by Judith Curry
2023 was a banner year for the publication of interesting climate-related books. Some excellent books for Xmas stockings, providing scientific insights, policy sanity and optimism for the 21st century.
Climate Etc. authors
First up is four books that have been ‘mid-wifed’ in some way by Climate Etc., by authors that are very familiar to the Denizens of Climate Etc. These books have been discussed previously here, but this is a reminder if you haven’t already bought/read them. Links to recent reviews/interviews are provided.
Climate Uncertainty and Risk – Rethinking Our Response, by Judith Curry
I assume my book needs no summary for this audience, I provide links to some reviews that I found insightful.
Climate Uncertainty and Risk is more than a book. Curry has produced a single-author counter to the IPCC that offers a radical alternative to the UN paradigm of climate change that could well serve as a manual for a future Republican administration.―Rupert Darwall, RealClear Energy
The real import of Curry’s book is her analysis of the forms of science and economics that are rallied to support extreme policy actions. She brings hope that climate peace is possible. – Terence Corcoran, Financial Post. This one is entertaining, jointly reviews my book and Michael Mann’s book.
While focused on climate, the book is also a thoughtful and significant contribution on uncertainty and risk in general. It makes valuable contributions on topics such as the interface between science and politics, how we handle disagreements within science, and how scientists communicate with governments and the public. The book addresses how to think about different types of uncertainty, the role of computer simulation models, and the use (and abuse) of scenarios, and how to respond to risk. The analytical framing is scientific. The synthesis of many parts into a coherent whole is impressive. All is in the context of climate, but the thinking, the writing, and the masterful sweep of the work is such that any business person, professional, academic, politician, or official should have no trouble drawing insights and lessons for a range of other fields. Do not be surprised if this book comes to be recognised as one of the most important contributions to this field. – Stephen Wilson, IPA Review
Solving the Climate Puzzle: The Sun’s Surprising Role, by Javier Vinos
Comments on the book:
Javier Vinós has produced a masterful summary of observational facts about Earth’s climate and the theories that have been proposed to explain them. I know of no other book that presents so many detailed and interesting facts about Earth’s climate. This is a long book but well worth reading for the excellent figures alone. Its extensive references to original papers are a valuable resource. –
Dr. William Happer, Physicist. Professor Emeritus, Princeton University. Former director of the Department of Energy’s Office of ScienceVinós’ journey towards identifying meridional heat transport as the driver of climate change represents the process of science at its best. “Solving the Climate Puzzle” will change the way you think about climate change. – Dr. Judith Curry, Geophysical scientist. Professor Emerita, Georgia Institute of Technology. President, Climate Forecast Applications Network (CFAN)
The unique achievement of Dr. Vinós in this book is his ability to tell the complex scientific stories as simply as possible and no less. He has assembled in this powerful new book a lot of fresh scientific insights and understanding that are second to none, so congratulation for all of you that are willing to study it. – Dr. Willie Soon, Astrophysicist and Geoscientist. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES)
Here is a good interview with Tom Nelson.
The Grip of Culture: The Social Psychology of Climate Catastrophism, by Andy West
Some recent reviews:
A cultural analysis, of the kind set out in The Grip of Culture, can explain the suicidal course taken by Western societies. Its message, that the true threat to our civilisation comes, not from the weather or the climate, but from the culture of catastrophism that has weaponised those issues is profoundly disturbing. Those of us who are fond of living in a free and rational society need to understand what we are facing, and soon.- Andrew Montford, Daily Sceptic
Culture explains the power and prevalence of the [climate catastrophe] narrative, the political and societal responses to it and the apparent willingness of many people to incur immense cost to avert a supposed existential threat, without proof of either its existence or our ability to alter its impact. In a new book The Grip of Culture: the Social Psychology of Climate Change Catastrophism, Andy A. West provides an academic analysis of the phenomenon. Its lessons have particular relevance to Canada’s climate obsession.- Joe Oliver, Financial Post
A free pdf of the book is available.
Doubt and Certainty in Climate Science, by Alan Longhurst
Text from my review of the book:
This is a remarkable book, a tour de force. There are fresh insights in each chapter, borne of Longhurst’s objective analysis of the data and the literature. The papers he cites are from Nature, Science, PNAS, Journal of Climate and other mainstream, high impact journals. I doubt that John Cook’s activist abstract classifiers would classify many if any of these papers as ‘skeptical’. However, each of these papers provides a critical link in Longhurst’s reasoning that produces conclusions that do not agree with the ‘consensus.’
I am reminded of this quote by Galileo: “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” The value of an independent assessment of this broad range of topics, by a scientist who does not have a dog in this fight, is extremely high. Very, very few climate scientists have personally dug as deeply as Longhurst over such a broad range of climate science topics. This reminds us that the broad range of complex issues surrounding detection and attribution of climate change are outside the scope of what most climate scientists consider, and one can only infer that their support for the consensus conclusions is based on second-order belief regarding many topics outside of their personal expertise and research experience.
Science
A number of climate science books were published in 2023, starting off with some interesting science then concluding with climate alarmism. In this genre is Michael Mann’s Our Fragile Moment, which looks like the 4th edition of Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. These two books caught my eye (haven’t read them yet).
The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World, by Helen Czerski.
From the book description:
All of Earth’s oceans, from the equator to the poles, are a single engine powered by sunlight, driving huge flows of energy, water, life, and raw materials. In The Blue Machine, physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski illustrates the mechanisms behind this defining feature of our planet, voyaging from the depths of the ocean floor to tropical coral reefs, estuaries that feed into shallow coastal seas, and Arctic ice floes.
Through stories of history, culture, and animals, she explains how water temperature, salinity, gravity, and the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates all interact in a complex dance, supporting life at the smallest scale―plankton―and the largest―giant sea turtles, whales, humankind. From the ancient Polynesians who navigated the Pacific by reading the waves, to permanent residents of the deep such as the Greenland shark that can live for hundreds of years, she introduces the messengers, passengers, and voyagers that rely on interlinked systems of vast currents, invisible ocean walls, and underwater waterfalls.
Most important, however, Czerski reveals that while the ocean engine has sustained us for thousands of years, today it is faced with urgent threats. By understanding how the ocean works, and its essential role in our global system, we can learn how to protect our blue machine. Timely, elegant, and passionately argued, The Blue Machine presents a fresh perspective on what it means to be a citizen of an ocean planet.
Elemental: How Five Elements Changed Earth’s Past and Will Shape Our Future, by Stephen Porder
From the book description:
It is rare for life to change Earth, yet three organisms have profoundly transformed our planet over the long course of its history. Elemental reveals how microbes, plants, and people used the fundamental building blocks of life to alter the climate, and with it, the trajectory of life on Earth in the past, present, and future.
Taking readers from the deep geologic past to our current era of human dominance, Stephen Porder focuses on five of life’s essential elements—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. He describes how single-celled cyanobacteria and plants harnessed them to wildly proliferate across the oceans and the land, only to eventually precipitate environmental catastrophes. He then brings us to the present, and shows how these elements underpin the success of human civilization, and how their mismanagement threatens similarly catastrophic unintended consequences. But, Porder argues, if we can learn from our world-changing predecessors, we can construct a more sustainable future.
Blending conversational storytelling with the latest science, Porder takes us deep into the Amazon, across fresh lava flows in Hawaii, and to the cornfields of the American Midwest to illuminate a potential path to sustainability, informed by the constraints imposed by life’s essential elements and the four-billion-year history of life on Earth.
Modelling
Predicting Our Climate Future, by David Stainforth
IMO, David Stainforth is the world’s deepest thinker on climate modelling. I referenced many of his papers in my book Climate Uncertainty and Risk. From the book description:
This book is about how climate science works and why you should absolutely trust some of its conclusions and absolutely distrust others. Climate change raises new, foundational challenges in science. It requires us to question what we know and how we know it. The subject is important for society but the science is young and history tells us that scientists can get things wrong before they get them right. How, then, can we judge what information is reliable and what is open to question?
Stainforth goes to the heart of the climate change problem to answer this question. He describes the fundamental characteristics of climate change and shows how they undermine the application of traditional research methods, demanding new approaches to both scientific and societal questions. He argues for a rethinking of how we go about the study of climate change in the physical sciences, the social sciences, economics, and policy. The subject requires nothing less than a restructuring of
academic research to enable integration of expertise across diverse disciplines and perspectives.An effective global response to climate change relies on us agreeing about the underlying, foundational, scientific knowledge. Our universities and research institutes fail to provide the necessary clarity – they fail to separate the robust from the questionable – because they do not acknowledge the peculiar and unique challenges of climate prediction. Furthermore, the widespread availability of computer simulations often leads to research becoming divorced from understanding, something that risks undermining the relevance of research conclusions.
This book takes the reader on a journey through the maths of complexity, the physics of climate, philosophical questions regarding the origins and robustness of knowledge, and the use of natural science in the economics and policy of climate change.
The editorial reviews on this book at the amazon site are well worth reading, from an impressive list of academic scientists.
Escape From Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It, by Erika Thompson
This is a very thought provoking book, and Thompson’s ideas influenced Chapters 8 and 9 of my book Climate Uncertainty and Risk. I posted a previous blog post on her journal article that spawned this book. From the book description:
Why mathematical models are so often wrong, and how we can make better decisions by accepting their limits. Whether we are worried about the spread of COVID-19 or making a corporate budget, we depend on mathematical models to help us understand the world around us every day. But models aren’t a mirror of reality. In fact, they are fantasies, where everything works out perfectly, every time. And relying on them too heavily can hurt us.
In Escape from Model Land, statistician Erica Thompson illuminates the hidden dangers of models. She demonstrates how models reflect the biases, perspectives, and expectations of their creators. Thompson shows us why understanding the limits of models is vital to using them well. A deeper meditation on the role of mathematics, this is an essential book for helping us avoid either confusing the map with the territory or throwing away the map completely, instead pointing to more nuanced ways to Escape from Model Land.
Natural Resources
Fossil Future: Why Global Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal and Natural Gas — Not Less, by Alex Epstein
From the book description:
The New York Times bestselling author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels draws on the latest data and new insights to challenge everything you thought you knew about the future of energy. For over a decade, philosopher and energy expert Alex Epstein has predicted that any negative impacts of fossil fuel use on our climate will be outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels to human flourishing–including their unrivaled ability to provide low-cost, reliable energy to billions of people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people.
What does the future hold? In Fossil Future, Epstein, applying his distinctive “human flourishing framework” to the latest evidence, comes to the shocking conclusion that the benefits of fossil fuels will continue to far outweigh their side effects—including climate impacts—for generations to come. The path to global human flourishing, Epstein argues, is a combination of using more fossil fuels, getting better at “climate mastery,” and establishing “energy freedom” policies that allow nuclear and other truly promising alternatives to reach their full long-term potential.
Today’s pervasive claims of imminent climate catastrophe and imminent renewable energy dominance, Epstein shows, are based on what he calls the “anti-impact framework”—a set of faulty methods, false assumptions, and anti-human values that have caused the media’s designated experts to make wildly wrong predictions about fossil fuels, climate, and renewables for the last fifty years. Deeply researched and wide-ranging, this book will cause you to rethink everything you thought you knew about the future of our energy use, our environment, and our climate.
Not the End of the World: How We Can Be The First Generation To Build a Sustainable Planet, by Hannah Ritchie
This book won’t be published until Jan 2024. But I follow Hannah Ritchie on twitter and substack, I expect this to be an outstanding book from what I have seen so far. From the book description:
This “eye-opening and essential” book (Bill Gates) will transform how you see our biggest environmental problems—and explains how we can solve them. It’s become common to tell kids that they’re going to die from climate change. We are constantly bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won’t be able to support crops, fish will vanish from our oceans, and that we should reconsider having children.
But in this bold, radically hopeful book, data scientist Hannah Ritchie argues that if we zoom out, a very different picture emerges. In fact, the data shows we’ve made so much progress on these problems that we could be on track to achieve true sustainability for the first time in human history.
Packed with the latest research, practical guidance, and enlightening graphics, this book will make you rethink almost everything you’ve been told about the environment. Not the End of the World will give you the tools to understand our current crisis and make lifestyle changes that actually have an impact. Hannah cuts through the noise by outlining what works, what doesn’t, and what we urgently need to focus on so we can leave a sustainable planet for future generations.
These problems are big. But they are solvable. We are not doomed. We can build a better future for everyone. Let’s turn that opportunity into reality.
Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet, by Marian Tupy and Gabe Pooley
From the book description:
“For centuries, the ivory towers of academia have echoed this sentiment of multitudinous ends and limited means. In this supremely contrarian book, Tupy and Pooley overturn the tables in the temple of conventional thinking. They deploy rigorous and original data and analysis to proclaim a gospel of abundance. Economics―and ultimately, politics―will be enduringly transformed.” ―George Gilder, author of Life after Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy
Generations of people have been taught that population growth makes resources scarcer. But is that true? After analyzing the prices of hundreds of commodities, goods, and services spanning two centuries, Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley found that resources became moreabundant as the population grew. That was especially true when they looked at “time prices,” which represent the length of time that people must work to buy something.
To their surprise, the authors also found that resource abundance increased faster than the population―a relationship that they call “superabundance.” On average, every additional human being created more value than he or she consumed. This relationship between population growth and abundance is deeply counterintuitive, yet it is true.
Why? More people produce more ideas, which lead to more inventions. People then test those inventions in the marketplace to separate the useful from the useless. At the end of that process of discovery, people are left with innovations that overcome shortages, spur economic growth, and raise standards of living.
But large populations are not enough to sustain superabundance―just think of the poverty in China and India before their respective economic reforms. To innovate, people must be allowed to think, speak, publish, associate, and disagree. They must be allowed to save, invest, trade, and profit. In a word, they must be free.
Climate policy and politics
Climate Change Isn’t Everything: Liberating Climate Politics From Alarmism, by Mike Hulme
IMO, Mike Hulme is one of the most important thinkers on climate change, and I referenced many of his papers in my book Climate Uncertainty and Risk. From the book description:
The changing climate poses serious dangers to human and non-human life alike, though perhaps the most urgent danger is one we hear very little about: the rise of climatism. Too many social, political and ecological problems facing the world today – from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the management of wildfires – quickly become climatized, explained with reference to ‘a change in the climate’. When complex political and ethical challenges are so narrowly framed, arresting climate change is sold as the supreme political challenge of our time and everything else becomes subservient to this one goal.
In this far-sighted analysis, Mike Hulme reveals how climatism has taken hold in recent years, becoming so pervasive and embedded in public life that it is increasingly hard to resist it without being written off as a climate denier. He confronts this dangerously myopic view that reduces the condition of the world to the fate of global temperature or the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide to the detriment of tackling serious issues as varied as poverty, liberty, biodiversity loss, inequality and international diplomacy. We must not live as though climate alone determines our present and our future.
See this very interesting review from the New Atlantis.
Not Zero: How an Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China and Won’t Save the Planet, by Ross Clark
From the book description:
‘Bravely challenging the Establishment consensus … forensically argued’ – Mail on Sunday
The British government has embarked on an ambitious and legally-binding climate change target: reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions to Net Zero by 2050. The Net Zero policy was subject to almost no parliamentary or public scrutiny, and is universally approved by our political class. But what will its consequences be?
Ross Clark argues that it is a terrible mistake, an impractical hostage to fortune which will have massive downsides. Achieving the target is predicated on the rapid development of technologies that are either non-existent, highly speculative or untested. Clark shows that efforts to achieve the target will inevitably result in a huge hit to living standards, which will clobber the poorest hardest, and gift a massive geopolitical advantage to hostile superpowers such as China and Russia. The unrealistic and rigid timetable it imposes could also result in our committing to technologies which turn out to be ineffective, all while distracting ourselves from the far more important objective of adaptation.
This hard-hitting polemic provides a timely critique of a potentially devastating political consensus which could hobble Britain’s economy, cost billions and not even be effective.
Best Things First: The 12 most efficient solutions for the world’s poorest and our global SDG promises, by Bjorn Lomborg
From the book description:
Now selected as one of the Best Books of 2023 by The Economist.
In this urgent, thought-provoking book, Bjorn Lomborg presents the 12 most efficient solutions for the world’s poorest and our global SDG promises. • If you want to make the world better, Best Things First is the book to read.
World leaders have promised everything to everyone. But they are failing. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are supposed to be delivered by 2030. The goals literally promise everything, like eradicating poverty, hunger and disease; stopping war and climate change, ending corruption, fixing education along with countless other promises. This year, the world is at halftime for its promises, but nowhere near halfway. Together with more than a hundred of the world’s top economists, Bjorn Lomborg has worked for years to identify the world’s best solutions. Based on 12 new, peer-reviewed papers, forthcoming in Cambridge University Press’ Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, this book highlights the world’s best policies.
Some things are difficult to fix, cost a lot, and help little. Other problems we know how to fix, at low cost, with remarkable outcomes. We should do the smart things first.
Governments and philanthropists should focus on these 12 smartest things. Fix tuberculosis, malaria, and chronic disease, tackle malnutrition, improve education, increase trade, implement e-procurement, and secure land tenure. This will improve the world amazingly. The cost is $35 billion a year. The benefits include saving 4.2 million lives each year and generating $1.1 trillion more for the world’s poor.
We can definitely afford it: The cost of $35 billion is equivalent to the increase in annual global spending on cosmetics over the last two years. This is likely the best thing the world can do this decade.
JC note: I look forward to your comments on any of these books that you’ve read, and also other book suggestions.
I’m part way through reading Iain Aitken’s “Climate Change: A Curious Crisis” and am curious about your views on this book and why it didn’t make the list?
Oops forgot this one! definitely worth reading
I earned a Master of Science in Environmental Management in 1982, and find your list absurd. It is political, not scientific.
Evidence?
Well gosh, maybe we can discuss the deoxygenation of surface waters, the slowing of the AMOC, and Ocean Acidification.
Once again: Well gosh, maybe we can discuss the deoxygenation of surface waters, the slowing of the AMOC, and Ocean Acidification.
Are you unaware climate modelers earned a Nobel Prize in Physics for their accurate work?
Let’s discuss the topic and see.
Evidence for political not science: first the titles, then the cover descriptions. I might look at the one by Hannah Ritchie when it comes out, None of the others; sociology, economics, denial, and oil promotion are not on my interest list, at least not for detailed study.
How about some evidence?
Really? your comment is what is absurd! And I am just a Master of the Obvious…
Are you aware Al Gores Nobel Prize was for politicizing Climate Science? Read his Nobel prize award “motivation” if you are not…
Like science is not political these days. Didn’t you learn anything from how the science of the COVID pandemic was handled?
Yup! Jan 20: “I know more about viruses than anyone.”
Jan 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
Feb 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
Feb 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
Mar 6: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it … Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”
Some advice. Don’t appeal to your own authority with such a weak credential.
It is a statement to back up my posts.
And a warning to those not in their field here.
Most of the people posting here have serious credentials and pretty deep understanding of the climate issue(s), science as well as politics.
https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/1490390189?ref_=cb_interstitial_us_au_mobile_unrec_referrer_google_dp_dp
This book is interesting:”Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism”
A note of caution though …. the author, along with others, solved a problem of decreasing biodiversity by restoring drainage systems, and consequently wetland persistence during drought. Despite the success, about 50% of his environmentalist acquaintances cancelled him because he would NOT say that the observed biodiversity decline was due to climate change., even though it was not due to climate change, and they all knew it.
Guess it depends on if you think human land use change and disruption of the water cycle are part of ACC.
I’ve read the first four books and look forward to reading the others, especially the ones about modeling, since everything seems to hinge on that.
It’s unfortunate that some advocates of AGW won’t take the opportunity to expand their knowledge base. How can knowing more hurt?
Even modelling relies on data, everything seems to hinge on that.
Modelling relies on data – in theory. A bad model can screw up data and run on a Yellowstone supercomputer again and again, consuming the output of a coal-fired power station. The CAM (CESM) model assumes a temperature-independent latent heat of water vaporization, leading to a 3% error in every step of energy transfer by water evaporation from tropical seas.
To myself
“ How can knowing more hurt?”
When I wrote that I was thinking only about this post. But given the headlines about our elite educational institutions in the last few years, it would be applicable there as well. Talk about anti- intellectualism. What must Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Locke, Bacon and their home boys be thinking?
They are distressed science is once again determined by political prejudice.
George, what non political scientific books would you suggest we read?
Note: almost half of the books on this list are hard core physical science
I’ll look at some of those in detail.
I suggest instead good websites such as Nature, Science News,
Quanta Magazine, Phys.Org, Cleantech News, Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy, Scientific American, to start
Mad Magazine would be more apropos.
Websites and climate models – that’s the ticket! Avoid text books. They might not yet be politicized enough.
Jim2,
That’s funny. I put up a list of hard science textbooks from my library earlier. But still not approved by Dr. Curry.
jim2,
Never mind, my list is up now. Complain all you want.
George J K,
In 1993 I donated my collection of Scientific American to a library. It had ceased to be scientific and later it ceased to be American. (Its main shareholders are Holtzbrinck Publishing Group from Germany and BC Partners.)
Your list is juvenile, but in keeping with a Master’s in Environmental Management. In my Australia, no Uni offered such a course in 1982 as the topic was in its infancy and not considered part of Science.
My book reading just now includes “Chaos” by Korsch & Jodl 1994 and “My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles” by Martin Gardner 1994, coincidentally both oldish. Many more.
You do realise that Lazard’s levelised cost calculations for renewables were based on incomplete cost inputs and have been seriously rubbished. Its 2023 masterpiece now combines hydrogen production and use, to dilute the faults of earlier reports. It is par for the course for some economists to model future costs of a technology that has yet to be proven commercially viable.
A previous editor of Science, Marcia McNutt, was noted for her contribution to debate on climate, when she wrote “The time for debate has ended. Action is urgently needed. ” 3rd July, 2015. She has science departed that post.
Geoff S
Yes, SA was the weakest source I was thinking of the old ones How about the other sites? Do you read them?
What do you read?
George J Kamburoff | December 16, 2023 at 9:16 pm | Reply
I suggest instead good websites such as Nature, Science News,
Quanta Magazine, Phys.Org, Cleantech News, Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy, Scientific American, to start..
George – Surprising that your would endorse Lazards LCOE. given its well deficiencies, omissions and deceptions
Geoff S:
“Lazard’s levelised cost calculations for renewables were based on incomplete cost inputs and have been seriously rubbished.”
Bank of America’s Global Research group has done a proper analysis of wind and solar, including “all-in” costs. One of their conclusions is that wind and solar are incredibly expensive. See page 12 of that report.
https://advisoranalyst.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/bofa-the-ric-report-the-nuclear-necessity-20230509.pdf
I believe in understanding a subject before politicizing it one way or the other. Here is the list I put up yesterday. with a few additions from my “bookshelf” (many in electronic form). Perhaps I’ll take up the social science aspects later.
Paleoclimatology: From Snowball Earth to the Anthropocene
by Colin P. Summerhayes | Sep 8, 2020
Paleoclimatology: Reconstructing Climates of the Quaternary
by Raymond S. Bradley | Mar 6, 2014
Global Physical Climatology
by Dennis L. Hartmann | Jan 2, 2016
Climatology (4th Ed)
by Robert V. Rohli and Anthony J. Vega | Jun 22, 2017
Biogeochemistry: An Analysis of Global Change
by W.H. Schlesinger and Emily S. Bernhardt | Sep 8, 2020
Exploring Climate Change Data and the Denier’s Gambits I June 30, 2022 | by Thomas H Wilson
The White Planet: The Evolution and Future of Our Frozen World
by Jean Jouzel , Claude Lorius, et al. | Jan 15, 2013
Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: With Applications to Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and Engineering, Second Edition | by Steven H. Strogatz | Jul 29, 2014
Atmospheric Science, Second Edition: An Introductory Survey (International Geophysics)
by John M. Wallace and Peter V. Hobbs | Feb 15, 2006
Ocean Currents: Physical Drivers in a Changing World
by Robert Marsh and Erik van Sebille | Jun 30, 2021
The Ice Age
by Jürgen Ehlers, Philip Hughes, et al. | Oct 19, 2015
The Scientific Method: Why science is a crucial process for human progress, not just another academic subject or belief
by Gordon Holman | Jul 28, 2023
Philosophy of Science: Very Short Introduction
by Samir Okasha | July 20, 2016
There are a bunch more in the “Very Short Introduction” series – maybe later.
Yes, thanks for clarifying. I’m interested in what George has to offer given his professed background in climate science. I’m part way through your book btw and it’s outstanding. Even for an MA from 20 years ago!
I bought a stack of Mark Steyn’s “A Disgrace to the Profession {Mann}” to give out as gifts. Steyn will personally autograph, including with a phrase. He is fundraising for his trial against Mann, now scheduled for mid January. The case has been rattling around in the DC courts for 12 years now. Mann sued Steyn and the National Review for lampooning him with an article called Football and Hockey. This was just after we all learned Penn State leadership had cleared Jerry Sandusky, and allowed him years of additional sodomizing of boys in the locker room, the same group who cleared Mann any improprieties after Climategate . The offending quote:
The phraseology was that of Rand Simberg who Steyn was crediting for wit. Mann sued both and their publishers. The publishers settled. Simberg was let go. But Steyn doubled down, refused settlement and wrote The Disgrace and still makes fun of Mann. He wrote for me, “If the fraudpants fit they you acquit.”
https://www.steynonline.com/13931/if-at-first-you-dont-succeed-trial-trial-again
I will have lots to say about the Mann-Steyn trial after it is over (note: I’m a witness for Steyn/Simberg)
Unless the trial is closed to the public I intend to be there. Here is a clip from Dr. Curry’s 2017 amicus brief:
The only book in Judith’s list I’m going to slam is Erika Thompson’s “Escape From Model Land”. It claims to be about: “How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It”, but fails to fully explain how they lead us astray nor what we must do about it.
Somewhat understandable but in my view wrong decision. Here’s why. Models deliver the answer that they are biased for. A second failure is cutting across corners to come up with the simple explanation while ignoring the not so obvious that the scientific method is supposed to detect.
Here is an example I posted about yesterday in the previous thread.
Earth obliquity measurements have been made since 1100bce. JN Stockwell (1872) devised a formula based on his calculations, but biased on the polynomial ‘trend’. The polynomial departed from the data (3000 years of measurements). JF Dodwell realised that the data indicated a step input and exponential decay that was a more fitting mathematical model. School maths teaches the search for models in data trend, and discards outlier points. (again link: https://melitamegalithic.wordpress.com/2022/10/31/searching-evidence-astronomy-for-the-heretic/)
Humanity is from early childhood biased through legend and myth to fear cataclysmic anything, in spite of the evidence around us, today more than ever, in geology, fossil research, and several others avenues. Models rarely if ever feature dynamic step inputs, and other surprises. Mathematical model extrapolations don’t lead to sound science but many times to chaos.
I have not read the book; the above is from experience and my past time research.
“School maths teaches the search for models in data trend, and discards outlier points.”
Particularly when it is a single point and there is no physical causality to explain the outlier.
ganon1950: quote ‘Particularly when it is a single point and there is no physical causality to explain the outlier.’
Not when it has been measured. Then there is the need to explain it not ignore it. If the model cannot explain it —- who said “if the facts don’t fit the theory—“. And false dogma is born.
The point is ‘trip points’ are fast and there is evidence they occur (Dragon Kings – step inputs). But will not be caught in models.
Please, give examples of “trip points” for large, rapid changes in earth’s obliquity. I don’t care about models, I would like an underlying physical causality (mechanism) explanation, and an uncertainty analysis based on the scatter of other points (compared to “modern” astronomical measurements) around the single point on which you base your conclusion. Also, what is your source for your megalithic data. Thanks.
Also, did you know there was an alignment with Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and the moon in March 2023. I have heard of no perturbation of the obliquity, much less a 1/10 degree or more. Also, six (inner) planet alignments (mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) +moon, occur about every hundred years. Have you found any other obliquity perturbations (that also return to original position) corresponding to these alignments? Personal opinion is that you are reading something into the imprecision of ancient measurements that is not there.
ganon1950
You ask for plenty. I try to give some answers for the time being.
“source for your megalithic data”: my own research (you will not find it elsewhere) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1502726572/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=sl1&tag=crmeu-20&linkId=c31efc853c1ca3a0ad9f2458b09c3a8a
My further quest: to find why so; why do they indicate obliquity changes? My findings are at https://melitamegalithic.wordpress.com/ Digging the devil out of the detail, and there is a lot, is laborious I find; and time consuming, plus the pertinent data has to be teased out.
However the links given above and earlier are now beyond speculation. The earlier material becomes more corroborative. Calendars, sediment record correlated to measurements are quite solid.
Mechanism: for the moment that is a very very long story.
Yes, I ask substantive questions. That is the proper way to approach skepticism.
Yes, being a proper skeptic involves asking hard, substantive questions. Unfortunately, you do not seem to answer most of them.
ganon1950:
First, lets clarify ‘skeptic’. There is the believer -who believes everything, and its opposite the skeptic who believes nothing, when both do not have what it takes to analyse the data. Neither can deal with a complex problem.
Second: who is the skeptic in your posts? I try to understand the ‘anomaly’ that interests me or that I stumble upon.
Something about your earlier replies. Planetary alignments. Gravity is the key (plenty of info for one to update himself). From Newton its proportional to [M1M2/d^2]. A simple Excel exercise can show the relative effect of near bodies on earth. The moon is critical, then Jupiter followed by Venus. The rest don’t matter. Test it for year 173CE on dates June27, July 27 (both known to have caused earthquakes and tsunamis and the anomalous obliquity measurements). Also October24. For the latter there is no obliquity measurement, but we have of lately sedimentary record of a substantial disturbance. See link above. The devil is in the detail.
What I have given you is incontrovertible evidence, but you need to use your head.
You can also check Feb5 2023, also a troublesome orientation (strain in rotating masses have a phase lag on dynamic stress)
Note much of my critical information came only in the last 30 months or so. There is no written gospel for science.
I am aware of celestial mechanics. And I am skeptical of your “What I have given you is incontrovertible evidence,” which you cannot explain or support. “It’s a very very long story” is not an explanation of underlying physical causality. Your causality is not even as good as astrology – at least astrology acknowledges, indeed studies, the frequent alignments of planets; either you do not (an unforgivable scientific omission as it would be a strong test of your hypothesis) or you have and have and have not found any other obliquity-conjunction correlations (which would also be an unforgivable omission). Come back when you have real tested evidence that your hypothesis is correct, instead of claiming it is incontrovertible, and hoping that the gullible will believe it if you repeat it.
Ganon1950, OK
Mark
Models led us astray when they are relied upon when the model has been shown to not match observed conditions.
Mitigation of CO2 does not pass muster.
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/epdf/10.1142/S2010007823400031
I find the difference of 1-2% of GDP acceptable, considering the possible damage and cost of no mitigation, particularly in the longer term (post 2100), e.g., sea level rise and crop failure. Also, some studies estimate that mitigation may add as much as 2% to GDP (not take from). I also find an either/or analysis/approach to be stupid – use all available tools: continued research to better understand the consequences and their probabilities, mitigation, adaptation, and conservation. Mitigation is already underway (good thing – the sooner done, the less the costs and damages in the long run). Just my personal opinion.
I have been a follower of your website Climate Etc. for several years now. As I say in my recently published book: Climate Change: Cause – Consequences – Mitigation (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CMPMH2CN) “Judith A. Curry, a former professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, manages an interesting blogsite (https://judithcurry.com). Dr Curry has had a distinguished carrier in climate research, e.g. studying possible connections between increased hurricane intensity and global warming, when she retired from her position at Georgia Tech in 2017, saying that “independence of mind and climatology have become incompatible.“ In her blog, she stresses the uncertainty associated with application of circular climate models and believes that many scientific conclusions about imminent global warming are not warranted….critical assessment of established knowledge and the accuracy of modelling results is always valuable for progress in science.“ The final edition of my book, which is at last completed after seven years of writing, has a new chapter on Ocean Currents with many images as well as a new subchapter on Climate Sensitivity. There are 65 sharp colour images in the book, which is 275 pp.
Yep, baby’s drillin’.
The International Energy Agency, led by climate alarm advocate Fatih Birol, apparently feels it is safe to start the process of revising its forecasts for oil consumption growth now that the COP28 conference has ended. Right on cue, the agency seen by many as allowing an ideological bias to influence its reports upped its forecast for 2024 demand growth by 130,000 barrels per day less than 24 hours after the final COP28 agreement was made public.
No one should blame Birol and his staff for wanting to get a head start on this year’s revisions. The agency has made a habit of systematically underestimating global crude demand over the past decade, missing the mark on the low side in 10 of the past 12 years. Once the initial lowball estimate is issued, the standard practice involves quietly issuing a series of revisions across the following months that enable Birol to retain a semblance of having been “accurate” by the latter months of each year.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/16/opinion-this-agency-is-scrambling-to-adjust-its-absurd-peak-oil-predictions-david-blackmon/
That is a 0.13% year-over-year increase, which can be compared to 1998-2019 steady yearly growth average of 1.17%. Rapidly approaching peak oil – A good thing, IMHO.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/265239/global-oil-consumption-in-barrels-per-day/
We have seen peak oil claims for many decades. They all failed. You can make some come true if you say some kinds of oil aren’t really oil. But if you count “just oil”, all predictions of peak oil have failed. I’m sure yours will also.
Polly, your source is only a good one if used honestly. You’ve presented the ideological fuzzy math definition of “peak oil”. Peak oil historically was a measure for calculating the remaining amount of discoverable oil. You’re presenting the metric for the amount of oil used yr/yr, peak usage. Do you recognize the difference?
Politically speaking, both the left and right like to see less need for oil, but only the right when it results in prosperity, total growth of global GDP.
Extrapolating in terms of all the above, such doesn’t discriminate between types of energy sources used, per se, but it does relative to the total cost of energy. If sources of energy breaks the back of the consumer, via energy costs, this is a problem. Expensive energy will lead to a death spiral in declining GDP. Germany is learning this, but not the U.S.–yet. Cheaper energy leads to improving prosperity, is what it boils down to. Prosperity for the consumer=increasing GDP.
Gee, so now that we’ve qualified the understanding of what’s being defined here; you’re happy to see that declining use of fossil fuels (peak usage) will lead to declining global prosperity/declining GSP. This will be commensurate with your daily ration of seed, of course.
Polly, But I actually am allowed to define what makes you happy: lack of energy causation for human suffering makes you happy.
Let’s not forget the most “evil” of fossil fuels: COAL.
Global demand for coal will hit a record high of 8.5bn tonnes in 2023 despite the worldwide push for net zero, the International Energy Agency has warned.
Rising usage of coal in China and India has driven an increase in demand, which comes just days after the Cop28 climate summit agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels to help hit net zero targets by 2050.
Increased coal consumption in Asia has offset declining demand in advanced economies across Europe and the US, which both recorded drops of around 20pc.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/12/15/coal-use-hits-record-high-2023-net-zero-push/
What I described didn’t define anything “for” you, Polly. I defined your lack of logic, an extrapolation of what makes you happy; . You like higher energy costs, higher energy costs make people poorer; you’re okay with that for your own ideological reasons.
There ya go again, telling me what I like. You have no clue.
“We are currently in the middle of all three Milankovitch cycles, and are very slowly entering a cooling phase due to tiniest changes in Earth’s orbit eccentricity, axial tilt and precession.”
–
Not the cooling phase, but the in the culmination of the warming phase.
The cooling phase is yet to come.
–
It is like the Northern Hemisphere’s summer at the first decade of July.
We also, at first decade of July, we also slowly entering a cooling phase, due to small mitigation changes in the duration of solar hours…
But, nevertheless, in first decade of July, at Northen Hemisphere’s summer, the temperature instead of falling, continues to rise.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Am I correct to say that one of the more immediate casualties of alarmism is Ukraine as the $billions needed to ward off the Russians was instead spent by our government to pay for Teslas and windmills and some massive Postal Service fleet of EVs.
Steve McIntyre has been busy lately.
Look at the difference right of the dashed line at AD1990. In the underlying Dalton Highway data, the series ends at almost exactly the long-term average, whereas the same data incorporated into D’Arrigo’s NWNA regional composite closes at record or near-record highs for the post-1800 period.
If the 1992-2000 Dalton Highway data doesn’t show record highs for the site chronology, then it is implausible to claim that it shows record highs for the regional chronology. So what’s going on here?
My guess is that the regional chronology has mixed sites with different average widths and that their rudimentary statistical technique didn’t accommodate those differences. If so, this would be the same sort of error that we saw previously with Marcott et al 2013, in which there was a huge 20th jump without any increase in component series (simply by a low value series ending earlier.) Needless to say, these errors always go in a hockey stick direction
https://climateaudit.org/2023/12/14/darrigo-et-al-2006-nwna-alaska/
Excellent selection, Judith. Do any of them offer the simplification (irrefutable) that CO2 is not, at this time, at these levels, in control of temperature and 2) we are not in control of atmospheric CO2?
Jimmww,
I would hope not. At this time, it is pretty much irrefutable that GHG’s are the major forcing causing increases in current global surface annual average temperature, even though it may be overlaid with internal stochastic oscillations (which average out over time) of lower magnitude. Maybe you should move on to the arguments that “it doesn’t matter (not a problem),” “we can’t do anything about it,” or “it costs too much to do anything about it”. At least those are socio-economic-political arguments of “soft” sciences that are not falsifiable, not the way that hard physical sciences are falsifiable, but have not been in the case of the temperature – GHG relationship.
“it is pretty much irrefutable that GHG’s are the major forcing causing increases in current global surface annual average temperature”
Why would be it irrefutable? What is the irrefutable evidence?
Javier,
I said “pretty much irrefutable” – there are always ones like you, and others here, that try to refute it and fail; thus adding to the confirmation (“proof”) by failed falsification.
Javier,
BTW, I started reading your book with Amazon’s free sample program. Within a page or two I came upon this statement:
Since 1988, the number of articles published each year has increased by a factor 50 (fig.1, black line).
Assuming there was 1 climate paper in 1988, then you are claiming in the 25 years since there have been now 50^25 = 2.98×10^42 papers published in 2023.
Do you just make up stuff that sounds good to you, or lack a basic understanding of math and science? Needless to say, I won’t finish the book.
“Assuming there was 1 climate paper in 1988, then you are claiming in the 25 years since there have been now 50^25 = 2.98×10^42 papers published in 2023”
Bad math, Polly, since 1988 is 35 years. This is what happens when you only suck down 110% proof.
A convenient way to weasel out of reading Javier’s outstanding book, ganon, which by the way is filled with hard science. Of course those who believe climate science is the homecoming queen version of science, that is, in the end it’s a popularity contest, there is no amount of evidence that will dissuade them from their humanity saving mission.
Karen, you are right. It should have been 35 years and 2.91×10^59 papers in 2023. And, as usual, you completely miss the point in favor of formulating an insult. But that’s just you being you. BTW, I don’t drink beyond an occasional beer,
Nonsense, Polly, you drink copious amounts of Kool-Aid, spiked of course.
Karen, I don’t drink Kool-Aid either, that seems to be your province. Why don’t you P. O. until you have something relevant to say – my guess is you are afraid of being crushed in a hard physical science discussion.
I suggest an overlay graph. Take the global warming since the beginning of the 20th century until today and emplace the Mauna loa CO2 curve. CO2 is smooth running and temperature jiggles a lot, actually the 1945 to 1975 range drops the temperature. Thats a long time span – one as commonly identified as climate defining – with significant simultaneous CO2 increase in accumulation. There has not been an acknowledged CO2 emission spike, one like Pinatubo. Can one imply that CO2 is a driver of temperature, or the other way around? I don’t see it.
If you see it the other way around, what is causing the temperature increase that is causing such a dramatic increase in CO2? Nobody says that there is a one-to-one correspondence between CO2 and GMAST (but it is damn close). There are clearly overlaid stochastic internal oscillations of the climate system, e.g., ENSO, as well as other anthropogenic effects (SO2, particulates, land use albedo changes – all causing cooling, not warming), but they are all minor compared to the GHE of GHGs, and the associated feedbacks. Sorry you don’t see it – pretty obvious if you look.
“Can one imply that CO2 is a driver of temperature, or the other way around? I don’t see it.”
–
CO2 is defenitely not a driver of temperature.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Christos,
“CO2 is defenitely not a driver of temperature ”
Yes it is. You’d have to give a convincing argument for what is forcing the CHANGE in temperature that then causes the CO2 increase.
https://i0.wp.com/timescavengers.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/1000-2000_co2temp-01.jpg
Polly, see guest post: Causality and climate, peer review describing how temperature leads CO2. It was hosted by Demetris Koutsoyiannis.
You failed there too. No doubt 110% proof at work. You need to get your wings clipped before you fly into something else.
cerescokid,
Peer review does not prevent occasional crap from getting through. If you believed it, you are the one with the 110% proof problem. And calling it that would just be another indication of the problem; 110% would be 220 proof, which is impossible.
Adaptation to climate is occurring in spite of the government. San Antonio has had a flash flood problem in some neighborhoods pretty much forever. It has nothing to do with “climate change.” In fact, the government should convert the flood insurance program to a flood adaptation one. Have FEMA buy out flooded houses along the coast. Convert some to preserves, some to public beaches, and some for private entities that can self-insure. Buy out the poorer people with a good price so they can move to higher ground. A win-win-win. And eventually, the coast would be clear.
Over the last two decades, as San Antonio and surrounding Bexar County, Texas, grew by more than 600,000 people, some 17% of the city’s blocks experienced a decrease in population.
That delta is largely due to flood risk that climate change exacerbates, according to a new report by the First Street Foundation, a data nonprofit with the mission of communicating climate hazards.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-18/more-than-3-million-americans-are-already-climate-migrants-researchers-say
Thanks for the admission that sea level rise is going to become a real problem, and it should be dealt with proactively by the government.
ganon – sea level has been rising since the little ice age. And if you can remove the Climate Doomer blinders, you will see that people who live on the coast experience hurricanes. Hurricanes cause 10, 20, or even more feet of water. This is a much bigger problem than “climate change”. And this is why the government should help poorer people move off the coast. It has nothing to do with CO2.
Sure, Jim. Perhaps you should read the NOAA technical report on sea level rise, including acceleration and attribution. What a coincidence that the end of slowly declining temperature of the LIA and the advent of SLR both came at the onset of GHG increases after the start of the industrial revolution, and both are accelerating. You may deny all you want, but that has nothing to do with reality.
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/sealevelrise/sealevelrise-tech-report.html
ganon1950 | December 18, 2023 at 9:58 am |
Sure, Jim. Perhaps you should read the NOAA technical report on sea level rise, including acceleration and attribution. What a coincidence that the end of slowly declining temperature of the LIA and the advent of SLR both came at the onset of GHG increases after the start of the industrial revolution, and both are accelerating.
Ganon – You are basing your commentary on GHG being the primary driver of the warming since the little ice age.
though can you provide some science based explanation on why there was a shift from a cooling trend to a warming trend at the end of the LIA when co2 went from 280ppm to 281ppm. There is a multitude of studies showing the current warming trend is due to ghg, but is there a study explaining why there was a shift from a cooling trend to a warming trend when the increase in co2 was neglible?
ganon – what a crock! One inch of sea level rise is less than 1% of a 10 foot hurricane surge. Weak tea, ganon. I expect better.
Joe,
Yes, the temperature decline was very slow and did not take much CO2 to turn it around. The end of the LIA may have also been associated with a Bond cycle that may have slowed the cooling. An overlay graph of T and [CO2] should make the “big picture” clear.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780323900850000164
https://i0.wp.com/timescavengers.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/1000-2000_co2temp-01.jpg
Jim2,
So you didn’t read the report and still don’t know what you are talking about. Instead of 1″ how about 1 foot (now) or 2-3 feet by the end of the century. That and the fact that storm surge amplifies the SLR – the winds push the excess water in front of it and the height builds up. It is similar to the way tide state affects storm surge, except the SLR is always there, while tide is a crap shoot.
ganon – what a crock 2.0. Hurricanes have been a flooding problem forever. They are a problem now. Adding a foot or two isn’t an issue. You can’t make a slight sea level rise more of a problem than hurricanes. You are making a fool of yourself.
ganon
And I am sure scientists were freaking out when the 1983 EPA report came out.
“ The report said sea levels could rise as much as 12 feet because of melting polar ice caps.”
By 2100
And how much has it gone up after 40 years? Maybe 4-5 inches.
How many more failed predictions do we need for the establishment to admit the actual observation evidence through the tidal gauges shows no significant acceleration.
And when the AMO goes cold turkey for a few decades the predictions are going to look even sillier.
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/10/18/EPA-report-predicts-catastrophic-global-warming/2626435297600/
I initially noted this Wunsch 2018, paper because of this passage, which I found interesting.
“As already noticed, the Southern Ocean had long been recognized as having a physics that is distinct from the midlatitude and equatorial regions . Without a supporting pressure gradient, ordinary Sverdrup dynamics cannot be applied to flows within the zonally unbounded latitude band of Drake Passage. Mesoscale eddies are now believed to play a central role both in the dynamics and thermodynamics, making the Southern Ocean a turbulent fluid that cannot be understood with linear models.”
But after reading the discussion above, I was reminded of other sections which included this
“ The central change in understanding of the ocean circulation during the past 100 years has been its emergence as an intensely time-dependent, effectively turbulent and wave-dominated, flow. Early technologies for making the difficult observations were adequate only to depict large-scale, quasi-steady flows. With the electronic revolution of the past 50+ years, the emergence of geophysical fluid dynamics, the strongly inhomogeneous time-dependent nature of oceanic circulation physics finally emerged. Mesoscale (balanced), submesoscale oceanic eddies at 100-km horizontal scales and shorter, and internal waves are now known to be central to much of the behavior of the system.”
The authors chronicle the history of changes in thinking about the oceans and discusses the efforts of pioneers in oceanography to gain a better understanding of all the dynamics involved.
As I was reading about the research by these scientists, I wondered where we would be without those who were willing to challenge the orthodoxy and the contemporary assumptions, motivated by a desire to increase their knowledge and that of their field.
I’m sure none of them thought the science was settled.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/amsm/59/1/amsmonographs-d-18-0002.1.xml
“The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.”
Paul Broca
Thanks. ‘Those who seek find.’
159) Wunsch, C. Quantitative estimate of the Milankovitch-forced contribution to observed climate change. Quat. Sci. Revs., 23/9-10, 1001-1012, 2004.
Abstract: “A number of records commonly described as showing control of climate change by Milankovitch insolation forcing are re-examined. The fraction of the record variance attributable to orbital changes never exceeds 20%. In no case, including a tuned core, do these forcing bands explain the overall behavior of the records. At zero order, all records are consistent with stochastic models of varying complexity with a small superimposed Milankovitch response, mainly in the obliquity band. Evidence cited to support the hypothesis that the glacial/interglacial cycles are controlled by the quasi-periodic insolation forcing is likely indistinguishable from chance, given the small sample size and near-integer ratios of to the precessional periods. At the least, the stochastic background “noise” is likely to be of importance.”
The obliquity formula beyond 2345bce, the 4k2 event, fails due to a transient step-input. Then is the ‘background noise’ the Eddy cycle?
It feels like at COP28 the delusions of Western greens finally crashed against the shores of reality. The luxuriant doom-mongering of privileged eco-warriors who insist the world will end if we don’t phase out fossil fuels was confronted by a truth no reasonable person can deny: that fossil fuels remain vital to human life. In the gleaming oasis of Dubai it became clear that oil, gas and even coal are not going away anytime soon, however much the Gretas of the West might want them to. Why? Because – brace yourselves – India, China, Brazil and other nations are not prepared to sacrifice their economic health at the altar of our deranged anti-modernism.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/12/17/brendan-oneill-cop28-and-the-scourge-of-eco-imperialism/
Big Green is becoming Jack Boot Statism.
Several blue states have deprived rural counties of the ability to reject the massive green energy projects that corporations want to site in their communities, while green industrial interests and environmentalist groups have poured money into state capitals.
Michigan, California, New York and Illinois have all passed legislation that consolidates authority over land use issues and rules with state-level bureaucrats at the expense of local governments that could have altered their own zoning codes to stem the tide of industrial green projects like solar and wind farms. These policies deprive rural residents in these states of their freedom and local autonomy, while also benefiting the corporate interests that line the pockets of the states’ Democratic governors, state policy experts and lawmakers told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Much of the renewables business and movement has been co-opted by big corporations,” which “are spending millions” on politics “because this is a matter of billions for them,” Edward Ring, a senior fellow for the California Policy Institute and the organization’s co-founder, told the DCNF. “What we are seeing, for example, with the ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’ is one of the biggest gifts of money to corporations that we have ever seen in this country,” Ring told the DCNF, referring to the IRA’s subsidies facilitating the rise of green energy.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/17/blue-states-rural-control-corporations-green-projects/
SO you don’t like Democracy and eminent domain. Too bad, both have been around for a while, E.g. interstate highway systems, national monuments and parks, location of power lines, hydroelectric projects, railroads, airports, oil drilling rights, etc. Get used to it, it’s not going away just because you don’t like some of the public benefit projects it makes possible.
I abhor unnecessary eminent domain which is what this “green” energy nonsense is.
JIm2, your abhorrence doesn’t make a bit of difference. Nor does your personal opinion of what is, and what is not, nonsense. If it upsets you, vote and contribute to your favorite candidates, that is your say in the matter. I’d say make convincing arguments, but I find that unlikely.
As I said a week or two ago, high interest rates are adversely impact “green” energy.
SunPower Corp. shares plunged the most in seven years after the rooftop solar installer warned that a potential default may affect its ability to continue as a going concern.
The company slumped as much as 25%, the most intraday since August 2016.
SunPower said it had learned
of an event of default under the credit agreement of its subsidiary, due to delay in delivery of 3Q financials, according to a filing Monday.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-18/sunpower-plunges-amid-default-risk-and-going-concern-warning
I saw this coming 9 months ago. I also noticed how everyone seems to ignore the cost benefits for ground mounted solar system.
https://ntreg.groups.io/g/main/message/4856
Mar 23, 2023
“With the help of Bing’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard I did some research on how big the potential market for residential solar is in Texas.
Some of my findings:
Using ChatGPT to query Google’s Project Sunroof (https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/) it estimates up to 77% of existing homes have the surface area to support a solar array up to 5KW but only 25% have good orientation (south facing roof) and minimal shading. With numbers like that we are never going to hit our net zero targets with roof top solar so I think we need to explore promoting more residential ground mount systems. Fixed axis ground mount systems cost nearly the same as roof top systems to install after factoring in the extra cost of having to install posts and buried wiring with the ground mount systems, but the real savings accrue over the life of the system. A study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) found that the average ROI for a ground mounted solar system in the United States is 12.5%, while the average ROI for a rooftop system is 9.5%. This means that, on average, a ground mounted solar system will pay for itself in 8 years, while a rooftop system will pay for itself in 10 years. I also found out that 75% of roofs in Texas are asphalt shingles with a average age of 9 years. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the average cost of removing and reinstalling rooftop solar panels is $3,750.
Benefits of a ground mount system:
1) Optimal placement means better lifetime energy production.
2) Cooler operation due to air flow behind the panels means more power and longer life.
3) Cleaning and maintenance much easier plus you don’t have to remove/install them if you need replace your roof.
4) Due to better siting and less shading you can use cheaper central inverters instead of microinverters.
4) Even better if you are using Bifacial solar panels with reflective ground cover.
As of 2021 about 22% (28,000 homes) of residential solar system are ground mount systems This was up from only 15% in 2020.
It is important to factor in how higher interest rates will affect solar system ROI too. Using Google’s Bard I looked at for sources of funding that could affect residential solar installations. One estimate from SEIA (2022) breaks down like this:
20% pay cash.
27% use HELOC loans and 80% of those loans are on homes with existing mortgages.
28% use 3 party financing (paying about 3% over HELOC rates) + requires 10%-20% downpayment.
25% are leased.”
Even back when the IRA was first announced I pointed out how vulnerable the funding was (I coined the term “synthetic capital”) and that rising interest rates would destroy about half of all the RE projects that were in the pipeline at the time.
Its even worse than I realized when I discovered that those billions of IRA tax credits were being funneled into yet another financial scheme call Tax Equity where big corporations pay as little as 70 cents on the dollar to buy cash strapped RE projects RE tax credits and then get to claim they are spending millions on clean energy but its just another green washing scam.
Just think about it:
If Earth’s surface were emitting those imaginary
240 W/m^2
Earth would have frozen to its very core a long time ago.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
I’ve thought about it.
Not if most of those 240 W/m^2 heated the atmosphere through absorption by CO2, CH4, and H2O vapor, and then collisions converted that excitation energy to molecular kinetic energy (heat).
There is not any 240 W/m^2 emission from Earth’s surface , we do not witness Earth emitting 240 W/m^2 .
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
depends on where you look.
ganon, where ever I look Earth’s surface doesn’t emit
240 W/m^2.
–
Where do you look?
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Some place between the equator and the poles. any place the surface temperature is about -18 C and the emissivity is near 1.
“any place the surface temperature is about -18 C and the emissivity is near 1.” doesn’t emit the enormous 240 W/m^2.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
You personal declarations have zero value. Provide supporting data information.
ganon, I know what the 240 W/m^2 feels like.
Also, I know the -18 C what feels like too.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Christos,
Your “feelings” aren’t scientific evidence.
ganon,
“Not if most of those 240 W/m^2 heated the atmosphere through absorption by CO2, CH4, and H2O vapor, and then collisions converted that excitation energy to molecular kinetic energy (heat).”
BTW, ganon, does our Moon rotate about its own axis?
Yes, it is tidally locked to the earth and its sidereal rotation about its axis takes 27.3 days, the same as one orbit around the earth.
“sidereal rotation” is not about its axis. “sidereal rotation” references to the stars.
Wrong, sidereal is rotation about it’s own axis (and yes it does), with reference to the fixed stars.
Either Moon orbits Earth once in 27,3 days, or Moon rotates about its own axis ones in 27,3 days.
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Can’t do both and face Earth always with the same side.
cerescokid,
“ The report said sea levels could rise as much as 12 feet because of melting polar ice caps.”
Still can, tho’ seems unlikely, and sources would more likely be Greenland and the WAIS.
Seems your understanding of nonlinear dynamics (acceleration and tipping points) and ice sheet collapse are about as good as your understanding of English; “could rise as much as” means the upper limit of rise, it does not mean “will rise”.
“could rise as much as“
Yes, as in another 8 inches. Put me down as all in.
You really don’t still believe that nonsense. I went all through the studies identifying all the errors and uncertainties with you, but none of it seemed to sink in. Figures.
I believe the NOAA technical report, not you (and corrected some of your cherry-picked errors, including current numbers for global acceleration instead of your single-source decades old values for one region). The decision of whom to believe wasn’t even close.
I will go with Kleinherenbrink. It has a certain ring of authenticity to it.
“ Note that the inability to state that an acceleration is present with certainty using satellite radar altimetry does not imply there is no acceleration at all. Its estimated value in this study is actually in line with the results of the 20th-century tide-gauge-based GMSL reconstruction by Dangendorf et al.17, notably 0.018 ± 0.016 mm yr−2. The uncertainties in the altimetry-derived estimate, however, cause the same acceleration to become statistically equivalent to zero at a 95%-confidence level.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-47340-z
Alan Longhurst’s book is not an easy read. It is packed with documented information.
What he demonstrates clearly is that the simplifications introduced to support the notion that the carbon dioxide dial can explain climate science are fundamentally unsupportable.
To begin, he raises the issue of a single average temperature being used to characterize the earth and shows that its accuracy is vastly overstated. For example, he questions whether urban heat islands have been given sufficient emphasis. Not only this, he raises valid questions as to whether a single temperature has any real meaning.
He also points out other ways in which man has altered climate besides raising the CO2 level which are ignored by the models.
I question whether anyone can read his book with an open mind and still support the current models.
“What he demonstrates clearly is that the simplifications introduced to support the notion that the carbon dioxide dial can explain climate science are fundamentally unsupportable.”
I don’t think any climate scientists make that claim. It just turns out to be the most important factor.
“he raises the issue of a single average temperature being used to characterize the earth and shows that its accuracy is vastly overstated”.
It is a simple metric with known uncertainty, as such it is still useful and its trend is meaningful. If you’d like spatially and daily resolved information, it has been available from satellites for over 45 years.
Longhurst claims that we don’t know enough to make the claim that CO2 is the most important factor.
Longhurst again claims that the sea temperature measurements are not really indicative of anything. Since the oceans cover more than 70 % of the earth’s surface, there is a huge information gap. He also raises an issue with the fact that apart from the US, too many of the land stations are urban and there not that indicative of the earth’s actual temperature.
Longhurst may make claims about what he did or didn’t know. However, he does not speak for the vast majority of climatologists. Sea temperatures are indicative of sea temperature – I don’t think that has ever been “nothing” – but more important is the heat content gain of the oceans, which is reflected in many temperature measurements at many depths (science marches on) – we only see 10% of AGW energy in GMST measurements, the rest is absorbed by the ocean. As for land stations, that is out of date – a few very well characterized stations are used to calibrate/confirm satellite measurements, which are much more accurate for GMST measurements as well as global space and time resolution (science marches on).
Longhurst’s position is that we don’t know enough to make the statement that changes in CO2 concentration are that most important factor in determining the earth’s temperature.
The single average temperature may well be a simple metric, but Longhurst questions whether land temperature measurements are in fact representative of the actual earth’s temperature, since apart from the US, too many of them are urban and subject to unknown uncertainty because of the urban heat effect. He also raises serious issues as to whether the ocean surface measurements have any real meaning.
In sum, Longhurst does not accept your statement that the single average temperature “is a simple metric with known uncertainty”.