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Clash of the Climateers

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From Climate Scepticism

BY TONY THOMAS

It’s the slugfest of the century

It’s the slugfest of the century — Australia’s top climate alarmist Dr Joelle Gergis (above) duking it out with Anna-Maria Arabia, CEO of the Australian Academy of Science. The green-Left Academy wants any challenge to its global warming panics to be censored by the federal apparatus – see Shut Them Up, Argues the Academy of Science. Hence I predict Ms Arabia will triumph by getting the impertinent Gergis cancelled as a climate denier.

At issue is “CCS” or carbon capture and storage. This means plucking CO2 out of industry and the atmosphere to achieve otherwise-unattainable net zero. The captured CO2, a plant food which the CSIRO admits has been lavishly greening the planet, has to be safely stored in repositories by the billion and even tens of billion tonnes a year. These CO2 jails must be locked up for thousands or even millions of years, say the Academy’s experts.[1]

But CCS is so much trillion-dollar bunk, as Joelle sets out to demonstrate. She’s playing Samson’s dangerous game — destabilising the Temple of Climate. This temple is already tottering in Europe as Germany et al recognise the havoc the Greens have caused their economies. Renewables are bunk too, not that Joelle would admit that. The climate models causing people to imagine “global boiling” and “highways to hell” are also bunk. As 2022 Nobel Prize winner in physics John Clauser puts it, “There is no correlation between temperature change and carbon dioxide – it is all a crock of crap.”[2]

In what the ABC would describe as “handbags at six paces”[3], the Arabia-Gergis stoush involves:

♦ For the Academy, its Roundtable Report of  March 2023 on ” Greenhouse gas removal in Australia” and its submission to the feds last July espousing mind-blowing CCS targets. That submission is so silly I’ve banished it to this footnote [4], and will focus instead on the Roundtable.

♦ For Joelle, there’s her vast piece in June’s Quarterly Essay, which makes my wordy Quadrant effusions look like haikus. (Gergis occupies 88 pages of the 122-page issue). She took a break from climate catastrophism to study creative writing, and another break from her ANU senior lectureship to sit in the dark-green Australia Institute for months as writer-in-residence to pen her essay.[5] The Institute is a Siamese twin of the Greens Party[6] . Joelle has now emerged to title her handiwork “Highway to Hell: Climate Change and Australia’s Future.”[7]

In her essay Joelle for once takes a view I agree with, that CCS is a stupid scam with not even the chance of an ice-cream in hell of getting us to the broad sunlit uplands of net zero. More on her CCS demolition down the track.

The Academy, however, trusts CCS as the magic bullet to save the planet from computer-modelled fiery damnation in 2100. In general, the Academy wants Labor’s anti-emissions targets to be made something like twice as fierce. Instead of one giant 7MW windmill being built per day to 2030 (Albo’s scheme), the Academy logically wants two a day. And instead of 22,000 made-in-China solar panels installed per day, it wants circa 40,000 a day. Climate Minister Chris Bowen’s wind farms and power lines are flattening forests and blighting landscapes. The Academy’s brought-forward emissions targets would at least double the damage.

In trying to square the circle on net zero, the Academy’s experts have come up with what I’d call the “Kittylitter Leapthrough”. It involves methane, CO2’s greenhouse pal, (formula CH4, according to Mr Walter House, my despairing chemistry teacher in 1956). At the roundtable, experts suggested that zeolite, kittylitter’s cheap ingredient ($US140 per tonne), might be engineered on a planetary scale to mop excess methane (p15).

The Roundtable was run by Academy President Chennupati Jagadish AC , who thought the Academy’s “independence and convening power made us an ideal host for a roundtable on novel negative emissions approaches for Australia.” He foresaw Australia as a CCS research – or maybe kittylitter — superpower.[8]

A list on page 28 shows that every one of the 18 round-tablers, by invitation, were drawn from the university/CSIRO/govt sectors (12 professors among them). There was not one person from industry. They dreamed of breakthroughs unimpeded by costs or commercial technology. Their suggestions include, with my comments below

1/ Trains that capture CO2 while travelling between mine sites, to be stored subsequently at mine sites.

Does anyone remember that 268-waggon BHP train in the Pilbara that lost its driver five years ago and travelled 100km at up to 160kph before its $300-million pile-up? Imagine such a runaway train dragging captured CO2. Would Gina Hancock, who thinks climate doomism is propaganda, convert her Roy Hill trains to CO2 courier duties?.

2/ Ocean alkalinity enhancement – Addition of alkalinity-enhancing substance generated from mine tailings and other waste.

I’m not sure that whales, sardines, octopi and clown fish cavorting in the Great Barrier Reef would welcome a gazillion tonnes of mine tailings. The roundtablers’ stream of consciousness continued,

4/ Ocean farming (e.g., kelp, seagrass) for CO2 capture…

Ocean storage: – Biomass in the ocean , e.g., seaweed that sinks to the deep ocean, Blue carbon[9], Deep ocean storage.

5/  Injecting in the atmosphere “iron-salt aerosols – iron-containing particles that enhance natural methane sinks by mimicking natural reactions caused by mineral dust particles.

Not content with re-jigging the oceans, the tax-funded boffins also contemplate rehashing our atmosphere. I guess the ivory-tower crowd likes to think big!

6/ Integrating carbon capture into current structural materials and systems, e.g., building materials can perform a dual role as carbon capture surfaces or retrofitting HVAC [heating, ventilation and air cooling] systems to provide capture function.

My villa unit has its Hitachi split-system HVAC motor in the front garden. Its concrete pad is tilting in the mud and the box has quite a lean. Could someone from the Roundtable please drop by, convert my HVAC to airborne CO2 capture, and straighten the lean while they’re at it?.

7/ DAC [direct air capture] used to accelerate biomass production (e.g., bamboo) with a view to use in cross laminated timber as a large-scale replacement/augmentation for steel structures in buildings.

I foresee the CFMEU’s John Setka enforcing a “bamboo site allowance” of $20 an hour on Melbourne’s high-rise jobs. As I write, I hum a tune from my teens which, as I recall, goes

On the windier days, Seems an orchestra plays
On a musical breeze for you;
Like a merry salute From a heavenly flute
To the tower of singing bamboo.

TIME now,as promised, for Joelle’s hatchet job on the delusions of the Academy and its September 2022 Roundtable.[10] Her Quarterly Essay dubs CCS “a fool’s errand that will only lead to delay and failure (p81)…a disastrous gamble (p12)…the fantasy get-out-of-jail-free card that threatens to ruin us (p50). If we buy into these delusions, we will be in very deep trouble.” (p51) Here’s why, she explains (p56-61):

♦ In the past 30 years 80 per cent of all CCS pilot projects have flopped.

♦ “To achieve global targets, approximately 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide need to be stored each year by 2030, growing to 10 billion tonnes per annum by 2050.”

♦ The 41 operational CCS projects in 2023 store less than 10m tonnes of CO2 a year (according to UNEP) or 49m tonnes (according to CCS industry-group figures – Joelle suggests the latter mob are lying, which is normal for green lobbies). Joelle herself is on the Climate Council. She’s mentored there by council chief Tim Flannery, who’s still waiting for his 2004 prediction to bear fruit about my birthplace Perth becoming a waterless ghost town.

♦ Given total human-caused emissions last year alone were 41 billion tonnes, CCS would need to be boosted by 1000 times to do any climate-solving.

♦ “Offshore CCS has added dangers of acidifying marine environments, contaminating groundwater, inducing earthquakes and the displacement of toxic brine deposits. The true risks of the hazards of the offshore CCS industry are yet to be fully scientifically and technically assessed, let alone comprehensively regulated… embarking on such a risky path for such little gain is spectacularly illogical.”

♦ To achieve net zero by 2050, the CCS industry would need to suck up investment worth $US655b to $US1.3 trillion ($A2 trillion or $2,000,000,000,000). Even with that, a commercial CCS plant takes ten years to build so don’t expect wonders by 2050.

A cynic might say that with CCS advocacy, the Academy is pushing a no-lose position for its 700 Fellows. If it works, they save (we hope) the planet. If it doesn’t, well the basic research costing eight or even nine-figure amounts won’t have been wasted in enhancing the Fellows’ lifestyles. There would be lavishly-staffed Centres of CCS Excellence, university promotions and job security, multi-million lab gear approvals, King’s Birthday honours and all that, plus jetting to prestigious conferences.

Also, CCS is not just a job-ticket for boffins who can do maths and engineering — there would likely be near-unlimited CCS funding for artsy hangers-on like Jungians researching the psyches of Joelle and other CCS-deniers; CCS angles re LGBTQI+s, feminists and Aboriginal main-chancers[11]; and CCS strategies expressed in gouache and dance (enjoy!). All this stuff is already affixed like sucker-fish to the mainstream “climate science” shark.

I’d better add that Joelle’s anti-CCS crusade is to stop Albanese from pussy-footing around on emissions, and harden up the progressives’ ruinous anti-fossil-fuel fatwas. Nothing but an immediate crackdown on fossil-fuel use and any new petroleum/coal projects will satisfy Joelle.

I do worry that exposing these schisms among the climate-crazy set could set back my good relations with Academy President Jagadish. He’s already cross with, I believe, other journos for disrespecting the Academy’s wisdom. He wrote to his Fellows last August that “undermining science undermines us all”. Those rogue journos “seek to twist the truth to suit their agenda”, he complained, continuing

We have witnessed the seeding and dissemination of uncertainty throughout the years—to postpone the regulation of tobacco consumption, to continue the use of lead in petrol, to obstruct vaccination during the ongoing pandemic, or to prevent action on climate change to list a few.

His next paragraph had me scratching my head. He seemed to suggest that blaming a Wuhan lab-leak for the global Covid disaster was a “deliberate undermining of public trust in science [and] conspiracy and fearmongering.” [12] I thought Xi Jin-Ping’s incendiary reaction and billion-dollar trade bans over PM Morrison’s mild call for a Covid-origins inquiry were a clue. And indeed, evidence for the lab-leak origin is compounding every day. US intelligence agencies with their vast resources are split or uncertain about the Wuhan lab-leak theory: at least one of these agencies, judging by Jagadish’s comment, must be conspiring and fear-mongering. What on earth’s going on at the Academy?

Jagadish conflated, without evidence, the public’s trust in science with public trust in his Academy, which has been thoroughly captured by the green-black-Left blob[13]. He went on,

Science relies on high-quality journalism to communicate discoveries that impacts our lives. And that is why we must be concerned when journalism and other sources seek to mislead, distort and obfuscate scientific evidence and in doing so undermine public trust in science.

It is a dangerous trend and must be called out. As a national academy whose remit is to uphold standards of excellence in science, we will call out behaviour that serves no good purpose and that harms the essential underpinnings of a stable, safe and civil society that relies on evidence-informed decision making. It is up to all those who value the importance of knowledge as a public good to take a stand in the face of those who would assault it.

I bet those other journos would want to ask Jagadish why, if his outfit is so sciencey and evidentiary, the Academy

♦ organised smoking ceremonies to cleanse Academy premises of evil spirits?

♦ Supported its Future Earth subsidiary’s childish if not vicious call for a no-growth economy?[14] See also the Academy’s conference here where it touts someone claiming “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”.

♦ Run fake Aborigine Bruce Pascoe as a plenary lead speaker on how his supposed ancestors communed with whales when Bass Strait was dry land?

♦ Used a previous school science course to badger 15-year-oldf’s to become ignorant little climate activists?[15] (in the kids’ science quiz: Could we do without it [mining]?… Would you work for a mining company?)

♦ Capitulated to a pile-on by Twitter ferals and apologised for the Academy’s pro-forma welcoming of the Liberal’s Christian Porter as incoming Science Minister? and

♦ Backed the losing Yes referendum, based on its fallacious view on the usage and meaning of “terra nullius”?

Science once had a good name, despite some wayward groupthink. These days orthodox climate science especially is so politicised and corrupted from primary-schooling upward that people would be wise to hold their nose when dealing with it. Case in point: the Academy’s manias about carbon capture and storage.

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] GREENHOUSE GAS REMOVAL IN AUSTRALIA – A report on the novel negative emissions approaches for Australia roundtable. p31

[2] More than 130 scientific papers say that even a doubling of CO2 – not expected for 150 years according to the IPCC – will cause less than 2degC warming, most saying around 1degC.

[3] When I lodged a complaint last year against the sexism of Media Watch’s Paul Barry referring to Peta Credlin with the phrase “handbags at six paces”, I got this response (email August 25) from Investigations Officer “James” at the ABC Ombudsman depot:

“I cannot agree with you that the phrase you complained about is sexist and demeaning. It is on old-fashioned, rarely used reference to a ‘minor disagreement’ – see for example Handbags at 6 paces – Idioms by The Free Dictionary.”

[4] Academy: “Australia should commit to building capacity to draw down greenhouse gases at scale, particularly carbon dioxide… In its April 2022 Report, the IPCC identifies that meeting the modelled 1.5°C pathways requires a net negative carbon dioxide emissions volume of 20-660 gigatons [20-660 billion tonnes, TT] by 2100. Building capacity to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – at scale along with the capacity to store it safely for centuries – is critical. Australia should announce a GHG removal target encompassing nature-based and technological solutions. This should be in addition to ambitious emission reduction targets.”

[5] Joelle, to put it another way, says she did her writing on lands of the Bundjalung, Ngunnawal ,Ngambri, Dharug and Gundungurra peoples.

[6] Wiki: “A number of current and previous senior employees of the Australia Institute have also worked with the Australian Greens or other environmental organisations. This includes the founder and former director of the institute Clive Hamilton (who ran as a Greens candidate), former Director Ben Oquist and current Executive Director Richard Denniss (both of whom worked for Australian Greens leader Bob Brown), Deputy Director Ebony Bennett (who worked as a Greens media advisor[4]), Chief-of-Staff Anna Chang (who was a media and campaigns advisor to the Australian Greens) and ex-regulatory lead Dan Cass (who was a Greens campaign manager and office bearer[5]). Ex-Director and Deputy Chair of the Australia Institute (2004–2022), Professor Barbara Pocock, was also elected as an Australian Green Senator for South Australia in 2022.”

[7] The ANU website says Joelle’s still with them. Her job is to coach 200 teen students a year about our climate doom (Essay p7)

[8] Jagadish: “This roundtable and its accompanying report will help propel Australia into leadership of what will likely be a defining endeavour of the coming century.” Roundtable Summary: “Australia has strengths and comparative advantages that could make it an international leader in negative emissions.” p32.

[9] “Blue carbon”, says NOAA, is “carbon captured by the world’s ocean and coastal ecosystems.” This makes the Academy’s musings somewhat circular.

[10] I notice Joelle has contributed a chapter to teen Greta Thunberg’s “The Climate Book”. Joelle wasn’t to know that Greta today jigs around in her her Hamas-friendly keffiyeh.

[11] Roundtable p27: “Engaging early with policymakers and communities, especially First Nations peoples, to co-design appropriate approaches to negative emissions portfolios.”

[12] For reference, Jagadish’s wording is: “The current level of discourse around science, in Australia and the world, in relation to the origin of SARS-CoV-2 [covid] is another contemporary example [of mis/disinformation]. It reflects a worrying pattern of deliberate undermining of public trust in science at a time when policymakers need to inform their decisions with rigorously gathered evidence, rather than in response to conspiracy and fearmongering.”

[13] Arabia was originally the anti-free-speech head of Science & Technology Australia, leading a 200-strong demo (see 2.20mins) to federal Parliament to urge laws against purported climate “misinformation”. She was appointed Academy CEO in 2016 after three years part-time as policy director/principal adviser for then Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Science policy director Chris Anderson, appointed in 2019, had been adviser and then chief of staff for six years to Labor Senator, Rudd-Gillard minister and factional warlord Kim Carr.

[14] Future Earth p45: “In fact, the neoliberal economic model has produced enormous inequality in Australia and beyond, has undermined democracy and participation, and has fuelled social and environmental injustice. As such, neoliberalism has become a barrier that undercuts just adaptation to climate change. Therefore, these economic and financial systems must change, not only to sustain the provision of basic goods and services and economic opportunities but also to address the inequities they have created across the world and between generations. Such a change will encounter resistance and hence requires courageous leadership. Yet, it is also an opportunity to learn from Indigenous ontologies that are based on Country and interrelated webs of being. It will mean shifting from growth thinking to degrowth models…” (My emphasis).

[15] Academy advice to teachers: “Ask students if they have ever taken action or advocated for a cause.” — Lesson outcomes: At the end of this activity students will … appreciate the need to lobby at all levels of government to ignite and lead change – even if it is unpopular with the voters.”

Climate Alarmist Hype that May 2024 is the “Hottest” Global Average Temperature Anomaly is Meaningless in the U.S. and at other global locations around the World

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From Watts Up With That?

Guest Essay by Larry Hamlin

The usual climate alarmists’ suspects are at it again trying to use the scientifically flawed claim that a single May 2024 global average temperature anomaly data point can characterize that the “world” must be the “hottest” it’s ever been as hyped below.

Alarmists also grossly misrepresent that the earth has exceeded a 1.5 degrees threshold temperature limit that is nothing but an arbitrary and purely politically contrived alarmist propaganda claim.

Of course, this purely politically contrived climate alarmist hype tells us absolutely nothing about the actual measured temperature anomalies or absolute temperatures at any specific location anywhere in the world.

NOAA data through May 2024 for the Contiguous U.S. (shown below) overwhelmingly establishes that the U.S. is not having the “hottest ever maximum temperature anomaly”. The U.S. is not experiencing any established increasing upward trend in maximum temperature anomaly values since at least the year 2005. 

Furthermore, the highest May maximum temperature anomaly in the Contiguous U.S. occurred in May 1934 as shown below at 5.66 degrees F versus 1.22 degrees F (shown in red highlights above) in May 2024.

There isn’t a shred of scientific evidence that the U.S. maximum temperature anomalies or maximum absolute temperatures (addressed below) are at all unusual. 

Looking at NOAA ‘s maximum temperatures for the Contiguous U.S. (shown below) we see that May 2024 was only the 106th highest May (at 74.68 degrees F highlighted in red) out of 130 total measurement months with the highest May ever measured occurring in 1934 at 79.21 degrees F.  May 2024

Looking at NOAA’s data for the maximum measured temperature in California (shown below) we see that May 2024 was only the 96th highest measured May (at 76.8 degrees F as highlighted in red below) out of a total of 130 measurements with May 2001 being the highest ever California maximum (at 83.8 degrees F) measured temperature. 

Looking at NOAA’s data for the maximum temperature measured in May 2024 for Los Angeles (shown below) we see this month is only the 38th highest measured May (at 66.4 degrees F highlighted in red) out of 80 May measurement values. The highest maximum May temperature in Los Angeles was in May 2014 at 75.8 degrees F. 

Climate alarmists conceal the lack of validity in their use of a single global average temperature anomaly value to falsely hype that the world is the “hottest” ever when, in fact, this climate alarmist propaganda claim applies to no specific location anywhere on earth including the Contiguous U.S. or the state of California or the city of Los Angeles or other global locations.  

Alarmist Scientists’ Schizophrenia Has Corrupted the Conclusions by Early Climate Science Greats.

From Jim Steele

Guy Callendar was a British engineer and amateur meteorologist whose research demonstrated how rising CO2 could warm the planet. In his 1938 paper The Artificial Production Of Carbon Dioxide And Its Influence On Temperature, he challenged the consensus when most scientists believed water vapor’s greenhouse effect was so overwhelming it rendered any contributions from CO2 insignificant. According to the Guardian and other media outlets, “He was the first scientist to discover that the planet had warmed by collating temperature measurements from around the globe, and suggested that this warming was partly related to man-made carbon dioxide emissions.”

I confess, I admire much Callendar’s scientific research. He calculated from what altitude downward infrared (his non-solar “sky radiation”) originated. He showed with CO2 at 300 ppm, 82% of the redirected infrared, that slows the cooling our surface, originates from the first 1000 meters of our atmosphere. Unfortunately, he did not discuss how rising convection releases most heat at higher altitudes, as seen by cloud formation. He also calculated that over dry Antarctica only 40% of the surface’s emitted infrared is redirected back towards the surface by CO2 and water, while in the moist tropic 73.5% is redirected explaining why tropical nights remain warm.

However, politics has now perverted the early climate science research. Selectively focusing on Callendar’s examination of CO2’s effect, today’s climate scientists and alarmist bloggers elevate Callendar to hero status. But they downplay his conclusions that such warming would be a good thing.

Callendar concluded, “it may be said that the combustion of fossil fuel, whether it be peat from the surface or oil from 10,000 feet below, is likely to prove beneficial to mankind in several ways, besides the provision of heat and power. For instance, the above mentioned small increases of mean temperature would be important at the northern margin of cultivation, and the growth of favourably situated plants is directly proportional to the carbon dioxide pressure. In any case the return of the deadly glaciers should be delayed indefinitely.”

To push their political agenda seeking global control of the world’s economies, and to suppress scientific skepticism, alarmist scientists flipped many of Callendar’s beneficial conclusions on its head. Now the “above mentioned small increases in mean temperature” is causing a fabricated climate crisis, despite people migrating to warmer climates for their health. Cold is indeed the greatest killer. But alarmists try to brainwash a gullible public that just 1.5C rise in temperature, mostly during the deadly winters, will cause ecosystems to collapse and human extinction.

While early scientist welcomed warmth and hoped it will prevent the “return of the deadly glaciers”, alarmist try to convince us retreating glaciers are a catastrophe. And as Callendar predicted, rising CO2 has caused a greening of the planet, but alarmists treat such a benefit as an irrelevant talking point only pushed by climate deniers.

While today’s alarmist push a bogus narrative that their current conclusions stand on the shoulders of the giants of early climate research, today’s alarmist have only perverted the giants’ work to manipulate the public and forward their political ambitions for control of the world’s economies.

The Guardian is Confused, 1.5°C of Warming is Not Catastrophic

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A recent article at The Guardian, “Brutal heatwaves and submerged cities: what a 3C world would look like,” claims that 1.5°C of warming, while not the end of the world, still will have many catastrophic effects on the planet, including the death of tropical corals, intense storms, and ice sheet collapse. This is false. There is no evidence that 1.5°C will have any of these effects, this is mere fearmongering.

The article is somewhat confused in its presentation, claiming at once that passing the 1.5°C limit will lead to “catastrophic heatwaves, floods, and storms,” while also saying it is not a “cliff-edge leading to a significant change in climate damage.” Catastrophe certainly sounds like “significant change,” and later comments further confuse the point. It’s important to note that, according to the E.U.’s climate and weather agency Copernicus, the average annual temperature has already exceeded 1.48°C the pre-industrial benchmark. Also, data from the longest continuously running temperature network indicates that Europe has already exceeded a 2.0℃ temperature rise with no appreciable negative climate impacts.

In an interactive graphic in the center of the article, the 1.5°C warming “benchmark” is claimed to be the point at which “heatwaves and storms intensify, tropical corals die off and tipping points for ice sheet collapse and permafrost thawing may be triggered.”

There are no citations or sources given for these claims. Luckily, Climate Realism has dug into the available data in previous posts on all of the mentioned subjects.

Regarding the 1.5°C warming claim, scientists have admitted that the value is arbitrary and political, and was not settled upon based on scientific or data-driven reasoning. The fact of the matter is, as discussed in “Reason is Right, There is No ‘Climate Cliff’,” that threshold was developed in the 90s by an 11-member German political “advisory board,” only one of whom was a meteorologist. The panel’s stated goal was to find a way to preserve the state of the Earth in its current form at the time, which is of course impossible in a dynamic system that is influenced not only by human activity but also by things well outside our control and ability, like space weather and tectonics.

There is no evidence showing that storms are getting worse, from tropical cyclones to drought, no climate signal is visible despite the warming of the past hundred-plus years. In regards to heatwaves, many recent media-promoted record-breaking heat spell claims have been shown to most likely to be a artifact of the Urban Heat Island effect due to the proximity to urbanization, which skews results much hotter than they otherwise would have been. In the United States at least, where a good reliable record exists, average temperature anomalies have not been on an upward trajectory. In fact, the worst recorded heatwaves occurred in the 1930s. (See figure below)

As Climate at a Glance: U.S. Heatwaves explains, “the lion’s share of the Earth’s modest warming occurs during winter, at night, and closer to the poles.”

The coral reef death claim is particularly strange, especially since far from dying off, corals in locations that previously suffered bleaching like the Great Barrier Reef are at their highest extent ever right now despite (or perhaps because of) recent warming. Corals arose, evolved, survived, and thrived when global average temperatures were much higher than they are today. There is no reason to think this trend would suddenly reverse with another 0.02 degrees warming. The empirical data rebuts this claim so thoroughly, it’s a wonder The Guardian would try to slip it by.

The ice sheets likewise do not appear to be on the verge of collapse. Several posts at Climate Realism (here, here, here, for samples) demonstrate that, while a short-term decline polar ice loss in the arctic occurred at the beginning of the 21st century, sea ice extent has largely stabilized since then. The previous decline  is hardly alarming, and definitely did not provide evidence for or presage an imminent total collapse. Two-time Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report Expert Reviewer Dave Burton pointed out in “Media Regurgitates Nonsense About Greenland Ice Cap and Sea Level Rise,” that hysteria over Greenland melt ignores the facts on the ground, that is, it’s way too cold to have a total ice loss in the region without a much more dramatic warming trend.

“Thanks to “Arctic Amplification,” Greenland should get more warming than most other places, but still no more than a few degrees,” Burton wrote. “That much warming would be nice for the hardy people who live there, but it could not melt the southern part of the Greenland Ice Sheet, because water has to get above 0°C to melt, and the southern part of the Greenland Ice Sheet averages much colder than that.”

Finally, the permafrost “tipping point” claim is also meritless. Predictions about the loss of northern permafrost have failed to materialize since at least 2005.

In a shameful display of science-free propaganda, The Guardian revealed it does not care at all about providing their readers with facts. It is quite simple to look up weather records and the current state of coral reefs. Instead, The Guardian chose to outsource their thinking to alarmist fearmongers, eschewing data for the drama of doomsday predictions. This is yet another instance of mainstream media outlets failing in their duty to responsibly and accurately inform the public concerning the true, unalarming, state of the planet.

The Spectator is Right, Climate Alarmist Messaging is Harming People

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A recent editorial in The Spectator claims that alarmist messaging like warnings of impending doom by climate activists and the United Nations are hyperbolic and even harmful. This is true. Data show that there is no catastrophe in store for humanity due to climate change, and studies show alarmist messaging is counterproductive and harms the mental health of people who take it to heart.

The article, “The irresponsibility of ‘two years to save the planet’” written by Ross Clark, describes the hyperbolic language used by climate alarmists, such as the concept of a climate crisis or giving humanity a countdown to disaster, and how it is counterproductive or even harmful. This discussion follows the recent claims made by the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in which he stated that there are only two years left to save the planet.

Clark points out that these “only a few years left” warnings have been made repeatedly, and “[b]y my maths that means we became doomed a dozen years ago, so I was resigned to sitting back and waiting calmly for the end, like the elderly couple who sat in deckchairs on the Titanic holding hands as the ship went down.”

Humor aside, Clark’s perspective is shared by many, and not only among those who are skeptical of the climate crisis narrative. Climate Realism covered a trend last year in media outlets admitting that the catastrophe narrative was becoming counterproductive even to their would-be supporters, as climate “doomers” began to believe that it was already too late to do anything about climate change, so why bother.

WaPo stated at the time “some scientists and experts worry that their defeatism — which could undermine efforts to take action — may be just as dangerous as climate denial.”

Climate Realism previously discussed another one of Clark’s articles, where he pointed out that “if you believe that human societies are doomed anyway — as 56 per cent of young people apparently do — what is the incentive to cut emissions?”

Besides the general non-issue of climate apathy, however, there is one troubling result of catastrophizing, and that is the state of mental health among younger people. Clark talks about a 2021 study which asked students at the University of Bath between the ages of 16 and 25 questions about climate change, which found “45 per cent of people in this age group were so worried about climate change that it was affecting their day-to-day life, while 56 per cent said that they thought humanity was doomed and 40 per cent said they were hesitant to have children because they would be bringing them up in an uninhabitable world.”

He goes on to say that “[n]o reasoned interpretation of the evidence would say that humanity is doomed by a changing climate,” which is absolutely true. Weather is not becoming more extreme, the planet is greening and crop production is growing, and issues like sea level rise are occurring at a very manageable rate.

Climate Realism has likewise addressed the fact that many peoples’ mental health are being impaired by the media’s coverage of climate change, here, here, and here, for example. The media and alarmists spin catastrophic narratives that real world data debunk, but, unfortunately a lot of people believe the hype and don’t check or follow the science.

It is always beneficial when media outlets, like The Spectator, run op-eds which provide much needed balance to the discussion. In the face of the copious evidence that no climate crisis is in the offing, it is unreasonable to be terrified or deeply distressed by climate change. It takes efforts like Clark’s to inoculate people against catastrophism with the truth.

Wrong, The Hill, Climate Change Isn’t Making It Unsafe for Kids to Play Outside

Silhouette, group of happy children playing on meadow, sunset, summertime

From the ClimateRealism

By Heartland Institute

By Linnea Lueken and H. Sterling Burnett

A recent article at The Hill claims that climate change is reversing the multi-decade trend of improving air quality in the United States, due to increased PM2.5 from wildfires and ozone from heatwaves, making it unsafe for children to play outside. This is false, air quality is improving, and the suggestion that kids should avoid outdoor play is hazardous to their health.

The article, “Climate change is making it more dangerous for kids to play outside, report finds,” covers a study published by a “climate analytics” firm called First Street Foundation.

To be clear, First Street is a strictly climate alarmist nonprofit group, that often publishes studies meant to frighten the public. Their predictions are based on climate modelling, and tend to ignore publicly available weather data that make their projections seem unlikely to occur in real life. This kind of work should be taken with a grain of salt. Climate Realism has refuted the Front Street Foundation’s false research before in the posts “No, WaPo, Climate Change is NOT Fueling More Devastating Rains and Flooding,” and “No, Axios, Future U.S. Hurricane Damage Losses Will Not be Driven by Climate Change,” for example.

According to The Hill, the study’s authors project that “by midcentury, the increased levels of microscopic soot particles (PM10 and PM2.5) and ozone molecules entering Americans’ lungs will be back to the levels they were at in 2004–before a decades-long federal campaign to clean up the air.”

This is an odd claim, lacking any basis in data. In fact, since the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1963, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency outlined its first official standards for particulate matter and ozone in 1971, measured pollutants, including PM10, PM2.5, and ground level ozone have all declined dramatically.

First Street researchers and The Hill claim PM2.5 is being driven up by increased wildfires, but the fact is, wildfires aren’t getting worse due to climate change.

Currently available data from the National Interagency Fire Center show that while there was an increase in total acres burned between 1983 and the early 2000s, it has since leveled off, and the last two years have had some of the lowest wildfire incidences in the United States in recent years. Older data, much of which was expunged from the NIFC website in 2020, show that wildfires were much worse in the early 20th century than they are today. This trend does not track with the theory that wildfires are driven by fossil fuel use, and global warming. (See figure below)

The increase post-1983 is due almost entirely to a change in forestry practices and management, rather than the modest warming of the past few decades, as described in many Climate Realism posts.

Additionally, satellites have been keeping track of wildfires for decades now, and that data clearly show that not only are wildfires not becoming more common or intense, they have declined since the early 2000s.

Since there are fewer wildfires, there is less smoke from wildfires, which means wildfires can’t be causing an increase in bad air days necessitating keeping kids indoors for their health. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data confirm this fact. The EPA reports that during the recent period of modest warming, since 1990 PM10 declined by 32 percent. In 2000, the EPA shifted its attention to also monitoring and regulating the emission of smaller particulate matter particles, PM2.5. Since then, PM2.5 has fallen by 37 percent.

With regards to ozone pollution, First Street argues that rising temperatures will increase ground level ozone, especially in major cities. The reality is that the best available temperature data does not show any increase in high temperature anomalies. (See figure below)

Also, the EPA’s air quality index data is available to the public, so we can look at what the air quality trends are for almost any major city. Taking New York City, since it is the largest city in America, we can see that air quality with regards to particulate matter seems to be getting much better in recent years, with only a few bad days last year (2023) due to that summer’s Canadian wildfires, many of which were started by arsonists. (See figure below)

The EPA’s air quality data show that overall, as the Earth has modestly warmed, ground-level ozone has declined 21 percent, since 1990. Once again, if ozone is declining, climate change can’t be making the air less healthy for children.

It is widely believed that many of today’s youths spend too much time indoors, wedded to their computers, video gaming systems, cell phones, and other devices. On this point an MIT study found:

Compared to the 1970s, children now spend 50% less time in unstructured outdoor activities. Children ages 10 to 16 now spend, on average, only 12.6 minutes per day in vigorous physical activity. Yet they spend an average of 10.4 waking hours each day relatively motionless.

Simultaneous to the decline in outdoor play, has been an increase in childhood obesity and associated diseases like diabetes. As a result, advocating keeping kids indoors while air quality is improving endangers their health, rather than protecting them from harm. This is especially true when one realizes that the U.S. EPA has found that indoor air contains two to five times more pollutants than outdoor air on average.

Outdoor air has not become more dangerous for children, but avoiding outdoor play and activities is a proven health hazard. The Hill should cautiously examine studies from organizations like the First Street Foundation with a skeptical eye, and check the hard data and context, before unnecessarily alarming its readers, and encouraging them to take actions that could result in poorer health for themselves and their kids. Climate change attribution is a hammer wielded by climate alarmists with each and every “non-optimal” weather condition or human health threat being nails they can drive their narrative and agenda home with, regardless of what the facts say.

NOAA’s Year 2023 “Selected Significant Climate Anomalies and Events” Diagram Misrepresents both Anomalies and Events

From Watts Up With That?

Guest essay by Larry Hamlin

NOAA concocted an array of “Selected Significant Climate Anomalies and Events” for year 2023 that are shown below as prominently featured in their Annual 2023 Global Climate Report.

Of the 25 highlighted entries on NOAA’s “Selected Significant Climate Events” diagram 13 are related to cyclone and hurricane events across the various oceans of the Northern and Southern hemispheres that occurred during the year 2023. 

These 13 highlighted isolated events suggest that 2023 experienced many extreme weather hurricane and cyclone events that will no doubt be hyped by climate alarmists with flawed claims of “extreme hurricane and cyclone climate events” having occurred in year 2023. 

However, the context of these highlighted events fails to provide a complete and comprehensive global history of the cyclone and hurricane tropical events for the year 2023 with these highlighted events grossly misrepresenting the totality of the year 2023 cyclone and hurricane outcomes across the global oceans.

A prior WUWT article shown below demonstrates that these NOAA highlighted cyclone and hurricane “events” completely misrepresent the very “normal” global hurricane and cyclone year 2023 outcome.

The conclusion of this WUWT article notes:

Unlike the NOAA year 2023 concocted and prominently featured “Selected Significant Climate Events” diagram which falsely hypes the extent of the year 2023 global hurricane and cyclone season outcomes the data from the Colorado State University Tropical Meteorology Project clearly establishes that the year 2023 was a very unremarkable and “normal” year for cyclones and hurricanes across the globe. 

Climate alarmist claims that hype the year 2023 hurricane and cyclone season as being an “extreme weather outcome” are absurd and incompetent as is NOAA’s “Selected Significant Climate Events” hurricane diagram portrayal.   

Equally disturbing in the NOAA prominently feature “Selected Significant Climate Events” diagram are the highlights noted for both the Arctic and Antarctic global regions. 

Instead of identifying the significant 8 yearlong (2016 to 2023) and 17 yearlong (2007 to 2023) inclusive periods of downward temperature anomaly trends respectively for these regions, NOAA hypes sea ice extent issues that are unaddressed in its report. 

The reality of the sea ice extent issues for the arctic and Antarctic regions are addressed here and here.    

The Arctic Region highest average temperature anomaly was 3.00 degrees C that occurred in year 2016 as shown below from NOAA’s Global Time Series data with a clear downward temperature anomaly trend since 2016 to 2.55 degrees C in 2023 (ignored and concealed by alarmists).

The Arctic’s year 2023 average temperature anomaly was 0.45 degrees C below its prior highest average temperature anomaly year of 2016. 

The Antarctic Region highest average temperature anomaly was 0.65 degrees C that occurred in 2007 as shown below from NOAA’s Global Times Series data which clearly shows a downward temperature anomaly trend since year 2007 (ignored and concealed alarmists) .

The Antarctic’s year 2023 average temperature anomaly was 0.50 degrees C below its prior highest average temperature anomaly year of 2007 at 0.15 degrees C. 

The Arctic and Antarctic global regional year 2023 long term significant downward temperature anomaly trends of 0.45 degrees C and 0.50 degrees C respectively were ignored in the “Selected Significant Climate Anomalies” diagram while the year 2023 North America and Europe global regional increase and decrease anomaly outcomes of 0.02 and 0.01 degrees C respectively are highlighted as being “Selected Significant Climate Anomalies” merit worthy. 

Additionally, NOAA’s prominently featured diagram fails to highlight the largest temperature anomaly change of all 16 global regions with that being the reduction of 0.8 degrees C for the East N Pacific region (over a 9 year inclusive period of 2015 to 2023) as shown below.

Rather than address this large year 2023 average temperature anomaly reduction NOAA’s “Selected” diagram highlight for the East N Pacific global region is adorned with a flawed claim that Hurricane Dora exacerbated the fire in Lahaina with that flawed assessment addressed in more detail here.

Also, the Hawaiian global region large year 2023 average temperature anomaly reduction of 0.66 degrees C is unaddressed in the NOAA’s “Selected” highlighted diagram. This large reduction (over a 9 year inclusive period) of 0.66 degrees C from 2015 is shown below. 

NOAA’s year 2023 average temperature anomaly data for its 16 global regions had 4 global regions which had by far the largest incremental changes from their prior record high average temperature anomaly values (all of them reductions) with these regions being:

Arctic – a reduction of 0.45 degrees C from year 2016  

Antarctic – a reduction of 0.5 degrees C from year 2007

Hawaiian – a reduction of 0.66 degrees from 2015  

East N Pacific – a reduction of 0.8 degrees C from 2015

Yet none of these significantly largest by far year 2023 average temperature anomaly reductions is addressed in the prominent NOAA’s “Selected Significant Climate Anomalies and Events” diagram for any of these regions while upward average temperature anomaly changes as small as 0.02 degrees C (North America) are highlighted.

The NOAA “Selected Significant Climate Anomalies and Events” diagram misrepresents many significant global anomalies and events for year 2023.

Wrong, Harvard, Alarmists’ Media Stories, Not Climate Change, Are to Blame for Mental Trauma

By Linnea Lueken

A recent news post at the Harvard School of Public Health “Understanding the mental health consequences of chronic climate change,” claims that climate change, which researchers dub “chronic,” is leading to negative mental health consequences for people around the world. Researchers claim that long-term, gradual changes to the environment are also traumatic. This is false. While natural disasters can traumatize those who survive them, individual weather events can’t be causally linked to climate change, and since environmental changes have always occurred throughout human history, Harvard’s new hypothesis is worthless or empty. In reality, and especially in the Western world, it is frantic and alarmist media coverage that leads to self-reporting of climate change related anxiety.

In answer to a question about gaps in what is known about how climate change impacts mental health, researcher and assistant professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Christy Denckla said that we “already know a lot about the mental health effects of climate-related disasters like hurricanes and wildfires.”

Indeed, Climate Realism has on several occasions, here, here, and here, for instance, refuted claims that suggest climate change itself, through the impact of natural disasters, is causing anxiety and other mental health problems. The reality in those cases is that while suffering through an extreme weather event, during which lives and property may be lost, definitely can be traumatic, no one would blame that trauma on “climate change” had the media not told them the weather event was caused by it.

In one particularly egregious example, several news outlets back in 2023 reported on a study that analyzed individuals who survived the 2018 wildfire in Paradise, California, and found widespread diagnoses of PTSD, anxiety, and depression. The researchers blamed those mental health problems on climate change. However climate change did not cause the fire in Paradise, poor maintenance of power lines did. Nor has the modest warming of the past century or so caused any statistically significant change in the number or severity of wildfires on Earth. In fact, data from NASA suggests that the amount of land lost to wildfires each year has declined substantially.

The same goes for hurricanes – there is no statistically significant trend in the number or severity of tropical cyclones and hurricanes.

This new research Harvard is reporting on further expands upon these previously debunked claims into even more nebulous territory. In addition to blaming mental health issues on particular weather events, Denckla goes on to explain that “the most urgent research priority is to understand the mechanisms through which slower-moving aspects of climate change such as temperature variability, ecosystem shifts, and changes in precipitation affect mental health.”

She goes on to say that the effects of climate change disproportionately impact particular populations, like “adolescents and children, indigenous communities, displaced migrants, economically marginalized groups, and nations and regions on the frontline of the climate crisis, such as Africa and countries most vulnerable to climate extremes.”

It is true that the poor and people in the third world are more impacted by natural disasters, in large part because they do not have as storm-resilient infrastructure as wealthier parts of the world do, and have less access to good medical care, and the food abundance delivered by modern agricultural systems built on fossil fuels. Meteorological drought, for example, in a small sub-Saharan tribal community without water storage and transport will produce more severe misery and harm than a similar drought would for the people of a developed city like Phoenix, Arizona.

Denckla seems to suggest that modern warming is a novel situation that uniquely impacts human mental health, however history clearly demonstrates that human civilizations have always suffered from natural disasters and slowly changing ecosystems and landscapes. Nature is never in stasis.

What is certain, however, is that climate change alarmism is the overwhelming narrative consensus pushed by mainstream media and activists. Climate Realism responds to disinformation every day from the media, and despite occasionally acknowledging that the “catastrophe” angle taken on climate-related issues is going too far, they continue to double down. It would be surprising if the constant battering by false and inflammatory climate news did not negatively impact the mental health of media besotted adults and children, alike. The ratcheting up of hysterical coverage, misleadingly linking damage from natural disasters to climate change, while harping on the fact no major climate policies are being passed, is leading to depression and anxiety about the future. It would serve the mental health of the general public better if Harvard devoted some resources to an alternative study, about how fearmongering by the media leads to mental health issues, and better still if its scholars began following and promoting the data which shows that no climate crisis is in the offing.

The post Wrong, Harvard, Alarmists’ Media Stories, Not Climate Change, Are to Blame for Mental Trauma appeared first on ClimateRealism.

Political Realism from a Climate Alarmist (the beginning of the end?)

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“The UN’s COP process is almost as dead as its deeply dishonest posturing about ‘keeping 1.5°C alive’…. With the COP process itself on life support, surely it’s time to change tack….”

“The sight of 80,000+ delegates unwittingly providing credibility to the fossil fuel incumbency that COP now unapologetically represents, has become sickening. Stay away. Call it out. Tell the truth.”

– Jonathan Porritt (below)

At least some climate crusaders are realistic in the lack of progress in the mitigation policy designed to dislodge consumer-driven, taxpayer-neutral energies (oil, gas, and coal) and substitute politically correct, inferior ones (wind, solar, batteries). It all gets back to energy density, a fundamental concept that climate activists do not want to understand (or do understand, but want pure de-industrialization).

A recent post by “sustainability campaigner and writer” Jonathan Porritt, “From COP 28 to COP 29” (January 4, 2024), has a number of realistic points regarding politics, while clinging to the narrative that Net Zero is achievable and at hand. It brings to mind what James Hansen said about the Paris Climate Accord back in 2015:

It’s a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit for them to say: “We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.” It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.

Back to Jonathan Porritt. Here is much of his post (with my subtitles added):

COP 28 limped to its predictably calamitous conclusion on December 13th. The heavily spun headline (“historic breakthrough”) quickly dribbled away into the sands of Dubai, to be replaced by more “balanced” commentaries from governments, businesses and some mainstream NGOs. Three weeks on, even that laboured balancing act now looks either totally naïve or deeply dishonest.

The “historic breakthrough” boiled down to one simple fact: that the final COP 28 Agreement refers explicitly to the burning of fossil fuels as the primary cause of today’s climate breakdown – the first time that has happened in 30 years of futile climate diplomacy.

It gets worse. I won’t weary you with the forensic details of how critical sections of the Agreement have been worded to minimise any serious impact on petrostates and fossil fuel companies. It’s so full of loopholes, weasel words, and vacuous generalisations, let alone unlimited boosterism for all-but-useless technologies like Carbon Capture and Storage, as to fast track this Agreement instantly into the pantheon of toxic suicide notes.

Fake Progress for PR

Every Government delegation will have known that as they watched that gavel come down on the final text on December 13th. Some will have felt “job done”; others “game over”. Every business delegation, messing around in the margins of COP 28 trying to be useful, will also have known this. But will have avoided talking about it, assiduously averting their eyes from the monstrous heap of Emperors’ clothes in the corner.

Worst of all, every NGO with any serious knowledge of the gap between what the science tells us today and the policies now needed to narrow that gap, will have known this. But they held dutifully to the line that COP 28 demonstrated “real progress” ….

Realism, Anyone?

My criticism here applies just as much to those NGOs as to all those government delegations and businesses enjoying the latest COP tourism offer. They’re either totally naïve or deeply dishonest.

And I hate to have to say this, but that particularly applies to many of those “stubborn optimists” or “resolute climate solutionists” who still cannot accept just how fast things are changing around the world. … [T]hey continue, COP after COP, to offer up a “solutions agenda” that they know means very little faced with the raw power of today’s fossil fuel incumbency….

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that the work of these organisations (including Forum for the Future) isn’t still critical: it is. In fact, it’s going to be even more critical over the next few years. People do indeed need to know that the transition away from fossil fuels is both necessary and absolutely doable – in a remarkably short period of time. That’s still the central premise of all the talks I’m doing these days.

But to remain both honest and effective, we solutionists must now preface that authentic solutions agenda, on every possible occasion, with this harsh and sometimes unbearable set of truths:

  1. There is literally no combination of emergency interventions, at this stage, which will keep the average global temperature increase below 1.5°C by the end of the century. As a target, 1.5°C is no longer on life-support: it is definitively dead. Indeed, it’s looking increasingly possible that the average temperature may temporarily reach [an increase of] 1.5°C this year – primarily because of the cumulative impact of the current El Nino. 
  2. That doesn’t automatically mean an irreversible slide on to 2°C and beyond. But if we’re not completely honest about why we have failed so comprehensively to protect 1.5°C, then all future efforts to protect 2°C will fail just as comprehensively, for exactly the same reasons. Stubborn optimism that denies this undeniable realpolitik is now a massive barrier to forcing today’s politicians to narrow that science-policy gap for real. 
  3. The UN’s COP process is almost as dead as its deeply dishonest posturing about “keeping 1.5°C alive”. This has serious implications for all those NGOs still hoping to justify the millions of dollars their funders and members provide them with. With the COP process itself on life support, surely it’s time to change tack, prioritising a last-ditch global “save our COP” campaign, demanding hard-edged reforms? This has to happen before the whole circus descends on CoP 29 in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, a country even more corrupt and just as much in thrall to the curse of fossil fuels as the United Arab Emirates.
  4. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change should also be put on notice. Forced to comply with the UN’s highly politicised, consensus-based decision-making process, its Assessment Reports (and occasional Special Reports) do not tell the truth. The IPCC has rarely managed to reflect the frontline science going on all around the world; its generic reassurances (that 1.5°C is still alive, for instance) are now a travesty of what good, responsible science is all about…. [T]he IPCC … refus[es] to speak the real truth about accelerating climate change to the world’s real power-brokers.
  5. All multinational companies should now threaten to boycott CoP 29 – unless a list of “save our COP” conditions are met. And this should include banning the representatives of all fossil fuel companies. The sight of 80,000+ delegates unwittingly providing credibility to the fossil fuel incumbency that COP now unapologetically represents, has become sickening. Stay away. Call it out. Tell the truth.

I know a lot of my colleagues in both the NGO and business worlds will resent these comments: “unreasonable”, “hectoring”, “extremist” – these are just a few of the responses I get these days. But where, I ask you, have reasonable, calm, middle-of-the-road voices got us over the last 30 years? Irrefutably, just a whole lot closer to that point where we find ourselves tipped over into irreversible climate change.

There’s too much political naivety at the heart of today’s solutions agenda. Do any of these genuinely caring, passionately committed, reasonable solutionists seriously think that today’s fossil fuel incumbency (embedded so deeply in both governments and the whole global business community) gives a flying fuck about what they think, say or do?

I understand why few of my erstwhile colleagues will be keen to join me in taking a different path – in advocating on behalf of those who believe that civil disobedience is now the only way forward: Just Stop Oil, XR and so on. For those of us who’ve worked inside “the system” (as I have done since stepping down as Director of Friends of the Earth in 1990), it’s deeply uncomfortable to have to acknowledge how little real impact we’ve made during that time – both on the climate and the biodiversity fronts. There have been so many dead horses that we should have stopped flogging a long time ago.

For me personally, that realisation kicked in around 2010, when the Tories came back into power, and even more definitively after 2015. It was clear then that there is no accommodation to be had with ideological zealots of that ilk, still locked in a deadly embrace with an industry that will go on prioritising shareholder dividends over the future of life on Earth – until we stop them….

Analysis

Yes: Government delegations, businesses, and NGOs “enjoying the latest COP tourism offer [are] either totally naïve or deeply dishonest.”

Yes: Fossil fuel companies are part of the Climate Industrial Complex.

True: Carbon capture and storage is a boondoggle, but that’s what you get by politicizing energy. ‘Big Oil’ is part of the Industrial Climate Complex, indeed. Greenwashers, too.

Think: “… fossil fuel incumbency” is about energy density and consumers. It is not some accident or artificial construct created by a vast conspiracy of some sort.

Wrong: “… the transition away from fossil fuels is both necessary and absolutely doable.”

Good News: Temperatures are leaving the COP goals of 1.5C and even 2.0C in the dust. And the world will do just fine so long as climate policy does not prevent adaptation to climate change.

A Plea to Climate Alarmists Be Realistic and Happier

When will the likes of Jonathan Porritt shed their deep-ecology skin to realize that politics is the wrong answer; that industrial wind and solar are threats to the living space; that CO2 is not a pollutant but beneficial to global greening; that climate-model extreme scenarios are just that; and wealth-is-health adaptation is the way of the future–as it has been in the past.

Stay radical but get real. Reject the Climate Industrial Complex for freedom from Statism and for human betterment. No more COPs, greenwashing, fossil-fuel boondoggles.

The post Political Realism from a Climate Alarmist (the beginning of the end?) appeared first on Master Resource.

UN reshuffling old climate alarmist song-and-dance at COP28

By: Craig Rucker

As it has been doing for decades, the United Nations is once again planning to hold its annual “Conference of the Parties” (COP28) to tell the world we face impending doom from manmade climate change.

Over the next two weeks, expect to see news reports covering how brave delegates, flying in on private jets to glitzy Dubai, are hard at work protecting us from the SUVs, gas ovens, red meat, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, plastics and other fossil-fuel consumer products we foolishly enjoy.  Human Events has the Story.

Having attended some 25 of these COP meetings, I expect few surprises.  But that doesn’t mean there won’t be some oddities. Among them is that the United Arab Emirates has been chosen to host the COP-28 confab. That sounds like a joke, but it’s not.

As everyone knows, the climate cabal is all about limiting fossil fuels. The UAE, on the other hand, is all about producing and using them. A lot of them.

In fact, last year the UAE employed fossil fuels: 607.25 terawatt-hours of oil and 698.48 TWh of gas, to meet over 95 percent of its electricity consumption. Solar and wind, by contrast, supplied a minuscule fraction of that, less than 20 TWh (barely 1 percent).

Making matters worse for climate worrywarts, the UAE is also planning to surge its development of fossil fuels.  According to the UK Guardian,  ADNOC (the UAE’s national oil company) “announced a $150bn investment over five years to enable an ‘accelerated growth strategy’ for oil and gas production.” 

One might think ADNOC’s president, Sultan Al Jaber, would be run out of town by the climate faithful for making such a proclamation. But they’re doing nothing. In fact, he’s set to preside over COP-28.

The big news at this year’s conference will likely center on its attendees. King Charles III, who famously predicted in 2019 that the world only had 18 months to save our planet from climate change, is set to give the opening address. He will be joined by Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and potentially Pope Francis. Notably missing are the leaders of the two biggest carbon-emitting nations, China and United States. 

Both President Biden and President Xi will stay home, but they did meet right beforehand to discuss climate change during their November powwow in San Francisco. Both pledged to “work together … to rise up to one of the greatest challenges of our time.” What this actually means is unclear.

Some experts believe all that was achieved during their San Francisco rendezvous was that the U.S. pledged to gut its fossil-fuel infrastructure and replace it with unreliable solar and wind. China only agreed to sell us the equipment to make that happen.

This is the hard, rarely mentioned reality, since China already controls 40% of the polysilicon used to make solar panels, 70% of the lithium-ion battery cell production, and 80% of the globe’s rare earth elements.

What it clearly doesn’t mean is that China is planning to limit its fossil fuel use anytime soon.  In 2022, for example, China built or issued permits for the construction of brand new coal plants at the rate of two per week, quadrupling the number of new coal power approvals. Overall, it is constructing six times more coal plants than the rest of the world combined.  That Xi is losing sleep over climate change or carbon emissions seems a stretch.

Other things to look for at COP-28 are the “Global Stocktake” and financing a new “Loss and Damage” fund.

The Global Stocktake is a review of how nations are meeting their climate commitment goals.  According to the Paris Climate Accord, each country is supposed to do what it can to keep the world from reaching a 2-degree Celsius warming (or 1.5-degree C if they want extra credit).

Although this is scientific nonsense, the Global Stocktake can be seen as a sort of “report card” on how countries are faring. Expect the USA and Europe to be sent to the principal’s office for bad behavior, while China and India receive kudos for simply pledging to do better in the distant future.

The Loss and Damage fund is supposed to compensate poorer countries for any climate hardships (droughts, floods, hurricanes, refugees, et cetera) they believe are imposed on them by richer nations that have used fossil fuels for a century or more. 

Among the countries vociferously championing this idea is the island of Tuvalu, which claims it is sinking into the ocean like Atlantis from rising sea levels.  In reality, the University of Auckland found that Tuvalu actually grew in land mass by 2.9 percent over the past 40 years.  While this might calm their fears, don’t expect it to stymie Tuvalu’s efforts to get money out of wealthier countries anyway.

So there you have it. The world is set to endure another fancy UN shindig about climate change. Be prepared for the lectures, dire warnings and proclamations. Annoying, yes. But don’t let the charade ruin your holiday season.

This article originally appeared at Human Events