The past several years have seen the appearance and proliferation of “fact checkers”, some of which are more like “fake checkers” driven by their founders positions on current issues. This evolved into organizations including Facebook, Twitter and Google blocking subscriber content and then banning individuals and organizations from using their services. However, two Duke University professors have now proposed establishment of a federal, “non-partisan” Misinformation Commission, though there is no assurance that such a Commission would be expert or objective. The suggested federal Commission is reminiscent of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984, which was also responsible for the ongoing revision of history.

Climate change would likely be a priority focus of the Commission, since charges of misinformation and the use of epithets such as “denier” and “anti-science” have been commonly aimed at skeptical scientists and politicians by climate change alarmists in the environmental movement, numerous politicians and bureaucrats and by some members of the consensed climate change community. There is even a website which focuses exclusively on exposing and berating scientists and others skeptical of the climate alarmist narrative.

The following are some examples of climate misinformation to assist the Commission.

1. Any statement that climate science is “settled science”, since there are numerous aspects of climate and climate change which are not well understood, including climate sensitivity and atmospheric feedbacks.

2. Any statement that global near-surface temperature anomalies have changed by an increment of one or more hundredths of a degree centigrade, since: the measurements are not made with that precision; many of the measurements are inaccurate and are “adjusted” to correct them; and, many areas of the globe are sparsely measured or unmeasured.

3. Statements that climate models can accurately project or predict future climate conditions, since the models were not able to accurately predict current conditions when they were “tuned” to previous temperature history and none of the models has been verified.

4. Statements that weather events have become more frequent or more intense as the result of climate change, since changes in weather event frequency and intensity have been neutral or negative.

5. Statements that weather events will become more frequent or more intense in the future as the result of some climate change contribution, since these statements are based on unverified attribution models.

6. Statements that the rate of sea level rise has doubled, or that the rate of sea level rise is increasing, based on satellite sea level measurements, since the differences between the satellite sea level measurements and the tide gauge measurements have not been resolved; and, since the purported change in the rate of increase in less than the measurement uncertainty in the satellite measurements.

7. Statements that wildfires have increased as the result of climate change, since satellite data refutes these statements.

8. Statements that climate change is interfering with crop production, since crop production has increased globally and laboratory experiments confirm that increased carbon dioxide concentrations enhance plant growth and the efficiency of plant water usage.

9. Statements that there is a climate “crisis”, or “emergency” or that climate change represents an “existential threat”. These statements are not supported by the IPCC reports nor by the actions of numerous national governments which are aggressively increasing their carbon dioxide emissions to expand their economies.

The climate change which has occurred and is currently occurring has produced net positive effects across the globe. There is no indication that this will change in the foreseeable future.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”, H. L. Mencken

From: Climate Depot

By: Joseph S. D’Aleo, CCM

Date: February 5, 2021

‘97% consensus is a convenient fiction’ – Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo rebuts the 11 most common climate claims

Climate Claim Fact Checks

"Below are a series of fact checks of the 11 most common climate claims such as those made in the recently released Fourth National Climate Assessment Report.[2] The authors of these reviews are all recognized experts in the relevant fields.

For each claim, a summary of the relevant rebuttal is provided below along with a link to the full text of the rebuttal, which includes the names and the credentials of the authors of each rebuttal.

See Impacts of Climate Change Perception and Reality by Indur M. Goklany here.

Heat Waves – have been decreasing since the 1930s in the U.S. and globally.

Hurricanes – the decade just ended as the second quietest for landfalling. hurricanes and landfalling major hurricanes in the U.S since the 1850s. 2020 saw a record 30 named storms and many Gulf impacts like the quiet solar periods in the late 1800s and this century, but the AC index ranked 13th highest. See 2020 Update showing similarities to late 1800s here and global contrasts here.

Tornadoes – the number of strong tornadoes has declined over the last half-century. More active months occur when unseasonable cold spring patterns are present." ...

‘97% consensus is a convenient fiction’ – Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo rebuts the 11 most common climate claims

University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH) has released their analysis of lower atmosphere temperature anomalies through December 2020. The current graph is shown below.

The temperature anomaly decreased by 0.26°C in December 2020, from 0.53°C in November. Dr. Roy Spencer noted that 2020 was the second warmest year in the 42-year satellite record at 0.49°C, compared to 0.53°C in 2016, which was a super El Nino year. The peak monthly anomaly in 2020 was 0.75°C in February, marking the peak of the 2019/2020 El Nino, comparable to the peak temperature in 1998, which was also a super El Nino year.

Dr. Spencer believes that the rapid drop in the anomaly in December marked the beginning of the impact of the current La Nina, which began in the fall of 2020. NOAA expects the current La Nina to persist through at least early Spring and perhaps through the Spring of 2021. It remains to be seen how strong the current La Nina will become, but Southern California Weather Force has issued a super La Nina warning for 2021, projecting the strongest La Nina in recorded history.

The graph below shows the ENSO index values from 1990 – 2020. Note the super El Nino events in 1997/1998 and 2015/2016. Also note that there has not been a very strong or super La Nina during this period. The current La Nina was approaching strong at the end of 2020.

Note that ENSO events are not climate events, because of their short duration, but rather weather events. However, both El Nino and La Nina events can have major impacts on global temperatures, as shown in the UAH graph of lower atmosphere temperatures. Note also that, while temperature anomalies returned to pre-El Nino levels after the 1997/1998 and 2009/2010 El Nino events, they did not do so after the 2015/2016 super El Nino. In that case, temperature anomalies remained approximately 0.25°C warmer. There is no basis on which to estimate how long it might take for this residual heat to dissipate if it does.

The Pacific Ocean experienced a Great Pacific Climate Shift in 1977, when the Pacific Decadal Oscillation shifted from its cold phase to its warm phase. It appears that the Pacific Ocean might be in the process of shifting back to its cold stage with the start of the current La Nina. The warm phase of the PDO is characterized by more El Nino events than La Nina events, which would tend to leave residual heat from the El Nino events. The cold phase of the PDO is characterized by more La Nina events, which should tend to reduce or remove the residual heat left by the more frequent and stronger El Nino events during the warm phase.

The Great Pacific Climate Shift began before the satellite era, so it is not captured in the UAH graph above. However, it appears that the residual heat remaining after the 1997/1998 and 2015/2016 El Nino events was captured by the UAH anomaly measurements. It will be interesting to see whether the PDO cold mode shift and the current La Nina will remove some or all of the residual heat.

From: Climate Etc.

By: Judith Curry

Date: January 30, 2021

Interview: Climate Change – A Different Perspective with Judith Curry

"My recent interview on the Strong and Free podcast.

I recently did an interview with Christopher Balkaran on his Strong and Free podcast

While I wasn’t previously aware of Balkaran or his podcast, you can see why I agreed to this interview, from these excerpts from the ‘About’ page:

“I created the Strong and Free Podcast to explore news topics by gathering multiple perspectives together and allowing people and organizations to discuss their opinions with detail. This allows for a nuanced conversation. It also means putting aside my own bias to explore these to the fullest. It means making all guests feel welcomed to share their opinions safely, without fear that the host will paint them into a corner, or make them sound incoherent. I want this place to be truly safe. I believe everyone, even those I disagree with, deserve to be treated with respect and to be on the Podcast to share their perspective. It also means having a concrete discussion on issues and determining the best way forward.  As long as we restore thoughtful approaches to the biggest issues of our time our conversations will have deep, valuable meaning. And, we enrich our own opinion.”

We covered a lot of topics that I think will provide good fodder for discussion and debate here.

Here is a transcript of the interview (quicker to read than to listen to the hour long podcast).  I edited the transcript eliminate thousands of ‘like’, ‘you know’, ‘okay’ (I am really a much better writer than speaker).  I also edited to increase overall coherency of what was said.

Transcript: ..."

Interview: Climate Change – A Different Perspective with Judith Curry

magma: molten rock material within the earth from which igneous rock results by cooling    Merriam-Webster

The land surfaces of the earth and the bottom surfaces of the earth’s oceans compose the earth’s crust, a layer of rock more than 24,000 feet to as much as 210,000 feet thick. This crust surrounds the upper and lower mantle and the liquid and solid core of the earth. The temperature of the subsurface earth increases with depth from the surface to the solid core, which has a temperature of ~6,000°C.

Magma, or molten rock from the upper portion of the earth’s mantle, most commonly manifests from active volcanos, which exist both on land surfaces and on the ocean floor.

Recent research suggests that the warming of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is, at least in part, the result of volcanic activity on the ocean floor below the ice sheet, rather than the effect of global warming.

Recent research also suggests that one of the causes of melting of the Greenland ice sheet is a mantle plume which allows magma to move up through the earth’s crust, rather than the effect of global warming.

There is also sea floor volcanic activity under the arctic sea ice, which might be contributing to diminishing Arctic sea ice extent.

There is currently renewed focus on dry hot rock geothermal energy in conjunction with explosive or hydraulic fracturing. The above graphic shows that there are areas where hot rock is present at relatively shallow depths. This rock can be fractured between two well bores, one used to inject water into the fractured hot rock and the other to transfer the resulting steam to the surface, where it is used to turn a steam turbine generator, then condensed and reinjected. Fracturing dramatically increases the surface area of the dry hot rock which is in contact with the injected water, thus increasing heat transfer to the water and thus increasing the capacity of the well pair and the generating capacity of the electric generator.

The closer the fractured rock area can be located to the mantle or to a magma pool, the higher the temperature of the fractured rock and the higher temperature and pressure of the produced steam.

Also, the closer to the mantle or a magma pool, the more rapidly heat extracted from the fractured rock can be replaced through conduction from the higher temperature source. This suggests that areas near active or even inactive volcanos might be the most productive early targets, since there are likely to be relatively shallow magma pools.

The capacity of the electric generator at a dry hot rock geothermal site is limited by the ability of the rock surrounding the fractured zone to conduct heat back to the fractured zone as it is removed by the steam generation process. Exceeding this capacity would cause the dry hot rock to cool, reducing its ability to transfer heat at temperature to the injected water.

Dry hot rock geothermal generation would be reliable and dispatchable, making it suitable for baseload generation of generation to supplement intermittent wind and solar.

From: Watts Up With That

By: Larry Hamlin

Date: January 29, 2021

Biden’s energy & climate incompetence on full display

"On his very first day in office Biden killed the TC Energy Keystone pipeline project as reported upon by the Wall Street Journal thereby demonstrating his and the Democratic Party’s colossal incompetence and ignorance of energy and climate realities at home and abroad.

His idiotic decision to revoke the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline was noted by the WSJ article as being “a slap at Canada” demonstrating that under his administration “investors that play by U.S. rules” will be subject to arbitrary political whims that represent nothing but Democrats pushing climate alarmism hype in the name of “fighting climate change” with these schemes always being irrelevant to the continuing global CO2 emissions upward climb driven exclusively by the world’s developing nations led by China and India.  

As addressed in the Wall Street Journal article the Keystone pipeline project would have provided for moving up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Alberta oil sands to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast. This long environmentally reviewed project has no material impact on greenhouse gas emissions since this crude will still be extracted in any event whether for U.S. benefit or benefit to other global purchasers that are adversarial to U.S. energy interests.

Shipping this crude using rail or tanker would increase CO2 transportation emissions by between 28% to 42% and with higher leak likelihood. Killing Keystone will strand billions of dollars in Canadian investment alienating a key ally and kill thousands of U.S. jobs including 10,000 American union construction jobs, steel pipe made in the U.S., a 10 million Green Job Training Fund, $500 million for indigenous suppliers and jobs and 100% renewable power to operate the pipeline.

This absurd purely political hand waving action by Biden clearly signals that his administration intends to promote economically damaging energy and climate actions driven completely by irrational claims based upon scientifically unsupported “climate emergency” propaganda." ...

Biden’s energy & climate incompetence on full display

Model projections of future climate focus on temperature anomalies compared to temperatures in a 30-year climate reference period. The inputs to these models include estimates of climate sensitivity, solar forcing, atmospheric feedback and the future rate of change of atmospheric CO2 and other “greenhouse gases”. The temperatures which form the 30-year climate reference period are estimates, since the actual data have been “adjusted”, “infilled”, “homogenized” and have also been affected by site moves, instrument changes, instrument drift, site deterioration and the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Temperatures more recent than the end of the 30-year climate reference period are also estimates, for the reasons cited above.

Global temperature and temperature anomaly measurements consist of both near-surface temperature measurements over land and sea surface temperatures over the global oceans. The global oceans comprise approximately 71% of the globe’s surface, or more than twice the land surface area. Ocean surface temperatures are also estimates, since the actual data is subject to all of the issues listed above for near-surface land temperatures, with the exception of UHI. Ocean temperature measurements are also sparse compared to near-surface land temperature measurements, so large areas of the global oceans remain unmeasured.

A recent series of articles by Andy May (here, here and here) present and compare ocean surface temperature analyses reported by several agencies involved in climate change analysis, as shown in the graph below. The graphed lines represent calculated ocean temperatures, rather than anomalies, based on the available ocean temperature data. It is important to note that the same measurements form the basis for all of the reported sea surface temperatures over the period shown in the graph. It is also important to note that the two NOAA sea surface temperature estimates differ by ~5.5°C and that the temperature trends represented by the graph lines are significantly different.

The two NOAA graph lines display a very slight upward trend in estimated sea surface temperatures, while HADSST4 shows a downward trend approximately three times as large as the NOAA upward trend. Note that the graph lines are based on temperature estimates reported to two decimal places. The two NOAA graph lines display virtually identical temperature trends, though the temperature estimates differ by ~5.5°C.

The various agencies which report global average temperature anomaly changes combine the anomalies in these sea surface temperature analyses with the anomalies reported for the near-surface land temperatures. The global average temperature anomaly changes are then reported to two decimal place precision and there is great interest in reported year to year changes of 0.01°C. The precision in the anomaly reporting is greater than the accuracy of the underlying data, even after “adjustment”.

The differences in the reported sea surface temperatures are one of the major reasons why global temperature changes are reported as anomalies, rather than absolute temperatures. However, since the reported average temperature for the climate reference period is an estimate and the reported temperature anomaly is also an estimate, reporting annual changes to two decimal place precision is totally unjustified.

From: Whats Up With That

By: Andy May

Date: January 18, 2021

The Rational Climate e-Book

"Patrice Poyet has just published a new 431-page eBook entitled, The Rational Climate e-Book, it is free to download here. Dr. Poyet studied geochemistry, remote sensing, and computer science at Ecole des Mines de Paris / Nice University. He received his doctorate in 1986. As an expert computer modeler, he spends much of the book evaluating climate computer models and uncovers their often-unstated underlying assumptions.

English is not Poyet’s first language and some of his phrasing is awkward, but even so, the narrative is compelling and interesting. You stop noticing the odd sentence structure very quickly.

Poyet declares that climate science is now the religion of our time. He then notes that cooling is far more hazardous than warming and quotes a passage from Trevelyan’s A Shortened History of England:

“The last half dozen years of Williams’s reign (i.e., the 1690s) had been the ‘dear years’ of Scottish memory, six consecutive seasons of disastrous weather when the harvest would not ripen. The country had not the means to buy food from abroad, so the people had laid themselves down and died. Many parishes had been reduced to a half or a third of their inhabitants.” (Trevelyan, 1942, p. 432).

This was the coldest period of the Little Ice Age. During this time people not only died due to cold and drought in Scotland, but also in China and many other parts of the world (May, 2020c, pp. 26-27). Poyet, notes as many others have, that the climate models used to supposedly “prove” humans are controlling the global climate have not successfully predicted anything. The lack of predictive skill invalidates them." ...

The Rational Climate e-Book

The potential for climate change to have adverse effects on the globe, its climate and its population is the subject of great international angst, fomented continuously by the UN secretariat, the UN FCCC, the IPCC, international NGOs, climate activist groups and numerous national politicians. The adverse effects of concern include rising global average temperatures, rising sea levels, more frequent and intense extreme weather events (floods, droughts, tropical cyclones) ultimately leading to a “crisis”, a “climate emergency” or an “existential threat”. The ultimate fear is that changing climate conditions would pass some “tipping point”, beyond which recovery to some previously acceptable climate state would be impossible. This fear appears to be shared, or at least proclaimed, by national and international politicians and by organizations which would profit from efforts to avoid these outcomes.

The fact that available data and observations do not support assertions regarding more frequent or more intense extreme weather events is largely ignored by those encouraging climate alarm. Each extreme weather event is somehow associated with climate change, whether as a cause or as a contributing factor. These associations are sometimes made by climate scientists, though far more frequently by climate alarmists and politicians, then echoed by the media. Increasing global average surface temperature anomalies are amplified into expressions such as “fireball earth”. Rising sea levels are amplified into concerns for coastal and island nation inundation. Projections are made concerning climate deaths, climate-driven migration, moving or shrinking animal habitat, increasing insect infestation, spreading disease and even pandemics.

Climate scientists have developed a new class of climate models used for attribution studies, which attempt to quantify the purported climate change contributions to extreme weather events. These attribution studies have most frequently been applied to studies of tropical cyclones in an attempt to quantify the effects of climate change on storm frequency and intensity, and on storm speed and its effect on resulting precipitation and flooding related damage. The climate models used in these attribution studies, like all climate models, are currently unverified and the uncertainty surrounding their attribution estimates are very large.

The potential of climate change to have beneficial effects on the globe, its climate and its population and the demonstrable existing beneficial effects are largely ignored. The modest warming over the past 150 years has ended the adverse impacts of the Little Ice Age, which was a period of widespread crop failures and rampant disease. The increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration has had numerous documented benefits, including massive global greening resulting from the aerial fertilization effects of increased CO2 combined with the impact of increased CO2 on the efficiency with which numerous plants use available water. These effects also manifest in increased crop yields resulting from longer growing seasons in combination with aerial fertilization and increased water use efficiency, as well as the availability of more temperature and drought tolerant seeds and improved farming methods.

Politicians have tended to focus of the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) but have almost solely ignored the demonstrable benefits. There is a solid argument that the current SCC is negative and that it will remain so for the foreseeable future. However, all estimates of the SCC are based on unverified models and are therefore questionable.

From: Climate Change Dispatch

By: Dr. John Happs

Date: January 14, 2021

Groupthink, Pal Review And The Climate Fraud

"A little over two decades ago, Dr. Irving Janis, professor of psychology at Yale University, published Groupthink in which he explained how a group of like-minded people could share a common belief or goal whilst completely ignoring any evidence that challenged that belief.

Janis provided the tragic example of the Challenger spacecraft disaster that occurred on January 28, 1986, when a rubber O-Ring failed to contain rocket fuel, allowing it to leak and explode.

A subsequent inquiry showed that the Challenger explosion and the deaths of all 7 astronauts should have been avoided.

The report into the cause of the Challenger accident concluded that a flawed decision-making process ignored warnings about possible problems with the spacecraft prior to launch.

This happened, despite NASA having always taken the position that any launch should be canceled if there was any doubt about the safety of the vehicle.

Engineers from Morton Thiokol, the company that manufactured the booster rocket, had warned that the launch might be risky because freezing temperatures forecast for the morning of the launch might adversely affect the O-Ring seals." ...

Groupthink, Pal Review And The Climate Fraud

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