CAFE

Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #377

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The Week That Was: September 21, 2019, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President,The Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week – “When in doubt, always tell the truth. It will confuse your enemies and astound your friends!”—Mark Twain [H/t Will Happer]

Number of the Week: 250 Outlets

Climate Model Inflation: According to the “Centre national de la recherche scientifique”, a French government entity billed as the largest governmental research organisation in France and the largest fundamental science agency in Europe, climate models have been underestimating the worst case for an increase in temperatures from a doubling of carbon dioxide (CO2). In a news release it announced:

“The international climate science community is undertaking an extensive programme of numerical simulations of past and future climates. Its conclusions will contribute significantly to part one of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, which is expected to be published in 2021. The French scientists involved in the work, in particular at the CNRS, the CEA and Météo-France, were the first to submit their contributions, and they have now revealed the broad outlines of their findings. Specifically, their new models predict that warming by 2100 will be more severe than forecast in earlier versions. They are also making progress in describing climate at the regional level.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #333

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Brought to You by www.SEPP.org, The Science and Environmental Policy Project

By Ken Haapala, President

Biased: TWTW has been accused as being biased. It is biased against speculative ideas being used to justify far reaching government policy, particularly if the primary support of these ideas are complex mathematical models that have not been validated. Politicians and the public are often overwhelmed by such models even though the models may contain significant omissions and logical errors. Government policies based on speculative thinking can be harmful to the economy and to humans.

Over the past two weeks, TWTW discussed significant problems with the reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its followers such as the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). Physicist Richard Lindzen brought up two: the climate system is unrealistically over-simplified and the global climate models fail to address critical issues regarding clouds and water vapor. Water vapor is by far the dominant greenhouse gas.

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WaPo’s Non-Shocking, Non-Discovery

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By Marlo Lewis, Jr. – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Trump Auto Rule: Washington Post’s Non-Shocking Non-Discovery

Today in the Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis, and Chris Mooney bash the Trump Administration’s SAFE Vehicles Rule, a proposal to freeze new motor vehicle fuel economy standards at the 2020 levels through 2026. Eilperin, Dennis, and Mooney (EDM) claim, or rather insinuate through the mouths of others, that the SAFE rule is a plan to doom humanity to a future of planetary ruin.

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Some Fuel Economy Common Sense

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By Paul Driessen – Re-Blogged From WUWT

But Greens go apoplectic over rule change that would have no climate or other benefits

Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards were devised back in 1975, amid anxiety over the OPEC oil embargo and supposedly imminent depletion of the world’s oil supplies.

But recall, barely 15 years after Edwin Drake drilled the first successful oil well in 1859, a Pennsylvania geologist was saying the United States would run out of oil by 1878. In 1908, the US Geological Survey said we’d exhaust our domestic oil reserves by 1927; in 1939, it moved petroleum doomsday to 1952.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #324

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Brought to You by www.SEPP.org The Science and Environmental Policy Project

By Ken Haapala, President

Group Think-Bureaucratic Science: Last week’s TWTW discussed Judith Curry’s review of a rather remarkable paper by retired MIT professor Carl Wunsch, who participated in 1979 report “Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment,” headed by Jule Charney. The findings in Charney Report have become the core reasoning for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), and many US government actions, including the EPA’s illogical finding that carbon dioxide endangers human health and welfare.

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Trump to Freeze Obama’s Auto Mileage Rules, Rescind California’s Emissions Authority

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By Bloomberg – Re-Blogged From Newsmax

The Trump administration, taking aim at one of former President Barack Obama’s signature environmental achievements, is proposing to freeze vehicle fuel economy requirements at the 2020 level and unwind California’s authority to limit tailpipe emissions in the state.

The Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration jointly proposed on Thursday to cap fuel economy requirements at a fleet average of 37 miles per gallon starting in 2020. Under the Obama plan, the fleetwide fuel economy would have risen gradually to roughly 47 mpg by 2025.

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Repealing Fuel Economy Standards Might Liberate Consumer Choice

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

The LA Times is worried that rolling back fuel economy standards might allow drivers to choose the solidly built gas guzzling cars they want instead of being forced to buy climate friendly plastic boxes on wheels.

Schwarzenegger being forced to drive a gas guzzling Hummer by “big oil”.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #263

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Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President,The Science and Environmental Policy Project

False Precision: In their early education, many students of science faced the problem of significant numbers (digits). A useful rule of thumb was that the chain was only as strong as its weakest link. In measurement, the less precise instrument making the measurements determines precision of any dataset representing the measurements. A mathematical operation does not add precision to the instruments, or the dataset. For example, as discussed in the January 21 TWTW, the widely used Automatic Surface Observing System (ASOS) instruments at airports have a precision of plus or minus 1 degree C (1.8 F, correctly, 2 F). Surface datasets using these measurements cannot be more precise than these instruments. Yet, routinely, some government agencies report data, after mathematical manipulation, with far greater precision – to one-hundredths of a degree C. Such precision is false.

Writing in the non-conservative Boston Globe, columnist Jeff Jacoby gives a simple illustration on how small errors in measurement can compound in a computer model with many small errors. Any assumption that the errors will cancel each other out needs to be demonstrated. However, in the reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its followers, such cancellation of errors is not demonstrated.

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Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Sux

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By Willis Eschenbach – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

Bizarrely, and unlike almost every other industrialized country, the US has fuel efficiency standards for cars. Each corporation (Ford, Chevy, etc.) has to meet certain fuel economy standards called the CAFE standards.

Let me start by saying that I think that this is governmental over-reach. In virtually every other part of life we let the market decide the required efficiency. We don’t have required efficiencies for gas-fired power plants. More efficient plants occur as a result of the market. We also don’t have required efficiencies for cell phones. If they burn through the batteries, they don’t sell. The market has always handled efficiency quite … well … efficiently.

So I object to ANY automotive fuel standards as both totally un-necessary, and worse, market distorting.

Here’s one important way it distorts the market. “Fuel Economy” is measured in a very curious way. Work efficiencies are usually measured per pound or per kilogram moved. Efficiency would relate to how much energy it takes to move say a hundred kilograms a distance of 10 metres horizontally. If you can move the same weight at the same speed using less energy, you have a more efficient setup.

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