Challenges of the clean energy transition

by Judith Curry

This morning I participated Conference on Energy and Decarbonization – A New Jersey Business Perspective. https://njbia.regfox.com/energy-summit.

UPDATE: full recording of the conference [here]

 New Jersey is a leader among U.S. states in aggressively tackling the transition to cleaner sources of energy (see the New Jersey Energy Master Plan).   So far, they have been doing a better job than California.   The near term challenges of the transition to clean energy are described in this article in the City Journal

New Jersey has a pretty good mix of electricity generation sources:  57.2% natural gas, 37.4% nuclear, 1.6% solar, 1.5% coal, 1.1% biomass, 0.9% non-biogenic waste, and 0.1% hydroelectric & wind.New Jersey’s renewable portfolio standard was updated in 2018 to require that 21% of electricity be from renewable sources by 2021, 35% by 2025, and 50% by 2030. 

This Conference was a pretty interesting event.  Here is the agenda and list of speakers:

  • Opening Remarks: Ray Cantor, Vice President, Government Affairs, New Jersey Business & IndustryAssociation
  • The Murphy Administration: Joseph L. Fiordaliso, President, Board of Public Utilities and Shawn M.LaTourette, Commissioner, Department of Environmental Protection
  • Climate Risks and Energy Policy Options: Dr. Judith Curry, President, Climate ForecastApplications Network
  • Energy Demand: Dr. Prasanna V. Joshi, Senior Manager of Corporate Strategic Research, ExxonMobil
  • Reliability Concerns: Elliott Nethercutt, National Regulatory Institute, NARUC
  • Transmission Infrastructure: Bob Martin, Managing Director, Christie 55 Solutions
  • Costs of Decarbonization: Dan Shreve, Head of Global Wind Energy Research, Wood MacKenzie
  • Offshore Wind: Kris Ohleth, Executive Director, Special Initiative on Offshore Wind
  • The Role of Gas Infrastructure in the Clean Energy Economy: Steve Westhoven, CEO, NewJersey Resources
  • Nuclear: Rick Thigpen, Senior Vice President for Corporate Citizenship and PSEG Foundation Chair atPublic Service Enterprise Group (PSE&G)                                                                        
  • Solar: Jim Spano, Managing Partner, Spano Partners
  • Heavy Duty Transportation: Dawn Fenton, Vice President for Government Relations and PublicAffairs, Volvo Group North America
  • Labor Concerns and Workforce: Kate Gibbs, Deputy Director, ELEC 825
  • Challenges for Buildings: Joe Uglietto, President, Diversified Energy Specialists (DES) 

The State administration of NJ assumes that climate change is a code red emergency. Industry leaders and people in the electricity sector are more concerned about energy reliability and cost, arguing for a slower transition. This Conference promoted dialogue among a range of leaders and stakeholders.

I was asked to update the audience on the latest IPCC assessment, topics of specific relevance to New Jersey, and the implications for the clean energy transition.

The slides for me presentation are here (hopefully you can download it?)

Some of the slides I’ve used before, but are included here again for completeness. My verbal remarks are provided below:

Slide 2  IPCC

The climate crisis can be summarized as:

  • Its warming
  • The warming is caused by us
  • Warming is dangerous
  • We need to urgently transition to renewable energy to stop the warming
  • Once we stop burning fossil fuels, sea level rise will stop and the weather won’t be so extreme

Last August, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, issued its 6th Assessment report.  In response, the secretary general of the UN stated that

“This is code red for humanity.”

Slide 3 what’s wrong with this narrative

In my talk today, I’m going to present you with a different perspective on the climate change problem and how we can approach solutions.

So what’s wrong with the crisis narrative?  It is my assessment that

  • We’ve vastly oversimplified both the problem and its solutions
  • The complexity and uncertainty surrounding climate change is being kept away from the public and policy debates.
  • Rapid reductions in emissions are technologically and politically infeasible on a global scale, with adverse negative consequences.
  • And finally, the climate crisis narrative gets in the way of real solutions to our problems

Slide 4  97% consensus

Even people that don’t know much about climate science have heard that 97% of climate scientists agree.  But exactly what do they agree on?  Not nearly as much as portrayed by the media.  Everyone agrees that:

  • Surface temperatures have increased since 1880
  • Humans are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and
  • Carbon Dioxide and other greenhouse gases have a warming effect on the planet

However, there is uncertainty and disagreement on the most consequential issues:

  • How much of the recent warming has been caused by emissions
  • How much the planet will warm in the 21st century
  • Whether warming is ‘dangerous
  • And how we should respond to the warming, to improve human well being

Slide 5 21st century warming

For policy making, the most consequential issue is how much warming we can expect in the 21st century.  This figure from the latest IPCC report shows climate model projections of global surface temperature anomalies over the 21st century.  There’s a large range of warming shown in this diagram, from 3 degrees to 8 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial temperatures.  We’ve already warmed by more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit. So whether the future warming is on the low or high end has huge implications for climate policy.  The largest amount of warming is associated with an extreme emissions scenario, SSP-8.5, shown by the purple curve. 

The large amount of uncertainty in 21st century projections of surface temperature is associated with:

  • The amount of emissions
  • The sensitivity of the climate to these emissions
  • And finally, there is substantial uncertainty about the relative importance of natural climate variability.  

Slide 6  Emissions scenarios

On the previous slide, recall that the largest amount of warming was associated with the emissions scenario SSP-8.5.  The IPCC 5th Assessment Report regarded the 8.5 scenario to be our most likely future, and it was referred to as the business-as-usual scenario.

However, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the 8.5 scenarios are implausibly high, if not impossible.  The gray lines show emissions projections made by the International Energy Agency out to 2050.  The IEA projections show fairly steady emissions through 2050, that are much lower than the 8.5 scenarios.  The IEA projections are even somewhat lower than the IPCC’s medium emissions scenario, SSP-4.5.

Nevertheless, the most recent IPCC report emphasizes the 8.5 scenario.  Not surprisingly, this extreme emissions scenario is the source of alarming impacts.

—-

The second major source of uncertainty is the sensitivity of the global temperatures to a doubling of carbon dioxide.  For decades, the likely range for climate sensitivity has been between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees centigrade, which is reflected by the assessment from the IPCC AR5 published in 2013. 

The red bars in this figure shows the range of climate sensitivity from the most recent climate model simulations, ranging from 1.8 to 5.7 degrees.  These values are overall much higher than those from the AR5, whose highest value was 4.6 degrees.

In spite of the larger range from the climate models, the most recent IPCC AR6 substantially narrowed the likely range of climate sensitivity to between 2.5 and 4 degrees, indicated by the vertical blue lines, rejecting the highest values from the climate models.  However this narrowing of the range is disputed, particularly on the low end.   The whole issue of climate sensitivity to increasing carbon dioxide remains unsettled

The bottom line here is some good news.  The extreme tail risks from global warming, associated with very high emissions and high climate sensitivity, have shrunk and are now regarded as implausible.

Slide 7  RCP4.5

So, what is our best estimate of the amount of warming expected in the 21st century?  The closest emissions scenario to the projections from the International Energy Agency is the medium emissions scenario, SSP4.5.

The recent IPCC report provides ‘constrained’ projections, that includes only the climate models with values of climate sensitivity between 2.5 and 4 degrees Centigrade.  The IPCC’s best estimate for warming by 2100 is 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit, relative to a preindustrial baseline for the period 1850-1900.  The policy relevant targets of 1.5 and 2 degrees centigrade, indicated by the dashed lines, reflect temperature change relative to this preindustrial period.  We have already warmed 1.3 degrees Centigrade, or 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit.   The IPCC’s best estimate has us crossing the 1.5 degree threshold in about 2030, and the 2 degree threshold in about 2055.  

There are numerous reasons to expect that the amount of warming will be lower than the IPCC’s best estimate.  The current emissions trajectory is running below the 4.5 scenario.  Lower values of climate sensitivity would also delay crossing these thresholds.  The other factor to consider is natural climate variability.  Major volcanic eruptions would have a cooling effect.  A solar minimum is expected in the 21st century, following the grand solar maximum that occurred in the late 20th century.  Natural variability associated with the large-scale ocean circulations is also expected to contribute to cooling in the coming decades.

We need to recognize that how the climate of the 21st century will play out is a topic of deep uncertainty. Once natural climate variability is accounted for, it may turn out to be relatively benignOr we may be faced with unanticipated surprises

Slide 8  Is warming dangerous

The next area of disagreement takes us away from science and into the realm of values.  How dangerous is global warming?  The IPCC 5th Assessment Report used a burning embers diagram to portray reasons for concern.  The level of concern increases with the amount of global warming.  Note that the IPCC does not use the words ‘dangerous’, ‘crisis’ or ‘catastrophe’ in its reports; rather it refers to ‘reasons for concern.’ 

Any evaluation of dangerous climate change must confront the Goldilocks principle.  Exactly which climate state is too hot versus too cold?  Some answer this question by stating that the climate we’re adapted to is ‘just right’.  However, the IPCC refers to a preindustrial baseline, in the late 1700’s.  Why anyone thinks that this is an ideal climate is beyond me.  This was during the Little Ice Age, the coldest period of the millennia.  Think George Washington and the horrible winters at Valley Forge. 

While the categories of concern in the burning embers diagram seem a bit nebulous, the 6th assessment report focused on extreme weather and climate events.  Lets take a look.

Slide 8  New normal

The recent IPCC report identified an increase in the intensity and frequency of heat waves, but a decrease in cold waves.  The decrease in cold events is actually very good news. Numerous studies have found that there are more deaths from cold events than from heat events, by as much as an order of magnitude. 

The recent IPCC report also identified an increase in the frequency and intensity of heavy rain events.  The IPCC looked at the period since 1950 in assessing trends in extreme events.  However, looking only at the record since 1950 can lead to weather amnesia

New Jersey is facing the prospect of increased flooding.  New Jersey is rightfully concerned about impacts from hurricanes. But these impacts are not necessarily worsening as a result of global warming. The worst hurricane to strike New Jersey in the historical record occurred in 1821 – a category 4 hurricane with a 13 foot storm surge.

Hurricane Ida recently caused 7 inches of rain in New Jersey over 2 days.  How does this compare with the historical record?  Central Park in New York City has a data record that goes back to the 1860’s.  The highest daily rainfall accumulation occurred during 1883, over 8 inches.

Looking at the historical data of extreme weather events helps us avoid weather amnesia.  Further, it reminds us that even worse extreme weather events have occurred in the historical record, and that elimination of fossil fuel emissions isn’t going to prevent extreme weather events.

Slide 10 hurricanes

The recent IPCC report concluded that it’s likely that the global proportion of major hurricanes (which are category 3 and higher) has increased over the last four decades.   However, the actual number of major hurricanes does not show a meaningful trend that can be distinguished from natural variability.

The left-hand diagram shows the number of major hurricanes that have made U.S. landfall since 1900.  The year 2005 stands out as the highest, which was followed by a period of 11 years with no major hurricane landfalls.  Also, there were a large number of major hurricane landfalls during the first half of the 20th century, when surface temperatures were significantly cooler.

The large amount of natural variability makes it difficult to identify meaningful trends in hurricane activity, and even more difficult to attribute any trend to manmade global warming.

Slide 11  NJ SLR

Sea level rise is an unambiguous impact of global warming.  This figure shows the sea level data record for Atlantic City.  Since 1910, sea level has been rising at a steady rate of 1.36 feet, or 16 inches, per century.  New Jersey’s coastal sea level rise is somewhat larger than the global average, owing to local sinking from geological processes and extraction of ground water.

In 2019, a team of scientists led by Rutgers University prepared a report entitled “New Jersey’s Rising Seas and Changing Coastal Storms.”  By 2100, for the medium emissions scenario, the Rutgers report predicted a likely range of sea level rise to be between 2 and 5.1 feet. New Jersey’s plan for Protecting Against Climate Threats, or PACT, adopted 5.1 feet as the basis for its regulations.

Slide 12  Rutgers 

In January 2021, I was contacted by Ray Cantor of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, to provide an independent evaluation of the projections in the Rutgers Report.

The main conclusion of my report was that the Rutgers projections are substantially higher than the IPCC projections, owing to their method of incorporating extreme scenarios of instability in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Slide 13 Global sea level rise

This figure is from the most recent IPCC Report.  The left column shows projections of global mean sea level to 2050, and the right column shows projections to 2100.  The middle row, circled in red, shows projections for the medium emissions scenario.  Looking at the 2100 projections, the yellow bar indicates the likely range from the latest IPCC report, with an upper value of 2.5 feet.  Accounting for local effects for New Jersey produces a value of 3.1 feet. 

This value of 3.1 feet is substantially lower than the 5.1 feet cited in the Rutgers Report.  The latest IPCC report reinforces my previous assessment that the sea level rise projections from the Rutgers report are far too high.

Slide 14  Adapting

In evaluating the dangers of climate change, it’s important to assess how global societies have dealt with the warming that we’ve already seen. So far, the world has done a decent job at adapting to weather extremes and climate change.  The upper left figure shows the change in yield for major crops, with yields for many crops doubling or even quadrupling since 1960.

The figure in the lower left shows losses from global weather disasters as a percent of GDP.  The spikes are associated with years that showed large losses from tropical cyclones.  Overall for the past 30 years, there has actually been a slight decline in losses.

The diagram in the lower right shows the number of deaths per million people from weather and climate catastrophes.  Over the past century, climate related deaths have dropped by 97%.

Slide 15 IEA

Under the auspices of the United Nations, the world is attempting to reach netzero in carbon emissions by 2050.

This diagram from the International Energy Agency illustrates the challenge.  The blue curve shows expected emissions based on policies that are currently in place.  The yellow curve shows the pledges that countries have made as part of the Paris Agreement.  And the green curve shows the path we should be on to reach netzero by 2050.

There’s a large gap between our current and committed policies versus the netzero target.  There are numerous impediments to reaching netzero: waiting for better technologies, costs of the transition, and politics surrounding natural gas and nuclear energy. But most importantly, there are concerns about maintaining energy security during the transition, in terms of electricity reliability and cost.

Slide 16 Netzero

The path to net zero by 2050 is generally regarded to consist of the following elements:

  • The fundamental premise is to eliminate fossil fuels
  • Then replace fossil fuel generation with clean energy, focusing on solar, wind, biofuels.
  • Nuclear energy remains controversial, although there is a recent surge of support in Europe and Japan.
  • There’s an implication of austerity in terms of using less energy
  • In doing the carbon accounting, it is very difficult to achieve netzero by 2050 without carbon capture and storage.  However, we do not currently have the capability to accomplish this at anything close to the needed scale.

The International Energy Agency finds that there is a possible but very narrow pathway to netzero by 2050, provided that there’s a huge leap in energy innovation and major efforts to build new infrastructure.  Other analysts find that reaching netzero globally by 2050 is a social and technological impossibility

Slide 17 netzero problems

Some countries and states can reach netzero by 2050 relatively easily if they have a large amount of hydropower or an existing base of nuclear power. However, it will be very difficult for most other regions, particularly in the face of growing population and desired economic growth.

But even if we can’t meet the targets, we should try anyways, right? 

Well, the fundamental problem is the level of urgency. I’ve shown that the perception of a crisis and the level of alarm that is often portrayed in the media and by politicians is overblown. Targets that are too stringent lead to decisions that aren’t beneficial in the longer term.

Another key issue is that the demand for electricity is growing.  We need much more electricity, not less.  Going on an energy diet like we did in the 1970’s is off the table.  We don’t just want to survive, we want to thrive. We need more electricity to support innovation and thrivability in the 21st century.

Slide 18 robustness

A more pragmatic approach to dealing with climate change drops the timelines and emissions targets, in favor of accelerating energy innovation.

Once the stringent targets are removed, you have space to imagine what the infrastructure for our 21st century electricity system could look like, with new technologies for electricity generation and a 21st century transmission infrastructure that is more resilient to extreme weather events.

Compare this vision against the current plan for urgently implementing 20th century wind and solar technologies, patching them into the existing transmission grid, eliminating backup power sources of natural gas and nuclear, and then hoping for the best.  This is where urgently working towards NETZERO by overinvesting in wind and solar is leading us.

Nations and states are coming to grips with their over dependence on wind and solar, notably California, the UK and Europe.  In 2021 so far, offshore wind in the North Sea has provided 7% of the UK electricity, compared to 25% in 2020.  Concerns about not meeting electricity needs next winter are resulting in a near term reliance on coal in Europe and Asia. 

You can avoid this situation by hanging on to your existing nuclear and natural gas generating capacity.  Nuclear and natural gas are key enablers for reducing carbon emissions today in the near term.  Natural gas is essential for keeping energy prices in check while we invest in the technology and infrastructure necessary to attain net zero in the future.

We can be sure the future of the 2030’s will look very different from the future of today. In evaluating clean energy technologies, extend your horizon to the 2030’s and build in the capability to adopt new technologies in your planning process.

Consideration of these factors can lead to a better and even cleaner electricity system by mid century, including new technologies, such as small modular nuclear reactors and advanced geothermal.

Slide 20 thank you

The Energy Transition will be one of the most capital- and resource- intensive undertakings in the history of mankind.  It is essential for business and industry to provide a reality check on both technical feasibility and economic realities.

But more importantly, we need to change the focus of conversation, and here is where business leaders can take charge.  Focus on a 21st century vision for electric power infrastructure, with abundant, cheap and clean electricity.  Sell prosperity and thrivability as the motivations for this.  Support innovation. Not greenwashing, which the energy industry is often accused, but come up with a real plan.  Its time to listen to business and the engineers, not the politicians and activists.   Come up with a good plan, and even the climate activists will have a hard time objecting. 

794 responses to “Challenges of the clean energy transition

  1. Judith,

    Thank you for this excellent post. I’d like to offer a few comments:

    1. The GCMs and the IPCC AR6 grossly exaggerate the projected temperature increases due to GHG emissions. Most of the warming is due to other factors, including the urban heat island effect, which the models and the IPCC do not take into account when projecting future GMST change due to GHG emissions.

    2. Empirical evidence indicates that global warming is beneficial for all impact sectors except sea level rise, for which the impacts are likely to be negligible – a little more than last century. Global warming and increasing CO2 concentrations are beneficial for Agriculture and Ecosystems. Global warming is beneficial for energy consumption (reduces energy consumption for heating more than it increases it for cooling, because the extra-tropics warm much more than the tropics) and Health (reduces deaths from cold events more than it increases them from warm events). All other impact sectors except sea level rise also benefit from global warming.

    3. Therefore, global warming is net beneficial. We should not be wasting money and seriously damaging the global economy trying to reduce global warming.

  2. I don’t think AR5 WG1 ever thought of RCP8.5 as ‘business as usual’, in fact I don’t think they even used the term. The original authors of it called it a ‘conservative BAU scenario’, and by BAU used it in the sense of no mitigation.

    AR6 WG1 has now made it clear that it is unlikely and even uses the implausible word.

  3. Well done Dr. Curry you should be one of the major voices in the current Administration’s efforts to “solve” the CC (wicked) problem. Unfortunately our current Administration is 100% sold on Slide 2 IPCC above, even subscribing to the irresponsible phrase of the UN’s Secretary General “code red for humanity”. If CC is code red what code should we assign to the possibility of Thermonuclear war (by accident or by design) or a more rigorous than Covid-19 airborne pandemic or even a catastrophic Financial Crisis that would wipe out trillions in value?

  4. Energy prices in the EU are going through the roof. On the eve of the 31Oct-12Nov COP26 meeting (26th UN Climate Change Conference) hosted by the British in Glasgow, Scotland (many won’t bother to attend, e.g., China, Russia, Brazil, the Pope), North Sea winds literally stopped blowing, driving wind driven electricity production through the floorboards. A sudden need to fire up gas and coal-fired electricity plants arose overnight.

    • As to the question, is warming dangerous? More people suffer and die of cold weather and Western Academia’s phony climate change science than from hot weather. Hopefully, another cold winter won’t have the elderly in Great Britain burning books again to stay warm. Unfortunately, the temperatures seem to be plunging.

    • Capitalism is not some Wokeism Safe Space. You get what you invest in. Good intentions won’t turn on the furnace.
      We are fast approaching the clash of feel good theory against the reality of being cold in the winter. Being hot is uncomfortable but being cold is painful and deadly.

  5. > New Jersey has a pretty good mix of electricity generation sources: 57.2% natural gas, 37.4% nuclear, 1.6% solar, 1.5% coal, 1.1% biomass, 0.9% non-biogenic waste, and 0.1% hydroelectric & wind.

    Scratching my own itch:

    As of 2019, California natural gas plants supplied a third of the state’s total demand for electricity, (almost half of the state’s in-state generation[1]) and supply the state with 41,000 megawatts of installed capacity.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California

    Last time I checked, 33 is smaller than 57.

    • Interestingly from your citation, most years the second largest source of energy, after natural gas, is imported energy. Got to wonder how much of that is fossil fuels. So the figures are misleading without that being attributed. Or how to export our problems and pat ourselves on the back for moving toward our goal without paying the price. As neighboring states move toward the same goals, will they have energy to spare. When the wind doesn’t blow in CA and neighboring states or it is cloudy, who do you turn to?

      • More interestingly, CMS, New Jersey isn’t doing better than California, in contrast to what we can read in the OP.

      • Bill Fabrizio

        > When the wind doesn’t blow in CA …

        I just came back from visiting a friend in LA, his 80th b-day. There are windmill farms to the south of Interstate 10. I passed twice over three days, maybe 3% were moving. The rest just stood like sentinels of a dead civilization.

      • The rest just stood like sentinels of a dead civilization.

      • Every day a troglodyte dies.

      • Geoff Sherrington

        Bill Fab,
        Re windmills turning or not, can you please give lats and logs so we can locate approximately where you were? (We Aussies need nav aids sometimes). I’m a keen photographer forever looking for the unusual. Like you, I have found some unusual in wind farm photos. Every wind farm photo I have with my expensive Nikon shows NO blades turning. Geoff S

      • Geoff …

        33°53’30.14″ N 116°35’28.86″ W

        I’m not sure of the name of the wind farm(s). Maybe they are associated with the Mt. San Jacinto farms? Not sure. They are in an area just northwest of the Salton Sea, bordered by the towns of Palm Springs to the south east, Whitewater and North Palm Springs to the north, and bounded by US Interstate 10, California Hwy 111 and Indian Canyon Drive. Route 10, in that area, is at approximately 600 feet above sea level although the surrounding mountains can get over 10,000 feet. San Jacinto is 10,834 feet, so I’m sure the siting of the farm(s) was to take advantage of the valley.

        Like most people, I don’t like to see waste. If they churn out lot’s of power, good. Maybe the wind picks up at night, and they become useful. But the reality is that they don’t turn all the time and the visual is quite stunning. A couple were missing a single blade, no doubt being under maintenance. Nevertheless it adds to the effect.

        It had the eerie quality of a graveyard … without the flowers.

    • You are right, 33 is smaller than 57 and the latter seems a very large number in the context of a good sustainable mix that is also ‘environmentally’ desirable in the context of being sustainable.

      Presumably nuclear here is counted as green and renewable, which is not so in many jurisdictions, where by nuclear is still very much frowned upon elsewhere

      However, without it, at our current state of development, I don’t see how the lights can be kept on if we ban fossil fuels and presumably it will be even more important in future decades bearing in mind gas is right up there as one of the key fuels to ban-in the UK efforts are being made to rapidly phase it out-

      Consequently I can’t see that a state that has such high gas usage and so little solar and wind can be seen as having a good mix in ‘environmental’ terms.

      tonyb

      • Nay not worry, TonyB. What you can or can’t see has little import on reality. More so that it appears that you’re tilting at windmills.

        The endgame is to get to carbon zero, and no “ban fossil fuels,” whatever that means, should be required. All we need is to stop burning them like there’s no tomorrow.

        Chances are we’ll need plastics for a long while. It’d be nice if got some left in a hundred years, don’t you think?

      • “The endgame is to get to carbon zero…”

        It’s a conditional statement. Subservient to making people’s lives better. So we don’t make them worse to get to carbon zero. But if someone believes carbon zero is more important, I have nothing good to say about that.

      • Ragnaar commented:
        It’s a conditional statement. Subservient to making people’s lives better. So we don’t make them worse to get to carbon zero. But if someone believes carbon zero is more important, I have nothing good to say about that.

        Simplistic. The problem of course is that carbon nonzero creates more climate change which makes people’s lives worse. Where is the balance?

      • David Appell:
        I’ll accept simplistic. A hierarchy of values. Where no goal is of exactly equal value to another goal. In the example where making lives better is less important than carbon zero, we sacrifice one value for another. To go further into the weeds, coherent hierarchies succeed and incoherent ones fail. Though they may be held in place for awhile with force. I think renewables are held in place by force, and they will collapse. it’s a question of when and to what extent? Rumblings are being heard today. The renewable system is shuddering. And indicator of a coming colllapse.

        I think it’s fair to say in her post, goals were not ranked so much. Options were given, some that the mainstream doesn’t talk about. I really think it is a great presentation. It may be that ranking goals is for policy makers.

      • > they will collapse. it’s a question of when and to what extent? Rumblings are being heard today. The renewable system is shuddering. And indicator of a coming colllapse.

        Are you a betting man, R?

  6. Victor O Adams

    Thank you Dr. Curry, I wished our Administration listened to and acted on voices as yours instead of jumping on the band wagon as listed on Slide 2 even repeating the UN’s “code red”.

  7. David L. Hagen

    Texas Lessons?
    The near collapse of the Texas grid this year is a wakeup call for grid reliability in the face of rapid wind and solar expansion.
    The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) reported:

    Approximately 48.6% of generation was forced out at the highest point due to the impacts of various extreme weather conditions.

    Texas has 37,567 MW installed Wind + Solar capacity for 34.5% of total capacity.
    31,390 MW Wind (28.83%)
    6,177 MW Solar (5.67%)

    5,000 MW load was shed to for stall collapse.
    Review of February 2021 Extreme Cold Weather Event – ERCOT Presentation

    Now Starwood Energy is proposing to install 11,000 MW of peaker gas turbines for $8 billion to earn a guaranteed 9% return on investment.
    Starwood Energy proposal to invest $8 billion in power infrastructure in the state of Texas

    • near collapse of the Texas grid this year is a wakeup call for grid reliability

      unfortunately, it is not a wake up call, it is an incentive, they make the most money when the power is scarce. The people who regulate the grid work for companies that make the most money when power is not enough.

  8. This was written:
    Since 1910, sea level has been rising at a steady rate of 1.36 feet, or 16 inches, per century.

    From 1910 to 1972 = 60 years
    From 1972 to 2021 = almost 50 years

    The atomic clocks were put into service in 1972, measuring Length of Day.
    Length of day has decreased since 1972, that means sea level has gone down over the most recent half century.

    Length of Day is well documented, check it for yourself.

    Increasing sea level, loss of ice near spin axis in polar regions and rising sea level around the equator would have slowed down the spin rate of earth and there would have been needed increasing numbers of leap seconds added each decade.

    They tell us things that are not true, on purpose, or they tell us things that are not true because they have no actual understanding of the meaning of the most reliable data.

    Sea level rise was the poster child of man made warming, a few years ago, they have stopped featuring that because it was an oblivious lie.

    Then they switched to “man made” global warming for awhile.
    That has not worked out because there are too many cold events.

    Now, they feature “Climate Change”, meaning, but actually saying, “Man made Climate Change”, knowing, or hoping, the leaving out the “man made” can sneak by. We just warmed out of the Little Ice Age, this warming is natural, necessary, normal, unstoppable, desirable, self correcting, stable, expected…………

    It is naturally warmer now, the Arctic is naturally more open now, there is more evaporation and snowfall on Greenland and around the Arctic now, there is naturally more Arctic Ocean Evaporation and Snowfall in and around the Arctic, this natural warm period will produce more ice sequestering in and around the Arctic for a few hundred years and then the the deep, heavy ice will spread and push into the ocean warm tropical currents and chill them with crushed ice dumped into turbulent salt water currents to chill the water to form sea ice and turn off the snowfall while the little ice age ice depletes.

    What has happened will happen again!

    Alex Pope

  9. Judith, why have you not gone back a couple of steps to the fact that no one has come up with any evidence that CO2 is harmful to humans at present levels or up to 4000 ppm as used in real greenhouses? Added is the data over the last 41+ years of lower troposphere satellite temperature measurements with global rises 0.13 C/decade, and 0.18 C/decade over land. These trends are hardly enough to be concerned about, especially as the plots vary as much as a whole degree C over a few years, and with no indication of the rate of change increasing – almost flat for seven years.
    To use New Jersey sea level data is atypical as there is subsidence in parts of the USA as the continent compensates for the Canadian post-glacial uplift. Compare it to the Fort Denison tide gauge in Sydney Harbour, NSW, with a steady 0.77 mm/yr over the last 135 years.
    So no real need to limit CO2 emissions, no real need to aim for Net-Zero-Carbon by any date, no need to spend trillions of any currency to achieve Net-Zero or on renewable energy systems!!

    • The Atomic Clocks were put in service in 1972 to me measure time accurately. Since then, Length of Day has decreased.
      That means the Inertia of Earth has decreased.
      THAT MEANS OVERALL SEA LEVEL HAS GONE DOWN!

  10. Consideration of these factors can lead to a better and even cleaner electricity system by mid century,

    All based on the MAJOR LIE THAT CO2 CAUSES ANY HARM!

  11. “A more pragmatic approach to dealing with climate change drops the timelines and emissions targets, in favor of accelerating energy innovation.”

    But Judith, remember the saying “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

    Speaking from experience as an aerospace engineer, one needs to place stress on the system to create innovation. If there isn’t a problem to solve, one has no incentive to innovate.

    Q: So how does one “accelerate energy innovation”?

    A: Increase competition. (Difficult to do with a regulated utility though.)

    A: Regulatory mandates for greater percentage of electricity from renewables, like Washington State’s Clean Energy Transformation Act.

    A: Increase the cost of fossil fuels to include external costs, such as imposing a carbon tax.

    A: Regulating greenhouse gas emissions by imposing a cap and trading allowances to pollute.

    There may very well be a need for substantially more nuclear power, but let’s try a more connected and intelligent grid first. Let’s try new battery storage like flow batteries. Let’s try demand response and efficiency. There is enough time to let company’s innovate first and then use nuclear to pick up whatever remains.

    • Afternoon Jeff (UTC),

      If you’re an advocate of “new battery storage like flow batteries”, what do you make of the concept of “new battery storage like electric vehicle traction batteries”?

      Vehicle-to-grid if you will?

      • According to the IEA (Update on EVs Aug 23rd 2021) there were 1.7m EVs (BEV & PHEV) in the US by the end of 2020. Unless nearly all of them were in California they are not going to be supplying much electricity to anywhere.

      • Evenin’ Dave,

        Most EVs, even in California, are currently not capable of V2x operation. Particularly Teslas!

        If you have a vivid imagination, assume for a moment a future in which all passenger cars are electrically powered, and all those that are parked for long periods are “bi-directional”.

        What then?

    • Innovation is largely driven by profit incentives. Government bureaucrats are not particularly helpful in that regard. Indeed, tends to have the opposite effect.
      The antics of government in Washington state provide a good example of misery being inflicted upon the General population in the name of “saving the planet”.

    • You wrote:
      but let’s try a more connected and intelligent grid first.

      In other words, you want nationwide power outages, rather than just a State like Texas or like a Region just like the WHOLE NORTHEAST OF THE COUNTRY,

      You wrote:

      Let’s try new battery storage like flow batteries.
      FOREIGN OR DOMESTIC TERRORISTS AND/OR NATURAL DISASTERS CAN TAKE OUT BATTERIES, WIND FARMS, SOLAR FARMS, GRIDS.

      Each Region needs adequate power to cut loose from the grid and operate independently. Individually, now, we are all buying our own generators because the grid has gotten much less stable as more coal is replaces with less reliable Wind, Coal, and Yes gas is less reliable because it depends on a pipeline grid that is not reliable.

      More connected has been proven to be less intelligent.

    • “…inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise. ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ is a silly proverb. ‘Necessity is the mother of futile dodges’ is much nearer the truth. The basis of the growth of modern invention is science, and science is almost wholly the outgrowth of pleasurable intellectual curiosity.”

      This insight from the past provides a rallying call to those that support the idea of ‘blue skies’ research and feel that scientific discovery and invention should be driven by curiosity rather than a strategy or a set of pre-defined rules.

      https://blogs.bl.uk/science/2014/02/is-necessity-the-mother-of-invention.html

      Opinions vary. A set of predefined rules. That’s how research is funded now. Are you familiar with government grants which fuel a lot of it these days? Science used to be conducted by mavericks. Now it’s funded by government wokesters. Shoehorning the insert future miracle here answer is not going to work. You need a maverick and not some more government money.

  12. The challenge for the century is ten times greater global GDP powered by 3 and a half times more energy demand, providing resources for health and education reversing population by 2050 and meeting twice the food demand.

    https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0959378016300711-gr1.jpg

    Fossil fuels have been great to date – but – with commodity prices surging – are they up to the 21st century.

    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/em-break-even.jpg

    ‘SAN DIEGO, (Jan. 13, 2021) – General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) announced today that it has been selected for the Advanced Reactor Concepts-20 (ARC-20) program, one of three programs supported under the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Reactor Demonstration (ARD) Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). GA-EMS will develop a conceptual design of a new 50-megawatt electric (MWe) Fast Modular Reactor (FMR) that provides safe, carbon free electricity, and has the capability of incremental capacity additions. The FMR will provide rapid load-following capabilities for seamless integration with renewables and other intermittent power sources, on and off the electric grid…

    GA-EMS is committed to the commercialization of FMRs, with a safe and affordable way to build and operate them in the near term,” said Dr. Christina Back, vice president of Nuclear Technologies and Materials at GA-EMS. “The FMR modular design will allow factory built components to be assembled on-site, keeping the cost of capital low, while the use of a helium instead of water coolant allows the reactor to be sited in nearly any location. It will use silicon carbide composite material, SiGA®, developed in the DOE’S Accident Tolerant Fuel program, to provide safe, clean energy throughout the U.S. for generations to come.” https://www.ga.com/general-atomics-selected-for-the-department-of-energys-advanced-reactor-concepts-20-program

    Fast neutron reactors are not a novel technology. Factory production is a new way of building them.

    https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/fast-neutron-reactors.aspx

    Meeting twice the food demand from existing farmland will require modern grazing and cultivation methods substantially drawing down that wondrous CO2 from the atmosphere.

    • All advanced reactor types in the U.S face significant challenges attempting to obtain a license as a result of the convoluted and highly prescriptive U.S. regulatory process There are significant technical, safety, and economic hurdles that must be cleared by the General Atomics design. No fast reactor has ever been licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. These elements point towards significant regulatory driven financial risk that US utilities are unlikely to embrace.

      The General Atomics’ design is unlikely to succeed in the U.S. The DOE has been out of touch with the US marketplace for quite some time so selection by the DOE is a poor indicator of potential success. However, the General Atomics design may have a chance in Canada where the nuclear regulatory process is more common sense oriented. Not sure about Australia.

    • 5 fast neutron reactors have operated in the USA. There were materials and cost problems. Factory built modules lend themselves to design standardization and generic approvals.

  13. Ireneusz Palmowski
  14. Ireneusz Palmowski

    As for changes in sea ice extent, it is not a simple temperature dependence. In the southern hemisphere, a strong link to El Niño is evident in summer. Large spikes have intensified since 2000, which can be linked to a decrease in solar activity. Changes in winter are smaller.
    https://masie_web.apps.nsidc.org/pub/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/south/monthly/images/02_Feb/S_02_extent_anomaly_plot_hires_v3.0.png
    https://masie_web.apps.nsidc.org/pub/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/south/monthly/images/09_Sep/S_09_extent_anomaly_plot_hires_v3.0.png

    • Also in the Arctic, El Nino episodes are linked to major warm pulses of the AMO peaking around August.

  15. A lot of sense being talked there.

    My view on ‘policies’ is that you should start with some simple, achievable ones, which don’t turn the world upside down but have clear measurable benefits to humankind.

    The first is ensuring that proper building regulations exist for new housing so that they are energy efficient. Note that because of different climates around the USA and the globe, the definition of what is ‘efficient’ in different geographies will be different.

    The POLICY problem concerns the drivers of the private construction sector (maximise profits by cutting every corner conceivable) and the health of society (healthy home living conditions brings healthier human beings, less need for healthcare, less absenteeism etc etc).

    What politicians haver the guts to quantify the costs to society of shoddy housing? That’s pretty imperative if you want to have safe, efficiently energy-controlled homes.

    You won’t get the construction industry changing without a gun to their heads, that is sure.

    I won’t comment on SW USA as I don’t live there, but here in the UK, the sensible things to do include:

    1. Underfloor heating instead of radiators to create a healthier, more efficient heat distribution inside rooms.
    2. HIgh quality glass windows ensuring adequate natural light and insulation superior to bricks and mortar.
    3. Appropriate insulation of outside walls, be that using integrated concrete formwork (concrete walls surrounded on both sides with insulating mould materials), the use of Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs), appropriate external cladding etc.
    4. Appropriate levels of loft insulation.
    5. Recycling of air and heat using Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery systems
    6. Use of land-based heat pumps to supply energy if appropriate.

    What this should mean over the 21st century is that the old housing stock built for days of cheap coal and paying zero attention to heat retention characteristics will be almost entirely replaced by 21st century designs where minimising the requirements for energy are to the fore.

    A variety of standards have emerged in the niche self-build sector which focus on slightly different things: Building Biology systems focus on building health, whilst Passivhaus standards are all about limiting heat losses down to almost nothing.

    The Structural Insulated Panels system of building houses has transferred a lot of manufacture into factories and much less around labour putting up brick walls brick by brick.

    The thing with having these technological alternatives available now is that rigorous analysis of the benefits of each can start to be undertaken, leading to real data-led, bottom-up knowledge of what really contributes to reducing the energy footprint of homes.

    Feeding people is another obvious area to look at energy impacts: everyone needs to eat healthily (that is the biggest correlation with reduced need for expensive healthcare going) and, whilst hydroponics makes sense for those thinking that living 365 days a year in a scorching hot desert is the way to go, most civilisations grew up around places where growing food in the soil was reliable and effective.

    It’s entirely appropriate to grow at least 80% of food in most places with temperate climates within 100 miles. Greenhouses and polytunnels help with some crops, but the vast majority will find out which crops grow really well in their particular climate. Where I live, we seem incredibly well adapted to growing parsnips, carrots, beetroot, onion, spring onion, garlic, shallot and pretty well adapted to growing potato, broad bean, climbing bean, dwarf bean, fennel, autumn turnip, swede, berries, apples, pears, plums. There are yet more crops that grow reasonably but some seasons they simply fail.

    In a green world, it makes zero sense importing that lot from half way around the world. Of course, we can’t grow olives, pineapples, oranges, bananas, avocados etc here. There is still a need for trade for those.

    Britain shouldn’t be a net importer of food in any way. The fact it is shows that values are not skewed toward self-sufficiency, energy usage, local seed production etc etc.

    Again, it’s not a black and white situation. Choices can be made along a continuum.

    But the energy consequences of these things are significant and there is zero technological barriers to making such policies successful, if the economics and energy imperatives stack up.

    Rural communities can, to be brutal, become energy independent through pooling animal waste products and using anaerobic digestors at field scale. So much for cows being great satans! Their dung can power entire communities….same with horses. And they power natural fertilisation of fields too, which costs absolutely nothing….of course, the EU thinks cow dung is ‘dangerous’, because the global TNCs don’t have ownership of it. If they did, it would magically become ‘the world’s most important product’….

    Truth never did sit well with politicians taking the bungs…..

    Completely replacing energy supplies with new ones is the most challenging problem of the lot – the one that should take the longest to solve, and the one that research into scale-up should be the most rigorous for.

    Planting trees has no barriers to action and is done entirely for the benefit of future generations. Given them screeching to the world about how everything ‘has been stolen’ from them, showing them billions of trees planted FOR them should shut them up, at least for five minutes…..

    Homes, food and trees. Three simple starting points. No excuses not to have transformed those three subjects by 2040. How many people do you know who won’t vote to prioritise healthier homes, healthier food and the calming nature of trees?

    Water management, local transportation and forests. Three intermediate points on the map. Break the back of these by 2050. How many teenagers wouldn’t vote to have these sorted out by the time their children are adults?

    Long distance transportation, base-level non-oil/gas/coal energy modalities, de-desertification: the things only likely to be solved properly in the second half of the 21st century. Let’s see where we are in 2040 before forcing uncommercial non-solutions onto a world which is sick and tired of oligarchs solely interested in riches they neither need nor deserve?

  16. Thanx Judith
    Great presentation
    Enjoyed comments
    Thom

  17. Pingback: Challenges of the clean energy transition - Climat et Vérité

  18. This study on the Pine Island Glacier contribution to SLR over the next 200 years was released yesterday. Any way you cut it, 5.1 cm over 200 years doesn’t sound frightening. Leave it to the MSM to make it so.

    https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.abi5738?et_rid=267930073&utm_campaign=toc_advances_2021-10-22&af=R&et_cid=3968650

  19. Nuclear is renewable! They have essentially no wind and solar. They are code red for climate. Gotta love it.

    https://www.cfact.org/2021/10/22/laughing-at-climate-hysteria/

    • Richard Greene

      Mr. Wojick
      Your column is the first article I read today and it was the best article I read this week. Short, informative and funny too.

      One additional fact I leaned yesterday:
      The COP26 bigwigs are staying at the luxury Gleneagles Hotel, 47 miles from Glasgow, to rest from their private jet journey. They are being driven to the conference in expensive electric vehicles. There is only one charging station at the hotel, so almost all the vehicles are going to be charged overnight with vegetable oil or diesel fuel powered chargers.

    • UK-Weather Lass

      From steam engine to steam turbine generated electricity took a couple of hundred years of engineering ingenuity. Today’s generators have not changed much in the meantime albeit producing higher capacity and via fuels other than coal, and with some improved efficiency here and there.

      Wind and solar emerged in the 19thC but were not candidates for progress in mainstream electricity supply. Less than one hundred years later wind and solar appeared again for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with a reasoned out electricity supply strategy.

      Without the massive subsidies and incentives neither wind nor solar would have received any attention at all were it not for the hysteria over CO2 from fossil fuel burning and the rejection of a nuclear alternative. All of this to save less than one percent of global emissions when we in the UK could clean up a lot better by building nuclear of all sizes and achieving net zero at some point in the next thirty years or so without a needless battery being manufactured. What has happened to all that serious engineering nous that has gave us all so many improved benefits?

      The uncertainty Dr Curry mentions will still be around throughout this century as prediction after prediction fail to register the reality and engineers start looking for a superior style of logic processor or a better understanding of randomness and infinity influencing how computer algorithms are designed and measured for efficiency.

  20. Ireneusz Palmowski

    There is also good information regarding the melting of the Arctic.
    “Jakobshavn Isbrae has been the single largest source of mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet over the last 20 years. During that time, it has been retreating, accelerating and thinning. Here we use airborne altimetry and satellite imagery to show that since 2016 Jakobshavn has been re-advancing, slowing and thickening. We link these changes to concurrent cooling of ocean waters in Disko Bay that spill over into Ilulissat Icefjord. Ocean temperatures in the bay’s upper 250 m have cooled to levels not seen since the mid 1980s. Observations and modelling trace the origins of this cooling to anomalous wintertime heat loss in the boundary current that circulates around the southern half of Greenland. Longer time series of ocean temperature, subglacial discharge and glacier variability strongly suggest that ocean-induced melting at the front has continued to influence glacier dynamics after the disintegration of its floating tongue in 2003. We conclude that projections of Jakobshavn’s future contribution to sea-level rise that are based on glacier geometry are insufficient, and that accounting for external forcing is indispensable.”
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0329-3

    • Much as I love a good Arctic discussion Ireneusz, surely this is not the right place?

      • Ireneusz Palmowski

        Sorry, if sea level rise is the biggest threat?

      • SLR may or may not currently be “the biggest threat” to humankind, but the title of the OP is “Challenges of the clean energy transition” and states that:

        New Jersey is a leader among U.S. states in aggressively tackling the transition to cleaner sources of energy. So far, they have been doing a better job than California.

        All of which seems to imply that “the clean energy transition” is a forgone conclusion in NJ, however quickly sea level may (or may not?) be rising?

  21. Thanks Judith,

    Intriguing information from the other side of the pond.

    Was there much discussion about my specialist subject?

    Distributed energy storage!

  22. ERCOT in Texas last week requested that businesses reduce power use. Texas temperatures throughout the last week were moderate.

    This is an article from July, issuing the same type of warning. I’ll add that Texas summer, 2021, was very mild; only a few days reached into the hundreds, less than half the normal highs.
    https://houstondaily.com/stories/604348554-we-should-not-have-problems-like-this-houston-businesses-respond-to-ercot-s-request-for-residents-to-reduce-energy-usage

    The summer in Texas was much cooler than normal. Example weather station data:

    Austin-Camp Mabry
    Average Temperature: 84.1°F
    Rainfall: 4.05″

    The temperature averaged 84.1 degrees, which was 1.7 degrees below normal. July 2021 tied with July 1959 and July 1947 for the 48th coolest July on record.

  23. This presentation makes sense except for one vital issue. Physics proves that the so called greenhouse gases cannot possibly heat the earth’s surface.

    • Jeez Alan!

      By all means attempt to prove your assertion, preferably elsewhere.

      However please note that Ray disagrees with you:

      https://youtu.be/slPMD5i5Phg

    • Richard Greene

      Greenhouse gases do not “heat” anything, like the sun does.
      They reduce the ability of our planet from cooling itself, by forming a partial barrier between earth’s surface and the infinite heat sink of outer space,
      The result is a planet that is much warmer than it would otherwise be, and our plants do not freeze and die every night. That’s a good thing !

  24. How much of the globally observed SLR is due to global warming, if any, is unknown. It could all be tectonic. The crust is everywhere in motion, both vertical and horizontal. The shape of the ocean basin is far from constant. So there is no way to predict SLR.

    • Ireneusz Palmowski

      Therefore, the problem of sea level rise is completely independent of man.
      https://i2.wp.com/eos.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/2018GL078142-Figure-1c-cropped-sized.jpg?w=820&ssl=1
      https://eos.org/editor-highlights/carbonate-melting-enhances-mantle-co2-fluxes-in-old-ocean-basins
      La Palma and Iceland are giving us signals of what is happening on the mid-ocean ridges.

      • No, it is not known to be dependent, which is very different. The issue is epistemic, not physical.

      • Irene and David: Though I’m skeptical of many claims concerning climate change, one thing I am reasonably confident of is that sea level rises with GMST. During the transition from glacial to interglacial, temperature rose about 6 degK and sea level rose 120 m: About 20 m/degK. If that same ratio applied to the EQUILIBRIUM 1 degK of warming we have experienced in the last half-century, then SLR in the tide gauge era has brought us only 2% of the way to a new equilibrium.

        Now, as ice caps have retreated poleward, there is less land covered with permanent ice that can melt due to rising GMST. However, 20% as much would be 4 m of EQUILIBRIUM SLR per degK of warming would be a conservative guesstimate. During the last interglacial estimated to have been 1 K above pre-industrial, SLR is currently believed to have been 7 m higher than today. So equilibrium SLR almost certainly will be several meters/degK.

        From my perspective, the right question is to ask is: “How quickly will sea level rise, not IF it will rise. Meters of SLR over a few millennia is a vastly different challenge than over a few centuries. It took roughly 10 millennia of SLR at a rate of roughly 1 m/century for most SLR from glacial to interglacial to occur. That process slowed dramatically 7 millennia ago and SLR has been negligible (compared with the 20th century) over the last 4 millennia. When significant warming stopped during the Holocene, SLR stopped many millennia later.

        Unfortunately, we haven’t had the technology to track the rate of SLR on a finer scale than meters and millennium until the advent of tide gauges. When tide gauges became available sea level was rising due to the end of the LIA. That rise was still going as very modest warming occurred in the first half of the 20th century and faster warming occurred during the last 50 years. There may be an element of internal variability (chaos) involved because the rate of SLR in the 20th century appeared fluctuated widely (though those fluctuations are on the edge of statistical significance).

        At the moment, we are experiencing about 1 inch/decade of SLR, not dramatically different than during the 20th century without significant problems. The cumulative nature of SLR will make it a problem someday. Fearmongers talk about 1 m or more of SLR by the end of the century, which would require an average acceleration of 1 inch/decade/decade. An acceleration of that magnitude isn’t apparent today. If acceleration ever reaches 1 inch/decade/decade, we still have about a half-century to prepare for its consequences, so I’m not impressed by that fear mongering. The observed rate of acceleration measured by satellite altimetry (which has been plagued by systematic errors in the past) puts us on track for the IPCC’s median estimate of about 0.6 m of SLR by 2100. About half of that is due to steric expansion of water as surface heat is transported below the mixed layer, a process that is now being accurately tracked by ARGO. I have high confidence that we understand this phenomena, except for the uncertain in climate sensitivity and rise in GHG. Nevertheless, we already have nearly 1 K of surface warming being transported into the deep ocean today and that will increase though perhaps not as fast as projected. That will go on for more than a millennia – which brings me back to the inevitability of meters of SLR at equilibrium in response rising GHGs.

        Sorry this is so late. I haven’t been keeping up with CE very well.

    • Yes – and SLR from global groundwater extraction is accelerating – to perhaps as much as 30cm/century! ( Yoshikawa, et. al. 2014 )

      That is modeled to occur by 2050.

      While there is considerable uncertainty, groundwater use, which I believe is a net benefit to humanity, should assuage SLR terror from AGW.

    • David Wojick wrote:
      How much of the globally observed SLR is due to global warming, if any, is unknown.

      Wrong:

      “Heating of the climate system has caused global mean sea level rise through ice loss on land and thermal expansion from ocean warming. Thermal expansion explained 50% of sea level rise during 1971–
      2018, while ice loss from glaciers contributed 22%, ice sheets 20% and changes in land water storage 8%. The rate of ice sheet loss increased by a factor of four between 1992–1999 and 2010–2019. Together, ice sheet and glacier mass loss were the dominant contributors to global mean sea level rise during 2006-2018. (high confidence)”

      IPCC AR6 WG1 SPM A.4.3 SPM-14

  25. Richard Greene

    Ms. Curry misses the boat by a focus on science when that is not the key issue. And I hope she is open to criticism. I realize Ms. Curry has a business and there may be financial pressures to at least partially agree with the coming climate change crisis narrative.

    The coming climate crisis is imaginary — a belief that dates back over 60 years — and it not based on science (facts, data and logic), so can not be refuted with facts, data and logic.

    The belief is based on claiming to be able to predict the future climate, which is “proven” by consistently wrong inaccurate predictions.

    We have over 60 years of environmental predictions that have been 100% wrong — no predicted crisis has ever shown up.

    To answer the question of what future global warming will be like — just discuss the past 45 years of actual global warming:

    Mild, intermittent warming
    Harmless warming
    Most affected colder, higher latitude Northern Hemisphere areas
    Most affected the six coldest months of the year
    Most affected nighttime low temperatures.
    Greening of our planet from more CO2 in the air

    Reality was mild beneficial global warming, and greening, for the past 45 years.

    Fantasy is a coming climate crisis … that has been predicted for the past 64 years, and never shows up.

    What do you prefer?

    Studying climate reality over the past 45 years?

    Or the usual always wrong wild guess predictions of the next 45 years?

    Whichever you prefer,
    New Jersey’s current mix of electricity sources, except for burning biomass, are ideal for the state. New Jersey does not need any transition. Use the money for something that benefits the citizens of New Jersey !

  26. Robert D Clark

    The ice cores are the only true records of the past. I explain the ice core.

    • Isakov Dmitry

      “The ice cores are the only true records of the past. I explain the ice core”

      I’m not an expert and didn’t go too deep into the topic. But I have some questions in regards ice-core profiles.

      While CO2 concentration data in ice-cores has merit and not controversial, temperature approximations based on isotope ratios is debatable. It is a good hypothesis and nice trick but assumptions used are not cut in stone truths. Plus it is based on calibration using last 80 years only (if I’m not mistaken). Assuming linearity of deposition when processes involved (evaporation, moisture transfer in atmosphere, and condensation) are strongly non-linear is not very convincing.

      There is also a very strong assumption on converting depth to years. The rates of ice growth an compaction (that traps CO2) are not stable. Imagine if they would use the rate of 300 feet per 50 years rate of ice growth. https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a22575917/wwii-p-38-discovered-under-300-feet-of-ice-in-greenland/

      There is a possibility that Ice formation in a particular location is not just a function of snow deposition. I understand that this is assumed.

      I understand that ice-core data is probably the best we have in regards climate in the past. But there might be alternative interpretations of data. However, I admit my poor knowledge of the topic and willing to get clarifications from the expert

  27. I do like calling out the narrative:

    “warming – by us – dangerous – urgent – stop”

    But I’m less satisfied with the valid responses:

    “oversimplified – uncertainty – infeasible – consequences”

    In addition:

    “bounded – other processes – NOT dangerous – benefits – significance?”

    as in:

    “warming is bounded – consider other processes – warming NOT dangerous within bounds – consider benefits as well as risks – global warming is not a term of the equations of motion, so what significance?”

    * Bound the problem! Any problem that’s not defined and bounded can be the stuff of emotional appeal of infinite extent or continuation. Global warming is bounded from the get go by the logarithmic forcing from CO2. This requires exponential rates of increase just to maintain a constant rate of warming. Five year mean radiative forcing rates peaked in 2017 and are slowly decreasing already. Future CO2 emissions are already limited.

    * Other processes that limit CO2 are DEMOGRAPHICS. Fertility rates are falling for every country and most countries, including the largest CO2 emitting ones, have projections for falling population, some quite rapidly. Imposing measures to limit CO2 in this perspective is laughably useless and a waste of time.

    * There is more emotional appeal that warming is dangerous iconized by images of earth melting or earth in a frying pan or something.
    Humans seem to gravitate to extreme ideas. The often depicted ‘Arctic Amplification’ is an example of global warming leading to less extreme climate, at least on a spatial basis. It is imagination, not models which create the idea of dangers. Many of the dangerous phenomena of climate ( droughts, fires, tropical cyclones, tornadoes, etc. ) actually exhibit decreasing if not significantly decreasing trends.

    * As with every cell of nearly all life on the surface of earth, humans are composed of organic molecules, the Carbon molecules of which we ingest from food which grew from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Those in denial of photosynthesis may also be in denial of the increased vegetation on earth and increasing rates of photosynthesis in the oceans. It is very difficult to rectify CO2 as a danger to life on earth when it appears to be INCREASING the amount of life on earth.

    * Of course, CO2 is a GHG. GHGs imposed RF. RF changes the energy balance which lead to warming in the global mean. But global temperature is not a term in the equations of motion, and it is the equations of motion which are the bases for the exchanges which create climate variation. It occurs to me that the more direct a phenomena is linked to RF, the more likely it is to occur as a consequence of CO2 increase.

    So, increased global mean temperature follows directly.
    Also, decreased stratospheric temperature follows directly.
    ‘Arctic amplification’ results from increased global temperature combined with advective exchange.
    These things were predicted, and have occurred.

    Global mean precipitation is thought to result from increased water vapor which is thought to increase from increased temperature. This could be occurring, but the effect was very small ( a few % ) and precipitation is not yet measured well enough to determine.

    However, spatial changes to precipitation depend on motion! Since the equations of motion do not include global mean temperature as a term, this remains highly questionable.

    • “Global mean precipitation is thought to result from increased water vapor which is thought to increase from increased temperature. This could be occurring, but the effect was very small ( a few % ) and precipitation is not yet measured well enough to determine.”

      Causation for increased water vapor is an afterthought in comparison to CO2. Rising CO2 means more heat; more heat means more evaporation is the argument; but it’s too simplistic. What about man-made reservoir growth; massive irrigation utilized for food crops?

      https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-us-and-global-precipitation

      The chart shows the growth of precipitation throughout the 20th century.

      If CO2 leads heat, and heat leads evaporation, then why didn’t heat during early warm periods during the 20th century lead to more evaporation, and subsequent precipitation? Or is increasing numbers of reservoirs, and irrigation perhaps the causation? But water isn’t a good cudgel for global political insurrection, some might think it to be a ridiculous argument.

      EPA: On average, total annual precipitation has increased over land areas in the United States and worldwide (see Figures 1 and 2). Since 1901, global precipitation has increased at an average rate of 0.10 inches per decade, while precipitation in the contiguous 48 states has increased at a rate of 0.20 inches per decade.

      CO2 works better for creating hysterics; why use loaded guns for global political insurrection when gas and hysterics will work just as well?

  28. Ireneusz Palmowski

    There is a good chance that the reservoirs in California will fill up within the next seven days.
    https://i.ibb.co/t4MrZxs/gfs-apcpn-wus-28.png

  29. Global SLR at 3mm a year for 80 years is 9.5 inches. At 2mm just 6 inches.
    5 or even 3 feet is absurd.
    Go NJ!
    https://www.cfact.org/2021/10/22/laughing-at-climate-hysteria/

    • David Wojick wrote:
      Global SLR at 3mm a year for 80 years is 9.5 inches. At 2mm just 6 inches.
      5 or even 3 feet is absurd.

      Sea level rise is accelerating, 0.098 mm/yr2.

      Also now rising at 4.7 mm/yr

      University of Colorado data:
      http://sealevel.colorado.edu

      • David you are such a climate alarmist. The chart that you attach shows that sea level is rising at 3.3 mm per year. A short-term increase in the rate is meaningless. When the short-term rate is falling are we all going to say sea level is now declining. Stop being an idiot

      • Rob Starkey commented:
        David you are such a climate alarmist. The chart that you attach shows that sea level is rising at 3.3 mm per year. A short-term increase in the rate is meaningless. When the short-term rate is falling are we all going to say sea level is now declining. Stop being an idiot

        Learn to read the science. It’s well known that sea level rise is accelerating, and anyone can easily find those papers on Google Scholar. If you fit a quadratic line to the CU sea level data (which they did not), you get the numbers I provided.

        Here’s a number for you: in Charleston, South Carolina, over the last 20 years sea level has been rising 1 inch every 32 months, on average. 1 cm/yr.

        data source:
        https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8665530

      • Rob Starkey wrote:
        David you are such a climate alarmist. The chart that you attach shows that sea level is rising at 3.3 mm per year. A short-term increase in the rate is meaningless. When the short-term rate is falling are we all going to say sea level is now declining.

        Learn to read the science. It’s well known that sea level rise is now accelerating — you can easily find those papers on Google Scholar. If you fit a quadratic curve to the CU data — which they did not — you get a better fit than a linear fit, with the numbers I provided.

      • R.S. Nerem et al, “Climate-change–driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era,” PNAS, February 12, 2018.
        https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1717312115

        “A 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise,” John A. Church and Neil J. White, Geophysical Research Letters, v. 33, L01602, doi:10.1029/2005GL024826, 2006GRL (2006).
        http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL024826/abstract

        Persistent acceleration in global sea-level rise since the 1960s
        Sönke Dangendorf et al, Nature Climate Change volume 9, pages705–710 (2019).
        https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0531-8

        and many more

      • I don’t see SEA LEVEL RISE

        http://sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=060-051

        I don’t see SEA LEVEL RISE

        http://sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=9452210

        I don’t see SEA LEVEL RISE

        http://sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=050-123

      • David
        The PNAS paper you cited is a garbage paper that took a short term change in the rate of rise and then did a “but if this rate is maintained until 2100” It wasn’t and the rate of rise is inconsequential.

        That seems to be your modus operandi when it comes to evaluating climate science. Believe anything that promotes a potential crisis vs coldly evaluating the data.

      • Rob Starkey wrote:
        The PNAS paper you cited is a garbage paper that took a short term change in the rate of rise and then did a “but if this rate is maintained until 2100” It wasn’t and the rate of rise is inconsequential.

        It’s based on 25 years of satellite data. Why is that “short-term?” The question is if the result is statistically significant or not. Is it? Have you evaluated the data? Then what was your finding on its statistical significance?

        You want to talk about data, let’s talk about data.

      • https://www.scseagrant.org/water-cities-climate-proof-the-coast/#:~:text=The%20subsidence%20rate%20is%20about,On%20the%20Cover.&text=Global%20sea%20level%2C%20meanwhile%2C%20has,1990s%20because%20of%20climate%20change.
        Now remove the subsidence.
        . “The subsidence rate is about five inches per century at the water-level gauge in Charleston Harbor.”
        Now, just eyeballing your the graph, we see that SLR has ceased again at Charleston, as it’s done previously.

      • DA

        “ You want to talk about data, let’s talk about data.”

        Have the next Cole Porter compose a melody for that and you can sing yourself to sleep when it gets frosty in your house. Right after humming “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”

      • Carl Wunsch, one of the giants in Oceanography, (Along with Munk) said this in 2007.

        “Although intense interest exists in the global average value of sea level change, and the plausible inference of an average rise, actually obtaining a useful result proves extremely difficult. If errors in the altimetric data are fully understood (not clear), estimates of an average rise near 3 mm yr−1 are sensible, but currently untestable against in situ datasets. Several problems exist: Figs. 1 or 2 show the great regional variability in trend values, sometimes up to TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE (emphasis mine) larger than the apparent spatial mean. In addition to remaining questions about altimetric error sources (e.g., geocenter movement), the sampling errors involving temporal aliasing and missing high-latitude coverage need to be better understood. In situ data are never truly global, have strong seasonal biases, are primarily confined to the upper ocean, and likely contain systematic errors of various types. Meteorological estimates from the so-called reanalyses are unconstrained in terms of global heat and freshwater budgets. Conversions from halosteric to mass components in sea level necessary to compute net freshwater inputs from salinity changes place very strong requirements (Munk 2003) on the accuracy of the mean salinity change and on the equation of state, particularly in models where various simplifications are made………”

        “At best, the determination and attribution of global-mean sea level change lies at the very edge of knowledge and technology.”

        https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/20/24/2007jcli1840.1.xml

      • Adam Gallon commented:Now, just eyeballing your the graph, we see that SLR has ceased again at Charleston, as it’s done previously.

        Then resumed every time.

        Eyeballing LOL.

      • A 14-year old paper, CKid. We now have 14 more years of data — good data, from GRACE satellites, and a great deal more research since then. We have streets in Miami and Key West and Norfolk VA flooding now. We have people being moved from their homes at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to US taxpayers. Increasing sea level rise in Bangladesh & Pakistan. And more. Too much and too real to deny.

      • DA

        You know anytime a location is faced with flooding it’s because of subsidence (not to be confused with subsistence which is what millions of Americans will be on after 3 more years of Bidenomics).

        Read a story about communities that are supposedly affected by sea level rise and with some research it’s easily discovered that the root cause is subsidence. But it’s rarely explained in the story because that doesn’t fit the narrative.

      • CKid commented:
        Read a story about communities that are supposedly affected by sea level rise and with some research it’s easily discovered that the root cause is subsidence.

        Sorry, I didn’t see this until now — I filter your comments — I read comments via email — straight to trash, due to your earlier juvenile comments. Same for a few others here.

        No, flooding isn’t always about subsidence, sorry, especially along the US East Coast “hot spot” — a big factor is the slowdown of the Gulf Stream and AMOC:

        “Hotspot of accelerated sea-level rise on the Atlantic coast of North America,” Asbury H. Sallenger et al, Nature Climate Change volume 2, pages884–888 (2012)
        https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1597

        https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/04.02_Jianjun_Yin.pdf

      • Dear David,

        “I read comments via email”

        Perhaps it would be prudent for you to read comments in context from time to time?

      • CKid commented:
        I don’t see SEA LEVEL RISE
        http://sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=060-051

        Cherry picking a couple of sites like this just proves you a denier who doesn’t deserve serious consideration or replies.

        You make it so easy to dismiss you. And not just with this comment, but with many others.

  30. Pathetic. Fear Mongering always fails. How are you going to spend you Government Grant for this hit piece?

    Warming is good. People as a majority love summer. Why? We have more food, more sunshine, it is sunny and warm things grow during this time. Warming is so so Good.

    Fools. Man does not cause warming, obviously the sun does. As the sun goes so does the climate.

    We are no longer warming. We are now cooling and people are aware of this truth which will only make you look even more foolish than you already do.

    As it gets cooler so too will we experience less food production and the population will go down as it has in past cooling cycles.

    More people die of cold than of heat.

    Fools. You will fail in your agenda Thank Goodness. The question is how much harm will you cause in your attempts to manipulate the Economy to how you want it to be, never realizing nor understanding the Invisible Hand of Self Interest of the Individual that governs the World Economy.

    Fools.

    • Fossil fuels are responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide, as well as global warming. To pretend that we can reduce deaths from cold by warming up the planet is beyond foolish.

      https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-responsible-for-1-in-5-deaths-worldwide/

      • “Fossil fuels are responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide”

        The local DA is channeling Harvard machinations now. Are you sure they didn’t squeeze automobile deaths into that metric somehow? How did they reconcile their fancy footwork numbers with the average human life expectancy increases throughout the 20th century?

      • jungletrunks, can’t you even read far enough to get to the second paragraph of the link?

      • Another inebriated DA observation, the second para: “The study, “Global Mortality From Outdoor Fine Particle Pollution Generated by Fossil Fuel Combustion,” published in Environmental Research, is based on a groundbreaking analysis that enabled the researchers to directly attribute premature deaths from fine particulate pollution (PM 2.5) to fossil fuel combustion.”

        What does the silly para you point out have to do with reconciling the average human life expectancy increases throughout the 20th century?

      • “Fossil fuels are responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide, as well as global warming.”

        This is epidemiology which effectively made up.
        In the really poor countries, fuel is cow dung.
        They’d probably INCREASE their life expectancy by using fossil fuels.

        How many deaths have fossil fuels prevented?
        ( ambulance rides, home heating, transportation, cooking, cleaning, etc. etc. )

        Certainly, chronic diseases are mostly from poor diet and exercise.

        I’m guessing you should by far be more concerned with that.

      • Have you ever considered clicking on links, Trunks?

        Where’s the study?

        Do you think that “Fossil fuel combustion emits particulate matter (PM2.5) harmful to public health” is true because particulate matter causes car crashes?

        I mean, it’s not impossible. Perhaps it creates fogs so thick that drivers can’t see through them.

        ***

        Thanks for the link, David. I will add it to “But Evidence,” under “gimme evidence that CO2 harms” as CO2 is the by-product of fossil fuel combustion. It illustrates how contrarians have the wrong model of evidence.

      • Exactly, TE.

        The court views the local DA’s ambulance chasing practice with contempt; he’s walking a thin line to disbarment for misleading the courts, using babies no less.

        And now Bingo comes to the rescue. I don’t defend aerosol pollution BTW, but peak aerosol pollution was circa 1970’s in developed nations; now you clowns conflate CO2 with carbon black, et al, what bingo cards. I ask the Bingo, how do you reconcile human life expectancy increasing throughout the 20th century with this study now placed into your dogeared portfolio?

      • TE –

        > They’d probably INCREASE their life expectancy by using fossil fuels.

        As compared to using cow dung. Is there a reason you didn’t make a comparison to the use of other sources like wind, solar, and nuclear?

        > I’m guessing you should by far be more concerned with that.

        Based on what? How do you know his level of concern with “that?” And tell me something, can you walk and chew gum at the same time?

      • Whataboutism works better if you do the reading, guys:

        We estimate 10.2 million global excess deaths in 2012 due to PM2.5 from this source.

      • Trunks

        >… how do you reconcile human life expectancy increasing throughout the 20th century with this study now placed into your dogeared portfolio?

        Can you walk and chew gum at the same time?

        What would the increase in life expectancy have been had people had more access to energy from non-fossil fuel sources? Or if people hadn’t had greater access to antibiotics? Or if people hadn’t had more access to education and societal institutions that provide more political agency to more people?

        So many unanswered questions.

      • Josh, I’m more concerned about your flatulence discharges than I am with the pollution from this report.

      • Trunks –

        > Josh, I’m more concerned about your flatulence discharges than I am with the pollution from this report.

        Well, your obsession with my bowels, sphincter, and other aspects of my digestion and elimination have been constant and explicit for quite a while now.

        Tell, me Trunks, are you similar obsessed with those bodily functions in other people as well, or do I uniquely have that status in your fantasies?

      • Anal is as anal does—Josh. What politburo do you and cohorts report to? I think they’re calling you:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEZQRhVgbP0


        My Heart Will Go On – Soviet Edition
        Celine Dion’s \”My Heart Will Go On\” as a Soviet march. Q P6P0Q P=Q P9!
        http://www.youtube.com

      • The point is, if like Bjorn Lomborn, you’re claiming that global warming is a good thing because it will reduce cold deaths, which are supposedly a bigger problem than heat deaths, you are seriously miscounting, let alone ignoring all the other problems global warming is causing now and will cause for the next 100,000 years.

      • David

        I have read your link and think your statement rather simplistic. There has been a great deal of research carried out on this in the UK, in particular during the last 3 years when a coroner ruled that someone with asthma had been killed by pollution. They lived very close to a major road.

        At this very moment a bill is proceeding through Parliament with various amendments try to force some additional degree of control.

        A report just today on the BBC updated this, and it is reckoned that around 25 teenagers will die in the next 2 years due to PM2.5 levels. The numbers you quote I can not see anywhere. Highly regrettable but not on the scale you quote

        Here is a detailed UK govt study

        https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/emissions-of-air-pollutants/emissions-of-air-pollutants-in-the-uk-particulate-matter-pm10-and-pm25

        One interesting fact I discovered last year was that 48 tonne trucks created 120000 times more downward pressure on road surfaces than a 1 tonne car.

        The net result of all this is that it was the brake dust, tyre remnants, clutch particles, plus dust being thrown up from the actions of the trucks that contributed a very major part of the particulates, not the exhausts.

        Ironically EV’s were thought to be worse as regards three of those aspects, due to their additional weight.

        So to say fossil fuels are responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide is clearly incorrect and I can not think you believe that, notwithstanding the data for special cases of China and India, the latter of which have their own problems with burning dung and wood

        Let us agree however that it is highly desirable to reduce pollution, but banning fossil fuels means the problems will be shifted to electric vehicles.

        Most solar panels though are made in China using hugely damaging mining processes and vast amounts of coal

        So basically humans trying to improve their lives are the problem and I don’t know your solution to that?

        tonyb

      • climatereason wrote:
        The numbers you quote I can not see anywhere….

        If you’d read the article I linked to you’d see that the numbers come from a peer reviewed study from a respectable journal:

        “Global mortality from outdoor fine particle pollution generated by fossil fuel combustion: Results from GEOS-Chem”
        Karn Vohra et al, Environmental Research
        Volume 195, April 2021, 110754
        https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2021.110754

      • David

        I gave you a very detailed response that you seem to ignore. Research carried out in resect of the action wanted by anti pollution campaigners do not bear out the figures you quote.

        Do you have any comment on the likelihood that brakes, tyres etc cause more pollution and ironically that may be worse by EV’s due to their heavier weight

        tonyb

      • climatereason wrote:
        So to say fossil fuels are responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide is clearly incorrect….

        As if you get to dismiss a detailed peer reviewed study in a respected scientific journal by throwing out a couple of numbers and anecdotes.

        LOL.

        Not worth my time.

      • David

        Your 3.49 . After reading your link I gave you a very detailed response which included a link to a UK govt research paper that itself was loaded with references. This you dismiss airily.

        I asked your opinion on the findings that brake and clutch and tyre pArticulates were a very large cause of pollution and also that according to the very detailed research going on at the moment in respect to a parliamentary bill, that the I in 5 figure you gave is a wild exaggeration.

        Your response LOL

        As for this 100,000 year nonsense. Mankind will find something better than fossil fuel in the next few decades and fossil fuel will die a natural death.

        How on earth will that affect the earth for 100,000 years?I read the long thaw years ao, thanks

        Tonyb

      • I certainly would not mind chasing down your squirrel, Tony.

        Check this graph:

        https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/image_data/file/114170/Figure01.jpg

        Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/emissions-of-air-pollutants/emissions-of-air-pollutants-in-the-uk-summary

        Ammonia does not come from wood stoves, but from Big Ag.

        At least 88 percent of it.

        What does Bjorn say about that?

      • Tony –

        Any thoughts on the COVID trend in the UK, and what they might say about the impact of NPIs?

      • Mr. Appel, I read the abstract of that paper and am less than convinced. In 2019, all deaths from lower respiratory infections totaled 3.6 million. 20% of that would be 720,000. Looking at the top ten causes of death, I struggle to see how PM 2.5 can come up to 20% of all deaths.

        I can see it being a significant contributor to some, such as lung cancer, although the decline in lung cancer since smoking became taboo makes me wonder. But diabetes? I fail to see the mechanism by which PM 2.5 contributes, and it is one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide. So is Alzheimers and other dementias–how does PM 2.5 contribute? What is the mechanism? The paper does not explain.

        The study crunched numbers in a meta analysis of other studies. We have all seen similar exercises resulting in absurdities like the UN claim that 300,000 deaths a year were caused by climate change. There are others that are not part of the environmental conversation.

        I don’t buy it.

      • Richard Greene

        1 to 5 deaths a year from fossil fuels?
        What are you talking about?

        Fossil fuels did not cause any warming for 4.5 billion years.

        Blaming all warming in the past 100 years on fossil fuels is an assumption, not a proven fact.

        Since warming in the past 45 years has been mainly in colder high latitude areas, mainly in the six coldest months of the year, and mainly at night, the warmer winter nights WILL certainly improve human health. Cold weather related deaths exceed hot weather related deaths by 10x to 20x to 1.

        Mr. Apple got three misinformation “strikes” in one comment !

      • Willard

        Thanks for your 5.22. I am not sure what point you are making as Chapter 5 of your second link makes the same point I did, that road/truck wear is a factor in emissions. Also they note that vehicle emissions are going down.

        There is an Act of Parliament going through the Lords at present trying to force the Govt to take note of that unusual occurrence, whereby the death of a specific child with asthma, living next to a main road, was related to air pollution, as judged by a coroner. The mother and her helpers have professionally calculated that up to 25 teenagers will die each year because of air pollution. This was on a programme I listened to on the BBC yesterday afternoon.

        The govt have said they will throw out any amendments as their figures demonstrate that emissions and deaths are falling.

        I suggested that in the light of the evidence that this figure of 1 in 5 from David was not realistic.

        I do not deny that particulates are a problem nor that we need to consider the consequent effects of particulates much more, nor the physical damage that trucks inflict.

        I also pointed to the irony that EV’s seem to cause particulate problems as they are heavier

        tonyb

      • Mornin’ Tony (UTC),

        Since nobody seems to want to discuss “Challenges of the clean energy transition” in depth perhaps we can discuss the “Challenges of transport electrification” instead?

        Have you ever driven an electric vehicle? If you had you would no doubt realise that you rely on “regenerative braking” rather than disc brakes, except in an emergency. Lisa the LEAF’s discs go rusty in the bracing sea air of North Cornwall if one doesn’t remember to intentionally engage the physical pads occasionally.

        Lisa’s traction battery does weigh a fair bit so tyre wear is worthy of discussion, but overall ICE vehicles are worse than BEVs on the particulate matter front.

      • Tonyb wrote:
        As for this 100,000 year nonsense. Mankind will find something better than fossil fuel in the next few decades and fossil fuel will die a natural death.
        How on earth will that affect the earth for 100,000 years?

        That’s how long it takes all of our CO2 emissions to ultimately leave the atmosphere via silicate weathering.

        https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/03/how-long-will-global-warming-last/

      • > I also pointed to the irony that EV’s seem to cause particulate problems as they are heavier

        That was the point that the graph I showed you undermines, Tony. All the indicators are going down. Some are still very high. They’re not from EV’s.

        I get that at some point some nuance is required. But when contrarians can’t even grok simple sentences like “air pollution from burning fossil fuels is responsible for about 1 in 5 deaths,” they’re not worth having.

      • “I get that at some point some nuance is required. But when contrarians can’t even grok simple sentences like “air pollution from burning fossil fuels is responsible for about 1 in 5 deaths,” they’re not worth having.”

        I completely get the sentence Willard its just that I don’t believe it and both the links that you and I have provided have surely showed that this figure can not be justified.

        The poor woman who lost her daughter is fighting to get the law on pollution changed. If she was able to claim it caused 1 in 5 deaths it would be very difficult for the govt to push back against it.

        That after lots of research they believe the numbers (of teenagers) killed is in the low 20’s then it is difficult to see how that 1 in 5 figure has any credence.

        tonyb

      • > I don’t believe it.

        You get your skepticism all wrong, Tony.

        The motto is “believe it, but check it,” not “disbelieve it, and don’t check it.”

        When I say that you can’t grok that air pollution from burning fossil fuels is responsible for about 1 in 5 deaths, I’m not suggesting that you can’t parse it or decipher its meaning. I mean that you will dismiss it without really trying to understand or pay any kind of due diligence how the authors are supporting it.

        In other words, you’re mostly powered by contrarian incredulity.

        Why should I nurture your bad cognitive habits by spoon feeding you?

      • Willard

        Your 2.23.

        If you read back you will see I actually read David’s link then I double checked it myself and came across numerous articles on the subject to which I linked to a recent UK govt one with lots of data

        I also took the trouble to refer you and David to the Act of Parliament currently going through the procedures, and the very real anguish of the mother who had lost their child to traffic pollution, as evidenced by the coroner in the first case of its kind in the UK.

        The mother has acquired huge amounts of professional support including from scientists and political parties and they came up with the figure of how many people will die of pollution.

        If the numbers were as suggested -1 in 5 -the govt would have no choice but to cave in.

        However they are not remotely of that category and fortunately pollution has been falling, but is still too high

        I can do no more than read, research and link to articles. I am sorry that is not sufficient for you.

        You can carry on believing the 1 in 5 figure but real world data doesn’t support it.

        Now, no more climate ball please Willard

        tonyb

      • Tony,

        There’s no “if you check” that holds – I did check, and there’s nothing in there that supports any kind of criticism regarding the validity of that 20% number. There’s some hand wringing about EV’s which are misguided, and that’s about it.

        You got to believe that the paper has been published.

        You got to believe that the paper passed peer review.

        You got to believe that there’s an empirical basis to the claim.

        You got to believe that you might misunderstand what the authors did.

        There are lots of things you can believe, and you could still prove the authors wrong!

        Not only that, but if you do, the authors might even thank you for it!

        So spare me the passive aggressivity, OK?

      • Willard

        I demonstrated that real world people who had suffered real world loss and were trying to amend an act of parliament to ensure other parents did not suffer a similar loss, had experts sieve through the extensive figures available

        They did not come up with one that remotely confirmed that 1 in 5 figure. It stretches my credulity and hopefully it will stretch yours

        Tonyb

      • Tony,

        You played squirrel, reported some anecdote, and linked to a study that had nothing to do with mortality.

        Please give it a rest.

        If you want to criticize the study, you need to read it.

        I don’t make the rules.

        Sorry.

      • Willard

        Thank you

        I will stick with the comprehensive real world observations on mortality I reference.

        Tonyb

      • Thomas Fuller wrote:
        I read the abstract of that paper and am less than convinced.

        Why don’t you read the paper?

        An abstract doesn’t contain the science, just a summary of the paper’s findings.

      • Somebody(?) wrote:
        A report just today on the BBC updated this, and it is reckoned that around 25 teenagers will die in the next 2 years due to PM2.5 levels.

        I gather this is from a UK report. If this is your understanding of how the “1 in 5 deaths” is calculated you are profoundly mistaken. It hardly means that 1 in 5 teenagers is keeling over from particulates!

        Why don’t you read the actual study to find out what they did and concluded? Why don’t you at least read the press release and some of the extensive media coverage? Because your anecdotal responses are extremely naive and the notion that they counter an extensive peer reviewed study in a quality scientific journal is frankly quite delusional.

      • Willard

        And thank you, for that link was only tiny part of the information I referenced, which revolved round the UK coroner decreeing the girl died of air pollution and that as a result a great many people were trying to change the law. The numbers they believed to be at risk of air pollution was a fraction of those in David’s study.

        If the numbers had matched those in the study the UK govt would have found it very hard to have resisted the demands.

        As I am not giving a TED talk i think the information i gave was quite extensive

        Good night Willard.

        Tonyb

      • Joe - the non epidemiologist

        David Appell | October 23, 2021 at 11:50 am | Reply
        Fossil fuels are responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide, as well as global warming. To pretend that we can reduce deaths from cold by warming up the planet is beyond foolish.

        https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-responsible-for-1-in-5-deaths-worldwide/

        20% of world wide deaths – Appell are you completely unable to recognize “pal reviewed Junk science”

        the study says 350k deaths in the US from 2.5 fine particle. Note that is 13% of total us deaths. The CDC shows only 7% from Respipatory deaths.
        A little basic background knowledge and it becomes obvious is junk science

      • Richard Greene

        Mr. Apple writes:
        “Fossil fuels are responsible
        for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide”

        My comment:
        That ridiculous false statement
        destroys what little credibility
        you had left !

      • Joe - the non climate scientist

        Richard Greene | October 25, 2021 at 9:52 am |
        Mr. Apple writes:
        “Fossil fuels are responsible
        for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide”

        My comment:
        That That ridiculous false statement
        destroys what little credibility
        you had left !”

        destroys what little credibility
        you had left !”

        Richard – I would modify you comment slightly “That ridiculous false statement exemplifies why a lot of climate science loses credibility !”

        i would also add that acceptance of a “ridiculous false statement” such as that highlights the inability to separate good science with activist science, ie the inability to set off the BS meter.

      • Joe - the non climate scientist

        Willard | October 24, 2021 at 2:23 pm |
        > I don’t believe it.

        You get your skepticism all wrong, Tony.

        The motto is “believe it, but check it,” not “disbelieve it, and don’t check it.”

        When I say that you can’t grok that air pollution from burning fossil fuels is responsible for about 1 in 5 deaths, I’m not suggesting that you can’t parse it or decipher its meaning. I mean that you will dismiss it without really trying to understand or pay any kind of due diligence how the authors are supporting it.”

        It takes very little due diligence to figure out the study is BS!

      • Particulate pollution from transportation is courtesy of our climate glitteratti- they ordered Europe to switch to diesel cars and trucks in the 1990s because of the “peak oil” and “global warming” scares.

        https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/22/the-rise-diesel-in-europe-impact-on-health-pollution

        Increases in deaths from air pollution are yet another “unintended consequence” of climate policy. And now that they spent global budgets on unreliables, we get to enjoy the affects of thousands of diesel and gasoline powered generators kicking on to burn a million gallons of oil a day to prevent the factories and hospitals from going dark.

        Bingo man smiles and asks, again, why we won’t just turn off the lights and heat.

      • Jefforino reads:

        Japanese and American car makers backed research into hybrid and electric cars, but the European commission was lobbied strongly by big German car makers BMW, Volkswagen and Daimler, to incentivise diesel. A switch to diesel was said by the industry to be a cheap and fast way to reduce the carbon emissions that drive climate change.

        and then he punches hippies.

        This story can only mean one thing: PRIVATIZE ALL THE THINGS!

      • “…big German…”

        But… Climate Chancellor!

        The “big German” switched electricity generation from nuclear to Russian natural gas, so those “electric” cars that manage to avoid catching fire will be built using fossil fuels and powered by them. Yay.

      • > But… Climate Chancellor!

        Jefforino can’t bring himself to read the complete sentence.

        Let’s repeat it for his and our Denizens’ benefit:

        Japanese and American car makers backed research into hybrid and electric cars, but the European commission was lobbied strongly by big German car makers BMW, Volkswagen and Daimler, to incentivise diesel.

        Next he’s gonna argue for ethanol like Dubya, one of his role models.

      • > It takes very little due diligence

        You’re on, Joe — show me what you got.

        If you can pull it off, more power to you!

        PS: Beware that Baron Munschausen’s trick won’t work.

      • Jefforino notes that governments set policies. Jefforino reminds Willy that even the “big German” needs some sort of industry if she’s going to pay all those social benefits.
        Willy is confused. Surely she’ll shut them all down. Any day now. First, turn off the lights and heat.
        Jefforino says, again: assume governments will keep the lights and heat and factories on, then set policy accordingly.
        No, no, no. Willy says think big! Close it all, figure it out later. When you have, give him a call in Moscow.

      • joe - the non climate scientist

        Willard | October 25, 2021 at 1:50 pm |
        > It takes very little due diligence

        You’re on, Joe — show me what you got.

        If you can pull it off, more power to you!

        PS: Beware that Baron Munschausen’s trick won’t work.”

        Willard – you might start with the CDC mortality tables and causes of death.

      • Once again Jefforino washes his hands over industries that profit from fossil fuels, glosses over the fact that these giants have way more power than hippies, and confuses NOx’s excess deaths with PM 2.5’s for squirrel’s sake.

        One day he might realize that the world is complex, but I wouldn’t go long on that.

      • > you might start

        Handwaving does not count as due diligence, Joe.

        Better luck next time!

      • Willard –

        Just borrow Joe’s crystal ball. That’s all the due diligence you need:

        Joe – the non epidemiologist | October 13, 2021 at 8:20 pm |
        https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

        7 day moving average since mid sept has been ranging from 350-250.

        300 / 7 = approx 43 daily – so a range of 45-50 is a close approximation

        time to take a chill pill

        Joe

        Just make sure to adjust the calibration a bit first. Joe’s said hhr number was between 40 and 50. Per the CDC it’s now up to 61. It will go higher.

        Extend it back to mid-September, as Joe did, and it’s obviously MUCH higher than 40-50.

        How can people be that confident even as they’re that WRONG?

        Per the CDC, the weekly rate of deaths from mid-Sept to Oct 13 ranged from 1,800 to 500. So say 1100/7 = 157 daily.

        Yeah. Calibrate a bit. 40-50 vs. 157. So let’s be gereous and say his crystal ball is off by 300%.

      • Joe - the non epidemiologist

        Mr josh

        7-day Metrics
        Community Transmission
        Substantial
        How is community transmission calculated?
        October 25, 2021
        Cases 12,567
        % Positivity 3-4.9%
        Deaths 46
        % Eligible Population Fully Vaccinated 68.2%
        New Hospital Admissions (7-Day Moving Avg) 293

      • Joe - the non epidemiologist

        https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailydeaths|new_death|select

        Joshy
        When I made that statement on oct 13, the 7 day moving average for florida covid deaths was 61, On Oct 14th , the 7 day moving average was 51, and on oct 15th, the 7 day moving average was 42 .

        That data is after correcting for the time lag

      • “Once again Jefforino washes his hands over industries that profit from fossil fuels, glosses over the fact that these giants have way more power than hippies, and confuses NOx’s excess deaths with PM 2.5’s for squirrel’s sake.”

        Willard talks “hippies” into burning a million barrels of oil a day to compensate for unreliables, blames Jeff and then makes up yet another false story about Jeff.

        Confuses?

        Appel’s link:
        “The study, “Global Mortality From Outdoor Fine Particle Pollution Generated by Fossil Fuel Combustion,” published in Environmental Research, is based on a groundbreaking analysis that enabled the researchers to directly attribute premature deaths from fine particulate pollution (PM 2.5) to fossil fuel combustion.”

        California, before Willy needed it to be otherwise:
        “As a significant fraction of PM2.5, diesel PM contributes to numerous health impacts that have been attributed to particulate matter exposure, including increased hospital admissions, particularly for heart disease, but also for respiratory illnesses, and even premature death.”

        https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/summary-diesel-particulate-matter-health-impacts

        All those diesel generators Willy ensured will be running full steam this winter are going to kill people. But Putin will make a lot of money, so it’s all good, right Willy.

        Joshy is still obsessing over Florida? Queeg and the strawberries.

      • Joe –

        > When I made that statement on oct 13, the 7 day moving average for florida covid deaths was 61,

        What are you talking about? The statement you made was that the number was between 40-50. Why would you say that it was between 40]-50 if the number was 61?

        You did your silly calculation and came up with a number of 43 for the average of deaths daily between mid-Sept and that date. The updated number (using your silly method of calculation) is actually at around 160.

        What is it with you boyz trying to deny statements you have made when I freakin’ quoted you when you made them?

        > On Oct 14th , the 7 day moving average was 51, and on oct 15th, the 7 day moving average was 42 .

        One again, per the CDC, the number is 61 for Oct. 13. And it will go up. You said it was between 40-50.

        Why do you boyz have such an incredibly hard time just admitting mistakes?

      • Joe- the non epidemiologist

        Joshua | October 25, 2021 at 4:31 pm |
        Joe –

        > When I made that statement on oct 13, the 7 day moving average for florida covid deaths was 61,

        What are you talking about? The statement you made was that the number was between 40-50. Why would you say that it was between 40]-50 if the number was 61?

        You did your silly calculation and came up with a number of 43 for the average of deaths daily between mid-Sept and that date. The updated number (using your silly method of calculation) is actually at around 160.

        Josh – Golly I missed the number by 25-30% 45 vs 61

        At least I didnt miss it by 300% and then brag about how wrong everyone else was.

        Jash’s follow up comment – “One again, per the CDC, the number is 61 for Oct. 13. And it will go up. You said it was between 40-50.

        Why do you boyz have such an incredibly hard time just admitting mistakes?”

        Josh – the florida trend is a solid down trend since Mid Sept, not up

        Josh – you are to busy claiming everyone else is wrong instead of noticing your own errors

      • Joe –

        > Josh – the florida trend is a solid down trend since Mid Sept, not up

        Josh – you are to busy claiming everyone else is wrong instead of noticing your own errors

        What is it with you buyz?

        You can provide no quotes where I said the teen is up. That’s because I never said that. There’s no doubt that the trend has been down significantly.

        Are you actually not capable of understanding that wblls the tend is down your numbers are way wrong?

        Further, you averaged the daily rate from mid-September to early October and came up with 43. I provided the quote.

        That number was off by around 300%.

      • Joe - the non epidemiologist

        joshy’s comment at 10/25 @6.31 pm

        You can provide no quotes where I said the teen is up. That’s because I never said that. There’s no doubt that the trend has been down significantly.”

        Joshy’s comment at 10/25 @4.31pm

        “One again, per the CDC, the number is 61 for Oct. 13. And it will go up. ”

        Keep digging

      • Joe –

        lol.

        That’s remarkable, even by your standards. Let me break this down for you:

        I said the following.

        > “One again, per the CDC, the number is 61 for Oct. 13. And it will go up. ”

        That number was for one day. I said that number for one day will go up, because of the lag..

        A number for one day isn ‘t a trend.

        That doesn’t mean to suggest that the trend is increasing.

        You watch. That number of 61 will, in fact, go up – even as the trend continues to decrease (as it has been doing, significantly, since the beginning of September). I have stated repeatedly that the trend is significantly down, because it clearly is.

        You see, Joe, that number for that one day can go up because of the lag even as the overall trend is going down.

        Can you really not understand that, or are you just pretending to be that dense for some odd reason?

        That doesn’t mean that your numbers weren’t totally wrong, and that you and your pals repeatedly show the inability to understand something as simple as the lag in the reporting of data in Florida.

      • > All those diesel generators Willy ensured

        How Jefforino mistakes me from automotive giants is a thing of mischievous beauty.

        David’s study refers to 8M deaths. Most of them are in China and India. Am I, as the representative of the automotive giants that bent Euro regulations, responsible for these deaths too?

        Oh, and a quick search might have led Jefforino to find out that NOx’s excess deaths are in 40K ballpark worldwide:

        https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/15/diesel-emissions-test-scandal-causes-38000-early-deaths-year-study

        Sooner or later Jefforino’s pants will catch fire.

      • Who would have guessed; Bingo is still pumping the local DA’s propaganda organ.

        Said paper purports a death rate attributed to fossil fuels at an “estimated” 20%.

        Roughly 25% of India’s and China’s population smoke, waft in some second hand effect, and Bingo! Fossil fuels is the cause of 20% of deaths! It all adds up in the DA’s ambulance chasing practice; it’s good enough for Bingo’s troll fodder portfolio fer sure.

      • PM 2.5 is the cause of deaths per Appell’s link, Diesel is a major source of PM 2.5, per science.

        My pants are chilly.

        “…as the representative of the automotive giants that bent Euro regulations, responsible for these deaths too?”

        A “but China” from you? How fun!

        Deaths in Europe count too, but let’s focus on your question.
        According to James Hansen, at the same time that Europe was switching to diesel, thereby ensuring growth of PM 2.5 pollution, Europe and North American leaders were aware that China wanted to address energy needs and CO2 emissions concerns with nuclear power along with hydro. But, at the urging of the warm, western leaders put “roadblocks” in front of the Chinese desires to use nuclear, forcing them to use coal and gas.
        The warm’s policies resulted in China’s current air pollution, but I’ll let you tell us if that was intentional or just incompetence. Either way, the blame is obvious.

      • > Diesel is a major source of PM 2.5, per science.

        That would be a lie if you read David’s paper, Jefforino.

        Have you?

        It could also be a lie if you know that diesel is a very tiny fraction of the fossil fuels market.

        Do you?

        Either you’re ignorant or your a liar, Jefforino.

        Which is it?

      • Wee Willie needs to get his head out of his… game before he calls people liars. He apparently believes that diesel doesn’t emit particulates under 2.5 um.

        Perhaps he needs to read the California Air Resources Board:

        “Diesel engines emit a complex mixture of air pollutants, including both gaseous and solid material.The solid material in diesel exhaust is known as diesel particulate matter (DPM). More than 90% of DPM is less than 1 µm in diameter (about 1/70th the diameter of a human hair), and thus is a subset of particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5). Most PM2.5 derives from combustion, such as use of gasoline and diesel fuels by motor vehicles, burning of natural gas to generate electricity, and wood burning.”

      • “Fine particulate matters less than 2.5 µm (PM2.5) in the ambient atmosphere are strongly associated with adverse health effects. However, it is unlikely that all fine particles are equally toxic in view of their different sizes and chemical components. ”

        “The highest toxicity score was obtained for diesel engine exhaust particles, followed by gasoline engine exhaust particles, biomass burning particles, coal combustion particles, and road dust, suggesting that traffic plays the most critical role in enhancing the toxic effects of fine particles. ”

        Nature, 2018
        https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-35398-0

        Thanks for playing Willy.

        But don’t worry, you can take credit for the coal emissions as well as the generators you helped sell.

      • So Jefforino isn’t exactly ignorant, he’s just being economical with the truth once again. Let’s recall the relevant numbers:

        This led to at least 38,000 premature deaths due to heart and lung disease and strokes. Most of the deaths are in Europe, where highly polluting cars are the main culprit, and in China and India, where dirty trucks cause most of the damage.

        The work also shows that, even if diesel cars did meet emissions limits, there would still be 70,000 early deaths per year. Excess NOx emissions are rising, the researchers found, and strict pollution controls need to be put in place to avoid the death toll rising to 174,000 in 2040.

        https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/15/diesel-emissions-test-scandal-causes-38000-early-deaths-year-study

        He should know by now that he’s still far from the 10.2 million global excess deaths in 2012 due to PM2.5. Diesel is responsible for less than 10% of these deaths. Which means that Jefforino throws around “but toxicity!” to cover his tracks.

        In any event, we reach an intriguing dénouement: unless Jefforino can find nuclear cars and trucks, he’ll have to embrace renewables.

      • Hi Tom, Willy’s playing the only game he knows: throw out a fantasy number that allegedly supports a ridiculous policy proposal that won’t address the problem. Then blame “industry” when people die.

        We’re surrounded by diesel engines in the west because the warm demanded them and China’s choking on coal dust and fumes because the warm insisted on it and, as Appell claims, it’s some sort of “moral” imperative to let them burn coal.
        The warm take no responsibility for this, of course, nor are they willing to put thought into their policy proposals. So nothing changes and, naturally, that’s your fault and mine.

      • Hi David,

        It should be obvious by now to you that Jefforino enjoys some leg pulling. Here’s his latest porky: We’re surrounded by diesel engines in the west because the warm demanded them. That’s obviously wrong:

        When it comes to trucks, diesel engines are also superior to gas engines in many ways according to Diesel Power Gear.

        https://www.motorbiscuit.com/why-do-people-love-diesel-trucks-so-much/

        Diesel Power Gear. With a name like that, you know it’s a hippie. Or perhaps a hipster. Look at the beard!

        Jefforino’s talk about taking responsibility is a lesson to us all.

    • Ann wrong:
      Man does not cause warming, obviously the sun does.

      Wrong – no evidence for this.

      We are no longer warming. We are now cooling….

      Wrong – no evidence for this.

      • “Let alone ignoring all the other problems global warming is causing now and will cause for the next 100,000 years.”

        I think you have been dining out on a rich feast of hyperbole today, David

      • “The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate,” David Archer (University of Chicago), 2008.
        http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10727.html

      • “The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate,” David Archer (University of Chicago), 2008.”

        Come back in 100,000 years and report whether this was BS or not.

      • Turbulent Eddie commented:
        “The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate,” David Archer (University of Chicago), 2008.”
        Come back in 100,000 years and report whether this was BS or not.

        David Archer is a world expert on the carbon cycle and how CO2 leaves the atmosphere — the ocean ultimately absorbs about 75%, and what’s left leaves by silicate weathering, which takes about 100,000 years. This is observed in paleoclimate research, as for the PETM and other hyperthermals.

        You’re welcome to read Archer’s more technical book,

        https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691144146/the-global-carbon-cycle

        or this piece:

        https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/03/how-long-will-global-warming-last/

        or some of his papers, such as

        “The millennial atmospheric lifetime of anthropogenic CO2,”
        David Archer and Victor Brovkin,
        Climatic Change (2008) 90:283–297
        DOI 10.1007/s10584-008-9413-1

      • David Archer is a world expert

        Appeal to authority.

        Science is about testing and evidence, not status.

        Of course, it’s easy to make claims about 100,000 years because there’s no counterfactual – which is the first reason to dismiss.

        I’m familiar with Archer and it appears based on evidence that he’s wrong about accumulation and uptake which exhibits a long term increase.

      • > I’m familiar with Archer and it appears based on evidence that he’s wrong about accumulation and uptake which exhibits a long term increase.

        Argument by assertion.

      • Argument by assertion.

        No.

        Un-referenced, sure.

        But there’s a certain expectation that participants are familiar with the data.

        http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/GHGs/CO2_appear+diaspear+AF.png

      • [TEDDIE] That’s not an argument by assertion.

        [ALSO TEDDIE] Un-referenced, sure.

        Millions of years of evo to get there.

      • Turbulent Eddie commented:
        David Archer is a world expert
        Appeal to authority.

        LOL, given that you have no authority whatsoever.

        Science is about testing and evidence, not status.

        I gave you several things he’s written, including a journal paper. Have you read it? Critiqued it? Nooooooooo.

        Of course, it’s easy to make claims about 100,000 years because there’s no counterfactual – which is the first reason to dismiss.

        Wrong — there’s paleoclimate evidence, as I said.

        I’m familiar with Archer and it appears based on evidence that he’s wrong about accumulation and uptake which exhibits a long term increase

        Appeal to authority, as Willard wrote. More LOL.

      • Turbulent Eddie wrote:
        I’m familiar with Archer and it appears based on evidence that he’s wrong about accumulation and uptake which exhibits a long term increase

        What does he get wrong, in your amateur opinion?

      • stevenreincarnated

        If man is suffering from the effects of CO2 100,000 years in the future then CO2 at some point became the least of mankind’s worries as civilization had been destroyed.

    • stevenreincarnated wrote:
      If man is suffering from the effects of CO2 100,000 years in the future then CO2 at some point became the least of mankind’s worries as civilization had been destroyed.

      Well look at that — a glimmer of understanding.

      Wonders never cease.

  31. Judith, the IPCC doesn’t say that “Once we stop burning fossil fuels, sea level rise will stop.”

    On the contrary, they say “In the longer term, sea level is committed to rise for centuries to millennia due to continuing deep ocean warming and ice sheet melt, and will remain elevated for thousands of years (high confidence).”

    IPCC AR6 WG1 SPM B.5.4

    • Curious George

      You start with a fabricated quote, as usual.

    • Richard Greene

      More IPCC nonsense
      — 33 years of one wrong prediction after another.

      When our current interglacial ends,
      the planet will get colder,
      probably for a long time.
      The current wonderful climate
      will be viewed as “the good old days”

  32. > I don’t defend aerosol pollution BTW, but

    Trunks does not defend aerosol pollution.

    BUT

  33. In Sex and Culture, J.D. Unwin categorized uncivilized peoples on the basis of how they responded to what they considered un-natural events.

    One of those categories was ‘Weather Control”

    https://ia800309.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/33/items/b20442580/b20442580_jp2.zip&file=b20442580_jp2/b20442580_0062.jp2&id=b20442580&scale=4&rotate=0&type=test.jpg

    Uncivilized peoples would appeal to a ‘Magician’ or ‘Priest’ who would guide the masses to some ritual ( a rain dance, human sacrifice, or the like ) that would reverse or prevent weather calamity. Whether or not it was effective, the unified belief in the ritual was important.

    Somehow, I get the feeling that the appeals to carbon restriction to reverse or prevent imagined calamity are similar for our modern primitive peoples.

    It’s all the more interesting that Unwin predicted modern collapse of Western civilization because of the collapse of family structure and morality. Given the evidence of his case in the decades since, it would seem to make climate change a moot point.

    • [TEDDIE] Somehow, I get the feeling that the appeals to carbon restriction to reverse or prevent imagined calamity are similar for our modern primitive peoples.

      [ALSO TEDDIE] It’s all the more interesting that Unwin predicted modern collapse of Western civilization because of the collapse of family structure and morality.

  34. Black carbon from electricity is not the problem.

    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/forcing-by-region-copy.png

    ‘All BC-rich sources together constitute 99% of the
    global inventory. Low-BC sources include coal power plants for generating electricity. These are not considered a large source of BC because the high temperatures and well managed combustion promote burnout of any BC that is formed. However, BC emission rates from power generation in developing countries are not well known (section 4.6.1).’ vhttps://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/jgrd.50171

  35. Pingback: Challenges of the clean energy transition – Watts Up With That?

  36. Pingback: Challenges of the clean energy transition – Watts Up With That? - Desi Creator

  37. Pingback: Challenges of the clean energy transition |

  38. God bless you, Dr. C.

  39. Pingback: Challenges of the clean energy transition – Watts Up With That? – Adfero News

  40. Isakov Dmitry

    97% figure is really astonishing. In John Cooks’s paper with Badford in 2013 he writes following in regards his famous 97% paper that most a referring to: ” Cook et al. (2013) found that over 97 % endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause”. This statement was the basis for the famous twit by Obama.

    But let’s look at the details of the original work. In the original paper Cook lumped together 3 categories: 1) explicit endorsement with quantification; 2) explicit endorsement without quantification; 3) implicit endorsement. Only the first category falls under “main cause” description, Also the number of the papers in that category was diminishingly small, while most were in category 3). This is a very typical cheating on the part of “consensus science”. Is there any dirty trick that they will not use in propping their agenda?

    The less critical issue is that in his sampling 64% of papers didn’t express any opinion on AGW, even though they discuss the climate. But those papers are excluded from statistics. Sounds like cherry picking to me.

    Again, do not take my word for it. Go to the original paper and see their data for yourself.

    The whole exercise, was like asking about existence of God inside the church after Sunday mass, while question is asked by the high priest with powers to excommunicate you for a wrong belief. That is why I’m surprised that they had to massage the data so much, it should have been 97% in category 1).

    • ‘We classified each abstract according to the type of research (category) and degree of endorsement. Written criteria were provided to raters for category (table 1) and level of endorsement of AGW (table 2). Explicit endorsements were divided into non-quantified (e.g., humans are contributing to global warming without quantifying the contribution) and quantified (e.g., humans are contributing more than 50% of global warming, consistent with the 2007 IPCC statement that most of the global warming since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations).’ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0044-6

      There is broad agreement on basics because the science on radiative physics is solid.

      e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2016/12/14/fact-checking-the-97-consensus-on-anthropogenic-climate-change/?sh=ce6052311576

      Although the source of most warming over the past 40 years is not so easily determined.

      ‘Indeed, the reconstruction of this pair of modes for regional climate indices (Fig. 3b, c) manifests as a multidecadal signal propagating across the climate index network (with certain time delays between different indices)—a so-called stadium wave (refs. 20,35,36,37)—which we will refer to as the global stadium wave (GSW) or, when referring to the global-mean temperature, Global Multidecadal Oscillation (GMO), although, once again, the oscillatory character of this phenomenon is impossible to establish due to shortness of the data record. The phasing of indices in the GSW is consistent with earlier work (ref. 20), which analysed a limited subset of the Northern Hemisphere climate indices (Supplementary Fig. 6). The global-mean temperature trends associated with GSW are as large as 0.3 °C per 40 years, and so are capable of doubling, nullifying or even reversing the forced global warming trends on that timescale.’ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0044-6

      • Isakov Dmitry

        Robert, As usual you do not know how to debate topics. Or is it some serious comprehension issues?

        John Cook claimed that “97 % endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the MAIN CAUSE”. While in his own paper Explicit endorsements with quantification (e.g., humans are contributing more than 50% of global warming, consistent with the 2007 IPCC statement that most of the global warming since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations) was just few % of the papers that they examined. >90% papers either didn’t say that it is >50% or didn’t give any endorsement at all. Go and read the paper.

        So to prove me wrong you don’t need to provide Forbes paper but to show that either I’m wrong in quoiting Cook’s original work or you can agree with me and say that Cook cooked up his conclusions for PR stunt.

        Simple.

        This is even before we address the issue of Cook’s methodology.

      • John Cook’s criteria are so broad as to be almost unobjectionable. Whish is why I quoted them. Only extreme loud mouth contrarians have quibbles.

        We have all read the Cook et al paper long ago and moved on. Forbes gives a broader perspective.

      • John Cook’s criteria by the way ARE NOT WHAT ISAKOV CLAIMS THEY ARE.

      • Isakov Dmitry

        “John Cook’s criteria by the way ARE NOT WHAT ISAKOV CLAIMS THEY ARE”

        Lying is bad habit. Didn’t your mother teach you?

        https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024/pdf

        Table 2.
        (1) Explicit endorsement with quantification. Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming
        (2) Explicit endorsement without quantification. Explicitly states humans are causing global warming or refers to anthropogenic global warming/climate change as a known fact
        (3) Implicit endorsement. Implies humans are causing global warming. e.g., research assumes greenhouse gas emissions cause warming without explicitly stating humans are the cause

        “To simplify the analysis, ratings were consolidated into three groups: endorsements (including implicit and explicit; categories 1–3 in table 2), no position (category 4) and rejections (including implicit and explicit; categories 5–7).”

        “Table 3. Endorse AGW 97.1%”

        Robert, you make it so easy to catch your BS.

      • Only one of the 3 categories was that AGW was most recent warming. And I discussed that.

        ‘(1) Explicit endorsement with quantification. Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming
        (2) Explicit endorsement without quantification. Explicitly states humans are causing global warming or refers to anthropogenic global warming/climate change as a known fact
        (3) Implicit endorsement. Implies humans are causing global warming. e.g., research assumes greenhouse gas emissions cause warming without explicitly stating humans are the cause’

        Isakov’s characterisation is a misrepresentation. After being corrected – what else would that be but a lie?

      • Isakov Dmitry

        “Forbes gives a broader perspective”

        If only there were example of solid investigative journalism from Forbes….
        Theranos, anyone? ;)))) “By 2015, Forbes had named Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in America on the basis of a $9-billion valuation of her company.[3] The next year, following revelations of potential fraud about Theranos’s claims, Forbes had revised its published estimate of Holmes’s net worth to zero”

        When can we expect revision by Forbes regarding “climate science”?

      • Isakov Dmitry

        “Isakov’s characterisation is a misrepresentation. After being corrected – what else would that be but a lie?”

        Robert, Why are you so bent on lying?

        We are discussing the claim: “” Cook et al. (2013) found that over 97 % endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the MAIN CAUSE”

        The only categories that qualifies for MAIN CAUSE is the one that quantifies the effect to be >50%. This was a a small fraction of the papers that they included into 97%. That means that they grossly misrepresented their own finding – deliberate lying to the public.

        Did you hit your head, or something?

      • > Read my original post.

        John did not make you mess that one up, cupcake.

    • “But Censensus” and “But Religion” again, Dmitry.

      Get new material.

      Your 64% is incorrect, btw. Revise and resubmit.

      • You got me Willard, now I have to go into the corner and cry in shame.

        https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024/pdf
        Page 4, Table 3. No AGW position 66.4%.

        You are correct. It is 66% not 64%. But wait, when they asked authors of the papers to rank their own papers the number became 64% (in the same paper).

        Willard, will you ever be capable of constructive debate? Or are you only capable of 1 sentence snarky vomits? Why can’t you ever substantiate any of your statements with evidence? It is not that hard, try it.

      • Still incorrect, Dmitry. You need to read things properly.

        Here is the first line of the legend for Table 3:

        Abstract ratings for each level of endorsement, shown as percentage and total number of papers.

        Here are the items the second line:

        – Position
        – % of all abstracts
        – % among abstracts with AGW position (%)
        – % of all authors
        – % among authors with AGW position (%)

        So yeah, 97% represents the percentage of abstracts with AGW positions.

        C13 did not go with the percentage among authors with AGW position.

        That would be 98.4%.

        I guess you could argue that C13 undersells its results.

        You would have a point.

        Better luck next time.

      • “So yeah, 97% represents the percentage of abstracts with AGW positions”

        So yeah, we confirm that you have comprehension issues because my original post is specifically talking about Cook’s claim that “over 97 % endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the MAIN CAUSE”, and not just AGW positions.

      • I’m afraid it’s you who has comprehension issues, my dear Dmitry. From the horse’s mouth:

        Among abstracts that expressed a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the scientific consensus. Among scientists who expressed a position on AGW in their abstract, 98.4% endorsed the consensus.

        https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024

        You’ll have to read back the introduction to understand where they’re going with this.

        You know, I spent months at the time on various contrarian misrepresentations. And that includes Richard’s hit piece. He even thanked me in one of his earlier versions. We had to part ways when he kept saying stuff about kappas.

        You really are new here.

      • Isakov Dmitry

        “You’ll have to read back the introduction to understand where they’re going with this”

        Willard, Willard. How many times should I reamind you to read things carefully? You have comprehension problem. We all know it, so we advise you to read slower and more carefully.

        Read my original post. See where the quote is taken from. Hint, it was different paper of James Cook in which he lied about the conclusions of his original paper. And it was that later paper that Obama put a link to in his twit. And this is how consensus science operates: misrepresentation and blatent lying.

      • Isakov, the consensus is 99.94% of scientists, this study found:

        “The Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming Matters,” James Lawrence Powell, Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, May 24, 2017.
        http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0270467617707079

    • Richard Greene

      Consensus is meaningless in science.
      So a 97% consensus is meaningless
      97% is also not even close to being true.

      Students reading abstracts is not an accurate method
      for understanding a paper — you must question
      the lead author and ask specific questions.

      When a leftist talks,
      always assume he or she is lying.
      You will often be correct.

      The Cook “study” was quickly debunked by Legates et al. (2013) in a paper published in Science & Education. Legates et al. found “only 41 papers
      – 0.3% of all 11,944 abstracts, or 1.0% of the 4,014 abstracts expressing an opinion, not 97%, had been found to endorse the standard or quantitative
      hypothesis.”

      Most of the papers they studied were not about climate change, and its causes, but were taken as evidence anyway. Papers on carbon taxes, for example, naturally assume that carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming – but merely using that assumption does not mean the paper does anything to support an assumption of dangerous man made warming !

      • The easiest way to show how David’s “only 41 papers” is preposterous is being provided by RG’s concedo:

        Papers on carbon taxes, for example, naturally assume that carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming – but merely using that assumption does not mean the paper does anything to support an assumption of dangerous man made warming !

        An assumption works quite well as a tacit endorsement.

        However, the last part of that quote is incorrect. The “assumption of dangerous man made warming” in only in RG’s mind. That’s not what C13 studied.

    • joe - the non climate scientist

      97% consensus – is now 98% consensus

      invalid denominator
      Invalid numerator = 98% consensus

      Richard Tol twitter’s “You studied 3000 papers, but only 1107 on the topic at hand, of which only 216 take a position. 212 agree, 4 disagree, a consensus rate of 98% (which is what Cook really found).”

      • Richard Greene

        Reading abstracts is what passes for a “study” in the leftist world !
        You start with a conclusion (want a really high percentage)
        and then cheat / misinform / data mine to get there.

        It is totally irrelevant what a popular vote of scientists adds up to.
        97%, 99%, 100%, 101% — does not matter !

        Anyone quoting the 97% number is very likely to be in the “science is settled” category = too ignorant of real science to be taken seriously.

        And you don’t evaluate science papers by having students read the abstracts. Abstracts are notorious for inaccuracy — too often making claims to attract readers, that are not fully supported in the paper itself.

        Of course if you are a leftist, a paper written by a leftist, that attacks CO2, predicts climate doom, and you agree with the conclusion or prediction, automatically becomes “the truth”.
        Mr. Apple follows that pattern almost all the time.

        Since the 1960s, every prediction of environmental doom has been wrong,

        Climate alarmists are unable to predict the climate in one year.

        They grossly over-predict warming in the next 10 to 20 years, and have been doing so since the Charney Report in 1979.

        And now we have Mr. Apple quoting 100,000 year climate science fiction — just like one would expect from a “CO2 is a satanic gas” religious zealot !

        There was a study.
        Mr Apple likes the conclusion / prediction.
        So it must be true !

      • Exact number is irrelevant. The main point is that Cook blatantly and deliberately misrepresented results of his own original paper.

        All consequitive claims, including Obama’s twit, came out of the secondary paper with this gross misrepresentation.

        The primary concern is not the fact of misrepresentation but the obvious intent in deceiving public. That deception was used in a blatant corruption schemes based on renewable energy projects.

        Conclusion, “consensus science” cult is not interested in science and they do not really care about climate or future. All they want is to make a lot of money now. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2020/04/20/how-a-110-trillion-green-recovery-can-save-the-world-new-report/amp/

      • joe - the non climate scientist

        Richard & Isakov
        We are in agreement.
        Richard Tol was mocking the “consensus study”

        Though another activist apparently did not recognize the mocking since he posted on his twitter feed.

      • > Reading abstracts is what passes for a “study”

        RG missed the second half of C13.

        For him it’s progress.

  41. Isakov Dmitry

    Judith, I think you are paying attention to minor factors

    ” The other factor to consider is natural climate variability. Major volcanic eruptions would have a cooling effect. A solar minimum is expected in the 21st century, following the grand solar maximum that occurred in the late 20th century. Natural variability associated with the large-scale ocean circulations is also expected to contribute to cooling in the coming decades”

    You need to explore the issue of latent heat transfer. Most people can intuitively see the impact we have on the water cycle and it doesn’t even need any debating. One can also asses the heat transfer potential. It is actually quite straightforward. No need to believe me. Anyone can make those calculations on their own. Total water vapour content in the atmosphere is around 10^16 kg. Cycling of less than 10% of this vapour between surface and top of the troposphere is enough to compensate hourly heat input from the Sun. So a small disturbance that affects this value will have a much larger effect that radiative forcing from all GHG. At the same time water vapour is the primary GHG and thus disturbance to water cycle is also the root cause for GHG forcings.

    • “But ABC.” (Since you’re new here, ABC stands for Anything But CO2.)

      You’re spamming a thread on energy issues, BTW.

    • Isakov Dmitry wrote:Total water vapour content in the atmosphere is around 10^16 kg. Cycling of less than 10% of this vapour between surface and top of the troposphere is enough to compensate hourly heat input from the Sun. So a small disturbance that affects this value will have a much larger effect that radiative forcing from all GHG

      How much “cycling” actually occurs? What do observations and data say?

      Wouldn’t meteorologists notice such a cycle in absolute humidity?

      Even surface pressure pressure? 10^15 kg comes to 2 kg/m2 over the surface. Surface pressure is 10,093 kg/m2 = 101,325 Pa, so the cycle’s difference is 20 Pa. A 20 Pa cycle can’t be measured?

      • Isakov Dmitry

        “How much “cycling” actually occurs? What do observations and data say?

        Wouldn’t meteorologists notice such a cycle in absolute humidity?

        Even surface pressure pressure? 10^15 kg comes to 2 kg/m2 over the surface. Surface pressure is 10,093 kg/m2 = 101,325 Pa, so the cycle’s difference is 20 Pa. A 20 Pa cycle can’t be measured?”

        Exactly, very small variation of water cycle can give huge variation in latent heat transfer. 10^15kg * 2000 kJ/kg = 2*10^21J. Hourly heat input from the Sun is 4.3*10^20 J. Just look at the orders of magnitude. Latent heat transfer is the primary heat transfer method from the surface to the top of the troposphere. Then at the top of the troposphere nucleation and condensation provide liquid water surfaces at 250K+ that are efficient IR emitters into the universe. There is close to nothing absorption in stratosphere.

      • Isakov Dmitry wrote:
        Exactly, very small variation of water cycle can give huge variation in latent heat transfer

        What do OBSERVATIONS AND DATA show???

        Do they support your hypothesis of “cycling?”

      • “What do OBSERVATIONS AND DATA show???

        Do they support your hypothesis of “cycling?”

        Do not get angry ? ;))) why can’t you find it yourself? Fine, I’ll do the work for you.
        https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/18/6/jcli-3299.1.xml

        “The total mean mass of the atmosphere is 5.1480 × 1018 kg with an annual range due to water vapor of 1.2 or 1.5 × 10^15 kg”

        Now, imagine if there is something that disturbs that cycle. The equivalent amount of generated water vapour from absorbing 100% of hourly Sun heat input is 4.3*10^20J / 2000kJ/kg = 2.1*10^14 kg. Just think about it.

      • Isakov Dmitry commented: Now, imagine if there is something that disturbs that cycle. The equivalent amount of generated water vapour from absorbing 100% of hourly Sun heat input is 4.3*10^20J / 2000kJ/kg = 2.1*10^14 kg. Just think about it.

        More theoretical calculations.

        What OBSERVATIONS AND DATA support your hypothesis?

        MEASUREMENTS IN THE REAL WORLD???

        Clearly you don’t have any.

        Nothing.

      • Isakov Dmitry

        “More theoretical calculations.

        What OBSERVATIONS AND DATA support your hypothesis?

        MEASUREMENTS IN THE REAL WORLD???

        Clearly you don’t have any.

        Nothing.”

        You were given a paper with measurement on water content. And you were given way to asses the latent heat input. But you just wave the hand and say there is nothing. Quite a dishonest approach. Pathetic actually.

        But let’s give you another chance. i have shown to you that just 1% of water vapour cycling in the atmosphere can take care of total hourly Sun input. So fraction of that value, e.g. below 0.1%, can cause climate change. Unless you will pretend that you are blind and cannot see hard numbers.

        Now, you want measurements from the real world. Here are the measurements from NOAA https://psl.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl
        Choose specific humidity to get values in g/kg. I choose latitude from 60 to -60 and Longitude from 0 to 359. For easier observation choose seasonal average from Jan to Dec. And then ask them to plot data from 1000 mbar (surface) and from 300 mbar (around 9 km altitude).

        So for 1000 mbar you will see that water content at the surface increased from 10.5 g/kg to nearly 11 g/kg from 1970 to 2020. Exactly when IPCC shows warming at the surface. 4.5% change. And remember we were talking about fraction of 1% to be critical. IPCC makes a wrong and totally unsubstantiated conclusion that Global warming causes moisture increase. While there is no reason of why it should not be opposite.

        But this is at the surface. This is water molecules with low kinetic energy content, as most of the energy was wasted on penetration through oil layers at the surface.

        The large kinetic energy water molecules are supposed to reach top of the troposphere and their radiate heat to the universe. Let’s see what is happening there. Plot the graph for 300mbar. you will see that at the same period of time from 1970 to 2020 the water content at those altitude decreased from 0.28g/kg to 0.25 g/kg. 11% decrease. That means that planet cannot release enough energy through radiation and all that excess heat does into heating up the oceans.

        Now behave as a grown up and talk proper science and hard numbers when you argue against this data.

  42. Ireneusz Palmowski

    The effect of the solar wind on the polar vortex.
    The low in the upper troposphere has settled into the Gulf of Alaska. This is supported by a renewed decrease in solar wind speed (increase in GCR to over 6700 counts at Oulu).
    https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/sat/satlooper.php?region=ak&product=wv-mid

    • Isakov Dmitry

      Yes, topic of solar wind is always downplayed in “consensus science”. And indeed when you take the energy density of solar wind it will be 3-4 orders of magnitude lower than radiative input. But this ratio is only valid when total surface area of the earth is considered. The reality is that solar radiation is dominating energy input at equator, while solar wind is concentrated to around 10 degrees latitude bands at the poles. Exactly the locations where solar radiant heat flux is minimum. I have no means of getting exact number but I would expect that at worst they will become equivalent, and possibly it might be higher for solar wind in those locations

  43. Isakov Dmitry

    Here is an innocent paper on green houses. I call it innocent because it is not debating climate change topic.

    https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e5fe/0ae32dcc39282fd9c3ba3ac1596537b7b446.pdf

    They have a very interesting observation. They make several green houses. Baseline greenhouse uses Low Density Polyethylene film. The beauty of this film is that it is highly transparent in LWIR range. You can put a black PE bag on yourself and IR camera will barely notice the presence of that bag. It is that transparent in this spectral range.

    Now the alternative coverings for the greenhouse are modified films that are much more absorptive in LWIR range. According to standard GHG theory, higher absorption in the layer above the ground will lead to heating at the ground. But what a miracle in the paper they found that covering with higher LWIR absorption resulted in up to 5C lower temperatures inside the green house.

    So what is wrong, their measurements or maybe, just maybe, certain assumptions in GHG theory? ;))))

    • ‘The Effect of Radiative Cooling on Reducing the Temperature of Greenhouses’

      Hardly relevant as the atmosphere is not – as we all know – a greenhouse. But how does he possibly get from radiative cooling to surprise that the greenhouse is cooler?

      • Isakov Dmitry

        Yes, atmosphere primary holds the temperature at the surface through latent heat transfer and convection, not by Radiation.

        “Hardly relevant as the atmosphere is not – as we all know – a greenhouse. ” Unfortunately consensus science cult is brainwashing kids with greenhouse analogy. And this has to stop.

        https://climatekids.nasa.gov/greenhouse-effect/
        https://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/08/does-a-greenhouse-operate-through-the-greenhouse-effect/

      • He pulls anything at all out of his arse. None of it reliable information.

      • Isakov Dmitry

        “He pulls anything at all out of his arse. None of it reliable information’

        Are you talking to your self in third person? is it an attempt of self-reflection?

      • Isakov Dmitry,
        Do you share the opinion atmosphere keeps Earth’s surface +33C warmer?

        https://www.cristos-vournas.com

      • Isakov Dmitry

        “Do you share the opinion atmosphere keeps Earth’s surface +33C warmer?”

        Just to clarify. Do you mean atmosphere or green house gasses in that atmosphere?

        Also, in general I do not like the averaged meaningless values. What is the average temperature of the surface of the Moon? Any number will be meaningless due to huge variations.

      • I mean the widely accepted view which claims without atmosphere Earth would have been a snowball planet. It says atmosphere is the cause average surface temperature is not 255K but it is 288K.

        https://www.cristos-vournas.com

      • Isakov Dmitry

        “I mean the widely accepted view which claims without atmosphere Earth would have been a snowball planet. It says atmosphere is the cause average surface temperature is not 255K but it is 288K.”

        This is where confusion is. What consensus science implies is that additional heating is due to GHG in atmosphere, not atmosphere per se. That is why they push fairytales. I didn’t have time to go through your theory but I think it is redundant. The key for keeping relatively high and stable temperature is adiabatic lapse. It determines base thermodynamic state of the system (PRESSURE, VOLUME, TEMPERATURE at fixed number of molecules of air). The main reason for variations comes from latent heat transfer between surface and top of troposphere. And top of troposphere is where they expect their 255K. They do not have a good theory uniting CO2 And this particular location in atmosphere. So instead they just ignore the basics. Wave hands and switch immediately to theories that assume this to be true by definition. That is why Pierrehumbert has to give a childish story about 300m shift of adiabatic lapse boundary and thus, somehow it lead to 1C increase at the surface. He never bother to explain why adiabatic lapse boundary is where it is in the first place.

      • Isakov Dmitry commented:What is the average temperature of the surface of the Moon?

        Easy to calculate, at least for the dayside. Just do a surface integral over the temperature at each dayside point. Without an atmosphere, the temperature at each dayside point is the pointwise equilibrium value given by its blackbody temperature with the Moon’s albedo. The integral gives a couple of gamma functions. I did it for the Moon’s equator here, and got exactly the right value, which all the knuckleheads at Tallbloke’s Talkshop nattered on about pseudophysics:

        https://davidappell.blogspot.com/2012/04/norfolk-constabulary-made-wrong-charges.html

        The darkside temperature is determined by thermal conductance through the regolith, and is mostly a constant temperature.

      • “The darkside temperature is determined by thermal conductance through the regolith, and is mostly a constant temperature.”

        Am I reading it right? Are you seriously claiming that Moon has day and night side and heat conduct through the Moon regolith from one to the other and this determines the temperature of the night side???????

        Do you know that Moon is rotating similar to Earth? Do you know why we see only one side of the Moon? I’m sure you cannot be that stupid. Ok…. i think you are capable of being that stupid, but probably you are just not expressing yourself clearly.

        Just for our information, during the day on equator the part that is facing Sun heats up to 150C, then it rotates and when it is facing away from the sun into the 4K universe the temperature drops to -100C. It has very little to do with thermal conduction through regolith.

        Also, do you know that at north pole of the Moon there are spots that are at -248C?

        I think you should seriously delete your blogpost. Or better leave it. So that we can always put your face into this “treasure”.

      • Isakov Dmitry wrote:
        And top of troposphere is where they expect their 255K. They do not have a good theory uniting CO2 And this particular location in atmosphere.

        What does this even mean? Talk about hand waving….

      • I see what you mean, thank you.

      • Isakov, what’s the rotation rate of the Moon?

        Do you realize your constant insults are a sign of insecurity?

      • 27 days

      • Isakov Dmitry wrote:
        Just for our information, during the day on equator the part that is facing Sun heats up to 150C

        Just for your information, you’re wrong — the temperature varies strongly by latitude and longitude. Here’s the measurement along the equator:

        https://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/diviner_moon_temperatures.png?w=614

        , then it rotates and when it is facing away from the sun into the 4K universe the temperature drops to -100C. It has very little to do with thermal conduction through regolith.

        So what’s keeping the surface temperature from dropping to 2.7 K?

        PS: It’s 2.7 K, not 4 K

      • Oh. Sorry I used info from NASA. But this is not update website, apparently it remeasured now more accurately.
        https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/lroc-20101005-lunarpole.html

        However, how does it change the fact that you do not know that moon rotates?

        “So what’s keeping the surface temperature from dropping to 2.7 K?”

        You know such thing as heat capacity?

      • David Appell

        In the Link you provided there is graph “Diviner-Measured Moon Equatorial Temperatures”

        “… Standard physics says (this is from Pierrehumbert’s textbook, Chapter 3, pgs 152-153) that, on a body like the moon, with essentially no atmosphere, there is no large scale equilibrium, so the temperature on the dayside is due to its radiation at that point. ”

        Very good!

        https://www.cristos-vournas.com

      • Isakov, yes, 27 days. So the temperature of any spot on the Moon isn’t changing very fast. Especially the nightside.

        So what do you think determines the temperature of the dayside?

        And of the nightside, and why isn’t it the background temperature of space, 3 K?

      • Isakov Dmitry commented:
        However, how does it change the fact that you do not know that moon rotates?

        Didn’t I just ask you to tell me the rotation rate of the Moon???

        “So what’s keeping the surface temperature from dropping to 2.7 K?”
        You know such thing as heat capacity?

        Is it? Do a calculation using the heat capacity of lunar regolith exposed to the vacuum of background space for 13.5 days.

      • Isakov Dmitry

        “Didn’t I just ask you to tell me the rotation rate of the Moon???”

        Your initial post was confusing and ambiguous. That is why, if you carefully read my first reply, you will see that I considered the option that you are just not clear in your expression.
        ” Do you know that Moon is rotating similar to Earth? Do you know why we see only one side of the Moon? I’m sure you cannot be that stupid. Ok…. i think you are capable of being that stupid, but probably you are just not expressing yourself clearly.”
        So the only issue left is why moon doesn’t cool down to 2.7K.

        “So what’s keeping the surface temperature from dropping to 2.7 K?”
        You know such thing as heat capacity?

        Is it? Do a calculation using the heat capacity of lunar regolith exposed to the vacuum of background space for 13.5 days.”

        So your claim (again, maybe you are not expressing it clearly) is that heat from day side conducts to the night side, which keeps it at 100K. That sounds implausible due to poor thermal conductivity of regalith.

        However, the good thing is that China lunar mission explored subsurface distribution of temperature and found that in less than 0.5m of the surface the temperature is actually quite stable at 240K. And this heat inertia ensures that surface temperature of the night side doesn’t go much below 100k.

        https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/12/4/731/htm

        So we can probably rule out that you are stupid, just misinformed. But I hope that now you will go and improve your blog post. 😜

      • Isakov Dmitry

        David,

        On examining your blog post more carefully, I see that you talk about thermal inertia
        “In effect, they assume (as Shore put it to me) “a body with no thermal inertia or thermal transport. For body with significant inertia and thermal transport (and especially rotation), these assumptions will be poor.”

        At the same time you insist that ” Since the Earth’s annual average temperature is about about 286 K, climate scientists say the greenhouse effect is approximately the difference, about 30 K.’

        How do you reconcile those things in your mind?

        Something is missing. I’m fine to assume that problem is me and I misunderstand your writings. I mean, I did it earlier;)))), as to me it seemed that you imply no rotation on the moon. Maybe I do not see something in your blog as well ;)))

      • Isakov Dmitry wrote:
        How do you reconcile those things in your mind?

        There’s nothing to reconcile that I see.

      • Isakov, where’s your calculation of the rate of temperature change of lunar regolith, using its heat capacity, when exposed to the vacuum of background space for 13.5 days?

        PS: Notice your MDPI paper’s abstract says …the temperature of regolith deeper than ~0.6 m is controlled by the interior heat flow.

      • Isakov, so where’s that calculation of the rate of temperature change of lunar regolith, using its heat capacity, when exposed to the vacuum of background space for 27/2=13.5 days?

        PS: Notice your MDPI paper’s abstract says …the temperature of regolith deeper than ~0.6 m is controlled by the interior heat flow.

      • “Isakov, so where’s that calculation of the rate of temperature change of lunar regolith, using its heat capacity, when exposed to the vacuum of background space for 27/2=13.5 days?

        PS: Notice your MDPI paper’s abstract says …the temperature of regolith deeper than ~0.6 m is controlled by the interior heat flow”

        Didn’t you read section 2. Methods of the paper? They provide thermal transfer calculation. Or do you desperately need me to make those calculations for you?;))) The top surface absorbs heat during the day to 355K. This creates gradient to the internal 240K that starts from 0.25m. When night comes the top surface cools down, all the heat stored in regolith starts to dissipate. But it cannot dissipate too much, because there is a constant heat source at 240K from below 0.6m. So we get a balance at 100K.

        Are you seriously going to claim that heat stored 0.6m below the surface comes by conduction from the hot side of the Moon? Look at Fig.11 of the paper. it is nearly constant temperature starting from 0.25 m and below. There is no gradient for heat conduction to take place. The is just stored heat. Now, the question is what is the source of that heat. Heating during the day will not suffice based on their data, so it is something else. . And I do not see them explaining the source of the heat (let me know if I missed it).

        But most probably it is similar to gravitational flexing on Io (Jupiter’s Moon) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130404170227.htm.
        It is just Earth’s gravity is much less than Jupiter’s, so we do not have such a strong effect. But this can explain internal heating. Alternative is a potential radioactive source deep below. We do not know.

    • Greenhouses. Greenhouse effect.

      Please learn the difference, my favorite crystallographer.

    • Isakov Dmitry commented:But what a miracle in the paper they found that covering with higher LWIR absorption resulted in up to 5C lower temperatures inside the green house.

      No, they found that this material resulted in lower temperatures compared to other materials. But it’s still a greenhouse.

      “Experimental results showed that under 35 ◦C ambient conditions, the inner temperature of the simulated greenhouse with the newly developed cladding was 4 to 5 ◦C less than that of the greenhouse with the commercial agricultural polyethylene (PE) film.”

      https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e5fe/0ae32dcc39282fd9c3ba3ac1596537b7b446.pdf

      • Isakov Dmitry

        “No, they found that this material resulted in lower temperatures compared to other materials. But it’s still a greenhouse.”

        Oh. Why do I need to explain you basics? Ok. Let’s do it.

        IPCC model of “Greenhouse effect” in the atmosphere implies 3 heat loss mechanisms from the ground with different magnitude: 1) IR radiation 390W/m2; 2) Latent heat 78W/m2; 3) Convection 24W/m2. So 80% loss is by radiation, a dominant factor.

        Then we have “consensus science” constantly making equivalence between atmospheric “greenhouse effect” and effect that keeps actual greenhouses warm (It is not done by me but by “consensus science” so all complains should be addressed to them).

        Now, we have a paper that has greenhouse with different coverings. Base covering is made of PE that is transparent in the critical wavelength range. PE is than compared to a covering made of the material that has strong IR absorption between 8um and 10 um with a peak at 9 um. They start their experiment with ground temperature at 35C. If we use Wein’s displacement law we will get that it corresponds to black body radiation with a peak at 9,4um. So we have a material that is catered for most efficient absorption of BB radiation from the ground. According to IPCC this should lead to highest temperature for material with highest absorption. But what a surprise we get an absolutely opposite effect. Greenhouse that has cover with highest IR absorption is the coolest.

        Now question to you. Is there any reason to rethink IPCC model of the Greenhouse effect?

        And maybe, just maybe we should suspect that IPCC grossly downgrades Latent heat and convective heat components and grossly exaggerates radiant component. Particularly we can consider the multilayer absorption model as total rubbish and unphysical. ;))

      • > It is not done by me but by “consensus science”

        You cited a page for kids and Roy’s, Dmitri.

        Roy’s.

        You have no idea how silly that makes you look.

      • “You cited a page for kids and Roy’s, Dmitri.

        Roy’s.

        You have no idea how silly that makes you look.”

        Yes, I cite what “consensus science” is pushing to kids and to general public. The number of sources that use greenhouse analogy to explain greenhouse effect is enormous.
        https://www.readingma.gov/climate-advisory-committee/faq/what-are-the-greenhouse-effect-and-greenhouse-gases
        https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-climate-works/greenhouse-effect

        I do not care who is Roy. He is your “consensus science” cult member.

      • > Yes, I cite what “consensus science”

        You still don’t get it, Dmitry, do you?

        Go there:

        https://skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=home

        Search for Roy’s abstracts.

      • Isakov Dmitry

        “You still don’t get it, Dmitry, do you?”

        No, it is you who still do not get it. Roy or not Roy, “consensus science” cult pushed unsubstantiated Greenhouse analogy for nearly a century. And this is a fact. And this analogy is garbage. Why can’t you make simple logical conclusions of what is written?

        As usual, Willard, you are hopeless.

      • > Roy or not Roy

        I’m not the one who used Roy as an epigon for your “but consensus” bait, dear Dmitry.

        Look. You made a silly rookie mistake. It’s no big deal.

        At least own your blunder before trying to rope-a-dope to another talking point.

      • Is it all you have. You are really hopeless

      • We’re just getting started, dear Dmitry.

        Here could be a follow-up: did you ever consider that the atmosphere wasn’t made of glass? Everybody knows that, including the kids that are being told that the atmosphere works like a greenhouse.

        Did you notice what I just did? The atmosphere works like a greenhouse. Not the atmosphere is a greenhouse.

        Anyone who’s more than three years old who has no problem with figurative language should be able to grok that one!

        How about you, my dear Dmitry?

      • Isakov Dmitry wrote:
        “No, they found that this material resulted in lower temperatures compared to other materials. But it’s still a greenhouse.”
        Oh. Why do I need to explain you basics? Ok. Let’s do it

        This has nothing to do with the atmospheric greenhouse effect. It has to do with the paper you cited. You misunderstood it.

      • “This has nothing to do with the atmospheric greenhouse effect. It has to do with the paper you cited. You misunderstood it.”

        Dare to explain my misunderstanding. ;)))

      • Isakov: If the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist, explain the shape of the Earth’s outgoing longwave spectrum:

        https://directory.eoportal.org/image/image_gallery?img_id=217998&t=1339757099534

      • Isakov Dmitry wrote:
        Dare to explain my misunderstanding. ;)))

        Your misunderstanding is obvious — the issue was about the greenhouse discussed in the paper, which had absolutely nothing to do with the atmosphere.

        Did you at least read the paper’s abstract? That was sufficient to point out your misunderstanding.

        End of discussion on this topic.

      • The last is a comment that should disappear. The first couple of sentences are sufficient.

    • A greenhouse cladding designed to radiate heat to space resulted in cooler conditions inside. Now there’s a surprise. Exactly the opposite happens – of course – in the atmospheric greenhouse effect.

      • Isakov Dmitry

        “A greenhouse cladding designed to radiate heat to space resulted in cooler conditions inside. Now there’s a surprise. Exactly the opposite happens – of course – in the atmospheric greenhouse effect”

        What happened to Kirchhoff’s law of thermal radiation? Robert, stop embarrassing yourself. Respect basic science at least.

      • The silica in the experimental cladding emitted was designed to emit at 750-2500 nm frequencies and provide passive, low cost heat loss from greenhouses in subtropical and tropical regions. I can’t see how Kirchhoff is at all relevant. Isakov is as usual fraudulently throwing around terms and names he doesn’t show he understands.

      • Isakov Dmitry

        “The silica in the experimental cladding emitted was designed to emit at 750-2500 nm frequencies and provide passive, low cost heat loss from greenhouses in subtropical and tropical regions. I can’t see how Kirchhoff is at all relevant. Isakov is as usual fraudulently throwing around terms and names he doesn’t show he understands.”

        Figure 7 is not visible for you. Base covering is made of PE that is transparent in the critical wavelength range. PE is than compared to a covering made of the material that has strong IR absorption between 8um and 10 um with a peak at 9 um. They start their experiment with ground temperature at 35C. If we use Wein’s displacement law we will get that it corresponds to black body radiation with a peak at 9,4um. So we have a material that is catered for most efficient absorption of BB radiation from the ground. According to IPCC this should lead to highest temperature for material with highest absorption. But what a surprise we get an absolutely opposite effect. Greenhouse that has cover with highest IR absorption is the coolest.

        But it is ok. Let’s not bother discussing it with you. You cannot understand references that you provide yourself, obviously you cannot read references from others.

        Hopeless, as usual.

      • The silica doped cladding was designed to provide passive radiative cooling at frequencies not involved in photosynthesis.

        It is in the title of the report.

      • 1 appeared after adding silica particles. The
        characteristic peaks at 720, 1380, and 1460 cm−1 belong to –CH2– in polyethylene. The peaks near
        1111 cm−1 were attributed to SiO2.
        Materials 2018, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW 7 of 12
        Figure 5. (a) A range of the visible radiation (VIS) transmittance of low-density-polyethylene (LDPE),
        1%S monolayer, and 1%S double; (b) A range of the near-infrared radiation (NIR) reflectance of LDPE,
        1%S monolayer, and 1%S double.
        3.4. FT-IR Spectrum of the Samples
        Figure 6 showed an FT-IR spectrum between 500 and 2500 cm−1 (4 to 20 µm) of different films. It
        was clear that there was no change when LDPE had added HALS (LDPE + H) and GY-NA-3000
        (LDPE + G). A strong absorption peak near 1000 cm−1 appeared after adding silica particles. The
        characteristic peaks at 720, 1380, and 1460 cm−1 belong to –CH2– in polyethylene. The peaks near 1111
        cm−1 were attributed to SiO2.
        Figure 6. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) spectra of different films.
        If the electromagnetic waves radiated by the object cannot be absorbed by the atmosphere, then
        it can penetrate the atmosphere and dissipate energy in outer space. It is well known that the Earth’s
        atmosphere has a highly transparent window in the infrared (IR) wavelength range between 8 and
        13 µm. Thus, whether the newly developed cladding has an absorption peak within 8–13 µm is very
        important. In order to observe this precisely, Figure 6 was converted into an absorption spectrum
        and x-axis units were converted to micrometers, as shown in Figure 7. Firstly, LDPE + H and LDPE +
        G had no clear change in the overall curve in Figure 7a, and this result represented that UA994 and
        GY-NA-3000 were useless for passive cooling. In Figure 7b, a powerful absorption peak near 9 µm in
        the 1%S monolayer and 1%S double appeared because of the characteristics of silica. The absorption
        of the 1%S monolayer is evidently stronger than that of 1%S double. During the manufacturing
        processes of the films, all additions were mixed and extruded into a 1%S monolayer with a thickness
        of 0.16–0.18 mm. However, there were two layers in 1%S double, with only half the silica content
        Figure 6. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) spectra of different films.
        If the electromagnetic waves radiated by the object cannot be absorbed by the atmosphere,
        then it can penetrate the atmosphere and dissipate energy in outer space. It is well known that the
        Earth’s atmosphere has a highly transparent window in the infrared (IR) wavelength range between
        8 and 13 µm. Thus, whether the newly developed cladding has an absorption peak within 8–13
        µm is very important. In order to observe this precisely, Figure 6 was converted into an absorption
        spectrum and x-axis units were converted to micrometers, as shown in Figure 7. Firstly, LDPE +
        H and LDPE + G had no clear change in the overall curve in Figure 7a, and this result represented
        that UA994 and GY-NA-3000 were useless for passive cooling. In Figure 7b, a powerful absorption
        peak near 9 µm in the 1%S monolayer and 1%S double appeared because of the characteristics of
        silica. The absorption of the 1%S monolayer is evidently stronger than that of 1%S double. During the
        Materials 2018, 11, 1166 8 of 13
        manufacturing processes of the films, all additions were mixed and extruded into a 1%S monolayer
        with a thickness of 0.16–0.18 mm. However, there were two layers in 1%S double, with only half the
        silica content (0.08–0.09 mm) at the same thickness. This reason caused the 1%S monolayer to have a
        bigger absorption at 9 µm than 1%S double.
        Materials 2018, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW 8 of 12
        (0.08–0.09 mm) at the same thickness. This reason caused the 1%S monolayer to have a bigger
        absorption at 9 µm than 1%S double.
        Figure 7. (a) An absorption spectrum of LDPE, LDPE + H, and LDPE + G; (b) An absorption spectrum
        of LDPE, 1%S monolayer, and 1%S double.
        3.5. Inverted Metallurgical Microscope Images of the Samples
        Dispersion will affect the properties of the materials, so it is very important to study the
        dispersion of silica particles in the films. Figure 8 showed inverted metallurgical microscope images
        of the 1%S monolayer and 1%S double in different areas. Silica particles are a white powder and their
        size is around 1300 nm. Compared to 1%S double, the 1%S monolayer white points, as shown in
        Figure 8a, did not evenly distribute. In the black box, the size of the white area was about 15–20 µm.
        This result indicated that silica particles were reunited in the films. However, in Figure 8b, it can
        clearly be seen that the size of the white points were within the range of 1–1.5 µm, which suggests
        that silica particles dispersed well in 1%S double.
        Figure 8. Inverted metallurgical microscope images of (a) 1%S monolayer and (b) 1%S double.
        3.6. SEM Images of the Samples
        To understand the dispersion of silica particles in the films, the cross-sections of the films were
        observed with a SEM. Figures 9 and 10 were the SEM images of the cross-section of the 1%S
        monolayer and 1%S double, and a–d were at the same position in the 1%S monolayer or 1%S double
        Figure 7. (a) An absorption spectrum of LDPE, LDPE + H, and LDPE + G; (b) An absorption spectrum
        of LDPE, 1%S monolayer, and 1%S double.
        3.5. Inverted Metallurgical Microscope Images of the Samples
        Dispersion will affect the properties of the materials, so it is very important to study the dispersion
        of silica particles in the films. Figure 8 showed inverted metallurgical microscope images of the 1%S
        monolayer and 1%S double in different areas. Silica particles are a white powder and their size is
        around 1300 nm. Compared to 1%S double, the 1%S monolayer white points, as shown in Figure 8a,
        did not evenly distribute. In the black box, the size of the white area was about 15–20 µm. This result
        indicated that silica particles were reunited in the films. However, in Figure 8b, it can clearly be seen
        that the size of the white points were within the range of 1–1.5 µm, which suggests that silica particles
        dispersed well in 1%S double.
        Materials 2018, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW 8 of 12
        (0.08–0.09 mm) at the same thickness. This

        https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/2853/2020/essd-12-2853-2020.html

      • Figure 7 shows an additional absorption peak in the silica doped cladding – keeping the greenhouse cooler. How this disproves the atmospheric transparency window is another Isakov mystery.

        ‘It was clear that there was no change when LDPE had added HALS (LDPE + H) and GY-NA-3000 (LDPE + G). A strong absorption peak near 1000 cm−1 appeared after adding silica particles. The
        characteristic peaks at 720, 1380, and 1460 cm−1 belong to –CH2– in polyethylene. The peaks near 1111 cm−1 were attributed to SiO2.’

  44. Ireneusz Palmowski

    Polar Vortex Blockade.
    “As the second half of the season approaches, the predominant wind direction will shift across northwestern Europe and become more easterly in nature. Since the core of cold air across the European continent is forecast to set up over the east, an easterly wind will be able to transport that chilly air farther to the west.
    These cold pushes of air from the east can lead to significant spikes in heating demands for several days to even a week at a time across northwestern Europe. If energy production and demand issues are still in flux by January or February, these cold snaps may place a significant strain on residents’ wallets.

    On top of chilly winds out of the east, the La Niña phase will increase the opportunity for snow across the United Kingdom and Ireland as well as areas from France to Poland, especially later in the season.”
    https://www.accuweather.com/en/winter-weather/accuweathers-2021-2022-europe-winter-forecast/1032617

  45. I am interested to understand how the presentation was received at the Conference on Energy and Decarbonization. What sort of comments and questions were generated by it?

  46. Jim

    Hopefully you will see this at the bottom, as the reply to this thread is a long way away

    Yes of course I have driven EV’s. I like them but have considerable concerns on range and using them as a first car.

    If you start to look at overall impact you then have to look at the morally and environmentally dubious nature of EV’s (and solar panels etc) from mining of rare earths (less sustainable than fossil fuels as this resource seems limited) and their assembly (all elements including batteries) and the solar panels to power them. Often with coerced workers and using vast amounts of coal.

    So it is not a straightforward like for like comparison. EV good ICE bad.

    My interest in the impact of lorries on roads arose from the terrible state of the roads. No wonder when you realise the enormous downward pressure exerted by trucks then add in the particulates, and they are an area that warrants more attention than they get, albeit as the driver shortage shows, they are an essential part of modern life

    Wet and windy here today, but the grockles are around in large numbers for half term. Shall I send you a few million across the Tamar?

    tonyb

    • tonyb,
      In the last few years there has been a huge increase in companies that recycle solar panels and batteries:
      https://www.enfsolar.com/directory/service/manufacturers-recycling
      The glass, aluminum, copper and silver are easy to recycle. The hard parts are the thin solar cells made up of lots of different minerals and elements.
      If I were much younger (and the capital) I would jump on this growing industry!
      Once the EVs hit the tipping point in numbers we will start hearing a lot more about Vehicle-to-Grid and refurbished batteries as household backup.
      Check out this new home electrical panel to turn any house into a microgrid.
      https://www.span.io/

  47. Afternoon Tony,

    EVs & “rare earths” is not really an argument any more. See for example this “Great British” technology from 6 years ago:

    https://ricardo.com/news-and-media/news-and-press/ricardo-develops-next-generation-electric-vehicle

    However the effect of HGVs on the environment is certainly worthy of discussion.

    As for the grockle => emmet transformation, we have plenty of our own already, thank you very much:

    https://twitter.com/DavidstowInfo/status/1450012326518722563

  48. Pingback: Democratic Virginia Lt. gov. candidate: ‘Open for discussion’ on vehicle miles traveled tax – Newsfeed Hasslefree Allsort

  49. Challenge #1: It isn’t market driven. The economics simply don’t support it, nor will they likely to support in within our lifetimes.
    Challenge #2: It will require an astronomically powerful and coercive Global Government to force it upon the Globe that will make the Fascist 20 and 30’s look like a picnic.
    Challenge #3: Once the climate alarmists get their way, and we have a Global Government run by the Chinese, do you honestly think they will give a damn about climate change?
    Challenge #4: How do we know all our efforts were successful? Where is the benchmark of a non-changing climate against which we can measure our current climate? When in the history of earth hasn’t the climate been changing? Since when has a non-changing climate existed? How do we even know it would be beneficial?
    Challenge #5: An ice age is infinitely more likely, in fact an almost certainty, to occur in the relatively near future. The decarbon movement leaves us totally unprepared to deal with the real risks society faces.

  50. Humankind have always adapted to a changing climate for thousands of years. It works just fine. We need to keep our reliable fossil fuels and nuclear and shun what is not cost effective – wind and solar.

    • Yes – a good perspective to keep.

      Humans have moved to and evolved in every climate of earth:

      https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Early_migrations_mercator.svg

      Climate change helped shape our genes – who we are is very much a result of climate change!

    • jim –

      >… and shun what is not cost effective

      How do you determine what’s “cost effective” without accounting for externalities, including but certainly not limited to negative health outcomes from inhaling particulate matter that results ​from from burning fossil fuels?

      Should we just ask Sydney Powell and Lin Wood?

      After all, you promised us that they had proof that the election was stolen and look how well that turn…

      Oh. Nevermind

      • Josh – the external costs pale in relation to the external benefits.

        I bet when you are accounting for all the glorious benefits of wind and solar, you don’t include the cost of new transmission lines from the middle of nowhere to where the electricity is needed, the backup generation needed for when the wind don’t blow or the sun don’t shine, the roads to nowhere to maintain the wind and solar facilities, the paying of wind and solar producers for electricity that can’t be used because production peaked when no one needed it, the subsidies paid by tax payers, the deaths that come from winter blackouts, the materials lost when manufacturers have no electricity during blackouts, or the cost of cleaning up worn out wind farms and solar farms. You would be better off burning your money.

    • jim2 commented:
      Humankind have always adapted to a changing climate for thousands of years.

      Examples? The global climate has been remarkably stable over the Holocene…though there are records of southwestern North American civilizations going extinct due to droughts.

      • Richard Greene

        The global average temperature change since the late 1600s has to be estimated, but is very likely already +2 degrees C. warmer

        The global average temperature change from pre-industrial also has to be estimated, although the IPCC claims to “know” the number, was already +1.5 degrees C., temporarily, at the peak of the late 2015 / late 2016 El Nino.

        There is no evidence that the +2.0 degree C. rise, or the +1.5 degree C. rise, harmed anyone … and strong anecdotal evidence that people living in the cold, late1690s would have loved the more moderate climate today.

        Global warming in the past 325 years has been good news.

        Global warming in the past 45 years has been good news.

        There is no evidence, beyond wild speculation, that a planet +1 degree C. warmer in the next 50 to 100 years will be dangerous in any way.

        Especially if the warming pattern of the past 45 years continues:
        Mainly in Northern Hemisphere’s higher latitude areas,
        mainly in the six coldest months of the year,
        and mainly at night.
        Think of warmer winter nights in Siberia !

        Another +1 degrees C. in 50 or 100 years would not even be noticed,
        (if not for hysterical leftists bellowing about a climate emergency)
        just like almost no one noticed the warming in the past 45 years.

        The difference between the 1970s and now, here in Michigan, is slightly warmer winters. We LOVE that climate change, and want a lot more warming. Climate change would be even more pleasant if the hysterical climate scaremongers were all deported to Bulgaria !

      • Vikings.

    • “It’s a good reminder that people have been responding to and adapting to climate change for a long time,” Balascio said. “It’s not something that’s necessarily new or happened in the last 150 years with global warming. This is something that civilizations have dealt with for a very long time.”

      https://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2018/how-will-humans-adapt-to-climate-change-ask-a-viking.php

  51. Dietrich Hoecht

    I am amazed about the lack of interest in finding real measured or known data vs. something theorized for whatever purpose.
    Tonyb makes statements about trucks exerting 120,000 times as much ground pressure as a passenger car!? My car specifies 35 psi; truck tire pressures should not exceed 145 psi. That’s a factor of 4.14, not 120,000. (could the problem be the convention of periods vs. commas? But a factor of 120 or 1200 would still be outlandish). My guess – the road damage is related to the vertical shear stress at the border between tire contact and the surround, not plain contact pressure.
    Then, the New Jersey sea level rise: real and incontestable measurements come from tidal gages. Sealevel.info has a treasure trove of data. From NOAA’s 375 world-wide tidal gage records the averages are 1.56 mm/yr and acceleration of 0.0524 mm/yr^2. This translates to a total of 8.76 inches in the coming century (not 3 or 5 or Gore’s 20 feet).
    Further, there are numbers on three New Jersey locales:
    Sandy Hook 4.06 mm/yr rise and 0.0057 mm/yr^2 acceleration,
    Cape May 4.55 and 0.1262, and Atlantic City 4.08 and 0.0125 respectively. It becomes clear that the Cape May zone is sinking rather remarkably. Therefore, New Jersey trends need a judicial local focus, not a statewide generalization.
    Lastly for a hard measurement vs. modeling discrepancy we may want to revisit the graph by Dr. Christy, which shows 102 CIMPS atmospheric temperature model runs, on average predicting temperatures 4.4 times as high as actual measurements via balloons! That is, from 1980 to 2015.
    Find the measurements!

    • Dietrich

      When I first heard that truck figure I thought it sounded like something from Greenpeace written to make a political point but not belonging to the real world.

      So I checked it with the Govt agency in the UK responsible for Road Transport then checked it with the country’s leading vehicle recovery agency. As far as I can see the figure is roughly correct.

      https://www.denenapoints.com/relationship-vehicle-weight-road-damage/

      If anyone can come up with a better figure then please link to it.

      tonyb

      • Dietrich Hoecht

        Tony,
        this report was written by a law firm, and they cite a GOA report. They also make non-sensical statements on taking cargo from trucks to railroad. Think of it, we had railroads crisscrossing the land and nowadays truck delivery has relegated cargo movement via rail to non-perishables like coal and new car deliveries, etc. Go ship the strawberries from California to NY by rail, and you have juices running over the rails. The fourth power multiplier is questionable as to axle loads – I’ll do some more digging, as you suggested – and of course overloading is no good. That’s why we have weighing stations and police mobile scales, but also stated bridge weight limits. I would also suggest that neglect of bridge structures, like by corrosion, and further, water penetration at pavement seams is a similar road deterioration cause.

      • Dietrich

        Apparently the problems are not so big on motorways which are specifically built to allow the pressure exerted by trucks.

        The problems arise when the trucks come off the motorways and then go by ordinary roads to distribution centres and direct to supermarkets in suburban areas where the roads were never designed for the pressure exerted.

        Roads need to be maintained and joints sealed to prevent water damage but the trucks damage the roads faster than they can be fixed.

        As I say the figures came from the uk transport organisation responsible for building roads.

        Wil be interested to see what you come up with. The other factor of course was that trucks are shedding particles of clutch, brakes and tyres directly into suburban areas thereby contributing to pollution but different to that coming from the ail pipe.

        Tonyb

    • Dietrich Hoecht commented:
      Sealevel.info has a treasure trove of data. From NOAA’s 375 world-wide tidal gage records the averages are 1.56 mm/yr and acceleration of 0.0524 mm/yr^2. This translates to a total of 8.76 inches in the coming century (not 3 or 5 or Gore’s 20 feet).

      Tide gauge data is actually exceeding the modern satellite data on SLR:

      https://www.globalchange.gov/sites/globalchange/files/global_average_sea_level_change.png

      so your 1.56 mm/yr is too low.

      Though it’s tempting and fun, you can’t just extrapolate a quadratic fit out to 2100 to get sea level rise. The physics just isn’t that simple — warming isn’t quadratic, hence thermal expansion of water isn’t, ice sheet melt isn’t, glacier melt isn’t, etc. You need a climate model with a good bit of sophistication.

      • Dietrich Hoecht

        David, something is wrong. If I take your chart and try to get a gradient I read 2.3 inches in recent 12.5 years. That translates to 0.184 inches or 4.67 mm/yr. That would be higher by a factor of 3 over the 1.56mm/yr. I have no idea where globalchange.gov gets its numbers from.

  52. Dr. Curry,
    Perhaps I missed it but did you get any feedback from the organizers or attendees?
    As usual, nice presentation.

  53. Robert D Clark

    The Vostok ice core shows we have had 4 ise ages in the last 400,00 years. We began this ice age about 20,000 years ago when the oceans were at their lowest.
    It took about 8,000 years to make the ice blocks. The next about 8,000 years nature was loosing more heat to the black sky than it retained. The oceans began to drop and the edges of the ice blocks began to break off. About 4,000 years ago the ice breaking off, floating away and melting, equaled the amount of heat lost to the black sky daily.
    The oceans stopped dropping, the radiant heat reflected remained constant. The average surface temperature remained constant.
    The amount of ice floating from the ice blocks, melting is constant.
    We will stay here for about the next 110,000 years.
    At that time the ice bocks will be gone, the oceans will begin to drop.
    When the oceans get the level where we begin to retain more radiant heat than reflected to the black sky the next ice age will begin.
    I PROBABLY WILL NOT SEE THIS, BUT THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE UNTIL THERE ISN’T!!!!

    • Actually, by the standard (Smithsonian) definition of Ice Age, our current began 2.5 million years ago and we are still in it. The most recent glaciation began 110,000 years ago, end of the Eemian, and we emerged from the LGM about 16,000 years ago, with no preceding CO2 change, immediately dropped into the Younger Dryas and rapidly emerged from that to the Holocene Optimum, from which we have been cooling for the last 8,000 years, with no CO2 causality for any of these movements.

    • Robert D Clark

      I have explained my reading of the Vostok ice core. I believe I am correct and there is no more I can do to win any more over to my belief.
      I am going back to save the hard work the AMERICAN PEOPLE, TESTERS and CONTACT TRACERS have done to control of COVID-19.

    • Robert D Clark

      I have begun talking about ICE MAKING and ICE MELTING on reply in week in review 10/31/2021

  54. David Appell
    “The darkside temperature is determined by thermal conductance through the regolith, and is mostly a constant temperature.”

    Exactly, that is why the night-time temperature in the Graph appears as linear. Because the night-time IR emission intensity is ruled by conductance through the regolith, and conductance is a linear function…

    https://www.cristos-vournas.com

  55. Dietrich Hoecht

    David, here is the link to NOAA’s 375 gage stations with the average and mean summary.
    http://www.sealevel.info/MSL_global_trendtable5.html

    • Richard Greene

      If data do not support David’s narrative,
      then they do not exist.

    • Dietrich Hoecht wrote:
      David, here is the link to NOAA’s 375 gage stations with the average and mean summary.

      But linear trends that start many decades ago, or even a century ago, do not represent modern sea level rise if there is an acceleration, nor modern rates of sea level rise.

      The sea level rise of a quadratic fit (the first derivative) will not equal the sea level rise from a linear fit (also the first derivative).

      It looks to me that the “trend” in your table is the linear fit.

      This is from the US Fourth National Climate Assessment 2018 pg 107:

      “Multiple researchers, using different statistical approaches, have integrated tide gauge records to estimate global mean sea level (GMSL) rise since the late 19th century (e.g., Church and White 2006, 2011; Hay et al. 2015; Jevrejeva et al. 200961,73,74,256). The most recent published rate estimates are 1.2 ± 0.2 mm/year73 or 1.5 ± 0.2 mm/year74 over 1901–1990. Thus, these results indicate about 4–5 inches (11–14 cm) of GMSL rise from 1901 to 1990. Tide gauge analyses indicate that GMSL rose at a considerably faster rate of about 0.12 inches/year (3 mm/year) since 1993,73,74 a result supported by satellite data indicating a trend of 0.13 inches/year (3.4 ± 0.4 mm/year) over 1993–2015
      (update to Nerem et al. 2010;75 see also Sweet et al. 2017,57 Figure 12.3a). These results indicate an additional GMSL rise of about 3 inches (7 cm) since 1990. Thus, total GMSL rise since 1900 is about 7–8 inches (18–21 cm).”

  56. Scotland exports by far the biggest portion of its electricity generation – allowing it to claim 97% renewables in domestic supply. Even then – some 50% of energy is used for heat and 25% in transport. Renewables barely scratch the surface.

    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/uk-electricity.png

    A ‘clean energy transition’ is less of a challenge than an opportunity for innovative entrepreneurs. But the starting point must be realistic analysis.

  57. Pingback: Judith Curry: COP26 "Code Red" Misleading (New Jersey data point) - Master Resource

  58. Putin: The Average Price Of Electricity In Russia Is 15 TIMES Lower Than In Germany And France!

  59. Judith: As best I can tell, the political goal of net zero emissions ignores the fact that about half of emissions are being taken up by sinks. As best I can tell, we could cut emissions of CO2 by about 50% and the level of CO2 in the atmosphere would stop rising. Instead of Net Zero, Net 50% should be enough to stabilize climate – at least until land-based sinks saturate. So I suggest that the goal for 2050 might be reduced to a far more practical “Net 50%”. If terrestrial sinks show signs of saturating, then the next step might be Net 25%. Deep-ocean uptake of CO2 will never saturate.

    It says a lot about the IPCC and other climate activists that they aren’t think in terms of doing the minimum possible to deal with climate change.

    • Franktoo,

      When the emissions were 50% of what they are now, roughly 50% of those emissions were taken up by sinks. In fact, about 50% of emitted CO2 was absorbed by the sinks regardless of the amount emitted. If we reduced the emissions by 50% it would not lead to the level of CO2 stabilizing, as the sinks would simply stop taking in around 50% of what they do now given that the return trip results in the sinks moving back to were they where. The return trip being equivalent is debated, but what is not debated is that any CO2 emission will lead to an increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, and that increase in the atmosphere will be less than the actual emission, but not zero as long as there are emissions.

      What you are trying to say is not physical in a system regardless of whether the system has gone to equilibrium or not.

      You need to qualify what you mean by “Deep-ocean uptake of CO2 will never saturate.” If you mean that we could pump enough CO2 into the deep-ocean to stabilize atmospheric CO2, then I would agree with the statement. However, doing so would require energy, and would have effects such as bringing the pH of the ocean to a more neutral pH. If you are saying that nature is going to move significant amounts of CO2 into the deep-ocean by itself, then that has demonstrably not happened in the past, and any expectation for it to do so in the future is imaginary.

      • atandb: Vertical currents in the ocean (including the thermohaline circulation) carry heat and CO2 into the deep ocean for free. Before industrialization, 98% of carbon dioxide was in the ocean and 2% was in the atmosphere. (Even larger amounts of carbon were buried in the ground as carbonate rocks, fossil fuels, organics materials in soil.) If the ocean pH and temperature remained constant, 98% of the carbon dioxide released by burning of fossil fuels would eventually be taken up by the ocean and CO2 levels would drop to near 300 ppm. However, with more CO2 dissolve in the ocean, its pH will drop modestly and “only” something like 90% of the CO2 added by burning fossil fuels will be taken up by the ocean. The warmer temperature of the ocean will also reduce how much CO2 goes into the deep ocean.

        The IPCC likes to confuse this simple picture of CO2 uptake by the ocean over about a millennium with a discussion about the much larger amount of time needed for CO2 to be “permanently” sequestered in the ground as carbonate rock rather than fossil fuel.

        At the end of the last ice age, ocean currents released enough CO2 from the deep ocean to raise CO2 in the atmosphere from about 180 ppm to 280 ppm over millennia. So during ice ages, the ocean held perhaps 98.7% of CO2 and the atmosphere 1.3%.

    • Franktoo commented:As best I can tell, the political goal of net zero emissions ignores the fact that about half of emissions are being taken up by sinks. As best I can tell, we could cut emissions of CO2 by about 50% and the level of CO2 in the atmosphere would stop rising. Instead of Net Zero, Net 50% should be enough to stabilize climate – at least until land-based sinks saturate.

      No, this is wrong. Warming won’t stop until about a decade after we reach net zero emissions. About 50% of our emissions are going to stay in the atmosphere no matter what — the “airborne fraction” has stayed about constant for decades. Emit less and 50% still stays and builds up.

      • David: You are confusing several different phenomena. CO2 stabilizeif we reduce current emissions by about 50% and sinks continue to take up CO2 at the current rate (which is somewhat more than 50% of current emissions). The ocean sink won’t ever saturate and eventually will take up about 90% of the CO2 we have emitted, but has taken up only about 25% so far. There are questions about long term uptake by the land sink, but the IPCC has consistently under projected uptake. So 50% reduction in emissions will, at least for several decades, keep atmospheric CO2 constant and its radiative forcing constant.

        Currently, about 0.7 W/m2 of current radiative forcing is being taken up by the ocean. If current forcing were 2.7 W/m2, then 1 degK of current warming is already sending 2 W/m2 of more LWR + reflected SWR to space (and climate sensitivity would be about 2 K/doubling). As ocean heat uptake gradually slows as the deep ocean slowly comes into a new state state with the warmer surface, another 0.35 K of “committed warming”) would be needed to send an additional 0.7 W/m2 to space. This committed warming process will take most of a millennium and isn’t worth planning for. (The IPCC’s models say ECS is higher than 2 degK, but that is inconsistent with current warming, forcing and ocean heat uptake.)

        If we reached net zero emissions, then CO2 would be falling while we are still experiencing “committed warming” as due to less uptake of heat by the ocean.

        “Net zero” emissions is merely a slogan for developed countries that will let developing countries continue growing their emissions for decades, producing something approximating the global 50% reduction in emissions that will stabilize CO2 levels at current levels.

  60. Franktoo: I agree and the IPCC ( https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf , Fig. SPM.7 also.
    https://i.imgur.com/znIE0pI.png
    The “budget to zero emmission ” disagrees. A wicked problem??

    • Frankclimate: Thanks for the link. The information in Figure SPM.7 makes little sense to me. Since the end of the last ice age until the industrial age, ocean uptake and release of CO2 had been in equilibrium at about 280 ppm. Around 1970, CO2 had reached 325 ppm, 16% above 280 and causing to a first approximation a 16% increase in ocean uptake of CO2 below the mixed layer assuming ocean overturning was unchanged. (Rising ocean pH has only a minor impact on how much CO2 dissolves in ocean water.) At that point IIRC, we were emitting enough CO2 to raise the amount in the atmosphere by 2 ppm and 1 ppm of that was disappearing into sinks and about half was uptake by oceans.

      By the time we reached 400 ppm (a 43% increase) ocean uptake of CO2 below the mixed layer should have increased by 43%. At that point IIRC, we were emitting enough CO2 to raise atmospheric CO2 by 4 ppm/yr and only 2 ppm was accumulating in the atmosphere with the other 50% disappearing into sinks.

      My understanding of SSP (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways) isn’t very good, but SSP2-4.5 is about double today’s forcing and perhaps around 560 ppm of CO2. So Figure SPM.7 NOW shows almost 2/3rds of emitted CO2 having been taken up by sinks so far and falling to 54% by the time CO2 doubles in the future??? And notice that the amount going into the ocean isn’t increasing in proportion to the amount in the atmosphere. Pre-industrially, 2% of CO2 was in the atmosphere and 98% was in the ocean. In the long run, more than 90% of anthropogenically emitted CO2 is supposed to end up in the ocean after equilibrium is restored, despite rising ocean pH.

    • jim2 commented:
      China alone generated about the same amount of CO2 as the next four countries combined. And its carbon output is still rising every year.

      China emits a lot because it has a large population. Americans emit more on a per capita basis. America has emitted twice as much CO2 since 1850 than has China, creating twice as much warming.

      Perhaps we should instead be focusing on the world’s wealthy — the richest 10% emit half of all CO2 emissions, and the richest 20% about 70%. (Oxfam 2015):

      https://www.reddit.com/r/onguardforthee/comments/ej8010/percentage_of_co2_emissions_by_world_population/

      Perhaps we could start with a global ban on superyachts, private jets, SUVs and homes over, say, 10,000 sq ft. We’re in a crisis — it’s time to start acting like it. Otherwise my suspicion is that in the not-too-distant future a small subset of the burgeoning youth climate movement is going to see to it, by other means, that owning such property will be made uncomfortable, undesirable and then taboo.

      • stevenreincarnated

        Think they’ll start with all the carbon Sasquatches that attend the IPCC meetings?

  61. Gautam Kalghatgi

    People on this thread might also be interested in this – https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2021/10/Kalghatgi-Net-Zero-Challenges.pdf

  62. A “Bomb Cyclone”, the latest in the CAGW industry to use Madison Avenue tactics to scare the most naive, gullible and frankly dim witted elements of the populace. How about saying what they said 70 years ago. It’s a big storm.
    https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/22/weather/weather-bomb-cyclone-pacific-northwest-california-rain-snow/index.html

    • “snow”?

      Now, now, I’m expecting the TV to tell me that outside my house on the east coast there is “Lower Atmospheric Disturbance Zeus” and it will be confirmed as at least a category 36.4. It would be a 40 if the dog gets damp.

      • Jeff, or anybody: explain why a Chinese citizen, or any other citizen of the world, shouldn’t be able, morally, to emit just as much CO2 as you did, today?

      • DA

        How do you know he did? Maybe he was sick and stayed home in bed with the furnace off all day and read by candlelight.

        Personally, I stayed home and mowed the lawn with my new electric lawn mower. Do I get good dooby points now? Since I bought an electric lawn mower, I think I’ll go buy a 7 passenger SUV. Seems like a good tradeoff.

        Although, now that I think of it, I’m going to have to wait 6 months for a new car because of a lack of chips. Labor shortages. Supply chain disruptions. Bidenflation. What a great economy. We could shut down the economy completely. Go back to the Stone Age. But think of all the benefits of cutting CO2 emissions.

  63. The world’s top five polluters were responsible for 60% of global emissions in 2019. China alone generated about the same amount of CO2 as the next four countries combined. And its carbon output is still rising every year.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-china-climate-change-biggest-carbon-polluters

    • jim2 commented:
      China alone generated about the same amount of CO2 as the next four countries combined. And its carbon output is still rising every year.

      China emits a lot because it has a large population. Americans emit more on a per capita basis. America has emitted twice as much CO2 since 1850 than has China, creating twice as much warming.

      Perhaps we should instead be focusing on the world’s wealthy — the richest 10% emit half of all CO2 emissions, and the richest 20% about 70%. (Oxfam 2015).

      Perhaps we could start with a global ban on superyachts, private jets, SUVs and homes over, say, 10,000 sq ft. We’re in a crisis — it’s time to start acting like it. Otherwise my suspicion is that in the not-too-distant future a small subset of the burgeoning youth climate movement is going to see to it, by other means, that owning such property will be made uncomfortable, undesirable and then taboo.

    • jim2 commented:
      China alone generated about the same amount of CO2 as the next four countries combined. And its carbon output is still rising every year.

      China emits a lot because it has a large population. Americans emit more on a per capita basis. America has emitted twice as much CO2 since 1850 than has China, creating twice as much warming.

      • Oh, so global warming is dependent on CO2 emitted PER CAPITA – I see! I would like to see your physics explanation for that one.

      • stevenreincarnated

        Jim, it’s made in China. How long could it possibly last?

      • jim2 wrote:
        Oh, so global warming is dependent on CO2 emitted PER CAPITA – I see! I would like to see your physics explanation for that one.

        Did you see the part about the US having already emitted more than twice as much CO2 as has China?

        Physics doesn’t depends on per capita emissions, but ethics and fairness do. Until the US drastically decreases its per capita emissions, especially in light of its historical emissions and the very high emissions of its wealthy, it has no moral right to tell other countries how to live, especially once poor countries who aspire to a similar standard of living.

      • If you are worried about ethics, David, you won’t take away a reliable and relatively cheap source of energy. That act will kill people. And are you going to demand from China they stop using fossil fuels when they catch up with the US? No, I’m thinking you won’t. Also, there’s that little detail that China is turning into a military power that is a huge threat to the US. Why in h*ll should the US cut them any slack AT ALL? (Note, that was directed to the Chinese government, not the people, but of course they can’t be separated when it comes to not helping them. That’s life, cruel as it is.)

      • jim2, it will be many decades before China catches up to the US in CO2 emissions.

        By then they will be the global superpower running on sustainable energy and the US, it sure looks like, will be a diseased and broken antique.

        Your argument is a red herring. How about engaging with the issue as presented?

      • The good news here, Jim, is that Appell admits that renewables aren’t even close to being cost competitive or effective. If they were, China would be adopting them because they’re better than fossil fuels.

        But we all knew that.

        The other good news is that Appell (accidentally) emphasizes the political conundrum- emissions cuts in Europe and North America will not result in less CO2 in the atmosphere, every cut there is offset and then some by increases in China. If you’re going to have a policy that cuts emissions, have a policy that cuts emissions instead of increasing them.

        Finally, we get the mention of “the very high emissions of its wealthy.” This is a serious political issue. In “green” California, for example, this means poor and middle class people pay more for gasoline and electricity and get less of it, but the wealthy retain access to daily flights to Hawaii, New York, Europe and Asia from a long list of California airports. The Democrats are so invested in cutting greenhouse gases that they are boasting today that the new infrastructure bill in Congress will spend $1.5 billion on California airports.
        People who can’t afford to drive to work will get to wave to the wealthy flying overhead in gas guzzlers and pay for their improved airports.

      • jeffnsails850 commented:The good news here, Jim, is that Appell admits that renewables aren’t even close to being cost competitive or effective.

        It’s well known that wind and solar are cheaper than coal.

        Especially when you include the huge external, damaging costs of the pollution from coal to health and the environment. It’s not even close.

        China just announced that they will not build coal-fired power plants anywhere outside their country.

      • Jeff, stop making up things that I didn’t say, or I’m not going to respond to you.

        I never wrote anything like ‘every cut there is offset and then some by increases in China.’

        Finally, we get the mention of “the very high emissions of its wealthy.” This is a serious political issue. In “green” California, for example, this means poor and middle class people pay more for gasoline and electricity and get less of it, but the wealthy retain access to daily flights to Hawaii, New York, Europe and Asia from a long list of California airports

        Completely convoluted. The point is to ban private flights by the wealthy, not have the middle class watch them fly overhead.

        Try to pay attention.

      • “It’s well known that wind and solar are cheaper than coal.”

        Then there is no moral or fairness reason to limit CO2 emissions in China, yet you believe there is.

        “I never wrote anything like ‘every cut there is offset and then some by increases in China.’”

        It’s the net effect of the global policy you prefer (the “fairness” excuse for allowing more coal burning in China). And my point was that this is a serious political issue- you cannot get votes in democratic western nations on emissions reductions that don’t reduce emissions, but do cause economic pain. The is the cause of all those charts showing the gaps between pledges and reality. No democratically elected government is going to tank its economy because it’s China’s turn to burn.

        “Completely convoluted. The point is to ban private flights by the wealthy, not have the middle class watch them fly overhead.”

        What benefit do you get from a ban on private flights (which nobody is doing, by the way) if you spend $1.5 billion in taxpayer dollars to give them more wide-body global flights? The inequality is obvious- in California, the poor must not be able to afford to commute to work by car or drive to take the kids to Disney World. But we’ll make it more comfortable for the wealthy to commute by air to London or New York and vacation on the beaches of Hawaii and Tuvalu (there being no beaches in California, apparently).
        At the very same time California insists people pay the nation’s highest energy prices, there are no less than 14 non-stop flights to Honolulu from LAX alone on a typical Tuesday and you can get round trip for as little as $224.

      • joe - the non climate scientist

        David Appell | October 26, 2021 at 1:52 pm |
        jeffnsails850 commented:The good news here, Jim, is that Appell admits that renewables aren’t even close to being cost competitive or effective.

        Appell response- “It’s well known that wind and solar are cheaper than coal.”

        Absolutely true when using “levelized cost of energy” LCOE

        Wind & solar advocates love using LCOE since that analysis is specifically designed not to capture all the true costs – deception is the name of the game with LCOE

      • Jeff: I haven’t said anything about California, so I don’t know what you’re going on about.

        I’m saying that an individual Chinese citizen has a right to as much energy and to emit just as much CO2 as an individual American citizen.

        Explain to me why they don’t.

      • “I’m saying that an individual Chinese citizen has a right to as much energy and to emit just as much CO2 as an individual American citizen.

        Explain to me why they don’t.”

        Last I checked, there were some people gathering in Scotland on the premise that there was some sort of “existential threat” to the entire globe from CO2 emissions. Are you now saying that’s not the case?

    • Perhaps we could start with a global ban on superyachts, private jets, SUVs and homes over, say, 10,000 sq ft. We’re in a crisis — it’s time to start acting like it. Otherwise my suspicion is that in the not-too-distant future a small subset of the burgeoning youth climate movement is going to see to it, by other means, that owning such property will be made uncomfortable, undesirable and then taboo.

      • Richard Greene

        Mr Apple claims “we’re in a crisis”
        We are not in any crisis
        We do not have any climate problem
        The current climate is the best climate
        for humans, animals and plants
        since the 1600s.
        If the planet warms 1 degree
        in the next 50 or 100 years,
        the climate will be even better.
        Mr. Apple is deluded about
        the current climate and speculating
        wildly about the future climate.
        Making wild guess predictions
        is not real science.
        Mr. Apple is a reality denier
        and a science denier.

    • Perhaps we could start with a global ban on superyachts, private jets, large vehicles and homes over, say, 10,000 sq ft. We’re in a crisis — it’s time to start acting like it. Otherwise my suspicion is that in the not-too-distant future a small subset of the burgeoning youth climate movement is going to see to it, by other means, that owning such property will be made uncomfortable, undesirable and then taboo.

      • If you truly believe we are in a crisis due to CO2 emissions, David, you wouldn’t be giving China a pass no matter what. So you are willing to let the Earth bake to a cinder because China is a developing country, David? This makes your entire shtick here on CE look disingenuous. But to make matters worse, you want the developed countries to switch from reliable and cheap fossil fuels to unreliable and expensive wind and solar. This will cause people to die from the cold during the ensuing blackouts. This certainly calls into question your ethics, which, once again, makes you look disingenuous. You spend an awful lot of time here just to make yourself look foolish.

      • jim2, you completely misunderstood my reply. It said that since the rich emit a great deal of the CO2, far disproportionate, let’s begin by banning their superyachts, private jets (they can teleconference), SUVs and massive homes.

        They’re massive CO2-belchers.

        That’s far more ethical than expecting the poor of China and India and the developing countries to cut their CO2.

        How about it?

        Check out this chart:

        https://i.redd.it/mfez247tvg841.png

      • How about the US suck their CO2 out of the atmosphere until their contribution is equal to China’s?

        The technology exists. A plant was just installed in Iceland. It currently costs an estimated $600 per ton of CO2.

  64. China’s emissions are so vast that its biggest companies, few of which are household names, create more pollution than entire nations. China Baowu, the world’s top steelmaker, put more CO2 into the atmosphere last year than Pakistan.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-china-climate-change-biggest-carbon-polluters

    • Richard Greene

      The only emissions that are harmful to humans are all those other than CO2. The air pollution over large cities in China and India is ignored by almost all “environmentalists”, along with slave labor building solar panels in China, and the cleanest safe source of electricity — nuclear power — protested by almost all “environmentalists”
      This is one big science denier group !

    • Richard Greene

      The planet hit +1.5 degrees C. for at least a month in late 2015 / 2016 and probably for a month in 1998 — both at the peak heat of large El Ninos.

      No one even noticed.

      The +1.5 degree C. is a nonsense number based on another nonsense number of +2.0 degree C. created by some economist with absolutely no scientific basis.

      Just like the past 64 years of predicting a coming global warming crisis — always wrong — staring with oceanographer Roger Revelle and associates in 1957.

      Meanwhile, the ACTUAL climate is the best climate for humans, animals and planets in 325 years since the cold, low solar energy Maunder Minimum decade of the 1690s.

      But climate predictions don’t need facts, data and logic to be repeated for years. They obviouly don’t even need to be correct !

      Some people still believe there were weapon of mass destruction in Iraq.
      Many leftists still believe the false Trump Russian Collusion political dirty trick pushed by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

      And many Americans now believe COVID vaccines are defeating the disease. They have no idea US COVID daily average deaths per 100,000 in 2021 are actually +16.9% higher than US COVID daily average deaths per 100,000 in 2020, with no vaccines at all in 2020 !
      Why let facts get in the way of a “good” narrative !

      Details on the +16.9% number at the link below:
      Replace each “DOT” with a period to get the correct URL:

      https://electioncircusDOTblogspot.com/2021/10/the-2021-daily-covid-death-rate-is-169DOThtml

  65. “We have already warmed 1.3 degrees Centigrade, or 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit. The IPCC’s best estimate has us crossing the 1.5 degree threshold in about 2030, and the 2 degree threshold in about 2055. ”

    But in SPM, p. 5, and other passages of AR6, WG1 we can read: “Global surface temperature was 1.09 [0.95 to 1.20] °C higher in 2011-2020 than 1850-1900.”

    So: About 1.1 degrees, not 1.3 degrees.

    Also important: SPM, pp. 17/18/19: “This includes the revised assessment of observed historical warming for the AR5 reference period 1986–2005, which in AR6 is higher by 0.08 [–0.01 to 0.12] °C than in the AR5.”

    So: About 0.1 degrees of the 1.1 degrees above are a result of “revised assessment” of former decades.

    Why we should cross the “1.5 degree threshold in about 2030” (“central estimate of 20-year averaged global surface warming”, TS, S. 36/37, Box TS.1 ), is puzzling for me. For the increase per decade by now did not exceed 0.2 degrees, and I couldn’t find any reason why it should be 0.4 degrees per decade within the next 20 years.

    • gfkeller: What’s wrong with a “revised assessment?” Happens all the time in science. That’s what science is.

      But I agree with the rest of what you wrote — I also don’t see how we cross 1.5 C in 2030.

      • Richard Greene

        First “science” assessment on the future climate:

        ” It’s worse than we thought ! ”

        Revised “science” assessment on the future climate:

        ” It’s worse than worse than we thought ! ”

        Next assessment:

        worse x3

      • Richard Greene

        For Mr. Apple, who cherry picked Scotland to brag about their very high percentage of electricity from renewables in 2020, mainly from wind and hydro:

        Here are some facts you left out:

        Scotland’s population is about 5.5 million, considerably smaller than the population of New York City.

        Scotland energy use is about 25% for producing electricity.

        What about the sources for the other 75% — for transportation and heating — they are not renewables !

        The bottom line is that Scotland represents a very tiny percentage of the world population (7.8 billion people) and electricity represents only 25% of all energy use of that tiny population.

        Data mining at it’s worst !

  66. Judith: From my perspective, natural gas is cheap way of converting “renewable electricity generation” into “reliable electricity generation”.

    Consider a society without fossil fuel where electricity is generated exclusively by wind and solar. That society, like ours, is struggling to build enough batteries to meet the needs of car transportation and has limited ability to store electric power behind dams. Even though they have built wind and solar electric generation capacity capable of meeting twice or thrice normal demand, every month or so a combination of cloudy and calm days results in a major expensive disruption in the supply of electricity. Now imagine that such a society discovers natural gas and begins building natural gas plants to generate electricity. How many plants would such a society build knowing that the GHE places limits on how much natural gas they should burn?

    I think that society would build as many natural gas generating plants as needed to make the electricity supply reliable, but would run those plants ONLY when wind and solar were inadequate. They would use natural gas to make unreliable renewable electricity into reliable electricity. The fixed cost to have a natural gas plant sitting around doing nothing most of the time is relatively low (about $0.01/kWh the way our plants are typically used) and the variable cost of the natural gas only needs to be paid when wind and solar aren’t delivering enough electricity (and their suppliers don’t need to be paid). Instead of trying to drive up the cost of natural gas by limiting production, that society would open production so that competition kept the price of natural gas as low as possible.

    Our society hasn’t experienced many major disruptions in the supply of electricity, so we don’t see natural gas as the solution to converting unreliable renewable electricity into reliable electricity. Consequently, we perceive use of natural gas as something to be eliminated, rather than as a relatively cheap solution to the problem of unreliable renewable electricity. We need a large capacity to generate electricity from natural gas for reliability, BUT we need to use that capacity as little as possible as renewable capacity grows. AND we need to grow renewable electricity in a fiscally sensible manner. Installing a large number of very expensive solar panels in cloudy Germany a decade ago was pure folly. German consumers will be paying those cost for decades. Installing much cheaper solar panels in the deserts of Southern California today produces electricity at about $0.02/kWh. Unfortunately, today Southern California doesn’t new more electricity when the sun is shining; they are already paying much more for renewable electricity installed when costs were much higher. California needs to be investing in the safety and reliability of its grid! The panic created by legislating NETZERO goals is blinding us to the financial practicality 50% renewable power that is 100% reliable and can power a society using mostly EVs rather than traditional cars. Then we can work on getting to 60% renewable that is 100% reliable.

    When the cost of increasing the fraction of reliable renewable electricity is too high, we obvious need to turn to nuclear power.

    • I could not agree more, Frank.

      Let’s imagine a world in which we do not live.

      The only conclusion we can infer is that is should be like ours.

      We really live in the best possible world.

      • Willard: Thought experiments can be useful: There are two extreme worlds that are possible and a reasonable compromise somewhere between the two. Extreme World 1 uses fossil fuel to generate most electricity for reliability and ignores the massive cost of rising CO2. That is the world we lived in before we became interested in reducing climate change. Extreme World 2 ignores electricity reliability and the massive cost associated with unreliable electricity. If we had grown up in Extreme World 2 and discovered natural gas, we would have begun using it to make electricity more reliable, despite its global warming effect. The cost of unreliability was much higher than the cost of warming. Somewhere between these two extreme is where an optimum solution can be found.

        From a purely pragmatic point of view, going too far and too fast toward unreliable high-cost renewable electricity will likely simply torpedo public support. In green Germany, public support for continuing investment in expensive renewable electricity appears to be waning. The key to maintaining public support for renewable power is maintaining reliability – which means adequate backup with natural gas. Restriction the supply of natural gas simply makes that backup more expensive.

      • > Thought experiments can be useful:

        I agree, Frank. My point is that you didn’t make any!

        I’m still glad that you now realize the wisdom of Energiewende. It’s never too late to be too late.

  67. Pingback: Judith Curry: COP26 “Code Red” Misleading (New Jersey data point) – Climate- Science.press

  68. New Jersey has a pretty good mix of electricity generation sources: 57.2% natural gas, 37.4% nuclear, 1.6% solar, 1.5% coal, 1.1% biomass, 0.9% non-biogenic waste, and 0.1% hydroelectric & wind.New Jersey’s renewable portfolio standard was updated in 2018 to require that 21% of electricity be from renewable sources by 2021, 35% by 2025, and 50% by 2030.

    Renewable portfolio standards are often criticized for excluding nuclear. In my view nuclear and renewables do compete with each other for resources so renewable portfolio standards should be changed to clean energy standards that include nuclear. It’s interesting to note that the renewables listed here total up to 5.2% of electricity generation, far short of the 2021 standard of 21%. Nuclear at 37.4% is already past the 2025 standard of 35%.

  69. Ireneusz Palmowski

    Without additional gas supplies to Germany, the German economy may have trouble ensuring continued production. More gas is now used for room heating.

  70. Ireneusz Palmowski

    During the winter, solar energy and wind cannot meet energy demand in mid-latitudes. When a cloudless eastern high prevails over Europe, nighttime temperature drops will quickly deplete energy reserves.

  71. “A solar minimum is expected in the 21st century, following the grand solar maximum that occurred in the late 20th century.”

    We are just over halfway through a very short centennial solar minimum. The next centennial solar minimum starts in the 2090’s.

  72. to David Appell ,

    I tried reply on the calculation of heat on the moon. But comments disappear. already 2 times. Frustrating. Will try again later.

    • Isakov Dmitry

      Ok. this comment went though. So I’ll provide estimates here.

      First of all. If you look at MDPI paper Fig 11, you will see that from 0.3 m and below the temperature is constant at around 240K. Constant temperature means 0 gradient and thus, zero conduction. So your theory that heat is conducted from hot side of the Moon to the cold side to sustain 100K is incorrect. Unless you mean something else and again just not expressing yourself clearly when you say: “The darkside temperature is determined by thermal conductance through the regolith, and is mostly a constant temperature”

      Now let’s explore heat capacity. Actually they provide full calculation in Methods section of the paper. But I will just a make few simplifications to avoid solving differential equations. We will first explore the day time. As it is shown in figure 11, during the day you get an approximately linear gradient between surface and depth of around 0.15m. Maximum temperate 355K and base temperature 240K, or 115K temperature difference. So we average and take half of it to estimate stored heat, e.g. 57K. Heat capacity and density are complex functions, but we can take some average value from the paper, e.g 850J/kgK and 1500kg/m3. So we get 57*850*1500*0.15 = 10 MJ/m2 of stored heat per sqm of surface. Now during night the surface temperature quickly drops to 100K. Let’s average and assume all the stored heat is a half depth of 0.08m. So we get a temperature gradient of roughly 200K per 0.08m. Thermal conductivity, according to the paper is 0.0007 W/mK. So we get heat loss from that depth to the surface at a rate of 0.0007*200/0.08= 1.7W/m2. How long it will take to loose all the heat during night, 10*10^6/1.7= 5.8 million seconds = 67 days. Most probably I oversimplified, but even if we take 1/5 of the stored heat value we get 13.4 days, just nice to sustain heat during lunar dark period.

      Of course the more interesting question will be what is the source of heat that maintains constant temperature of 240K below 0.3m. I have a good guess but it is probably not important for our discussion at this moment.

      • “Maximum temperate 355K and base temperature 240K, or 115K temperature difference. ”

        Moon rotates and the maximum temperature point changes, so the next moment the previous maximum temperature point’s inner layer will be hotter than the outer skin layer’s temperature.
        Thus stored energy flow will change direction from in to out. Eventually, long before dark the surface will be cold again.

        https://www.cristos-vournas.com

      • Isakov Dmitry

        “Moon rotates and the maximum temperature point changes, so the next moment the previous maximum temperature point’s inner layer will be hotter than the outer skin layer’s temperature.
        Thus stored energy flow will change direction from in to out. Eventually, long before dark the surface will be cold again.”

        That can explain why my value is 5 times larger than necessary (more than 60 days instead of 13.5 days of the lunat night). Still enough heat was stored.

        In any case, what is your take for the reason why it is constant 240K from below 0 3m of the surface?

      • “why it is constant 240K from below 0 3m of the surface?”
        I think the diurnal temperature fluctuations do not go deeper. Also I am sure the numbers change with latitude.

        https://www.cristos-vournas.com

      • Isakov Dmitry wrote: How long it will take to loose all the heat during night, 10*10^6/1.7= 5.8 million seconds = 67 days. Most probably I oversimplified, but even if we take 1/5 of the stored heat value we get 13.4 days, just nice to sustain heat during lunar dark period.

        Nice fudge factor with the 1/5th.

        If your hypothesis is correct, why isn’t the temperature of the nightside regolith continually declining, from when it first leaves sunlight to when it next enters sunlight?

        Instead the temperature is constant on the nightside. Your hypothesis of heat capacity does not explain that.

      • Dr. Isakov Dmitry

        “Nice fudge factor with the 1/5th.”

        You are very dishonest debater. You asked for calculations. To have a precise estimate you need to solve differential equations couples with non-linear boundary conditions. Obviously I use crude simplifications to make my assessments but I provided very clear assumptions and even expressed how I calculate.

        1/5 factor is an admission that I was oversimplifying particularly for the heat storage phase on the hot side, as I used constant temperature difference. It is not constant for sure, but my estimate shows that I can use 5 times smaller value and it will still be enough to explain how thermal mass of the regolith prevents “night” side not to cool down much below 100K.

        I have also shown that your assumption on thermal conduction from hot side to cold side is unphysical and total garbage (if you want to be so personal).

        “If your hypothesis is correct, why isn’t the temperature of the nightside regolith continually declining, from when it first leaves sunlight to when it next enters sunlight?”

        Are you blind? I gave you order of magnitude estimate that explains how heat accumulated in thermal mass during sunlight is slowly released from depth to the surface. Don’t pretend to be stupid.

        “Instead the temperature is constant on the nightside. Your hypothesis of heat capacity does not explain that.”

        It does and I was even surprised on how well it does it. It is not constant it is slowly decreasing because radiative loss is still faster than conduction of heat stored in regolith within 0.15m depth.

        The bigger question is what ensures 240K at depths below 0.3m. This cannot be explained by heat storage during lunar day. But there are good explanations in cosmology for such subsurface heats.

    • Isakov Dmitry wrote:
      I tried reply on the calculation of heat on the moon. But comments disappear. already 2 times. Frustrating. Will try again later.

      I sympathize, and often find the same. Now I copy every reply before I hit “Post Comment.”

  73. Australia is set to a announce a net zero target. It’s politically pragmatic. Most Australians are behind it – even if there are some details to be worked through. And even if there are some contrarian curmudgeons with crude and eccentric climate theories left looking discombobulated

    ‘As the government prepares for the COP26 United Nations climate talks in Glasgow in November, the survey showed 41 per cent of voters wanted the government to reach net zero before 2050 and 32 per cent believed net zero should be reached by 2050. By contrast, 12 per cent believe 2050 is too fast and 15 per cent believe no goal should be set.’ https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/australia-s-biggest-climate-poll-shows-support-for-action-in-every-seat-20210829-p58mwb.html

    I expect that the how will look very much like the 2030 target. Some of it in the land sector. Precision agriculture to apply nitrogen where it is needed and avoid nitrous oxide emissions. Methane digesters at feedlots. Animal dietary supplements to improve feed conversion efficiency and reduce methanogenesis. Changes in grazing and cropping management.

    The global land area is 13 billion hectares. There are about 8 billion hectares of forest, woodland and mountains and ice. 5 billion hectares is agricultural. Cropping is some 28% of agricultural land, orchards 3% and grazing 69%. Cropping and orchards provides staples and nutrients – as well as culinary diversity. Grazing animals convert otherwise unusable resources on marginal lands into important sources of protein. Australia has about 400 million hectares of agricultural land. We can sequester all of our emissions for the foreseeable future. Farmers all over the world are pioneering a 21st century agriculture that restores carbon to soils – and Australian farmers at least are not lagging behind. One key process in Australian conditions – across landscapes – is to get fire regimes right. I’d suggest insisting that bushfires in 2020 were AGW and claiming huge improvements in management.

    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/emissionsreduction01.jpg

    There are opportunities still with CFC’s and Ozone. Along with those from increased efficiency. As well as with new technology. I’m technology agnostic – why not 10-15% wind and solar balanced with existing hydro, biogas and geothermal. Perhaps even a little battery storage to stabilise grid frequency. But running an industrial economy on wind and solar with tangible range anxiety seems a bit whimsical. Factory built fast neutron reactors offer the opportunity to provide electricity, process heat and enable liquid fuel and fertiliser manufacture. They await practical commercial deployment. A decade or so will transform the energy landscape.

    https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/fast-neutron-reactors.aspx

  74. Ireneusz Palmowski

    Within two days, cold air over the Rocky Mountains will reach as far as Texas.
    https://i.ibb.co/LzjXpJm/gfs-pvort-320-K-NA-f072.png
    https://i.ibb.co/wrkmP85/gfs-hgt-trop-NA-f072.png

  75. Willard, Appell, and Joshua are pushing policies that will produce social unrest. Where are your ethics?

    Blackstone Inc. co-founder Stephen Schwarzman said the world is facing energy shortages so severe they could cause social unrest.

    “We’re going to end up with a real shortage of energy,” he said at a conference in Saudi Arabia. “And when you have a shortage it’s just going to cost more and it’s probably going to cost a lot more. And when that happens you’re going to get very unhappy people around the world, in the emerging markets in particular.”

    https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/oil-gas/energy-squeeze-will-trigger-unrest-says-blackstones-schwarzman

    • Indeed. Not only that, but they push for a non-solution to a non-problem given that wind/solar don’t generate sufficient energy to power the machinery needed to reproduce themselves.

      For example, the Caterpillar 797F dump truck is powered by a 4,000 horsepower turbocharged diesel engine. At full power it will require 2.98 megawatts of energy. Assume the truck runs at 50 per cent of maximum power for an eight-hour shift. It would consume around 12 megawatt-hours of electricity. It would need 120 of Tesla’s latest automotive batteries to power it. The batteries would weigh 64 tonnes. So, if I understand things correctly, and frankly, I may not, to charge those batteries would require a single 1.5 MW wind turbine operating at full capacity for 8 hours. However, given that wind turbines have a capacity factor of between 30-35%, that would mean 3 turbines – except that, you could have 100 turbines and not power anything if the wind is not blowing, something the UK and the EU are now beginning to understand. Anyway, that is for a single dump truck at a single mine and does not include all the other heavy machinery operating at a mine – hydraulic shovels, graders, front end loaders, bull dozers, etc. Then you must process the raw materials, transport, fabricate, prepare the site, transport to the site, assemble, test, maintain, decommission and ultimately dispose. And notice that the machinery used to bury decommissioned turbine blades is not is not solar or wind powered.

      https://i2.wp.com/dawgonnit.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/020821_1619_THENOTSOCLE1.jpg?resize=800%2C600&ssl=1

    • jim2 commented:Willard, Appell, and Joshua are pushing policies that will produce social unrest. Where are your ethics?

      Oh knock it off. No one is promoting an energy shortage, we’re promoting an energy transition. You know that.

      The social unrest will come from climate change, deaths (already), sea level rise, expenses, climate refugees.

      Jim, I noticed you ignored my reply to your claim that “Problems due to global warming are like fusion power – always 50 years out.” How come?

      https://judithcurry.com/2021/10/06/ipcc-ar6-breaking-the-hegemony-of-global-climate-models/#comment-962394

      • Appell – energy shortages are already occurring due to the policies you promote. These problems are much more directly related to your favored policies than “climate change” weather extremes are related to CO2 emissions.

      • Slide 8 …

        The recent IPCC report also identified an increase in the frequency and intensity of heavy rain events. The IPCC looked at the period since 1950 in assessing trends in extreme events. However, looking only at the record since 1950 can lead to weather amnesia.

        New Jersey is facing the prospect of increased flooding. New Jersey is rightfully concerned about impacts from hurricanes. But these impacts are not necessarily worsening as a result of global warming. The worst hurricane to strike New Jersey in the historical record occurred in 1821 – a category 4 hurricane with a 13 foot storm surge.

        Hurricane Ida recently caused 7 inches of rain in New Jersey over 2 days. How does this compare with the historical record? Central Park in New York City has a data record that goes back to the 1860’s. The highest daily rainfall accumulation occurred during 1883, over 8 inches.

        Looking at the historical data of extreme weather events helps us avoid weather amnesia. Further, it reminds us that even worse extreme weather events have occurred in the historical record, and that elimination of fossil fuel emissions isn’t going to prevent extreme weather events.

      • Jim2, last winter’s energy shortage in Texas wasn’t due to renewable energy, it was due to bad policies, a bad grid, and power company greed. It was a huge blackout, greatly affected many people. People died.

        Blackouts are a problem to be solved. We have to stop emitting carbon or climate change will only get worse.

      • Jim2, those are just anecdotes.

        An increase in extreme rainfall events is a scientifically proven hypothesis linked to anthropogenic climate change:

        “Global warming already driving increases in rainfall extremes: Precipitation extremes are affecting even arid parts of the world, study shows,” Nature 3/7/16
        http://www.nature.com/news/global-warming-already-driving-increases-in-rainfall-extremes-1.19508

        “Increased record-breaking precipitation events under global warming,” J Lehmann et al, Clim. Change 132, 501–515 (2015).
        http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-015-1434-y

        Evidence for more extreme downpours:

        Papalexiou, S. M., & Montanari, A.(2019). Global and regional increase of precipitation extremes under global warming. Water Resources Research, 55,4901–4914. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018WR024067

      • It doesn’t matter if there was a worse hurricane in the distant past. It matters if there are worse storms now and in the future, more extreme rainfall events now and in the future, more and worse droughts now and in the future, etc.

        We’re living now, not them. Our children and their children will live in the future, not 1821, and will have to face the significant problems of climate change.

      • Joe - the reality based non climate scientist

        David Appell | October 26, 2021 at 1:46 pm |
        “Jim2, last winter’s energy shortage in Texas wasn’t due to renewable energy, it was due to bad policies, a bad grid, and power company greed. It was a huge blackout, greatly affected many people. People died.”

        Unbeknownst to Appell – The Wind produced less than 10% of capacity from Feb 12th through Feb 19th – Across the whole north american continent!

        That is 9 days for wind and solar not the 48 hours for natural gas

        Unbeknownst to Appel – The MRO and SPP grid also came close to collapsing – though not nearly as close as ERCOT since the wind/solar penetration was only in the 10-15% range instead of the 25% penetration.

        Unbeknownst to green zealots – wind and solar is not the solution

      • It doesn’t matter … in the … past.

        Interesting…

        You are making the valid case that theoretically reducing global temperature won’t prevent the kinds of events that occurred when global temperature was lower.

      • The reason that reducing global temperature won’t reduce the kinds of events that occurred when global temperature was lower is that these events were the function of dynamic variability, which is not a function of global temperature.

      • David – you don’t even have anecdotes to back up your claim that CO2 emissions have exacerbated weather extremes now, much less in the future. You don’t have anything that any reasonable, rational person would consider proof.

      • Europe is a good example of what the elimination of fossil fuels will do! They are having an energy crisis!

      • joe - the non climate scientist

        “Increased record-breaking precipitation events under global warming,” J Lehmann et al, Clim. Change 132, 501–515 (2015).
        http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-015-1434-y

        The second sentence From the article Appell cites
        “There is now medium confidence that human-induced greenhouse gases have contributed to changes in heavy precipitation events at the global scale. ”

        Definition of Medium confidence by the IPCC
        “Medium confidence means around a 50 per cent chance of being correct.”

        Appell – do you realize that the study admits that it has only a 50% chance of being correct !

      • jim2 wrote: David – you don’t even have anecdotes to back up your claim that CO2 emissions have exacerbated weather extremes now

        I cited three papers for you. I’ll keep going.

        “Here we show that, worldwide, the number of local record-breaking monthly temperature extremes is now on average five times larger than expected in a climate with no long-term warming.”

        – Coumou, D., A. Robinson and S. Rahmstorf, 2013: Global increase in record-breaking monthly-mean temperatures. Climatic Change, doi:10.1007/s10584-012-0668-1.

        ==

        “Extreme Precipitation Events are on the Rise,” Climate Central, 5/6/14.
        http://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/maps/extreme-precipitation-events-are-on-the-rise

      • Turbulent Eddie wrote:
        The reason that reducing global temperature won’t reduce the kinds of events that occurred when global temperature was lower is that these events were the function of dynamic variability, which is not a function of global temperature.

        What does that mean?

      • Turbulent Eddie commented:
        You are making the valid case that theoretically reducing global temperature won’t prevent the kinds of events that occurred when global temperature was lower.

        Of course such events will still occur if the temperature goes back to baseline. That’s obvious.

      • David, yep, those pay-walled articles prove a lot, I’m sure.

      • jim2 commented:David, yep, those pay-walled articles prove a lot, I’m sure.

        Not my problem.

        Go to your library.
        Search the web for a PDF.
        Try Sci-Hub.
        Write to the authors and ask for a copy.
        At least read the abstracts.

      • So the third link is available. They only used data from a warming period. They should have selected periods of no warming or cooling for comparison. It’s exemplary of the sloppy work coming from some quarters of climate science.

      • Third link of what? Explain yourself.

      • jim2 commented:
        Europe is a good example of what the elimination of fossil fuels will do! They are having an energy crisis!

        And this is all due to renewable energy, huh?

        It’s not due to the sharp increase in the price of natural gas (up 78% in the US market in 12 months) or oil (Brent crude up 101%)? Or the massive problems in the supply chain?

        Come on.

        If people can’t afford to heat their homes, their government should give them sufficient financial aid, of course.

      • jim2 commented:
        Europe is a good example of what the elimination of fossil fuels will do! They are having an energy crisis!

        It’s not due to the sharp increase in the price of natural gas (up 78% in the US market in 12 months) or oil (Brent crude up 101%)? Or the massive problems in the supply chain?

        Come on.

      • jim2 commented:
        So the third link is available. They only used data from a warming period. They should have selected periods of no warming or cooling for comparison. It’s exemplary of the sloppy work coming from some quarters of climate science.

        Sure Dr. Scientist Jim2. How do you assess their methodology, which they explain in section 2.3, Assessment of Trends?

      • The local DA likes to peddle tyranny by numbers using scripted peer review. Want to know why these papers on growth in precipitation start around 1950, or later, measuring increasing precipitation?

        This chart shows the growth of precipitation throughout the 20th century:

        https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-us-and-global-precipitation

        If CO2 leads heat, and heat leads evaporation, then why didn’t heat during early warm periods during the 20th century lead to more evaporation, and subsequent precipitation? Or is increasing numbers of reservoirs, and irrigation perhaps the causation?

        EPA: On average, total annual precipitation has increased over land areas in the United States and worldwide (see Figures 1 and 2). Since 1901, global precipitation has increased at an average rate of 0.10 inches per decade, while precipitation in the contiguous 48 states has increased at a rate of 0.20 inches per decade.

      • First you explain why they didn’t do the same analysis for global temperature flat and down periods. It’s possible heavy rains have been increasing irregardless of the temp trend. Nice dodge though.

      • Still not allowed to post a comment with actual content.

        Why not Judith?
        Why are you censoring me?

      • I think I know why my substantive comments are being censored…..

        Same reason all deniers do.

      • jim2 commented:
        First you explain why they didn’t do the same analysis for global temperature flat and down periods.

        No, I don’t have to explain anything.

        You have to explain why their methodology didn’t prove their claim. It’s explained very well in their methodology section. Have at it.

      • jungletrunks commented:If CO2 leads heat, and heat leads evaporation, then why didn’t heat during early warm periods during the 20th century lead to more evaporation, and subsequent precipitation?

        How many times do you have to be told that CO2 isn’t the only factor that affects climate, and this was especially true in the early 20th century when CO2 was low, solar irradiance was changing, and skies were clearing of volcanic dust?

      • Another reply to Jim2 doesn’t appear.

        Why Judith Curry?

      • jungletrunks wrote:
        If CO2 leads heat, and heat leads evaporation, then why didn’t heat during early warm periods during the 20th century lead to more evaporation, and subsequent precipitation?

        What says it didn’t?

        OF COURSE emitted CO2 leads heat. There’s absolutely not doubt about that whatsoever, an infant child can see it. Claiming anything else, I’m sorry, truly idiotic.

      • jungletrunks wrote:
        If CO2 leads heat, and heat leads evaporation, then why didn’t heat during early warm periods during the 20th century lead to more evaporation, and subsequent precipitation?

        What says it didn’t?

        OF COURSE emitted CO2 leads heat. There’s absolutely not doubt about that whatsoever, an infant child can see it. Claiming anything else, I’m sorry, is truly id.io.ti.c.

      • Funny, you can’t use the word “id.io.ti.c” on this site.

        WordPress is for child.ren.

      • With early parole from postal incarceration the local DA should be all smiles, yet his petty misdemeanor logic ensues. Better call Saul to hone up on charm skills, DA; also consider looking into an apprenticeship with one who has true skill in your trade. I’m not sure if your parole officer would approve, but ambulance chasing chops can only go so far.

        “How many times do you have to be told that CO2 isn’t the only factor that affects climate, and this was especially true in the early 20th century when CO2 was low, solar irradiance was changing, and skies were clearing of volcanic dust?”

        We all know water vapor is a GHG, DA, no need for the shake down here. To your point; there were, as we all know, hot periods in the early 20th century. But my point is that it doesn’t matter that CO2 atmospheric content was lower then; your simplistic argument is that with the rise of CO2, and resultant heat, that this led to more evaporation. But implicitly your argument is that without CO2 there can’t be more evaporation even if there’s more heat, but even if there was more heat, without CO2 there can’t be more evaporation? Regardless, it’s your logic. I accept your onion version of idiot BTW.

  76. How Europe’s energy crisis threatens to push up bills

    In the European Union, around 6.9% of people, or around 30 million people, said in a 2019 Eurostat survey that they could not afford to heat their home sufficiently.

    But many experts say that number could increase as natural gas prices surge to all-time highs in Europe, increasing by more than 500% since last year.

    “The increase of energy prices is also coinciding with an increase in energy consumption, mainly because of COVID. A lot of people were at home more often. And for this reason, they use more energy,” said Lidija Živčič, who coordinates the EmpowerMed energy poverty programme from Slovenia.

    She added that people who lost work due to the COVID-19 crisis could also be impacted by the price surge.

    “Energy poverty is no longer just an issue for four or five people with low incomes,” says Mari Carmen Gómez. “Even someone who has a job and earns a half-decent salary is finding it very difficult to make ends meet.”

    https://www.euronews.com/2021/10/26/europe-s-energy-crisis-why-it-s-not-just-spain-s-poor-fearing-a-rise-in-electricity-bills

  77. David Appell
    “If your hypothesis is correct, why isn’t the temperature of the nightside regolith continually declining, from when it first leaves sunlight to when it next enters sunlight?

    Instead the temperature is constant on the nightside. Your hypothesis of heat capacity does not explain that.”

    Actually the temperature of the night side regolith is continually declining, from when it first leaves sunlight to when it next enters sunlight.
    The temperature is constant 240K from below 0.3m of the surface on the lunar equator.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4447774/bin/40064_2014_Article_1586_Fig5_HTML.jpg

    I think the diurnal temperature fluctuations do not go deeper. Also I am sure the numbers change with latitude.

    https://www.cristos-vournas.com

    • The night side of the Moon does cool from dusk to dawn, from about 125K to 95K at the equator.

      The standard method calculates the equivalent black-body temperature for Earth, by imagining that the solar irradiance is spread evenly over the whole sphere. Which gives a black-body temperature of 278.6K, and minus 30% albedo is 254.83K. An additional 33K of proposed greenhouse effect raises that to 287.83K, or 14.68°C

      For the Moon with 11% albedo the figure is 270.6K, which is 73.3K higher than the real global mean surface temperature of the Moon, at 197.3K. So what’s gone wrong?

      Calculating the Lunar surface temperature for the sunlit side only, (divide by two and not by four) and averaging that with the mean temperature of the dark side, gives a far more sensible value.

      394*0.5^0.25 = 331.31K
      minus 11% albedo
      331.31*0.89^0.25 = 321.8
      and averaged with a dark side mean temperature of 90K (guess, it could be less)
      (321.8+90)/2 = 205.9K

      Note that the Lunar dark side temperature is dependent on the regolith heat capacity, which if higher would raise the dark side temperature but make little difference to maximum temperatures on the sunlit side.

      Earth’s sunlit side (at any given time), is cooler than the sunlit surface of the Moon, mainly due to clouds and water vapour, but Earth’s global mean surface temperature is far higher than on the Moon, primarily because of the oceans keeping its dark side so warm.

      The standard model removes the night cycle, and falsely attributes all of the influence of heat capacity on mean global surface temperature to the atmospheric greenhouse effect, and treats heat capacity merely as zero sum thermal dampening.

      Earth’s black-body temperature for the sunlit side only, after 30% albedo, 6% Rayleigh scattering, and 16% solar near infrared absorption by water vapour, is 12.5°C. As opposed to 48.65°C for the mean BB temperature of the Lunar sunlit side.

      There are additional losses on Earth from non-radiative surface cooling, and gains from poleward heat transport, and from longwave back radiation.

    • Christos Vournas |wrote:
      Actually the temperature of the night side regolith is continually declining, from when it first leaves sunlight to when it next enters sunlight.

      Slightly, yes. But in my blog post my interest was in the radiative physics, i.e. the nightside.

      https://davidappell.blogspot.com/2012/04/norfolk-constabulary-made-wrong-charges.html

  78. Ireneusz Palmowski

    The animation below shows the rate at which the surface temperature of the Northeast Pacific is dropping as a result of the blocked circulation over the Bering Strait.
    https://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/data/5km/v3.1/current/animation/gif/ssta_animation_30day_large.gif
    Due to the increase in solar activity (in the solar southern hemisphere), a further decline in the Niño 3.4 index can be expected.
    https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/nino34.png

  79. There is a constant turnover of atmospheric water content at a cycling rate of about 9 days. Hydrologist Dimitris Koutsoyiannis finds no evidence of intensification against background decadal variability. As he suggests – there is likely a small change in a large energy dynamic.

    ‘According to Fig. 14, the total evaporation on Earth (precisely equal to the total precipitation according to Eq. 14) is 522 700 km3/yr and corresponds to 5.227×1017 kg/yr of water flux. For the average temperature of Earth equal to 14.46 ◦C (Table 2), the latent heat of evaporation (calculated from Koutsoyiannis, 2012; Eq. 40) is 2.467 × 106
    J/kg. Thus, the total energy involved in the hydrological cycle is 1.290 × 1024 J/yr or 1290 ZJ/yr. This corresponds to 4.086×1016 W, which, if reduced to the Earth’s area (5.101× 1014 m2), results in an energy flux density of 80 W m−2 that is precisely equal to the value given by Trenberth et al. (2009). This is about half the global solar energy absorbed by the Earth (161 W m−2, according to Trenberth et
    al., 2009). Compared to the human energy production, which in the past decade was about 170 000 TWh/yr or 0.612 ZJ/yr (corresponding to the year 2014; Mamassis et al., 2020), the total energy involved in the water cycle is 2100 times higher.
    Put differently, the total human energy production in 1 year equals the energy consumed (or released) by the hydrological cycle in about 4 h.’ https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/24/3899/2020/hess-24-3899-2020.pdf

    I might add that at the surface there is a balance of radiant and latent heat that depends on surface water availability. The radiant heat is lost in nanoseconds. Latent heat is carried slowly up in water vapor until reaching a height where it condenses.

  80. Isakov Dmitry

    this is really annoying. Why comments are not going through

    • Comments usually don’t appear for me either. Judith agrees to WordPress’s censoring of keywords, which is incredibly broad, or censors on IDs.

      Which is it, Judith?

      Of course she won’t respond.

      Am about ready to leave this site because of such games.

      • Ok. Then I will just have to simplify my response to your comments.

        You are wrong ;))))

        Unfortunately arguments defending this statement are not allowed, so you will have to just trust me ;)))

        And yes, I agree with you. Time to leave this site

      • Chief –

        I owe you an apology. Remember when you said the following?:

        Robert I. Ellison | October 4, 2021 at 7:30 pm |
        Florida deaths peaked at 401 on 27 August 2021 and have been in decline since to 18 on 3 October. Joshua insists that the CDC data is unreliable based on another newspaper article. God this is nuts.

        And in response I told you that no, the CDC data are not unreliable but that there was a lag in the recording of deaths and in the end the number would be much higher than 18?

        Remember how you reacted to that? How you got insulting? How you called me “nuts?” How you told me that newspaper articles describing the reasons for the lag were “yellow journalism”?

        And do you remember how on October 19 I told you the number had been updated to 126, and that in fact the number you called “definitive” was off by 700%

        So I owe you an apology. The number you said was definitive was NOT off by 700% after all.

        No, that number has been updated. The number is now 141. So actually you’re getting on towards being off by 800%. The lag may have now been closed – with the karat number being updated AFTER 3 WEEKS. So your error may not reach the level of 800%. But sometimes the lag in recoding deaths in Florida has taken as long as over a month so it’s hard to say just yet.

        I’ve almost given up on you having a sense of integrity and accountability so as to acknowledge your error and to acknowledge I was correct. It seems that you simply don’t have the psychological makeup to be able to do so. You know, that whole grandiosity thingy and all. But it’s never to late and I will always hold out a bit of hope no matter how unlikely it might seem that you’ll step up to the plate.

      • Josher is very weird. I said that one uses the available data and does not create 1000’s of deaths for partisan political purposes. Florida cases and deaths continue to decline. The latest count is 106 deaths in the week to 21 October.

        http://ww11.doh.state.fl.us/comm/_partners/covid19_report_archive/covid19-data/covid19_data_latest.pdf

        I said he was nuts for repeating this BS endlessly at many inopportune instances. That’s obviously still correct. Where’s a quality control censor when called for?

      • Please beware your wishes, Chief.

      • Joe - the non epidemiologist

        Josh –
        Instead of being a jerk

        can you give us a link to the CDC data that shows you are correct and everyone else is wrong.

        the data you are citing conflicts with the data from both the florida department of health , and John Hopkins and 91-divoc

        chief gave you a link that shows Florida deaths are no where close to what you say the CDC is showing

      • Hi Joe, thousands of New York City municipal employees marched across the Brooklyn Bridge in protest of vax mandates.

        At Joe Biden’s request, the city is set to fire 50,000 city employees Friday.

        This is why Capt. Queeg is obsessing about Florida. He assumes Florida’s governor will challenge Biden in 2024. His hopes of using Covid to generate hatred of Republicans is fading. They’re aren’t in the streets shouting “let’s go Brandon” in Brooklyn out of anger at DeSantis. Queeg needs squirrels and strawberries STAT.

        By the way, twice as many cases in the last 7-days in New York as there are in Florida. It’s not due to the high prevalence of testing either- California is testing at the same rate as New York and has less than half the number of cases as New York. Fall is here and authoritarianism isn’t stopping the spread of Delta in New York.

      • Joe –

        https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailydeaths|new_death|select

        You have to select the parameters.

        Chief continuously cites the data for the current date, to deliberately (and transparently) obscure the effed of the lag.

        On Oct 4 he stated that the 7-day moving verge for number of deaths in Florida for Oct 3 was “18,” and that number was “definitive.”

        I told him that number would go up. By a lot. Because of the lag. He said I was nuts. He mocked the very idea that it would take weeks for that lag to close.

        It’s now up to 141, up from the 126 that was listed on Oct 19 (for Oct 3).

      • Joe –

        This is why Jeff is lying. Here is what he said on Sept 22:

        jeffnsails850 | September 22, 2021 at 2:18 pm |
        […]

        The death rate in Florida .8 per 100k in the last 7 days, is lower than that in NY minus NYC (1.5 per 100k) and lower than NYC (1 per 100k)…

        […]

        But there were more deaths in NY over the last 7 days than in Florida,

        I explained to Jeff at that time how he was wrong. His error was also becicause he failed to grasp the simple concept of the lag.

        So, Jeff said there were more deaths in the week prior to Sept 22 in NY than in Florida.

        Let’s see how that worked out, shall we?

        Now that the lag is effectively closed, according to the CDC, the number of deaths in Florida for that week was in the area of 1,624. The number of deaths in NY (city and state) was about 252.

        Is 262 larger than 1,624, as Jeff said?

      • And Joe –

        > the data you are citing conflicts with the data from both the florida department of health , and John Hopkins

        That’s simply not true. Have you descended to the point where all you have left is lying also?

        The data I am citing is from the CDC, and broadly consistent with ANY of the other reliable sources, including the Florida DOH.

        Look for one statement I mads which isn’t and kcixd a quote.

        You can’t becauas there aren’t any.

        Once again:

        I said the following.

        > “One again, per the CDC, the number is 61 for Oct. 13. And it will go up. ”

        That number was for one day. I said that number for one day will go up, because of the lag..

        A number for one day isn‘t a trend.

        That doesn’t mean to suggest that the trend is increasing.

        You watch. That number of 61 will, in fact, go up – even as the trend continues to decrease (as it has been doing, significantly, since the beginning of September). I have stated repeatedly that the trend is significantly down, because it clearly is.

        You see, Joe, that number for that one day can go up because of the lag even as the overall trend is going down.

        Can you really not understand that, or are you just pretending to be that dense for some odd reason?

        That doesn’t mean that your numbers weren’t totally wrong, and that you and your pals repeatedly show the inability to understand something as simple as the lag in the reporting of data in Florida.

      • And Joe –

        I said the following (with reference to the 7-dag moving average in Florida):

        > Per the CDC it’s now up to 61. It will go higher.

        The 7-day moving average for Oct 13 is now up to 76.

        Yeah, exactly as I said it went higher.

        That doesn’t mean that the trend at time was increasing (in fact it was decreasing).

        Do you understand now?

      • Queeg says the CDC are “liars” and nobody should look at death stats.

        CDC says Covid is spreading twice as fast in New York as Florida right now. Queeg says the CDC are liars and we shouldn’t look at cases, we should look at deaths, but only in September.

        Queeg says Ron DeSantis is “anti-vax” and everyone outside of Florida loves mandates, but the New York Times says Brooklyn has mass protests against mandates.

        Queeg needs squirrels because “let’s go Brandon” is trending.

      • Joe –

        Jeff and chief are proven liars. I have provided the quotes.

        Part of their lying it so say people said things but never oeicde any quotes.

        This is the crew you want to join?

      • Joster is an irredeemable radical spin doctor indulging in endlessly repeated lies and insults. Apart from being pointless it is obsessive to the point of being disruptive and disturbing.

      • Chief –

        > irredeemable radical spin doctor

        I quoted you.

        Unfortunately, your fragile ego simply won’t allow you to acknowledge that you made an error.

      • The context was declining delta variant cases and deaths in Florida – and that continues to be the case. Contrasted with wild stories about how bad it was because it is a red state.

        Joster is an irredeemable pest.

    • I know you are but what am I.

  81. hahha. So I’m only aloud to complain about the comment dynamics on this blog and nothing else. ;))))))

  82. Ok. David, If I cannot provide arguments to defend my position I will just have to have a short comments to our previous exchanges.

    You are wrong ;))))

  83. I’ve had it with this site.

    Too many of my comments don’t show up. Something censors them. Judith Curry abets this censoring.

    Ironic, given her conservative political stance.

    This has become a waste of time and I’m done with it.

  84. Richard Greene

    “Problems exist. Problems can be solved.
    That’s what humans do.”
    Mr. Apple

    My short list of problems not solved:

    Solar power at night
    Wind power with wind under 6mph
    Getting permits for a new nuclear power plant
    (A cure for) The common cold, influenza or COVID
    Crime
    Poverty
    Terrorism
    Politicians lying
    Hysterical climate alarmists predicting a coming climate
    crisis for 64 years in a row, so far, while sensible people
    try to enjoy the excellent current climate.

    Lots of problems can’t be solved.
    When leftists are in charge, they often get worse!

  85. Geoff Sherrington

    For a couple of years now, the value of this site has been debased by individuals who turn it into conversations of their own making. That is not showing courtesy to a host who deserves it.
    Can you people who have repeatedly shown this poor performance please give it a rest for a while.
    FWIW, nothing that these serial offenders has offered has added to my prior knowledge. Meaning, you know a hell of a lot less than you think you do. Geoff S

  86. Ireneusz Palmowski

    The upcoming winter in the Northern Hemisphere could be surprising in many regions. It begins with a pronounced braking of the polar vortex in the upper stratosphere. These anomalies will move into the lower stratosphere and upper troposphere over time.
    https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_UGRD_ANOM_OND_NH_2021.png
    https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_WAVE1_MEAN_OND_NH_2021.png

  87. From a recent email sent to me. We have zealots from both sides who spend their time repeating word for word the same points endlessly.

    But there are solutions that maximise human development and economic growth and conserves and restores natural environments. Surely that’s the common goal.

    ‘I’ve been following the climate issue on the blogs since about 2006. Judith Curry is my single most trusted source, but I must say I appreciate your persistent comments on her blog.

    The two things I appreciate most are:

    1. Your focus on abrupt climate change as the most serious concern.
    2. Your focus on soil carbon capture, including your advocacy of Rattan Lal’s work.

    In a world in which the issue has become highly politicized, with nonsense from both “alarmists” and “skeptics,” sane voices are rare. Insofar as a focus on real solutions is desirable, the fact that almost no one is focused on the issues above is frustrating.

    I just followed you on Twitter, but it doesn’t look as if you are very active there.

    Is there a place to follow you other than as a commenter on Judith’s blog?’

    • Chief –

      Stop lying

      I owe you an apology. Remember when you said the following?:

      Robert I. Ellison | October 4, 2021 at 7:30 pm |
      Florida deaths peaked at 401 on 27 August 2021 and have been in decline since to 18 on 3 October. Joshua insists that the CDC data is unreliable based on another newspaper article. God this is nuts.

      And in response I told you that no, the CDC data are not unreliable but that there was a lag in the recording of deaths and in the end the number would be much higher than 18?

      Remember how you reacted to that? How you got insulting? How you called me “nuts?” How you told me that newspaper articles describing the reasons for the lag were “yellow journalism”?

      And do you remember how on October 19 I told you the number had been updated to 126, and that in fact the number you called “definitive” was off by 700%

      So I owe you an apology. The number you said was definitive was NOT off by 700% after all.

      No, that number has been updated. The number is now 141. So actually you’re getting on towards being off by 800%. The lag may have now been closed – with the karat number being updated AFTER 3 WEEKS. So your error may not reach the level of 800%. But sometimes the lag in recoding deaths in Florida has taken as long as over a month so it’s hard to say just yet.

      I’ve almost given up on you having a sense of integrity and accountability so as to acknowledge your error and to acknowledge I was correct. It seems that you simply don’t have the psychological makeup to be able to do so. You know, that whole grandiosity thingy and all. But it’s never to late and I will always hold out a bit of hope no matter how unlikely it might seem that you’ll step up to the plate.