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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #502 – Watts Up With That?


The Week That Was: 2022-05-07 (May 7, 2022)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself–nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” – Franklin Roosevelt, inaugural address, March 4, 1933, at the peak of the Great Depression. [Repeated from last week, boldface added]

Number of the Week: 47 inches (1.2 meters)

THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)

Scope: After discussions over the past few weeks on how global climate modelers ignore advances in our understanding of the atmosphere, particularly over the past 50 years, and our understanding of earth’s climate history, particularly over the past 2.5 million years, this TWTW discusses some of the consequences of this deliberate ignorance. [If surgeons deliberately ignored advances in medicine over the past 50 years, they would be accused of medical malpractice. Instead, climate modelers receive Nobel Prizes.]

Ecologist Jim Steele is producing a series of videos, with transcripts, describing “The Big 5 Natural Causes of Climate Change.” Part 1 was on Varying Atlantic Water Transport. The work of Tom Gallagher, discussed last week, includes the issue of ocean currents. Part II of Steele’s presentations is on Jet Streams and Extreme Weather. This goes to the natural causes of the February 2021 Texas Norther which dove deep into the southern Great Plains, the June 2021 hot ridge over the Pacific Northwest and western Canada, and the July 2021 flooding of parts of Germany.

The group known as World Weather Attribution wasted no time calculating exact probabilities that carbon dioxide was the likely cause for the latter two events. Ross McKitrick has shown that the frequency probabilities used by World Weather Attribution have no basis in established Probability Theory, thus their estimates are meaningless.

Attorney Francis Menton made observations about public comments at a hearing by New York’s Climate Action Council

Also discussed will be a series of op-eds and articles in the Wall Street Journal on the new Disinformation Governance Board being established by the Department of Homeland Security under the Biden Administration. Had the Trump Administration set up such a board, the howls from mainstream media would have been deafening. Also, this week, Biden’s Department of Justice announced it established an office for Environmental Justice. Fifty years after the Clean Water Act, the US does not have a solid operational definition of waters of the United States. How many years will it take for an operational definition of Environmental Justice?

For a few minutes at 2:50 pm on Saturday. April 30, 99.87% of electricity delivered by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) came from sources other than fossil fuels. Of course, this was trumpeted by promoters of solar and wind. Using data from CAISO, TWTW checked what happened at 7:15 pm when the sun was going down.

Paul Homewood and Andrew Montford continue to report on the false claims that offshore wind is a cost-effective alternative to fossil fuels.

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Extreme Weather Events: In a 20-minute video, with transcript, on his blog, ecologist Jim Steele discusses the pioneering work of Carl-Gustav Rossby in the 1940s on how jet streams “cause extreme weather when their waviness increases and causes weather patterns to linger over a region longer than normal.”

“Rossby insisted that the jet stream’s wavy patterns were essential for the planet to achieve greater temperature equilibrium more efficiently as each wave’s ridge transports more warm tropical air poleward and each trough drives more cold arctic air equator-ward.

“The jet stream normally steers mid-latitude weather systems relatively quickly from west to east across the globe. When that eastward movement slows, the jet streams become more wavy causing weather patterns to linger and extreme weather to evolve. Rossby noticed the minimal circulation speeds most frequently happened in late February and early March when sufficient cold arctic air reservoirs developed and pushed the jet stream equator-ward.

“Rossby developed a circulation index to track jet stream changes, but later, researchers developed the more commonly used North Atlantic Oscillation index based on changes in air pressure between Iceland and the Azores. That index more easily identifies changes in the jet stream waviness and gave weather forecasters a higher degree of predictive skills.

“During a large pressure difference, or positive phase, a more zonal jet stream flow will evolve, bringing warmer, wetter weather to northern Europe.

“When pressure differences are below average, or the negative phase, a wavier jet stream evolves causing more unpredictable weather, blocking patterns, and extreme weather.”

The importance of the jet stream changes seasonally, thus is lost when using annual averages.

“During our winter, the ITCZ [intertropical convergence zone] and jet stream move equator-ward allowing colder air to push southward as well as increasing the jet’s waviness

“The dry high-pressure system forming beneath a jet’s ridge, pulls warm tropical air northwards on its western side as well as promoting clear skies and greater solar heating.

“The low-pressure system forming in the jet stream’s trough pulls colder arctic air southward as well as promoting cloudiness and rain. This dynamic partially explains why the south- eastern United States has long been dubbed a ‘warming hole.’

“That warming hole gets obscured by temperature statistics that are averaged nationally and globally. However, a recent study shows that 34% of all USA weather stations with at least 70 years of data, (represented by blue dots), exhibit cooling trends and most are concentrated in the jet stream’s trough.

“Knowing that published temperature data, when the government falsely claims in its ‘Climate Resilience Tool Kit,’ that cities in the southeast are at risk due to heat from climate change, that false claim only generates mistrust for the government’s climate science narratives

“Aligning with Rossby’s observation that the jet stream’s greatest waviness occurs during winter when the reservoir of cold arctic air reaches a maximum, the jet stream dove deep into the southern United States between February 12th-19th, in 2021. Arctic air caused the regions colored purple to remain below freezing for over 160 hours.

It is important to note that such extreme cold periods occur in the Great Plains. Three occurred in the 1880s prompting Teddy Roosevelt to wonder if the Great Plains could support human settlement. Steele goes on further to explain how Rossby waves are similar to the meandering streams:

“My research with meadow restoration observed that evolving dynamic in meadow streams. Small differences in surface hardness causes small waves to evolve in the stream’s channel. The wave’s curvature alters the stream’s speeds which naturally amplify the waviness over years, and the stream erodes the banks to evolve into omega configurations. Eventually the waviness amplifies enough to cause that part of the channel to break off from the main flow forming stagnant oxbow lakes.”

Steele discusses other jet stream-caused extreme weather events such as the 2015 rapid summer melting in the colder northwestern Greenland while there was no such melting in the generally warmer south, and the severe flooding in western Germany in 2021 for which Steele states:

“But the real cause was the dynamics of a cut-off low that concentrated the moisture in that region for days

“Cut off lows are called weatherman’s woes because it unpredictably causes extreme weather. Cut off lows form from the same naturally evolving fluid dynamics that cause cutoff highs and omega blocks.”

Unfortunately, once distinguished science groups follow the CO2 fad and fail to look at naturally occurring events. A leader in this false blaming of CO2 is the World Weather Attribution group (WWA). According to its website,

“WWA is a partnership of:

“Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford (ECI)

“Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI)

“Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environment (LSCE)

“University of Princeton

“National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

“Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre (The Climate Centre”

Again, we see the influence of the Princeton modeling group and NCAR, where climate modelers fail to test their models against over forty years of comprehensive atmospheric temperature trends and the compilation of spectroscopic parameters used to predict and simulate the transmission and emission of light in the atmosphere, the high-resolution transmission molecular absorption database (HITRAN). See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy, Measurement Issues – Atmosphere, https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/analysis/partners/ and https://hitran.org/

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Fear and Anger: Attorney Francis Menton describes his thoughts about those who gave presentations for over two hours at a public hearing of The Climate Action Council (CAC) which developed a plan for reducing CO2 emissions in the State of New York:

“The first statutory target is a 40% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, which as a practical matter means that fossil fuels must be almost completely eliminated from the electricity sector by that date. The Council issued its Draft Scoping Plan for how to achieve the targets on December 30, 2021. The Draft Scoping Plan is some 300 pages of text plus 500 pages of appendices; but the gist comes down to, we will order the private sector to eliminate emissions by various dates certain, and then it is up to the little people to work out the details.”

After reflecting on the hearing Menton wrote:

“As stated in my prior post, of the 60 or so speakers, all but myself and four others were vigorous supporters of the critical necessity of achieving the stated zero carbon goals by the given dates as an urgent matter of saving our planet and our children. This was so despite what appeared to me to be manifestly huge issues of physical feasibility and cost that are almost certain to cause these grand ‘net zero’ energy schemes to fail. The CAC’s draft ‘Scoping Plan,’ as it currently exists for public comment, does not consider these feasibility or cost issues in any remotely adequate fashion, if at all. That fact did not appear to bother the overwhelming majority of the speakers.”

“The previous post mentioned fear as a common theme — fear that use of fossil fuels by us New Yorkers will bring on storms, floods, and other disasters to threaten our lives and livelihoods. But what I failed to mention was another emotion that was even more prevalent in the comments — anger.” [Boldface was Italics in original.]

One can imagine what may happen to this fear and anger when members of the public recognize they have been fooled into believing there is a climate crisis when there is none. Once government tried to quell fear, now it exploits it. See Quote of the Week and links under Challenging the Orthodoxy and Questioning the Orthodoxy.

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Ministry of Truth? The Biden Administration continues with steps towards an authoritarian government, tolerating no disagreement. In an amazing action the Department of Homeland Security established a Disinformation Governance Board (DGB). Since the administration has declared a climate crisis that only appears only in an imaginary atmosphere found in climate models rather than in physical evidence, it is extremely difficult to grasp what is disinformation to this administration?

In “Disinformation for Dummies” an editorial in the Wall Street Journal begins:

We realize public schools don’t teach the classics anymore, but has no one in the Biden Administration read George Orwell? Apparently not, because that’s the only explanation for its creation of a new Disinformation Governance Board.

We have to admit that when we first read about it, we thought the news was itself disinformation from the Administration’s political enemies. Surely, no one in this age of polarization and public mistrust of institutions would think it’s wise to set up a government shop with the job of telling Americans what is true.

We were wrong. No less an authority than Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, broke the news about the board last week in an appearance before Congress. He said the purpose of this new corner of the bureaucracy will be to warn Americans about falsehoods coming from foreign adversaries such as Russia, China and cartels that smuggle migrants into the United States.

After presenting comments by the secretary of Homeland Security, the editorial continues:

But does anyone think this board will limit itself to foreign falsehoods? The temptation will be great to address issues that are part of America’s raucous domestic political debate. All the more so given that the disinformation board’s first executive director is reported to be Nina Jankowicz, whose partisan footprints are all over social media. She can be seen on TikTok singing her own highly partisan adapted lyrics to the tune of a ‘Mary Poppins’ song. (What did Julie Andrews do to deserve that?)

In an article titled “Biden Establishes a Ministry of Truth” professors of finance and economics, respectively, Roger Koppl and Abigail Devereaux write about threat experts:

“If you predict doom and nothing much happens, it was because of your wise warning. If you don’t predict doom and reality is worse than you predicted, you will be blamed and shamed. The incentives are clear. Truth experts at the DGB will proclaim grave threats around every turn even when any ‘threats’ are minor to nonexistent.

“By creating the DGB, the U.S. government is creating a crisis monitor with the dial permanently set to ‘existential threat.’ No one inside the board will have the incentive—or the courage—to dial it down.”

In another essay, columnist Gerard Baker begins:

“It’s always exciting for progressives when they create a new government office of something or other. They live for this: another excuse to spend piles of taxpayer dollars; another polysyllabic title and flashy logo; another opportunity to extend the long, comforting arm of the bureaucracy into the business of ordinary citizens who never knew how impoverished their lives were without it.”

After discussing false claims by President Obama, he concludes:

“You don’t promote truth by banning error. You don’t have a monopoly on truth in the first place, and you may discover your “truths” are errors or lies. Even if you’re right, and epistemically 100% certain, it doesn’t give you the authority to ban someone from saying something different.

“The only proven effective way to counter bad information is with good information. The only way to overcome lies is with truth, and the government can’t be the arbiter of what that is.” See Articles # 1, 2, & 3.

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Operational Definition: An operational definition for “physical sciences” can be described as physical evidence which can be observed and measured. In discussing new litigation seeking clarity of the definition of U.S. Waters (which have included piles of wet leaves far from any stream) Jan Stroup writes:

“’Fifty years after the enactment of the Clean Water Act, its reach is clear as mud,’ writes Jonathan Wood, introducing an amicus brief for a Supreme Court case.”

The Department of Justice has announced a new office focused on environmental justice. The concept appears to be as clear as muddy waters. The enforcement strategy (as of now) appears to be: DOJ will force those whom they don’t like to either pay off the friends of DOJ, or else suffer consequences. See links under Expanding the Orthodoxy and Litigation Issues ******************

A Few Moments: According to a report from Palm Springs:

“While partygoers celebrated in the blazing sunshine at the Stagecoach music festival, energy demand statewide hit 18,672 megawatts at 2:45 p.m., “and at 2:50, we reached 99.87% of load served by all renewables, which broke the previous record … of 97.58%,” said Anna Gonzales, spokeswoman for California Independent System Operator, or CAISO, a nonprofit that oversees the state’s bulk electric power system and transmission lines.”

TWTW checked the next day and found that according to CAISO: at 2:50 pm Solar generated 12,462 MW, Wind 4,790; Geothermal 774; Biogas 201; and Small Hydro 153. By 7:15 pm Solar was near zero, but who needs electricity at night to keep the lights on? At 7:15 pm Large hydro supplied 2,459 MW [including dams from outside of California]; Imports 4,241 [power supplied outside of California regardless of source]; Batteries 779 and Nuclear 2,260. Solar power is not ready for prime time.

On the same note, the falling costs of wind power in the UK are proving illusionary. Andrew Montford and Paul Homewood discuss how wind promoters have played the subsidy game for their benefit, not for consumer benefit.

See links under California Dreaming, http://www.caiso.com/todaysoutlook/pages/supply.aspx, Subsidies and Mandates Forever and Energy Issues – Non-US

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Additions and Corrections: Last week when discussing emissions from volcanoes TWTW incorrectly stated that hydrofluoric acid, HF, is a weak acid. Its corrosive ability varies, depending on source of information. TWTW thanks the readers who corrected this error. It is amazing the AAAS Science publishes articles claiming that volcanoes give off carbon dioxide which forms a weak acid while ignoring the strong acids so emitted.

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SEPP’S APRIL FOOLS AWARD – THE JACKSON

SEPP is conducting its annual vote for the recipient of the coveted trophy, The Jackson, a lump of coal. Readers are asked to nominate and vote for who they think is most deserving. The entire Biden Administration won in 2021, so individuals in it are still eligible.

The voting will close on July 30. Please send your nominee and a brief reason the person is qualified for the honor to [email protected]. The awardee will be announced at the annual meeting of the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness on August 14 to 16 at the South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Registration: https://aaps.wufoo.com/forms/qb79fo31o62uh1/; Hotel: https://be.synxis.com/?adult=1&arrive=2022-08-14&chain=6903&child=0&currency=USD&depart=2022-08-15&group=DOC0811&hotel=11548&level=hotel&locale=en-US&rooms=1

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Number of the Week: 47 inches (1.2 meters). According to local reports, on May 1 the popular Colorado ski resort, Vail mountain, ended its longest season ever with 47 inches (1.2 meters) of base snow still on the mid-mountain. Vail ski resort opened in 1962, See links under Changing Weather.

Challenging the Orthodoxy — NIPCC

Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science

Idso, Carter, and Singer, Lead Authors/Editors, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2013

Summary: https://www.heartland.org/_template-assets/documents/CCR/CCR-II/Summary-for-Policymakers.pdf

Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts

Idso, Idso, Carter, and Singer, Lead Authors/Editors, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2014

http://climatechangereconsidered.org/climate-change-reconsidered-ii-biological-impacts/

Summary: https://www.heartland.org/media-library/pdfs/CCR-IIb/Summary-for-Policymakers.pdf

Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels

By Multiple Authors, Bezdek, Idso, Legates, and Singer eds., Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, April 2019

http://store.heartland.org/shop/ccr-ii-fossil-fuels/

Download with no charge:

http://climatechangereconsidered.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Climate-Change-Reconsidered-II-Fossil-Fuels-FULL-Volume-with-covers.pdf

Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming

The NIPCC Report on the Scientific Consensus

By Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), Nov 23, 2015

http://climatechangereconsidered.org/

Download with no charge:

https://www.heartland.org/policy-documents/why-scientists-disagree-about-global-warming

Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate

S. Fred Singer, Editor, NIPCC, 2008

http://www.sepp.org/publications/nipcc_final.pdf

Global Sea-Level Rise: An Evaluation of the Data

By Craig D. Idso, David Legates, and S. Fred Singer, Heartland Policy Brief, May 20, 2019

Challenging the Orthodoxy

The Big 5 Natural Causes of Climate Change: part 2 Jet Streams and Extreme Weather

By Jim Steele, A Walk On The Natural Side, May 2, 2022

https://perhapsallnatural.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-big-5-natural-causes-of-climate.html

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4_DjeCsgWk

Deaths in climate-related disasters declined 99% from a century ago

By Bjorn Lomborg, The New York Post, Apr 30, 2022

https://nypost.com/2022/04/30/deaths-in-climate-disasters-declined-99-from-a-century-ago/

[SEPP Comment: A major part of which is due to better weather forecasting and preparedness.]

How Many of the World’s 8 Billion Will Survive Without Fossil Fuels?

Which is the great threat to civilization, climate change or a world without fossil fuels?

By Ronald Stein, The Heartland Institute, May 3, 2022

https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/how-many-of-the-worlds-8-billion-will-survive-without-fossil-fuels?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Heartland+Weekly%3A+Ministry+of+Truth+Run+by+a+Commie+Theater+Nerd&utm_campaign=HW+%2805-07-22%29&vgo_ee=K3MjnNRCJr0oiS9v4U%2BHzw%3D%3D

WUWT Contest Winner, General Audience, Second Place – “Is There Really a Climate Crisis?”

The Dog That Never Barks

By David Hawkins, WUWT, May 5, 2022

“The environmental campaign leading to demands for radical changes to our lifestyles relies on a progression from one assertion to another, all supposedly scientifically supported.  This series starts with the assertion that climate models are a good predictor of future climate and temperature.  The next assumption (probably the largest) is that carbon dioxide is the main, if not the only driver, of these climate models.  The next assumption is that a rise in global temperatures in excess of 1.5 degrees Centigrade by 2050 will have a disastrous effect on the ecosystems of the planet.  The final assumption in the chain is that limiting carbon dioxide generated by humanity to arbitrarily set limits will stabilise global temperatures.”

Insights On Progressive Thinking From The Climate Action Council [CAC] Public Hearing

By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, May 6, 2022

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-5-6-insights-on-progressive-thinking-from-the-climate-action-council-public-hearing

A Sense Of Proportion

By Willis Eschenbach, WUWT, May 5, 2022

Defending the Orthodoxy

Scientists identify the most extreme heatwaves ever recorded globally

By Staff Writers, Bristol UK (SPX), May 05, 2022

https://www.terradaily.com/reports/Scientists_identify_the_most_extreme_heatwaves_ever_recorded_globally_999.html

Link to paper: The 2021 western North America heat wave among the most extreme events ever recorded globally

By Vikki Thompson, et al, AAAS Science Advances, May 4, 2022

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm6860

From the abstract: “Throughout the globe, where we have reliable data, only five other heat waves were found to be more extreme since 1960.”

[SEPP Comment: Apparently the authors and AAAS Science never heard of the 1930s Dust Bowl in the US, which had reliable data. Such are the standards of AAAS – the American Association for the Advancement of Science!]

Use of ‘too hot’ climate models exaggerates impacts of global warming

U.N. report authors say researchers should avoid suspect models

By Paul Voosen, AAAS Science, May 4, 2022

https://www.science.org/content/article/use-too-hot-climate-models-exaggerates-impacts-global-warming

Link to paper: Climate simulations: recognize the ‘hot model’ problem

The sixth and latest IPCC assessment weights climate models according to how well they reproduce other evidence. Now the rest of the community should do the same.

By Zeke Hausfather , Kate Marvel , Gavin A. Schmidt , John W. Nielsen-Gammon & Mark Zelinka, Nature, May 4, 2022

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01192-2

[SEPP Comment: Do these climate people advocate that rather than wildly extreme models, they will use ridiculously extreme models?]

Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science

Northern Ireland faces loss of 1 million sheep and cattle to meet climate targets

By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, April 30, 2022



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