by Judith Curry
Discussion thread for your reflections and prognostications
Where to begin? 2022 was a wild ride. While politics and the economy seem depressing, I spotted a FASCINATING article
Top 22 Breakthroughs of 2022 versus 1922.
After reading this article, I feel much better about 2022, and cautiously optimistic about 2023. The Twitter Files and the great twitter unblocking make me cautiously hopeful that free speech can abound, which is the most fundamental pre-requisite for common sense to prevail in human affairs.
I look forward to your thoughts on 2022 and 2023, and please provide links to reflections/prognostications that you find interesting.
We will be spending the New Year weekend watching the wild weather in the U.S. west. Yesterday we received 1″ of rain, which finally melted the remains of a big “cement” snowfall from several weeks ago whose heavy weight brought down many large branches of our juniper trees. The rain is now transitioning to snow, still pretty warm so it won’t start accumulating until tonite. I’m expecting another large cement snowfall accumulation over the coming week (nonstop atmospheric rivers), and more tree damage. Once we get a lull in the snow, there will be a big chainsaw massacre at our house. We need all the rain/snow we can get out here, but please can it only rain at night and snow in small but frequent doses.
And finally, my (nearly) annual end-of-year post is an opportunity to thank commenters and guest posters for their contributions. I also appreciate emails from people who choose not to post comments on the blog.
Best wishes to each of you for healthy, happy, and prosperous New Year
Fascinating article about 1922 vs 2022.
My only objection had to do with their claims about lab-grown meat. Their analysis totally ignored the many beneficial aspects of animals on farms. I discuss that in the post below.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/11/animal-vegetable-or-e-o-wilson/
Best of New Years wishes to you and yours, good lady, and many thanks for all the work you’ve done and continue to do to move the climate discussion forwards.
w/
Diamantis has overlooked 2022’s greatest breakthrough in bipartisan climate communication, the inflatable polar bear suit.
Unlike the brutish, short and sweltering fake bearskins worn by CFACT at COP-23 Paris:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2015/12/its-christmas-time-in-cite.html
The batter inflated white polyester bears debuted by their opposite numbers at COP27 stand seven feet six inches tall, yet are light enough to dance in the desert heat of Sharm el Sheikh
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2022/12/advances-in-climate-communication.html
Thanks for what you continue to do. I read every issue of your blog with appreciation admittedly some are above my knowledge base. In a world where everything is hyped for click bait and everything that happens is the “greatest catastrophe that has ever happened”, it is no wonder Gen Z is the most depressed and suicidal generation (WSJ today). We hope 2023 brings more truth and balance to public discussions.
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Happy New Year to you, and everybody else, especially to Elon Musk. When I close my eyes, I can see him carrying that sink into Twitter building.
I hope SWOT brings more precise information about climate change in 2023. Happy new year from México Judith.
Prediction: The growing sickness of the power grid will get a lot more attention.
https://www.cfact.org/2022/12/30/blackouts-for-christmas-a-sick-grid-gift/
Combined with
https://www.cfact.org/2022/12/27/ferc-considers-constraining-renewables/
Finally confront the deceptive green renewables narrative:
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2022/12/the-new-normaling-of-blackouts/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Heartland+Weekly%3A+In+2023%2C+Expect+the+Unexpected&utm_campaign=HW+%2812-31-22%29
I am only halfway through Mededith Angwin’s “Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of our Electric Grid,” but I like it a lot.
It was published two years ago, before the February, 2021 Texas grid disaster, and it is timely.
Happy New Year, Judith. I follow your blog closely. You are doing us a great serve.
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Robotics #14 … The robots would be able to perform boring, repetitive, and unsafe tasks and free humans up to do safer, more productive work. “This means a future of abundance,” says Musk. “A future where there is no poverty, where you could have whatever you want in terms of products and services. It really is a fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it.”
Whenever technological advancement is discussed, invariably the above statement, or one similar, is invoked. And, for the most part, civilization has been transformed … materially … with great benefit for humanity.
While technology has moved by leaps and bounds, humans have essentially remained the same. Yes, one could say we’ve read more, maybe our IQs have gone a bit higher, live longer … yet we still are a group with a wide range of abilities, needs and desires. It’s become apparent that not everyone should invest in a college education. In 1994, Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein wrote The Bell Curve, and followed by other works, which showed how a large segment of the population were actually harmed by a societal narrative of educational advancement as synonymous with human fulfillment and happiness. Of course what’s not stated, but implied, in that narrative is that failure to achieve educational advancement makes one somehow … less. (I’ll leave it at that.)
The issue of what ‘work’ means for humanity is never broached. In the above statement, Musk seems to think that if we have robots doing all the messy tasks then we will all be free to achieve some higher state. Maybe that’s true. From my experience, working in the construction industry for almost 3 decades, I’ve found that humans need an activity which gives them a sense of accomplishment, personal responsibility, financial income and has the opportunity for them to learn from their successes and failures. In short … adds to their dignity as individuals. I call this work.
Who wants to dig a ditch? Believe me, it’s a back breaking task. I know I’ve dug many. Yet, taking all ditch digging away from humans also takes away the opportunity for someone an activity to, at least temporarily, provide for themselves. This is an extreme example, but one that is real. Western society, advanced as it is, has not eliminated drug dependence, crime, suicide, depression …
Technological advancement, while fantastic, is not the answer. And may actually, in some ways, have a negative affect. We need to be more cognizant of what increases individual human dignity.
Happy New Year!!!
Bravo!
Work is important for personal value, despite the European disdain for American identification with it. Even being coerced to do things you don’t like has value, as you may discover in later years (been drafted?).
Comfort is not necessarily valuable.
I think an important question is, “What kind of economy will allow everyone to live well from not working?” Not all the burger flippers and “telephone sanitizers” have musical or other artistic talents that will allow them to be stimulated or rewarded from doing things that no one would be willing to pay them for. I suspect the outcome will be higher use of recreational drugs. The “Soma” of Brave New World will come in many forms.
I remember being an advocate for automation when I was in my 20s. A well-educated man 20 years my senior told me I hadn’t thought it through thoroughly. He advocated for automation only when necessary or if it could do a superior job to humans. He said that elevators should have human operators so that people could have jobs and not be displaced. Sixty years later, I think that Jack was wiser than me.
Could a society such as envisioned by Musk allow any one person to have as much wealth as four-million people?
I hesitate writing this for a number of reasons, one of which is a misinterpretation of my intent. Reading the 2022 vs 1922 piece led to a reflection on how our society and civilization have changed over a century.
My grandmother died in a state hospital. She was committed in 1928 and passed away there in 1964. I never visited her. My father was 5 when she was institutionalized and he was partially under the care of older siblings until adulthood. He committed suicide at 59. I first knew he was having problems when I got a call at work and my aunt said “Your dad is losing his mind”. Just the right clinical touch to put an 18 year old’s mind at ease.
Over the decades I wondered what my grandmother’s life was like being mentally ill, but also she fared surrounded by others in the same condition.
Over the last several years, I think I have discovered what she was observing. I see behavior almost on a daily basis that is certainly abnormal and possibly reflecting mental illness. I see it on our streets. The homeless in a catatonic state paralyzed from drugs. I see it when an unsatisfied customer pulls a gun to get attention. I see it when a woman begins screaming at the person behind her in line because he asked if she knew he was already in line. I see it in fast food restaurants with all out brawls between customers and employees. I see it when a woman pushes a 3 year old onto a train track. I see it when public officials engage in make believe dress up. The abnormal is being accepted as normal.
Deinstitutionalization had its intellectual roots in the 1950s gaining momentum in subsequent decades. It was thought to be enlightened for the individual but I have to question if it is best for the sick and if it is best for the sustainability of our civilization.
While not laying blame on the most vulnerable of our population, there seems to be a fine line between what the general society accepts as behavioral norms and the forces to best sustain a civilization. What was once found only in institutions is now amongst us, after barely a blink.
“ Civilizations die by suicide not by murder “
Arnold Toynbee
“ Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.”
“ From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.”
Will Durant
“ When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.”
Carl Sandburg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FkRrZhIUcAAHIIT?format=png&name=small
Kid … thank you for sharing your experiences.
In these pages we talk about how humans have a tendency on social matters to react supporting extreme opinions/actions instead of deliberative, measured responses.
State institutions are an excellent example of such a tendency. In 1972, Geraldo Rivera’s report on Willowbrook State School showed abuse but did not make any lasting contribution for reform. It did result in closures. Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of McMurphy and Louise Fletchers’ Nurse Ratched in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoos’ Nest’ in 1975, a move based on the book by Ken Kesey in 1962, didn’t seem to move reform either. It became fashionable to bash state institutions instead of dealing with the actual issues.
And now we have mentally ill, and mentally stable, people living homeless. It’s that human tendency to look away, and to accept the quick and easy ‘solution’. Not all the time, but sometimes … we’re cowards. All of us.
Here’s to 2023!!! May it be the year of the brave!
Thanks Bill, I couldn’t agree more that we are prone to look away and want to believe in quick and easy solutions. Many social problems are incredibly intractable challenges and, at times, government just doesn’t have the answers.
I didn’t do a good job of addressing the other theme of my comment. That our society, and long long term, our civilization, is under threat. I see signs of aberrant behavior every day, the kind that use to be found only in our institutions . The sustainability of a civilization depends on many virtues. They aren’t those things that are popular or politically expedient. Sometimes there will be losers and sometimes there will be those excluded. An aspirational culture cannot have winning participation trophies as a guiding principle.
Societal rules, expectations and sanctions exist for a reason, to perpetuate that civilization. There is a hierarchy of human behavior that gives some cultures a greater chance of survival than others. Promoting the lowest common denominator as a societal goal is a race to the bottom. Tolerance of counterproductive and aberrant behavior gets more counterproductive and aberrant behavior. It also gets speaking of that civilization in the past tense.
Kid …
> Many social problems are incredibly intractable challenges and, at times, government just doesn’t have the answers.
Looks like the Canadians have an answer. (sarcasm)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/maid-in-canada-whats-behind-the-euthanasia-scandal-suicide-rent-trudeau-mental-illness-equal-rights-11672397399?st=ilenjde2sscaj09&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Sometimes it’s not having an answer, but just accepting the hard work that some problems entail. With mental illness (as with many other issues) there’s no easy way out.
“…, but just accepting the hard work that some problems entail.”
If suicide, homelessness, and recreational drug use are increasing, then hard work alone may not be enough. Unless the problems are getting better, society is either not doing the right things, or enough of the right things. Many people think that we are headed in the wrong direction, and unfettered technology may be responsible.
Clyde … ‘Hard work’ can be thought of two ways:
1) As a societal value.
2) As an action. Not all social problems have a solution, certainly in a mathematical sense. Examples are suicide, homelessness and drug use. There’s no magic bullet, no magic algorithm. The choices are to do nothing or to ‘work hard’ by trying a multifaceted approach.
Technology is just a tool. While it has value, it isn’t a value. I think you are correct when you say we are headed in the wrong direction. We’re adrift because we’ve become unmoored from our values. Instead of looking at technology, we would do better looking at who/why the lines have been severed.
At my house, 800 ft. above RNO airport elevation, the snow started about the time you posted this. At noon the airport is reporting a depth of 0.5, there’s 2.5 in. on my driveway, and NWS’s sport forecast predicting about 7 in. total. Looks like I’ll be out early tomorrow A.M using fossil fuel to clean the driveway. Another extreme weather event due to climate change!
*NWS spot forecast
And another example of what a missing letter can do: in the linked Top 22 Breakthroughs article, “It is worth nothing [sic] that there are currently 37 privately funded fusion companies working on commercializing various forms of fusion.”
LOL – especially since I’d bet this is about the same number that have been working on fusion for the last 50 years.
Mostly techno-utopian nonsense.
Lab meat: Worldwide agar production peaked at 10 million tons a year. Worldwide sugar production is 180 million tons or so.
Worldwide meat production is 340 million tons.
In what universe is lab grown meat going to be anything but a Whole Foods+ type product?
Fusion power: the problems with oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear fission are scale. The problem with fusion is that it doesn’t even have the EROEI to start with. The experiment was cute, but there is no indication whatsoever that this method is going to scale; is going to achieve actual overall energy payback (i.e. energy for the fusion device, to mine the deuterium/tritium fuel, to build the transmission grids, to mine the materials to build the lasers and magnets and what not, etc etc). This “discovery” does nothing to change the multi-decade paradigm of fusion being “10 years away”.
Qubits: we already can’t build secure code for 32 or 64 binary bit machines; the possibility of having significant code checking coverage or output checking, much less security, for even 100 qubits = zero. We are already getting into the million monkeys on typewriters area – the problem with this paradigm is someone has to check all of the monkey output to see what is of value.
Small scale fusion reactors: doesn’t change the lawfare already conducted against nuclear. Small scale reactors are also less efficient: they produce more waste per kWh output than the large scale ones. And surely higher waste output per unit energy output is going to make the anti-nuclear folks change their minds…not.
As for 1922: that author didn’t try very hard.
1922 saw DeWalt invent the radial arm saw – something which has contributed to real world buildings for 100 years.
1922 also saw the origin of modern weather forecasting: the method of using differential equations to do so was proposed then by Lewis Fry Richardson.
Other 1922: Vitamin E discovered. First regular radio broadcasts for entertainment. Niels Bohr gets the Nobel Prize. Muller sets out the laws of heredity – the basis for modern genetics. Polarographic analysis of chemicals is invented.
This is all in Wiki – the author clearly didn’t try very hard to look for 1922 notable achievements.
Predictions:
Multipolarity is going to accelerate. This includes ongoing inflation in the West – part due to social and political discouragement continuing underinvestment in fossil fuel exploration and development, part due to government policies like sanctions. The West has 40% of the world’s oil reserves under sanctions (Russia, Iran and Venezuela). Another 40% is no longer obviously under the West’s thumb (Saudi Arabia and the most of the rest of the Middle East). The EU + US consumes around 37% of the world’s oil right now. This is not a balancing equation. Energy directly affects cost of living and particularly food prices.
Ongoing economic suffering among the not-1% in the West will lead to ever greater government/1% crackdowns on dissent even as “bad” political parties keep growing.
The UK will have more prime ministers in the last 7 years than it did in the previous 30.
The majority of G7 countries will be in recession, accelerating the relative decline of G7 share of global GDP.
The US power grid will receive some money, but will fritter it away on more transmission connections for solar PV and wind even as the percentage of time in which major electricity power pools’ electricity prices are negative, increase.
More blackouts, higher utility costs.
Tech industry layoffs will accelerate as Musk demonstrates that Twitter can operate just fine with 1/2 or less of staff; that plus the maturity of the industry and its increasing reliance on government polciy means there is no longer any benefit to trying to preoccupy the potential “disruptors”. BTW: Twitter auction in January 17…
>”Mostly techno-utopian nonsense.” [opening statement from wolf1 comment]
Agreed.
The Diamantis article reminds me of the dreary 1950’s Reader Digest never-ending “Power of Positive Thinking” articles.
A much more ‘like it’ summary from Wolf1, IMO.
My 2p worth is …
‘Synthetic data’ is not a proxy for randomness and that is where our logic machines continue to suck because as a species we cannot get a handle on what random means.
All human babies appear to be born with a logarithmic mindset which we then batter into submission via our arithmetic rules. It has been suggested that it is this which makes us unable to think random or accept random as a part of our critical thinking (which might mean a end to many of our so called ‘tipping points’ etc) … and be more careful about how we collect what we refer to as data (which includes a whole heap of hype) … it might also reduce gambling habits although it could increase them too. Depends how random we can become I guess.
Let us make 2023 a truly great transition from consensus madness to random individual freedom and see sanoty restored to its rightful place. Happy New Year to All.
Posted at Lucia’s but relevant here
Happy New Year all.
Thanks for helping make 2022 bearable.
I like predictions rather than resolutions.
None of mine worked out last year.
Not uncommon.
So 2023.
Putin will live forever and the war will still be going for for the second of its 10 years.
Trump will be made the new head of the United Nations.
No severe earthquakes or weather events for the first 3 months of the year.
No Stockmarket correction and collapse.
Tesla and Twitter will combine to form a super tech monster doubling in value.
Resolution a second 70 year plan better than the first.
Enjoy 2023!
#23 we learned that the cost of money is not zero… not even the risk-free rate is zero!
Why does it matter? Economics denialists have been exposed. Centralized government grown too big to fail has failed and apparently will keep failing as the voting population is growing more ignorant in every election, many believing they’re actually is such a thing as a free lunch.
A New Year’s present: the Stanford Classical Liberalism Initiative conference with Jonathan Haidt and many other brilliant talks,
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHrIsBEEehWkahy9c51tkdg
Conference link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHrIsBEEehWkahy9c51tkdg
I’m hoping that 2023 will see people waking up to the fact that the world is no longer warming as it did for the last 20 odd years of the 20th century. Daily we are bombarded by the media telling us that the world is warming and we’re going to kill the planet, and nobody seems to notice that it is not true. We are told that the ten or so hottest months happened during the last ten years, true …… but they don’t tell us that nearly all of those records were broken in 2016, during the el Nino year and that there has been no real lasting increase in temperature over that time, in line with the very real increase in atmospheric CO2
I recently saw a sad article about a young skier in Colorado died in an avalanche. The author of the article cited climate change as a contributing factor to the accident. Comment section, well you can imagine the arguments.
Happy New Year, Judy and denizens.
In 2023 we still live in the best of times, and the worst of times, in the age of wisdom, and in the age of foolishness, in the epoch of belief, in the epoch of incredulity, in the season of light, and the season of darkness, in the spring of hope, in the winter of despair, we have everything before us, and we have nothing before us. Everything changes so everything remains the same.
In 2010 Nature journal published the opinion article “2020 visions” for the first issue of the 2010s decade, Nature asked a selection of leading researchers and policy-makers where their fields would be ten years from then. It contains some pearls, like:
“Deployed widely, these kinds of solutions and the development of a smart grid would mean that by 2020 the world would be on the way to an energy system in which solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal and hydroelectric power will supply more than 80% of electricity.” Daniel M. Kammen. Director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley
Kind of a joke in the midst of a grave energy crisis likely to worsen in 2023.
But the most interesting part came a month later in the Correspondence section of Nature: “Our decadal research predictions (‘2020 visions’ Nature463, 26–32; 2010) provoked ideas — and ire.” where Peter Turchin, of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut wrote:
“Political instability may be a contributor in the coming decade
The next decade is likely to be a period of growing instability in the United States and western Europe, which could undermine the sort of scientific progress you describe in the Opinion collection of ‘2020 visions’… In the United States, we have stagnating or declining real wages, a growing gap between rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, and exploding public debt. These seemingly disparate social indicators are actually related to each other dynamically. They all experienced turning points during the 1970s. Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of looming political instability.”
Those of you who haven’t heard about Peter Turchin should look it up, particularly his book “Secular Cycles” with Nefedov. His studies about agrarian societies are easy to translate to an industrial society by reformulating agricultural production in terms of labor supply and demand. Economic elites can also be reformulated in terms of labor supply and demand. They are the demanders of workers. A symptom of elite over-production is the increase in the university-educated population and the rising cost of such studies.
Peter Turchin with his cyclical studies, and Joseph Tainter with his studies on the collapse of complex societies might become even more important over the next years if the stagnation part of the integrative phase leads to the crisis part of the desintegrative phase, as Turchin’s cliodynamics projects.
Turning to the climate issue, 2023 can only continue the disconnect that our hostess noticed in her post:
https://judithcurry.com/2022/11/02/the-climate-crisis-isnt-what-it-used-to-be/
IPCC’s AR6 ever-increasing warming projection will contrast more and more with the lack of warming steam since the big 2015 El Niño. As countries struggle with the energy crisis, and Japan just announced a U-turn in its nuclear policy, the climate crisis will become less relevant in determining energy policies, contrasting vividly with the ever increasing official alarmism about the climate.
Electricity and CO2 will receive the rational attention that is needed, but to date has been/is lacking 1/2
The Electric Power Research Institute, EPRI, has several reports that are available for the public which address electricity-CO2 issues. EPRI is funded by, and its areas of research directed by, organizations that have lots o’ skin in this game. The summary of this report list some of the other available reports.
Strategies and Actions for Achieving a 50% Reduction in U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 2030
https://www.epri.com/research/products/000000003002023165
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This white paper explores strategies to achieve the U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) economy-wide emissions target of a 50–52% reduction from 2005 levels by 2030, identifying least-cost emission reduction actions across the electric sector, transport, buildings, and industry. Successfully implementing these strategies will require substantial policy changes coupled with accelerated deployment of electric end-use technologies and of electric sector technologies (including expedited financing, siting, permitting, and integration). While the analysis focuses on the U.S., many key findings provide insights that are valuable for nations with similar goals and rates of change.
The analysis focuses on three core scenarios:
Reference. Assumes on-the-books federal and state policies and incentives
50×30. Achieves a 50% reduction in 2030 GHG emissions relative to 2005, assuming electrification economics and technology improvements consistent with earlier EPRI studies
50×30 E+. Assumes additional technology and policy drivers that accelerate electrification by lowering the cost of electricity-using technologies, reducing customers’ reticence to shift technologies, and accelerating the turnover of end- use equipment
Outcomes are evaluated using EPRI’s REGEN energy-economy model,3 which integrates detailed representations of electric and end-use sectors and includes hourly simulations to capture the variability of renewables and load. The analysis was conducted with an eye to the future, recognizing that investments made today to meet 2030 targets are interim steps in a desired transition to net-zero.
Results highlight that energy efficiency, cleaner electricity, and rapid electrification are the central strategies to achieve the 2030 target. Emerging technologies—carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS); advanced nuclear; clean hydrogen—while important for driving future reductions, are unlikely to provide large reductions this decade given the stringency of the target and lead times for deploying these technologies at scale. Instead, the challenges in driving 2030 reductions are primarily in execution, with a 50% reduction requiring large changes in how energy is produced, delivered, used, and governed while maintaining reliability and affordability every step of the way. In parallel, technological advances and deployment incentives will be needed to facilitate more stringent 2035 and mid-century emission goals.
The rapid pace and extensive scale of change that this study (and other published analyses) project as necessary to meet these 50×30 scenarios highlight the need for additional efforts to understand key issues that are not fully addressed in this paper. EPRI has developed several companion studies that begin to identify and investigate some of these issues which are fundamental to a successful transition:
Reliability. Enhancing Grid Reliability and Resiliency in a Net- Zero Economy (http://mydocs.epri.com/docs/public/EPRI-Report-EnhancingEnergySystemReliability-20210804.pdf)
Grid Modernization and Decentralization. Maximizing Distributed Energy Resource Value Through Grid Modernization (http://mydocs.epri.com/docs/public/ EPRI-Report-MaximizingDistributedEnergyResourceValue-20210804.pdf)
Leveraging Existing Nuclear, Hydro, and Transmission. Leveraging Existing Energy Infrastructure to Help Meet 2030 Greenhouse Gas Reduction Goals (http://mydocs.epri.com/docs/public/EPRI-Report-LeveragingExistingInfrastructure-20210804.pdf)
Climate Policy Choices. Analyzing Federal Clean Energy Standards: Policy Design Choices and Future Electric Power Sector Outcomes (https://www.epri.com/research/ products/000000003002020121)
EPRI: a familiar name from my past.
From the executive summary:
“– highlight the need for additional efforts to understand key issues that are not fully addressed in this paper.”
Does it consider to what extent is the mechanical equipment that today feeds the world, that does not work with electricity? And the effect of reducing the hydrocarbon source of the energy that drives it will eventually have? Or a planned alternative?
Covid – and the war/Ukraine – has shown what a disturbance in the food chain can be like.
Dan Hughes said: “Electricity and CO2 will receive the rational attention that is needed, but to date has been/is lacking”
I vociferously dispute that.
There can be a role for solar PV and wind in electrical grids, but attempts to use these to achieve net zero are doomed to failure barring a magical discovery of cheap, large scale storage.
For example: electricity curtailment. Solar PV and wind produce electricity intermittently, and structurally very often during nadir portions of the duck curve. This creates the ludicrous situation where utilities, hence consumers, are paying for electricity to literally not be produced even as electricity bills keep rising far faster than inflation.
Germany, for example, paid over 800 million euros for curtailed wind electricity in 2021.
The UK paid 216 million GBP to curtail wind electricity in 2022 and has averaged over 200 million GBP in wind electricity curtailment over the past 3 years.
Texas averages over US$200 million in curtailment every year.
None of these 3 locations have achieved more than 40% solar PV + wind electricity vs. overall generation; the trends are unquestionably for curtailment amounts to keep increasing should solar PV and wind installations continue to increase.
And increase is certain. The CEOs of 2 different electricity generation companies both gushed over the IRA and its $391 billion in subsidies for alternative energy at the GCPA fall conference in 2022. That money is going to get spent, and the resulting flood of even more intermittent generation will force a reckoning in the overall grid: will dispatchable demand such as natural gas, nuclear and coal continue to be available given ever lower average prices? Throw in increasing heat pump and electric cars – this is a recipe for disaster.
As for the possibility of cheap, large scale storage: I discount it immensely. As I have mentioned before: we are already at 2/3rds of the energy density of gunpowder with the top end battery technologies. We would need at least 10x greater energy density vs. cost in order to affordably back up intermittent solar PV and wind electricity generation – meaning enormous volumes of energy with weapons-grade energy densities.
That’s what I meant by the use of “rational attention”. So far the attention has all been totally irrational.
EPRI and CO2: 2/2
This Web site has all in one place a report on the Low-Carbon Resources Initiative, LCRI, and EPRI:
Net-Zero 2050: U.S. Economy-Wide Deep Decarbonization Scenario Analysis
https://lcri-netzero.epri.com
The Discussion section of the, extensive, Executive Summary states:
“Discussion
Achieving net-zero energy across the United States by 2050 would involve an energy transformation that is unprecedented in scope, scale, and timeframe. A customer-focused approach to building, connecting, and operating this future energy system rests on dramatically increasing optionality, innovation, and collaboration across the energy sector:”
Lots of details follow in the Report.
Each of the 22 breakthroughs is great. Nevertheless, one question remains: Will the introduction of all the new inventions allow people to smoothly accommodate to the changes? Will there not be new hosts of those who are left behind? It seems to me, for example, that fast proliferation of internet and social networks left many people unprepared and vulnerable to misinformation (so vigorously spread to Europe mainly by Russia). New technologies are needed and necessary – but is the social and educational network ready to prepare people for the changes? I think new system of public education will be needed.
“It seems to me, for example, that fast proliferation of internet and social networks left many people unprepared and vulnerable to misinformation (so vigorously spread to Europe mainly by Russia). New technologies are needed and necessary – but is the social and educational network ready to prepare people for the changes? I think new system of public education will be needed.”
It seems to me that the tried and true method of critically thinking for ones self would suffice. Politicians have been a font of misinformation long before the internet existed and will continue in that mode. Long live the internet and sites like Judith Curry’s.
Can’t help but wonder what the leftist id ee ot circus clowns will come up with this year. Will they start “gender” transitioning trees and rocks? Wouldn’t put it past them.
One thing on my radar concerns wind, solar, and add to those the push to go all in on electric everything. North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee experienced black-outs. The TWA and Duke Energy supply power for the region and has a very low percentage of wind and solar. However, there has been a big push to replace natural gas heat with electric heat pumps. Apparently, the new heat pumps pushed the grid past its limits.
So, all this brings up the question of how much pain will it take before people start voting out the Climate Doomer politicians. Short of rebellion, this appears to be the only way out of energy suicide here in the US. A large portion of the population have voted in these id ee ots. Will they ever see the light and vote them out?
2023 will be even worse here, energy-wise. More EVs and more demand for electricity due to the Climate Doomer war on fossil fuels. I would pop some popcorn, but my power’s out.
>” … people start voting out the Climate Doomer politicians” [from Jim2 comment]
Here in Aus, we have no other winnable political offerings for voter choice apart from AGW pushers. This is what the major party groups call “bipartisan”.
There are (very) minor parties that may talk some sense but have no hope of winning seats. Gathering enough preference votes from these small groups might seem to offer some hope, but this has been tried with utterly dismal failure. Some smarter politicians have even registered party groups with names like “Climate Change is Trivial” which has attracted some silly votes – but these groups have surreptitiously channelled preferences to the majors anyway. (No, “surreptitious” is not conspiracy, these smarty groups just stay schtum on their preference allocations and the silly votes don’t care enough to dig this out).
Hopefully in 2023 people in the bubble of this virtually unknown blog will finally realise that in the real world out there it is obvious why the only choices, politically, are so-called “AGW pushers”, i.e. those who accept the reality and the weight of scientific research. It’s obvious to all but the denizens here, it would appear.
Oh well, carry on preaching to each other.
@JMurphy. How can you be happy about “green” energy driving up the price of everything. Do you give a d*** about your fellow man at all?
jim2, do you have any evidence for your assertion? As far as I know Covid, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and supply issues (related more to covid but also to the invasion and our desire – which I’m sure you share – to cut off Russia’s war finance) are the reasons for high prices. Do you care about the Ukrainians or are you more concerned about trying to use as much gas as possible? Luckily, we in Europe are having a mild winter and using less. I find it highly ironic that the country which contains more global warming deniers (America) is being most affected by the cold. Maybe there is a god after all, and she has a great sense of humour!
@JMurphy
I can’t believe you have the temerity to ask for evidence that the Climate Doomer policies in Europe are hurting the economy. Europe and especially Germany have failed to develop local sources of fossil fuels in favor of unreliable wind and solar. Now they find themselves burning brown coal. Your request is laughable.
You have nothing. OK.
JM: Happily here in the US one of the two major parties is comprised of skeptics. That this is not true in Oz is unfortunate for them, but as Jo Nova chronicals well, their grid is collapsing much faster than ours. Likewise Europe.
Also this blog is very well known in the US skeptical community, which includes roughly half the adult population. A very big bubble indeed.
In short your words are ridiculous.
JMurphy; “As far as I know Covid, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and supply issues (related more to covid but also to the invasion and our desire – which I’m sure you share – to cut off Russia’s war finance) are the reasons for high prices.”
Not so, JMurphy. A convenient excuse, but the subsidized intermittent generators (thus far) only add to the cost of the the grid. Each windmill (in Australia) draws the owner a payment of approx $930,000 per year in REC payments, directly added to the bills of the consumers. The much lauded Tesla batteries (eg Hornsdale, South Australia) serve a wonderful role as Frequency Control Ancillary Service (FCAS) providers at a cost of $100s of millions per year; a service which was barely required before solar and wind were significant providers. This cost too gets added to the consumer bills.
Not to mention, trillions of $ are required for new distribution networks to get this power to the consumers: Yep, also added to the bill.
And then, there are ridiculously contrived energy market bidding systems, which completely favour intermittent energy providers, and leave continous generators idling, at cost, without compensation. Yes, the continuous generators have to increase their unit charge. That gets added to the bill.
If you have any doubt, ponder these historical charts of Australian state electricity costs; South Australia has by far the largest contribution by renewables.
https://www.aer.gov.au/wholesale-markets/wholesale-statistics/annual-volume-weighted-average-30-minute-prices-regions
In the mid 90s, the FFRDC where I worked, brought in Dr. Ted Fujita to give a presentation.
In 1974, Fujita discovered a phenomenon he called downbursts. With help from the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), he studied the 2,584 miles of damage caused by the 148 tornadoes occurring during the Super Tornado Outbreak of April 1974. He had determined that downdrafts from the storms actually had enough strength to reach the ground and cause unique damage patterns, such as the pattern of uprooted trees he had observed at Hiroshima so long ago.
He had drawings he had made at Hiroshima as a graduate student in 1945 showing a starburst pattern.
Initially, leaders in meteorology, mocked and shunned him and his theories. He had copied the articles these “leaders” published and he highlighted their names and displayed them as part of his presentation.
Dr. Fujita’s work led to the development of the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) system that reduces the risk of downdrafts causing aircraft accidents. Dr. Fujita called himself an “observational meteorologist” not one from a white tower. He loved to fly over the midwest and observe the aftermath of tornadoes and microbursts.
He didn’t trust computer models!
His work led to the F scale for tornadoes among many other breakthroughs in meteorology.
I’m not sure what names the “so called science leaders” called him for his early work but it would be the equivalent of “Climate Denier or Anti Vaxxer”.
Dr Fujita was still angry about what happened to his early work but he persevered and made the world a safer place.
A real hero.
Here’s a link summarizing his life: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/fujita-tetsuya
Tom … thank you for the link. Amazing what the power of one human mind can do.
From Seth Borenstein (AP) As many of you now the serial misinformers — Steve M, Tony H (formerly know under a fake name of Steve G, and Marc M — constantly harass me on Musk world social media. For the past week they have been spreading false information about Greenland and one of my past stories. They are actually saying Greenland is increasing in ice not decreasing. I don’t respond directly to those purposeful liars. They know what they’re doing and they don’t care about truth. But I do respond on occasion to their sheep-like followers who retweet and sometimes spew their own venom. In this case, I tweeted NASA GRACE satellite data, Danish Meteorological Institute posts, NOAA Arctic report card that show on average Greenland is losing about 286 billion tons (Gt) of ice a year in total ice. The misinformers cherry pick and only use surface mass balance, conveniently skipping the massive amount of ice that is lost when it calves in icebergs and melts from warmer water below. Most of that is based on NASA GRACE satellite data that measures the gravity of the ice sheet. All this is a long explanation to set up the inadvertently funniest and most ignorant response yet. So illiterate that I don’t have the heart to make fun of him to his face and will even spare this person identification here. But here goes:
Replying to @borenbears @JunkScience
Check again and check ICE data not analogous gravity readings. If you are not a left wing ideolog, you can face the facts.
https://twitter.com/tan123/status/1609935018029158401?s=20&t=zJRbjksgU19O6DQuPTaivA
AGW… Western academia’s conjecture that modernity is causing global warming proves the liberal fascist education establishment supports a hoax and scare tactics for political purposes.
My prediction for 2023: The UAH thirty-year running average trend of global mean temperature will be ‘up’ during each of the next twelve months.
Not sure what you mean, Beta. The annual values will most likely all be above the 30 year average because we are running in the second El Niño induced warming step. All of the warming in the record has come via two El Niño steps up.
See https://www.cfact.org/2021/01/15/the-new-pause/
But the 30 year trend will likely not increase every month because of the year by year oscillations which cause some years to be much cooler than the prior year.
Oops … The UAH thirty-year running average mean trend for each succeeding month of the year 2023 won’t be known until the end of each corresponding month in the year 2038.
The UAH 30-year linear trend beginning with the first month of 1993 and ending in the first month of 2023 will probably have a positive slope — as probably will every succeeding 360 month period until 2023 is out.
But you make a good point here. Let’s see what actually happens as the year moves forward.
Happy New 2023 Year to you Dr. Judith Curry! Also the best wishes for your wonderful Blog the “Climate Etc.”!
RE: Fake Meat.
It’s also been a rough year for Beyond Meat Inc. Sales of fake meat have fallen at grocery stores and product tests with fast-food partners didn’t result in any Beyond products becoming permanent menu items in the US.
Two separate rounds of layoffs eliminated more than 20% of employees, or about 240 roles. The company also endured its share of scandals — ranging from its chief operating officer being arrested in an alleged road-rage incident after a football game to a plant in Pennsylvania being linked to Listeria contamination and other safety issues. The COO, finance chief, head of supply chain and chief growth officer have all departed in recent months.
Beyond Meat Has Fallen 95% From Peak
Stock has been on steady slide for more than a year
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-28/stocks-to-watch-in-2023-carnival-ccl-beyond-meat-bynd-ev-startups
All the best in the new year Dr. Curry and fellow denizens of the blog. Quite excited for your book on risk and uncertainty in 2023.
I see the prospective date is now pushed back to July, no bother of course, given your treatment of the topic on these pages over the years (monsterism, etc.) I expect it to be well worth the wait.
The Climate Doomers are recommending the very tactics that are causing economic havoc today.
Outcomes are evaluated using EPRI’s REGEN energy-economy
model,3 which integrates detailed representations of electric
and end-use sectors and includes hourly simulations to
capture the variability of renewables and load. The analysis
was conducted with an eye to the future, recognizing that
investments made today to meet 2030 targets are interim
steps in a desired transition to net-zero.
Results highlight that energy efficiency, cleaner electricity,
and rapid electrification are the central strategies to achieve
the 2030 target. Emerging technologies—carbon capture,
utilization, and storage (CCUS); advanced nuclear; clean
hydrogen—while important for driving future reductions,
are unlikely to provide large reductions this decade given
the stringency of the target and lead times for deploying
these technologies at scale. Instead, the challenges in driving
2030 reductions are primarily in execution, with a 50%
reduction requiring large changes in how energy is produced
https://www.epri.com/research/products/000000003002023165
The only possible means for reaching the intermediate 2030 target is through government-imposed energy conservation measures — energy rationing, in other words.
The results of the 2022 mid-terms indicate that the climate activists will probably be in control of the federal government indefinitely into the future.
My prediction is that as the decade of the 2020’s moves forward, these activists will continue their policy of using aggressive environmental regulation to force the closure of coal-fired and gas-fired baseload generation capacity without adequate and reliable 24/7/365 replacement.
It’s a policy which is the equivalent of enforced energy rationing, for all practical purposes.
These closures will have the predictable economic and social consequences. But if what is happening in Europe and in Australia is any predictor of the future, the climate activists will not being paying any kind of political price for their policy actions.
Climate Doomer energy policies lead to ruin.
Spain’s solar energy crisis: 62,000 people bankrupt after investing in solar panels • FRANCE 24
Happy New Year!
My prediction for 2023 is a slow but sure pivot back to accountability brought on thanks to 2022 crises of inflation, energy shortage, pandemic policy reviews.
We were reminded in 2022 that modern society is a choice, and actually is fragile (requiring competent maintenance).
More specifically we learned:
1. You really can’t turn the power grid over to enthusiastic, sophomoric activists. Energy is critical, access to it requires a government willing to listen to competent scientists and professionals. Those “100% Renewable Plans!” will be forgotten.
2. There are negative consequences to unlimited spending.
3. You cannot “control” a virus, much less the weather, or anything else with more authoritarianism and you loose much when government officials pretend otherwise, are proven wrong and then angry that you notice.
4. People pay attention when you wreck the schools and allow chaos on the streets.
In short- government just learned that you can babble any nonsense you want as long as the lights stay on, food is affordable, the school teaches reading and math, and the government doesn’t do absurd things.
For those of you thinking- aha, but Trump was the worst! Well, yeah, but carry the thought. If the president of the United States can be a complete nitwit, then it stands to reason it could certainly be the case with chancellor of Germany, the head of the WHO, the governor, the school superintendent, the prosecutor, and the IPCC grand poohbah.
“The Twitter Files and the great twitter unblocking make me cautiously hopeful that free speech can abound, which is the most fundamental pre-requisite for common sense to prevail in human affairs.”
We agree and know you’ve paid a heavy price for it, too. We admire your deep expertise, courage and persistence, esp. given what you’re up against. Always have.
In the vain of that free speech and common sense prevailing, we add our voice to those like yours.
https://open.substack.com/pub/envmental/p/sacrificing-humanity-on-the-green?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Stay the course. Humanity will thank you later.
“The ESO said a new record was also set for the share of electricity on the grid coming from zero-carbon sources – renewables and nuclear – which supplied 87.2% of total power.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/03/uk-sets-new-record-for-turbine-power-generation-after-period-of-low-wind
No coal, either.
” In 2021, Russia accounted for 55% of Germany’s gas imports, a level that had declined to 26% by the end of June 2022,…”
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/08/energy-crisis-germany-europe#:~:text=Germany%20has%20decided%20to%20replace,the%20end%20of%20June%202022.
.
The future is bright in the real world beyond blogs. The future is green. Move forward or keep looking/harking back and get left behind.
So now you misguided saps have to pay for gas and other fossil fuels plants to sit idle. But you can’t get rid of them. They still have to be maintained. You will have to fire them up again and all the yo-yo power output is less efficient.
Yes, you guys are on top of the world now!
jim2, “renewables and nuclear – which supplied 87.2% of total power.” and” Germany’s gas imports, a level that had declined to 26% by the end of June 2022″ must make you weep with disbelief and frustration!
Never mind, in the real world we will continue to progress and go green. Join the majority or stay stuck in the last millennium – it’s a free world and you can choose to remain in the past if you wish but you will be missing out on a bright future. Shame.
Go green:
https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/global-energy-substitution.png?ssl=1
Not going.
Wow that record wind power generation lasted all of 30 minutes from 6pm to 6.30pm!
In case you hadn’t noticed electricity needs to be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Stalin cut the supply of available grain to certain regions. Was that also a victory? Perhaps their new found gas came from Africa who doesn’t really need their own resources.
Didn’t know that about Stalin. Makes sense, though, all considering.
https://wapo.st/3vBcx2a
Best blog ever. Thanks, looking forward to your book. Happy 2023 to all.
The EV market hype belies the truth.
Making money on EVs won’t get much easier.
While the suits in Detroit, Seoul, Stuttgart and Tokyo may finally get the computer chips they need, the unit economics on electric vehicles are still crummy. Lithium-ion battery prices increased in 2022 for the first time on record, a 7% bump. And some of the biggest brains in the business, including Toyota President Akio Toyoda and Rivian CEO and co-founder RJ Scaringe, worry that it will take years for the battery supply chain to catch up.
That’s why the best strategy for auto executives may be to stick with the simple bait-and-switch: Get drivers hyped to go electric with low base prices, while predominantly stamping out far more expensive, higher-trim models. If you already can’t make enough cars, the logic goes, make the most profitable ones.
But if the economy stays on shaky ground and interest rates continue to climb, banking on indefinite demand may be unwise. “US consumers are hunkering down,” says S&P analyst Chris Hopson, “and recovery towards pre-pandemic vehicle demand seems like a hard sell.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-31/four-2023-electric-vehicle-trends-to-watch
Shortly after JFK was elected the tongues began to twitter. Speculation was rampant that a long dynasty had begun. After 2 terms of JFK, RFK would be elected and then re-elected, so it went. And then by the time Teddy finished his 8 years, it would be 1984.
It didn’t work out that way…exactly. Thirty eight years have come and gone since that Orwellian vision. It took awhile, but lag effects don’t occur only in climate science.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FlJcl4HXoAAxr4J?format=jpg&name=900×900
I’m back on the Gulf shore beaches again. The first thing I did was check the sea level rise since last year. I waded out knee deep into the water and stuck the yard stick into the sand. Not a bit of difference.
I imagine if I drove down to Ft Lauderdale and stood in front of the Elbo Room as I did in 1964, I wouldn’t notice a difference either. Except for the absence of the ubiquitous Connie Francis songs.
Last week, after listening to the constant harangue by their parents, the grandkids asked me if they would have to move to Denver to escape the ravages of SLR. Only if you are going to be around 5,280 years from now, I said.
A comment at the start of 2023 that there are many similar features this winter season to the season 1989/90, at least in terms of general snow patterns in the US and the European Alps.
In 1989/90, I worked a ski season in the Jungfrau region of Switzerland and, after a freak ‘warm atmospheric river’ deluging rain all over the Alps up to 3000m around December 15th (melting all the picture-postcard snow ready for the winter season), I had to tell ski clients for 8 weeks that ‘there isn’t any snow and, sadly, there isn’t going to be any either’. We finally got proper snow starting February 10th, after six weeks of mild, dry weather, after which it snowed regularly and, in April, down to unseasonably low levels.
In January, a fellow resort worker a generation older than me was invited by friends to decamp to Beaver Creek in Colorado for a week’s ski-ing, as snow over there was plentiful.
I’ve seen plenty fo US commenters on stories of ‘no snow in Europe’ this week say ‘come over to the US to ski, Europeans’.
There are folks suggesting that the 2023 denouement in Europe is ‘due to climate heating’. It’s total rubbish. This happened three years running in 1987/8; 1988/9; and 1989/90 over 30 years ago. It coincided with the ‘triple conjunction’ of big planets Saturn, Uranus and Neptune (probably a coincidence, but who knows?)
What these observations do suggest are:
firstly, that unusual weather patterns can re-occur every few decades;
secondly, that there may be correlations between such events and snowfall patterns far away; and
thirdly, it’s a wise person who talks to those over 50 before claiming that some weather event is unheard of. –
People under 30 hadn’t heard about the snow-less early winters in Europe; they hadn’t heard about the epic European drought summer of 1976; and few would acknowledge that it barely snowed for 8 years between January 1st 1971 and late 1979 in the SE of England.
People under 30 have also never seen rate hikes to subdue inflation. The recessions they know were non-events during a period of zero to negative interest rates. They are about to get an object lessen concerning inflation, rates, and recession.
The 60 Minutes segment with Paul Ehrlich might be a sign that his hard-core alarmism is dying off.
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CBS disgraced itself by broadcasting the doomsday claims of biologist Paul Ehrlich, with hardly any qualifications, on 60 Minutes. Ehrlich, now 90 years old, has been publicly and confidently making completely wrong predictions for longer than most people have been alive.
His 1968 book The Population Bomb predicted mass starvation in the ’70s and ’80s, only to have global extreme poverty and hunger go into steep decline. His predictions of increasing resource scarcity led him to make a wager with economist Julian Simon in 1980 that five commodities would become more expensive by 1990. The real price of all five commodities declined instead.
Simon was not mentioned once in the 60 Minutes segment, though anchor Scott Pelley did mention that the green revolution, the improvements in agricultural technology in the late 20th century that increased crop yields around the world, had proven Ehrlich’s starvation claims wrong. But in the entire 13-minute segment, CBS did not include a single person pushing back on the alarmism.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/01/population-bombers-are-going-extinct
Jim2, 60 Minutes has an agenda in mind and then works backwards to program the “evidence” confirming their agenda. It is not what some might consider journalism but rather preaching to the unwashed and unknowing in their audience.
Political preferences can change.
Nuclear power: Italy is planning a turnaround in energy policy
by Micaela Taroni
Under the pressure of the energy crisis, however, the Italians suddenly became painfully aware of their heavy dependence on electricity from abroad. The topic moves the citizens because they clearly feel the increase in their electricity bills despite government support.
Although renewable energies have been significantly expanded in recent years, the production of green electricity is far from sufficient.
No wonder that the new government around the right-wing populist Giorgia Meloni regards the return to nuclear energy, which the Italians had renounced following a referendum in 1987, as a solution to the energy problems.
https://joannenova.com.au/2023/01/italy-may-build-back-nuclear-not-quite-the-great-reset-the-greens-or-financial-houses-had-in-mind/
That’s funny because that Nova person obviously doesn’t know 2 important facts: First, the Italians are talking about the the next generation (4th) of nuclear plants, which will not be happening anytime soon ; Second, even if those plants were available within the next 10/15 years, there will be at least another 5 or 6 different Italian governments in that time, some of whom will cancel those plans so that everything has to start all over again from the beginning!
Never trust anything from someone who has no idea about the country they are commenting about.
My wish for 2023 is the resumption of the periodic summary of science news and links to articles and papers. It is often very educational for me. Onward, Dr. Curry!
I get the impression that environmental groups want to get rid of most humans and for those few left, want them to live in caves.
Hecate Greene’s current approach to raptor habitat is to expect that the birds will manage to hunt voles and mice among the solar arrays. Both the short-eared owl and northern harrier hunt by coursing low to the ground and by using their acute hearing to locate prey. Inverter noise, while not expected to be audible to humans outside the developed areas, seems likely to affect both the birds’ ability to hunt and disrupt the behavior of prey in those areas. Fewer than 100 short-eared owls are left in New York State: most are winter visitors, but the state-threatened northern harrier has been observed year-round in Coxsackie, and short-eared owls have been seen by local residents during the summer as well.
https://savinggreene.com/projects-1
I have never been able to reconcile the apparent contradiction of the left when they are purportedly champions of the poor and yet advocate energy policies that retard any progress in providing sustainable electricity to millions across the globe. Nigeria has 92 million citizens without access to electricity. These other countries have substantial segments of their population without electricity: DRC 72 million, Ethiopia 56 million and Pakistan 54 million.
Let’s not keep millions in the 19th century just to address some imaginary catastrophe.
https://punchng.com/92-million-nigerians-lack-access-to-electricity-worst-globally-report/
The University of Southern California had removed the word
“field” from its curriculum references because of its racist and anti immigrant connotations.
We all can name a few other words on the no-no list, but this one just seems to be so over the top, that it leaves me speechless.
Judith has retweeted an article from The Atlantic about university academic research becoming a loser and not generating new ideas. When the intellectual heft is wasted on such drivel, I wonder why.
I once looked at a list of the 450 most important inventions, innovations and discoveries over the last 400 years. Americans were involved in 250 of them. The country in second place wasn’t even close.
A dynamic, growing economy depends on investing in new ideas. If not, we shrivel.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11622411/Woke-leaders-USC-ban-word-field-racist.html
I am consistently perplexed as to how certain subjects that I think should be nailed down by reference to facts hacmve vehemently diametrically argued positions;
How much temp rise results from 2X CO2?
Does homogenization distort the records of non homigenization records?
Has the UHIE been properly addressed, and do non urban records support trends when urban recirds are added in?
Are there changes in global cloud cover and what are the implications?
Are there changes in global humidity and why and what are the implications?
Do satellite sea level rise claims match tidal gages?
Why do articles still claim sea level rises of 10mm/year by 2050?
Somehow significant issues of climate change get argued by technical people over and over again.
My theory: deciding what to do under conditions of uncertainty needs us to do two things. First, bias ourselves to “do no harm”. Second, bias ourselves to our narrative based on our belief that the truth of the Narrative is greater than the truth of the detail (AOC said something like that when defending errors in the “facts” she was using to backup sociopolitical positions).
So the alarmist says in his head, an error on the side of increased action hurts no one, while an error on the other side may hurt a lot. The alarmist also says, everyone I respect says for their profession, alarming things are happening, so the correct bias is towards alarm.
Meanwhile, the contrarian says excess alarm impoverishes the world and disrupts the economy, and those I respect see in their professions powerful figures pushing anticipated but not present alarms, ie bad things aren’t yet happening.
So both sides look at data with so much uncertainty you need statistics to see it, and bias themselves to the + or the – side. And when the uncertainty is as great as it is, the”truth” lies on a knife edge: you lean left, you are frightened by the cliff’s edge drop below you, you lean right, you are comforted by the roadway at your feet.
Is this what’s going on?
Some of you remember ATTP. And Then There’s Physics.
I came across something simple:
“Because it works. This is how theories in physics come about. You have an idea, you check the predictions, you stick with your idea or toss it out.”
– Sabine Hossenfelder
Because of physics, the climate has done and will continue to do X. How can you doubt physics? You must be a flat earther.
What has the climate done? Been boring. Around 1 C of GMST rise since forever. Hurricanes are about the same. We still have droughts and floods.
These people, their ship is sinking and they can’t toss it out. Sea Level Rise is what they grasp to. But that’s boring too.
ATTP. What about the physics?
Jane Fonda “ There’d be no climate crisis if it wasn’t for racism””
That encapsulates the world’s state of affairs.
Everything is mucked up is because of racism and global warming and global warming and racism. Not much more complicated than that.
She never disappoints.
These idiots have been captured by an uncritical acceptance of “the Butterfly Effect”, that all forces effect the outcome to some extent.
Yup. The rise in sea level changed the outcome of a hurricane smashing Florida. Chinese CO2 production has become worse because the Hutus slaughtered the Tutsis in Rwanda.
The Butterfly Effect is an attractive idea for the social constructionists. Poetic, even. Full of virtue: we are all in this equally and therefore responsible equally for whatever we do. Reductionist analysis violates the Universal Spirit of Mother Earth. Nothing, even a nuclear bomb, overwhelms the harm caysed by even the use of plastic straws for your Slurpee.
Did she foretell Trump’s victory just by looking at crowds?
This graph shows the Congressional Budget Office projection of net interest on the Debt Held by the Public for the rest of this decade. By 2025 it will be nearly $800 billion. For perspective, that will be 10 (ten, diez) times what the Federal Government will spend on K-12. The $800 billion is 4 times what the net interest was in 2000.
Debt Held by the Public grew 20% from 1945 to 1968. It has gone from $3.4 Trillion in 2000 to a projected $26+ Trillion at the end of this year. It’s only going to get worse.
https://www.concordcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2.15.23-CBO-release-chart.png
Oooh, I never want to miss the opportunity to mention that Biden is proposing to have the rich pay their fair share by increasing the top marginal tax rate. This means in 2027 millionaires will pay $2 billion more in taxes than under previous legislation. Just to put the Interest spending of $800 billion against the attempt to have the rich pay their fair share to the tune of $2 billion.
I know it is hard to believe, but some people actually fall for this charade.