internally of counteracting that, it will. And our system is so capable. (continue reading)

The Big Lie About Global Warming

The two previous commentaries, Climate = Sum of Weather and Climate Events & Weather discuss how climate is established and how specific climate events affect weather. However, the far more controversial topic is how climate and particularly the recent climate change affects weather now and might affect weather in the future.

The Modern Warm Period essentially began with the end of the Little Ice Age and the start of the industrial revolution in the late-1800s, as shown in the graphs below from NASA GISS and UAH.

However, the warming of concern has occurred mostly since the 1950s, the period when anthropogenic CO2 emissions began to increase significantly, as shown in the graph below.

The increase in global average temperature, measured as anomalies from some reference climate period, has led to concerns that continued increases in anthropogenic CO2 emissions would lead to continually increasing global average temperatures and to significant changes in regional climates and the global climate overall. The increase in the global average temperature anomaly is approximately 1.0(+/-0.2)°C over a period of  approximately 150 years.

The potential climate-induced changes of concern include changes in the frequency, duration, extent and severity of weather events such as tropical cyclones, droughts, floods and tornadoes. There are also concerns regarding increases in sea surface temperatures and sea level rise associated with the increasing sea surface temperatures and with glacial melting.

The IPCC Working Group 1 analyzed these issues and reported low confidence regarding any significant trends in any of these weather event characteristics. However, the IPCC Summary for Policymakers and later the IPCC Synthesis Report essentially ignored this analysis. Their publication, accompanied by dire press releases and hyperbolic declarations of “Code Red” by the UN Secretary-General and others, has stirred concern that the nations of the globe have not done enough to halt climate change and that “greater ambition” is required to avoid “climageddon”. Cries of “Earth on Fire” and “Boiling Oceans” have poured forth from the cheerleaders of climate doom, regardless of the fact that the available data do not support and frequently contradict their assertions.

This concern regarding worsening of weather events has spawned numerous efforts at attribution of purported current or potential changes such as more frequent or stronger hurricanes, more frequent or massive floods, longer and more extensive droughts, more frequent or more powerful tornadoes, etc. to climate change caused by global warming. There is even an effort to produce instant attribution studies to maximize attention while the analyzed weather event is still “front of mind” with the public. These attribution studies are based on unverified and unvalidated models, as are the projections of future climate change.

One of the most inexplicable aspects of these concerns is the assertion that climate change threatens food production in the face of confirmed global greening and record global food crop yields, while at the same time numerous national governments are beginning to take action against farmers, taking productive farm land and requiring reduction in herds of dairy cattle and meat animals.

Meanwhile, in the face of developed nation angst, the developing nations continue to increase fossil fuel use and emissions at a rate which more than offsets the emissions reductions by the developed nations and total global annual emissions continue to rise unabated.

From: Watts Up With That

By: Robert Girouard

Date: August 2, 2023

A Brief History of Climate, From Prehistory to The Imaginary Crisis of the 21st Century

Since appearing in Africa a few hundred thousand years ago, Sapiens has had to contend with climatic changes of a magnitude and severity far beyond the benign warming we’ve experienced since the end of the Little Ice Age. These include at least two glacial-interglacial cycles, numerous major shifts in temperature and humidity, and cataclysmic eruptions such as that of the Toba volcano around 73,000 BP (yr before present), whose ashes darkened the sky for years.  Thanks to his intelligence, Sapiens not only overcame all these challenges posed by a turbulent and unpredictable nature, but also became increasingly resilient, less and less dependent on the climate.

A tumultuous prehistory

From 190,000 BP onwards, our distant African ancestors first faced the Riss glaciation, followed by the Würm glaciation. Default climate during these ices ages was cold, dry and dusty, and polar at higher latitudes.

The mega-droughts that affected much of tropical Africa between 135,000 BP and 75,000 BP made life very difficult, forcing Sapiens to take refuge in the caves along the South African coast (Blombos). The Great Lakes Tanganyika and Malawi, now several hundred meters deep, remained almost completely dry for several thousand years, on several occasions.

Sapiens experienced a brief interval of favorable climate during the Eemian interglacial, which began around 130,000 BP and lasted around 15,000 years. It was significantly warmer than today, as evidenced by the disappearance of the Arctic summer ice pack and Alpine glaciers, and the greening of the Sahara. During the heat peak, the oceans were on average 2°C warmer than at present, which implies much higher temperatures on land. Some archaic Sapiens took advantage of this exceptional climatic window to leave Africa.

Between 70,000 BP and 60,000 BP, thanks to improved and wetter conditions during the last ice age, populations migrated from the coasts of South Africa to East Africa, the starting point for new exits from Africa, this time by Sapiens sapiens. (continue reading)

A Brief History of Climate, From Prehistory to The Imaginary Crisis of the 21st Century

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) defines climate as the sum of weather events over 30-year periods, which they refer to as climate normals. Many nations update their climate normals on a 10-year cycle, as recommended by WMO. These climate normals are then used as the basis for monitoring excursions beyond the bounds of the reference normal. The most discussed anomalies are temperature anomalies based on the current concerns about anthropogenic global warming.

The graph below illustrates a number of long-duration climate events over the past 4500 years which produced significant temperature anomalies. The graph is based on a climate normal temperature of 57° (14°C). In the current era, the graph shows 3 warm events (Roman, Medieval and Current) and 2 cold events (Dark Ages and Little Ice Age). The graph also shows the very brief but very rapid cooling event in the 1970s, which is considered a weather event because of its short duration. Concern about anthropogenic influence on climate change began with the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850 and became more intense around 1950. The causes of the clearly cyclical climate warming and cooling cycles prior to the end of the Little Ice Age are not well understood. However, they are almost certainly not anthropogenic.

There are also several shorter-term climate events which affect weather on a large scale, including the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). The PDO and the AMO transition between what are referred to as warm and cool phases. The phase transitions are not well defined and understood, and they are not generally predictable. The PDO warm plus cool phase duration ranges from approximately 40-60 years. The AMO warm plus cool phase duration ranges from approximately 60-80 years. The PDO is currently in a cool phase and the AMO is currently in a warm phase, as shown below.

The PDO graph above shows the significant variation in PDO strength and the frequent, brief excursions from phase to phase. The smoother AMO graph more clearly shows phase duration, though still showing significant variation in strength.

The PDO has significant impacts on climatic conditions and weather events affecting South America, Australia and Asia, as well as North America. The El Nino Southern Oscillation is also affected by the PDO. El Nino events are more likely to occur during the positive or warm phase of the PDO, while La Nina conditions are more likely in the negative or cool phase. The recent triple-dip La Nina occurred during the PDO cool phase, while two recent super El Nino events occurred during the PDO positive or warm phase.

The AMO has significant impacts on climate conditions and weather events in the North Atlantic Ocean and along its coasts, as well as Africa and India. The warm phase of the AMO is believed to contribute to the frequency and strength of hurricanes. However, the “drought” of major landfalling hurricanes which began in 2006 occurred during the warm phase of the AMO.

The relatively short duration of extensive, accurate measurements of sea surface temperatures and the long duration of PDO and AMO cycles makes it difficult to analyze the impacts of the phase of one of these climate events on the other. However, the differing durations of these two major climate events mean that they will not always be in the same phase or in different phases; and, the two climate events do influence each other. There remains much to be learned about these interactions.

From: Watts Up With That

By: Don Ritter

Date: August 1, 2023

Abandon Fossil Fuels, Empower China

Autocratic Producers (primarily Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Russia, Iran, Qatar, Venezuela and China) and certain democratic (or semi-democratic) Consumers (fossil fuel-dependent nations, mostly in the Global South), are uniting over oil, gas, coal, petrochemicals, natural gas-derived fertilizers and wind-solar-battery raw materials that are essential for building and maintaining modern industrial nations.

The implications are enormous, for global commerce, and especially for America.

China straddles both worlds. It’s the world’s largest coal producer and consumer – and the second-largest fossil fuels consumer after the USA.Although the United States remains the planet’s largest oil and gas producer, government policies are restricting investment in future domestic production, forcing U.S. companies to scour the world to increase production.

The autocratic Producers clearly benefit from America’s declining production, because major Consumers (India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and others) that buy oil, gas and petrochemicals must feed their people, fuel their vehicles, and sustain or grow their economies at reasonable cost.

Giant energy Producer Russia continues to sustain its economy and finance its war in Ukraine, as it waits for Western electorates to lose patience and reduce military aid. Moscow counts on continued fossil fuel sales to Consumercountries, particularly China.

China is importing record amounts of oil and gas from Russia, making it the largest financier of Russia’s Ukraine war. China’s dual-use technologies also enter indirectly into the Russian war machine. Courtesy of Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, China is building new refineries and becoming a major petrochemicals producer – even as Biden energy policies curtail U.S. refinery and petrochemical investments.

Petrochemicals fuel or provide building blocks for just about everything. They therefore add tremendous value to the crude oil China imports from Russia.

Meanwhile, America and the West pursue sweeping policies on “manmade climate change.” That means they deride and downgrade the value of fossil fuels that are the lifeblood of all industrialized nations: Producers, Consumers and those fortunate or wise enough to play both roles. (continue reading)

Abandon Fossil Fuels, Empower China

Climate characterizes the average weather conditions for a particular location over a long period of time (usually 30 years). World Meteorological Organization

Weather is a series of events occurring at a specific location at a specific time. The events include high and low temperatures, precipitation, wind speed, storm nature and intensity and other factors. These events are typically recorded daily and compiled as the average weather for a specific location in a specific month. This compilation is performed for each specific location for each month of a given year and reported as the average weather for that year.

Climate is the compilation of the series of events for each specific location for each year over a period of 30 years. However, the history of weather events in each year of the 30-year period can vary widely from year to year relative to the compilation which is the climate for that specific location.

Once the climate for a location has been established, future weather can be compared with the climate average for that particular climate period and also with the historic range of weather events from which the climate for the location was compiled. In most cases, the future weather would be expected to fall within the range of the weather events for the climate period. However, the future weather would not be expected to match the average weather for the climate period.

The occurrence of weather which falls outside the range of weather conditions which compose the climate period is of interest because it is different. It is typically referred to as an anomaly. The repeated occurrence of weather which falls outside the range of the weather conditions which constitute the established climate raise the question of whether there will be a long-term change in the weather conditions which would ultimately constitute a climate change.

Climate change can be tracked in several ways. Tracking a moving 30-year period, adding the most recent year’s data and dropping the data from the oldest year in the climate period would alter the range of events for the moving climate period, if the most recent year’s data is outside the range of the prior climate period. However, the effect on the climate average would likely be minimal. Tracking is more frequently done on 10- and 30-year periods, which makes the effect of weather outside the range of the previous climate period more obvious. A thirty-year period with different ranges of weather events and/or a different average would constitute a changed climate.

Weather events are recorded across the globe in a variety of different climate regimes, ranging from deserts to the poles. The changes in each of these climate regimes are monitored and recorded. They are then compiled and analyzed to establish an assessment of the global climate and of changes in the global climate. One of the results of combining the data from the numerous climate regimes is that significant detail is lost in the averaging process across months, years and the 30-year period.

From: Climate Etc.

By: Hakon Karlsen

Date: July 8, 2023

How much warming can we expect in the 21st century?

A comprehensive explainer of climate sensitivity to CO2

Short summary

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the atmosphere’s climate sensitivity to CO2is likely between 2.5 and 4.0°C. Simply put, this means that (in the very long term) Earth’s temperature will rise between 2.5 and 4.0°C when the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere doubles.

A 2020 study (Sherwood20) greatly influenced how the IPCC calculated the climate sensitivity. Sherwood20 has been “extremely influential, including in informing the assessment of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) in the 2021 IPCC Sixth Assessment Scientific Report (AR6); it was cited over twenty times in the relevant AR6 chapter“, according to Nic Lewis. A Comment in Nature confirmed this view.1)

Nic Lewis took a closer look at this study, and in September 2022, he published his own study (Lewis22) that criticizes Sherwood20. By correcting errors and using more recent data, including from AR6, Lewis22 found that the climate sensitivity may be about 30% lower than what Sherwood20 had found.

If we know what the climate sensitivity is, and if we also know approximately the amount of greenhouse gases that will be emitted going forward, then the amount of future warming that’s caused by greenhouse gases can also be estimated.

In terms of future emissions, a 2022 study (Pielke22) found that something called RCP3.4 is the most plausible emissions scenario. Traditionally, another scenario (RCP8.5), has been used as a business-as-usual scenario, but this is now widely regarded as an extremely unlikely scenario, with unrealistically high emissions. (continue reading)

How much warming can we expect in the 21st century?

The UN recently reported that “extreme weather caused two million deaths, cost $4 trillion over the last 50 years”.

The graph below, prepared by Bjorn Lomborg, plots annual deaths, averaged by decade, from extreme weather and other non-weather events.

The graph provides both accurate information and misinformation in several ways. The graph accurately plots all the available data, showing the decrease in deaths from extreme weather over the period for which accurate data are available. The decrease is most dramatic prior to 1970, though the decrease continues through the following 50-year period, which is the focus of the UN report.

The graph is labeled “Annual climate-related deaths” and identifies “floods, droughts, storms, wildfires and heatwaves” as the “climate-related” events of interest. However, the UN accurately describes extreme weather events as the cause of the deaths, not climate.

The deaths of interest are “climate-related” to the extent that climate is the sum of weather over a period of 30 years, as specified by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The choice of “climate-related” would appear to suggest some contribution of climate change to the ongoing deaths. However, the continuing decline of extreme weather deaths is inconsistent with the suggestion that climate change is making extreme weather events more extreme or more frequent.

The subheading of the graph includes heatwaves, but does not include cold waves, although studies reported by The Lancet suggest that deaths from cold are approximately 10 times greater than deaths from heat, even in areas with warm climates.

The subheading also includes wildfires, which are not actually extreme weather events, though lightning strikes are one identified cause of fires which might develop into wildfires under certain conditions. However, there are numerous other causes of wildfires which are not weather-related or climate-related, including electric transmission and distribution faults, improperly controlled cooking and campfires and arson. There are also factors which can cause fires to become wildfires, including poor forest management practices.

The UN report includes the following explanation: “Over two million deaths and $4.3 trillion in economic losses; that’s the impact of a half-century of extreme weather events turbo-charged by man-made global warming, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Monday.” However, the data over the past half-century shows little evidence of the “turbo-charging” by “man-made global warming” asserted by the WMO. In fact, this assertion, while consistent with the political IPCC Summary for Policymakers and Synthesis Report, is inconsistent with the data as analyzed in the IPCC Assessment Reports.

The UN report also gives no recognition to the results of normalization studies which demonstrate that the principal causes of the increase in economic losses are increasing GDP and increasing construction of infrastructure in areas subject to extreme weather events. The continuing decline in deaths from extreme weather events is moderated somewhat by increasing population in areas subject to extreme weather events.

It appears essential that events resulting in large numbers of deaths and massive economic losses be analyzed and reported clearly and carefully. In this case, the UN has failed to do so.