By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT
CNN laments that Covid-19 didn’t mess up the economy or frighten people enough to bring lasting change. But some see the Coronavirus lockdowns as a “test run”, which may help shape future climate policies.
The pandemic didn’t solve climate change. This week’s disasters are proof
By Eliza Mackintosh, CNN
By Jim Steele – Re-Blogged From WUWT
In Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain wrote, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.” Unfortunately, conjecture based on limited facts has produced “research” trumpeting catastrophic fears of extinction. The “escalator to extinction” theory argues organisms must migrate to higher elevations where a cooler altitude will offset global warming temperatures. But there is scant evidence that is happening.
By Jim Steele – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Scientific evidence reveals there has been no climate effect regards California’s wildfires! None! The data below proves it beyond all doubt. There is no denying that warmer temperatures can cause drier fuels and promote larger fires. But that fact is being misapplied to all wildfires. About 70% of California’s 2020 burnt areas have been in grasslands and dead grass is so dry by the end of California’s annual summer drought that dead grasses are totally insensitive to any added warmth from climate change. Dead grasses only require a few hours of warm dry conditions to become highly flammable.
It’s fire weather not climate change that is critical. Furthermore, the century trends in local temperatures where California’s biggest fires have occurred reveal no connection to climate change. In most cases the local maximum temperatures have been cooler now than during the 1930s. Those cooler temperatures should reduce the fire danger. Newsom is either ignoring or distorting the scientific evidence, is totally stupid, or is a dishonest demagogue.
The Week That Was: September 12, 2020
Brought to You by www.SEPP.org
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature’s answer.” – Max Planck
Number of the Week: 10%
Review of the Greenhouse Effect: For the past few weeks TWTW used presentations by William Happer to discuss the greenhouse effect, which is how certain gases interfere with the loss of electromagnetic energy, particularly in the infrared frequencies, from the surface of the earth into space. The gases that slow the loss of energy (heat), keeping the earth warmer at night than it would be otherwise, are known as greenhouse gases. Starting in 1859, physicist John Tyndall described their influence through a set of experiments. Tyndall recognized that water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas, and without it land masses would freeze at night, making vegetative growth virtually impossible.
By Judith Curry’s Blog – Re-Blogged From WUWT
A thought-provoking article from my new favorite blog, The Ethical Skeptic.
The Ethical Skeptic
My new favorite blog is The Ethical Skeptic. From the About page:
“It is the intent of this author and purpose of this blog to propose afresh from its beginning, a genuine problem in philosophy. A problem of method-induced creeping ignorance, wrought in the name of science. Until one understands how a philosophical definition or principle can be manipulated for ill intent, one has not really learned it. Such is the nature of ethical skepticism; an applied ability to spot the condition wherein skepticism is employed with the specific goal of cultivating ignorance inside society. In order for us to hone our skills at spotting scientific deception through means of this false skepticism however, it becomes necessary that one approach afresh, many core ideas of philosophy.”
By Willis Eschenbach – Re-Blogged From WUWT
At 73, I’m now in what I call my “late youth”. As a confirmed wanderer, I’ve seen a bit of the world, and I’ve read and studied extensively about our life here on this most lovely planet. As a result of my wide experience, I don’t often come across a book full of brand-new ideas and concepts which strongly affect how I look at the world.
So I have to give big props to my gorgeous ex-fiancee who went to the library and came back with Scott Adams’ book, “Win Bigly“. Scott Adams is the cartoonist who draws “Dilbert”, and it turns out he is much more than that.
By P Gosselin – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Wood pellets.
Swiss meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann calls it “the dumbest energy and environmental policy ever”. Now, finally, after years of being warned, Germany’s mainstream media are finally showing signs of waking up to it.
Idiots and energy policy: Burning of “CO2-friendly” wood pellets driving mass European deforestation. Illustrative photo by P. Gosselin
Germany’s flagship ARD public broadcasting recently presented a report earlier today about how “CO2 neutral” wood burning is leading to widespread deforestation across northern Europe – a rather embarrassing development for the Europeans, who recently expressed their condemnation over Brazilian forest policy.
The Week That Was: September 5, 2020
By Ken Haapala, President, SEPP, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org
Quote of the Week: “A few days ago, a Master of Arts, who is still a young man, and therefore the recipient of a modern education, stated to me that until he had reached the age of twenty he had never been taught anything whatever regarding natural phenomena, or natural law. Twelve years of his life previously had been spent exclusively amongst the ancients. The case, I regret to say, is typical. Now we cannot, without prejudice to humanity, separate the present from the past.” – John Tyndall (1854)
Number of the Week: 4.3 to 8.7 million people in California exposed!
By Jim Steele – Re-Blogged From WUWT
How do we focus our resources to minimize the devastation caused by California’s wildfires? First, we can reduce ignitions. California’s deadliest fire, the Camp Fire and California’s 2nd largest fire, the Thomas Fire were ignited by faulty powerlines during high wind events. California’s sprawling power grid has rapidly expanded since 1970 to accommodate the influx of 20 million people. Accordingly, powerline-ignited fires increased area burnt by five times relative to the previous 20 years.
California’s largest fire (Mendocino Complex), its 3rd largest (Cedar Fire), 5th largest (Rim Fire), and 7th largest (Carr Fire), were all ignited by accidents or carelessness. Uncontrollably, more people cause more accidents, suggesting California’s wisest course of action requires creating more defensible space.
The Week That Was: August 29, 2020, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.” – Karl Popper
Number of the Week: 50%
Popular Delusions: Last week, TWTW discussed the problem of the California Blackouts (also called greenouts) and the failure of California politicians to properly prepare for the simple fact that as the sun goes down Photoelectric Power declines and other means of electric power generation must be increased significantly (ramped-up). The state constitution places the ultimate responsibility on the legislature.
By Bjorn Lomborg – Re-Blogged From WUWT
How climate change panic costs us trillions, hurts the poor, and fails to fix the planet
Reviewed by Thomas P. Sheahen
Danish Economist Bjorn Lomborg is already well known for eight other books at the intersection of economics and public policy. “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” published in 2001 established him as a perceptive observer of the cost of addressing the world’s environmental problems. He provided evidence to show that, with prosperity, civilization is addressing the major environmental issues. Lomborg’s attention to the numbers hidden beneath the slogans gave his analysis a credibility that could not be brushed aside, to the chagrin of some prominent politicians and environmental organizations of the time.
By David Middleton – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Cold-weather accounts for almost all temperature-related deaths
With the number of extreme weather days rising around the globe in recent years due to global warming, it is no surprise that there has been an upward trend in hospital visits and admissions for injuries caused by high heat over the last several years. But cold temperatures are responsible for almost all temperature-related deaths, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Research.
By Benjamin Zycher, AEI – Re-Blogged From GWPF
Having received the 2018 Nobel Prize in economics largely in recognition of his economic analysis of climate policy—in particular the development and application of the Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy (DICE) model—William D. Nordhaus now is under attack from the environmental left.
By David Wojick, CFACT – Re-Blogged From WUWT
As a logician, I am always on the lookout for fallacies and there is no lack of them in climate change alarmist policies. New Zealand’s newly released climate risk assessment not only has multiple fallacies, they build on one another in a cascade.
This is not about New Zealand. The authors of the assessment make clear that theirs is a new approach which they hope will be used globally. So this is about the world, including America.
Out in the webiverse someone asked me “Willis… do you consider yourself a denialist?”
Mmmm … an excellent question, with an answer which likely won’t go the direction that they think.
First, the term “climate denier”, or in this incarnation “denialist”, was specifically chosen for its overtones of “Holocaust denier”. It is used as a pejorative term for anyone who disagrees with any aspect of climate science, usually without any attempt to say what the person is “denying”.
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
The Week That Was: August 8, 2020, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org
Re-Blogged From WUWT
Quote of the Week: “What we observe is not Nature itself but Nature exposed to our methods of questioning.” –Werner Heisenberg, also “We have to remember that what we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our methods of questioning.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein
Number of the Week: Zero (0)
July Summary Part V; General Conclusions: Four weeks ago TWTW reviewed Richard Lindzen’s new paper summarizing what we know with reasonable certainty, what we suspect, and what we know is incorrect about climate change, the greenhouse effect, temperature trends, climate modeling, ocean chemistry, and sea level rise. Key parts included (with additions in boldface):
1) The climate system is never in equilibrium.
The Week That Was: July 25, 2020
By Ken Haapala, President, SEPP
Quote of the Week: “When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.” —Thomas Paine (1776)
Number of the Week: 12 datasets of evidence
July Summary Part III; Models and Observations: Two weeks ago TWTW reviewed Richard Lindzen’s new paper summarizing what we know with reasonable certainty, what we suspect, and what we know is incorrect about climate change, the greenhouse effect, temperature trends, climate modeling, ocean chemistry, and sea level rise. Key parts included:
1) The climate system is never in equilibrium.
By David Wojick – Re-Blogged From WUWT
In the ongoing effort to clearly summarize their position, CLINTEL has published a Scientific Manifesto in the form of ten propositions. These specifically address, among other things, the role of National Academies in protecting the integrity of science, in the face of alarmist dogma.
Since the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has evolved from guardians of science to an alarmist fortress, I thought it interesting to contrast the basic CLINTEL Manifesto with the statements of NAS President Marcia McNutt.
First, here are the ten basic CLINTEL propositions. (In the Manifesto document each is elaborated with regard to the sorry state of climate science today. All-caps are in the original.)
By Vijay Jayaraj – Re4-Blogged From WUWT
The United States is the only major Western country that is not part of the Paris climate agreement, which seeks to restrict and reduce fossil fuel consumption across the world. But the country is not immune from the impacts of the restrictive energy policies the agreement imposes on its trade partners. One of those is my own country, India.
India imports large amounts of coal, oil, and natural gas from the U.S., mostly to generate affordable power for its electric grid. That grid must grow rapidly to meet the needs of over 1.3 billion people. Over 300 million of them—comparable to the whole U.S. population—currently have no electricity. But they need it desperately for their health and their escape from severe poverty.
By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT
The BBC has belatedly decided they need at least a little input from one of the targets of their latest big oil climate conspiracy propaganda piece. Dr. Willie Soon does not hold back in his response.
Note some of the links take you to a “You are leaving the mail.com service” page. This is a harmless artefact caused by copying Dr. Soon’s email, click continue to see the referenced document.
Dear Ms. Keane,
I am wary of responding to your false allegations, since your questions seem somewhat loaded. Disappointingly, they appear to repeat the dishonest and misleading claims of the former Greenpeace USA research director, Kert Davies (now running the so-called “Climate Investigations Center”), whose research we have shown to be disingenuous in Section 2 of our attached 2018 report on Greenpeace (Attachment 1). Unfortunately, the premise of your series seems to be the dangerous conspiracy theories promoted by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their 2010 book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change and their 2014 film of the same name. I’ve attached a short 3-page .pdf (Attachment 2) summarizing just a few examples of the poor scholarship and bizarre hypocrisies in Oreskes & Conway’s conspiracy theories.
By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Originally published at Climate Realism
Unable to win the debate in the court of public opinion, climate activists are increasingly calling for the imprisonment of climate realists. The latest example is an article in The Carbon Brief titled “How climate change misinformation spreads online.” The authors, who are all University of Exeter professors, advocate fines and imprisonment for people publishing “climate misinformation” online. They justify their call for imprisonment by claiming tremendous harm from “misleading information that is created and spread with intent to deceive.”
That’s one take, another take is that those who publish what the Left deems as “misinformation” are actually publishing what might be dubbed “inconvenient truths.” The 2006 film by Al Gore of the same name is a case in point. Gore, not being particularly good at details, published a boatload of misinformation in that film, and social media responded to correct the record. In one scene Gore used an animated clip of a polar bear in danger of drowning, trying to get onto a tiny ice flow made smaller, presumably by global warming. Gore cited this as the new normal of drowning polar bears. The reality? Scientists documented one drowned polar bear at sea after an intense storm, something that hasn’t been seen since. According to an Associated Press article:
“A federal wildlife biologist whose observation in 2004 of presumably drowned polar bears in the Arctic helped to galvanize the global warming movement has been placed on administrative leave and is being investigated for scientific misconduct, possibly over the veracity of that article.”
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Re-Blogged From WUWT
Quote of the Week: ““No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” – Albert Einstein [H/t H. Sterling Burnett]
Number of the Week: From 55% to 34% with no change in gross amount.
July Summary: Discussed in the previous three TWTWs, Richard Lindzen’s paper, “An oversimplified picture of the climate behavior based on a single process can lead to distorted conclusions,” contained nothing new, but provided an excellent basis for understanding what we know with reasonable certainty, what we suspect, and what we know is incorrect about climate change, the greenhouse effect, temperature trends, climate modeling, ocean chemistry, and sea level rise. Describing this knowledge, or lack thereof, will probably take two or three installments to complete in TWTW, but it may be a valuable reference in the future that can be modified as needed.
Re-Blogged From WUWT
The Heartland Institute’s Donald Kendal, Jim Lakely, and The Center for the American Experiment’s Isaac Orr are joined by Michael Shellenberger in episode 250 of the In The Tank Podcast. Shellenberger is on the show to talk about his “controversial” new book “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.”
The book destroys the climate alarmist narrative that the world is coming to an end and that wind and solar are the future of energy in the United States. He also discusses how climate alarmism has become the new secular religion that he once observed, and his journey to the side of reason, science, and realism.
On Amazon: Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All
Environmental Progress https://environmentalprogress.org/fou…
Deep reading: Climate Change Reconsidered series (published by The Heartland Institute) http://climatechangereconsidered.org/
By Roy W. Spencer, PhD – Re-Blogged From WUWT
For the last 10 years I have consulted for grain growing interests, providing information about past and potential future trends in growing season weather that might impact crop yields. Their primary interest is the U.S. corn belt, particularly the 12 Midwest states (Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Michigan) which produce most of the U.S. corn and soybean crop.
Contrary to popular perception, the U.S. Midwest has seen little long-term summer warming. For precipitation, the slight drying predicted by climate models in response to human greenhouse gas emissions has not occurred; if anything, precipitation has increased. Corn yield trends continue on a technologically-driven upward trajectory, totally obscuring any potential negative impact of “climate change”.
By Ed Zuiderwijk – Re-Blogged From WUWT
This is a posting about the epistemology of climate models, about what we can learn from them about the future. The answer will disappoint: not much. In order to convince you of the veracity of that proposition I will first tell you a little story, an allegory if you want, regarding a thought experiment, a completely fictitious account of what a research project might look like, and then apply whatever insight we gained (if any) to the climate modelling scene.
A thought experiment
Here’s the thought experiment: We want to make a compound that produces colour somehow (the mechanism how it does that is not really relevant). However, we specifically want a well-defined colour, prescribed by whatever application it is going to be used for. Say a shade of turquoise.
By David Wojick – Re-Blogged From WUWT
National Academies of Science should speak out against climate alarmism, not support it. This is the major message in a recent letter from Professor Guus Berkhout, president of CLINTEL, to the new head of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. The integrity of science is at stake.
This letter is a model for how all alarmist National Academies should be addressed. For example, the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is painfully alarmist. Even worse, NAS has been joined in promoting alarmism by its two siblings, the National Academies of Engineering and Medicine. The fact that these Academies have become a servant of supranational political organizations such as IPCC shows how serious the crisis in climate science really is.
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Re-Blogged From WUWT
Quote of the Week: “Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.” – Richard Feynman
Number of the Week: 2%
Oversimplified: Last week, TWTW presented a new paper from MIT Professor emeritus in Atmospheric Physics Richard Lindzen titled: “An oversimplified picture of the climate behavior based on a single process can lead to distorted conclusions.” The discussion was limited to what was presented in the No Tricks Zone blog. Further, TWTW did not draw a clear distinction between what the blog presented and what Lindzen actually wrote.
Starting with the UN and continuing through virtually all industrialized countries in the West, there is enormous political pressure to replace reliable fossil fuels with unreliable wind and solar power, particularly for electricity generation. Yet, no successful demonstration project exists showing this can be done at reasonable costs. Even the largest “battery” in the world, the Bath County Pumped [Hydro] Storage Station in Virginia, must be recharged, refilled, nightly by electricity from reliable nuclear and coal-fired power plants.
Michael Shellenberger / IMAGE: TEDx Talks via YouTube
After an opinion piece it published Sunday drew the wrath of militant eco-warriors, Forbes appeared to have doubled back on it only a day later, pulling from its online platform the shocking apology by reformed climate-alarmist Michael Shellenberger.
Shellenberger is a devout environmentalist and political progressive, and he’s blowing the whistle on the climate change movement starting with a simple message: Sorry.
“On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years,” he wrote in a Sunday Forbes op-ed.
As of Monday, however, only a faint trace of the original article was visible on the site.
Quote of the Week: “Aqueous vapor [water vapor] is a blanket, more necessary to the vegetable life of England than clothing is to man. Remove for a single summer-night the aqueous vapor from the air which overspreads this country, and you would assuredly destroy every plant capable of being destroyed by a freezing temperature. The warmth of our fields and gardens would pour itself unrequited into space, and the sun would rise upon an island held fast in the iron grip of frost.” – John Tyndall (“Heat: A Mode of Motion”, 1861) [H/t William Happer]
Number of the Week: Daily change of 100⁰C (or daily change of 180⁰F)
By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT
By Caleb Rossiter – Re-Blogged From WUWT
This is the slide show and 20-minute talk that Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Chellie Pingree tried to censor at the LibertyCon 2020 conference in Washington, D.C. After Dr. Rossiter gave a climate talk at LibertyCon 2019, they wrote to sponsors of the event, such as Google and Facebook, and asked them not to fund any event with an appearance by “climate deniers” from the CO2 Coalition. See http://co2coalition.org/2019/01/30/representatives-ocasio-cortez-and-pingree-and-climate-change-debate/
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Re-Blogged From WUWT
Quote of the Week: “I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.” – Richard Feynman
Number of the Week: 11,000 & 1,600
Dynamics in the Tropics: In 2017, Judith Curry retired from her tenured position as a professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she had been Chair of the department, to focus on her private firm, Climate Forecasts Applications, citing the “craziness” of the field of climate science and the great politization of research funding. She has long recognized that there are major problems in the field, particularly in the dynamics of the atmosphere and the oceans in the tropics. As a climate modeler, she has first-hand knowledge of these problems, yet to be solved.
By Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. – Re-Blogged From WUWT
The Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 concentration data continue to show no reduction in the rate of rise due to the recent global economic slowdown. This demonstrates how difficult it is to reduce global CO2 emissions without causing a major disruption to the global economy and exacerbation of poverty.
After removal of the strong seasonal cycle in Mauna Loa CO2 data, and a first order estimate of the CO2 influence of El Nino and La Nina activity (ENSO), the May 2020 update shows no indication of a reduction in the rate of rise in the last few months, when the reduction in economic activity should have shown up.
By Robert L. Bradley, Jr. – Re-Blogged From WUWT
One cannot know what is going on in a certain Wilmington, Delaware, basement. But so far, the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden has committed to go far beyond the activism of President Obama and 2000 nominee Al Gore in regard to energy and climate policy.
Last June 4, Biden released a 22-page, 10,000-word Joe’s Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice that can be reduced to 17 words: “Biden believes the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face.”
By Daniel Turner, The Daily Caller – Re-Blogged From WUWT
It’s curious … SpaceX has all the money in the world, and they didn’t hire someone who could have accurately predicted the afternoon weather in Florida on May 27, 2020. Seems like a huge oversight, doesn’t it? And to think there are scores of nonprofit leaders and academics in Washington, DC who can accurately predict global temperatures 10, 15, even 50 years into the future.
Oh, stop it with the “climate isn’t weather” rebuttal. It’s trite and silly. The guys who says “food isn’t cuisine” is a food critic, and by default, haughty and obnoxious.
How about this one: science isn’t semantics.
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Re-Blogged From WUWT
Quote of the Week: “’It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of the castle and to see the battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.’ so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride.” – Of Truth, Francis Bacon (1625)
Number of the Week: 140% more than [of] a very small number is still a very small number
Political Rhetoric: Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Todd Myer, the author of “Eco-Fads: How the Rise of Trendy Environmentalism Is Harming the Environment” discusses how certain politicians use the term science without any special meaning. Myer states:
“The word ‘science’ has been hollowed out by politicians, who have stripped it of its substance and power and replaced them with emotional pabulum. These politicians discard the scientific method and deploy the term merely as a weapon against their opponents.”
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley – Re-Blogged From WUWT
To all the kind and generous readers who have donated to the appeal for Naomi Seibt, I should like to say how very grateful she for your support. Thanks to your contributions to her Patreon account, she now has $1800 a month in income, and skeptics everywhere are spreading the word. Stefan Molyneux, who has interviewed Naomi in the past, has just retweeted it, and from there it has been retweeted almost 1000 times. Latest news is that the State Media Authority in North-Rhine Westphalia has threatened Naomi with imprisonment.
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Re-Blogged From WUWT
Quote of the Week: “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” – Voltaire
Number of the Week: 25 to 100 times greater
Disruptive Wind: The electrical grid operators provide reliable electricity with narrow tolerances. Generally, grid operators plan that power sources can be shut down for maintenance, usually in the spring and the fall. To keep costs down, grid operators desire to have maximum operating capacity in the summer (cooling) and in the winter (heating). According to the EIA’s description of electricity generating capacity:
To ensure a steady supply of electricity to consumers, operators of the electric power system, or grid, call on electric power plants to produce and place the right amount of electricity on the grid at every moment to instantaneously meet and balance electricity demand.
By Kip Hansen — Re-Blogged From WUWT
In keeping with the NY Times’ Editorial Narrative on climate change (“every story is a climate story”), Henry Fountain writes this piece: ‘Expect More’: Climate Change Raises Risk of Dam Failures. It carries the sub-title “Engineers say most dams in the United States, designed decades ago, are unsuited to a warmer world and stronger storms.”
The story is the sad tale of the dual dam failures in Michigan – the Edenville Dam failed and the resulting downstream flow overtopped the Sanford Lake Dam situated 10 miles further downstream on the Tittabawassee River.
Don’t know where that is?
By edmhdotme – Re-Blogged From WUWT
THE health establishment was looking away when the coronavirus struck; it had other priorities. If you look at the World Health Organisation’s list of health threats, number one is climate change. Pandemics were down in third place, behind ‘non-communicable diseases’ such as diabetes and obesity.
Wherever you look, you will find some of the biggest names in the public health establishment declaiming on the risks of climate change to world health. On the eve of the outbreak, the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene declared that we would be seeing ‘mass migration, emerging infectious diseases such as dengue and a shortage of food’. As the first people fell ill in Wuhan, the WHO announced that in ten years we would be seeing 250,000 additional deaths per year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress as a result of global warming. Epidemiologist Professor Andy Haines told readers of the Telegraph that ‘climate change is a threat to global and national security that is costing lives and livelihoods right now’.
By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Even worse than we thought ™ – global warming estimates have been raised, just in time for next year’s COP26 conference. But one of high end CMIP6 models, CESM2 (highlighted above), has already been invalidated by a paleo study.
Just how hot will it get this century? Latest climate models suggest it could be worse than we thought
Michael Grose Climate Projections Scientist, CSIRO
Julie Arblaster Associate Professor, Monash University
May 18, 2020 5.58am AESTClimate scientists use mathematical models to project the Earth’s future under a warming world, but a group of the latest modelshave included unexpectedly high values for a measure called “climate sensitivity”.
By Kip Hansen — Re-Blogged From WUWT
There has been a lot of talk in the press and from talking heads claiming that the Covid lockdown has “reduced emissions” (power plants cutting back on power generations, factories closed, populations ordered to stay home, most airplanes grounded) and talk encouraging that government Covid recovery packages, should support only companies and projects “which decouple economic growth from GHG emissions”. The “Build Back Better” movement.
It is true that emissions from human sources – automobiles, factories, power plants, etc. – have been reduced by the multitude of nations that have sacrificed their economies in the [misguided] belief that doing so “saves lives”.
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Re-Blogged From WUWT
Number of the Week: ZERO – $0
Red Team Vs Blue Team: Various organizations, such as the military, cybersecurity, etc. use a red team vs blue team conflict where the blue team uses the conventional thinking and tactics of the organization and the red team tries to break and / or exploit weaknesses in the conventional approach. Over the past several years there has been an effort to establish such a mental conflict to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the approach used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its followers. Thus far the effort has failed, and Washington is geared to the election cycle, making it unlikely such an approach will be used until after the elections, if ever.
By Tilak Doshi – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Up to a few months ago, life was normal. Well, sort of. In that pre-coronavirus normalcy, the reigning narrative was that of mankind facing assured destruction if we did not amend our wasteful – read carbon-intensive — ways. Short of a drastic curtailment in our use of fossil fuels, we would all perish in the not too distant future.
How distant depended on who one listened to. At the radical end of the spectrum — US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, teenage icon Greta Thunberg and the Extermination Rebellion folk among others — gave us a decade or less before we would face the fury of the elements, be they fires, droughts, floods, and other horrors of biblical proportions. The “moderate” position held by the mainstream climate change establishment — ranging from the key multilateral organizations such as the UN’s IPCC to the private sector with oil majors such as Shell and leading environment and social governance (“ESG”) practitioners like Larry Fink, CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund BlackRock– held that we had to reach the “net-zero” rate of carbon emissions by 2050 lest the world climate “tip over” to Armageddon.
By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT
You might think business stars like Warren Buffett have some idea of how to run an insurance company. But climate experts keep trying to explain that the focus insurers have on observational evidence is leading to insurers underestimating the risk of climate disasters.
Insuring your home may get harder and more expensive as climate change increases risks
ABC Radio National / By Antony Funnell for Future Tense
Our homes have become sanctuaries — places of refuge in the time of coronavirus. But they can’t protect us from all threats.
By Paul Driessen – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Michael Moore and Driessen agree! Wind, solar and biofuel energy are devastating Planet Earth
Never in my wildest dreams did I envision a day when I’d agree with anything filmmaker Michael Moore said – much less that he would agree with me. But mirabile dictu, his new film, Planet of the Humans, is as devastating an indictment of wind, solar and biofuel energy as anything I have ever written.
The documentary reflects Moore’s willingness to reexamine environmentalist doctrine. It’s soon obvious why more rabid greens tried to have the “dangerous film” banned. Indeed, Films for Action initially caved to the pressure and took Planet off its website, but then put it back up. The film is also on YouTube.
From The Competitive Enterprise Institute
Patrick J. Michaels – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Executive Summary
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2009 “Endangerment Finding” from carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases grants the agency a legal mandate that can have profound and far-reaching effects. The Finding is based largely on a Technical Support Document that relies heavily upon other mandated reports, the so-called National Assessments of global climate change impacts on the United States.
The extant Assessments at the time of the Endangerment Finding suffered from serious flaws. We document that using the climate models for the first Assessment, from 2000, provided less quantitative guidance than tables of random numbers—and that the chief scientist for that work knew of this problem.
By Jim Steele – Re-Blogged From WUWT
What’s Natural
In 2019 bird researchers published Rosenberg et al “Decline of the North American Avifauna”, reporting a decline in 57% of the bird species. They estimated a net loss of nearly 2.9 billion birds since 1970, and urged us to remedy the threats, claiming all were “exacerbated by climate change”, and we must stave off the “potential collapse of the continental avifauna.” Months before publication the researchers had organize and extensive media campaign. Typical doomsday media like the New York Times piled on with “Birds Are Vanishing From North America” and Scientific American wrote, “Silent Skies: Billions of North American Birds Have Vanished.”
As I have now been sheltering in place, I finally had ample time to thoroughly peruse Rosenberg’s study. I had a very personal interest in it, having professionally studied bird populations for over 20 years and had worked to restore their habitat. I also had conducted 20 years of surveys which were part of the study’s database. Carefully looking at their data, a far more optimistic perspective is needed. So here I join a chorus of other ecologists, as reported in Slate, that “There Is No Impending Bird Apocalypse”. As one ecologist wrote, it’s “not what’s really happening. I think it hurts the credibility of scientists.”
By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Yet another green celebrating the retreat of humans in the face of a deadly epidemic.
The Green Read: Will coronavirus help nature reclaim the Earth?
There are signs of wildlife flourishing in the absence of humans, but COVID-19 has also slowed conservation efforts.
by Nick Clark 30 Apr 2020
In these times when we need to seek out positives to counter the gloom, there are many good things happening in the natural world. In the space wrought open by COVID-19, a quiet has descended on parts of our planet previously drowned out by normal life thundering on.
