16-year-old actress Greta Thunberg was elevated to fame by people such as the World Economic Forum who wanted to pull on heart strings to manipulate votes, funding and government policy. Despite her total lack of scientific understanding Greta ranted, “Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction”. Click-bait medial like the New York Times and National Geographic eagerly added their support to the climate crisis myth by attaching false narratives to cherrypicked tragic photos.
Indeed, humans have reduced biodiversity via overhunting, lost habitat and introduced species.
But humans are now actively increasing biodiversity by preventing overhunting, removing invasive species and restoring habitat.
Increasing CO2 to 400+ ppm is greening the earth because the world’s vegetation thrives when CO2 concentrations approach their optimal 1000 ppm. Pictures of thriving ecosystems debunk the climate crisis as a few degrees of warmer minimum temperatures benefit wildlife. Flowers bloom and wild babies are born during the warm seasons.
Last week, Climate Change Roundtable discussed, “The failure of peer review: Climate is Beholden to Bullying and Bad Decisions.” That episode dealt with the bullying of a journal to remove a paper. This week we look at another incident: The use of FOI requests by NASA’s Dr. Gavin Schmidt to look into correspondence between authors, editors, and collaborators for for another paper they don’t like, of which Dr. Willie Soon was the lead author.
Join our host, Anthony Watts, and weekly panelists, Dr. Sterling Burnett and Linnea Lueken, and Dr. Willie Soon as will delve into the fight between the dark Climate Empire and the Climate Rebellion over the right to publish, or perish at the hands of the Climate Empire.
Tune in LIVE for Climate Change Roundtable at Noon CT/1PM ET this Friday to engage in this enlightening discussion. Don’t forget to leave your questions to have them answered live during the show! Tune in to share your thoughts and be a part of this pivotal conversation.
Peter had been pleading, begging for people to pay attention to the global emergency. “Is this my personal hell?” he tweeted this past fall. “That I have to spend my entire life desperately trying to convince everyone NOT TO DESTROY THE FUCKING EARTH?”
Jane Pauley: “Searing heat, massive wildfires, catastrophic flooding. Unequivocal evidence the United Nations says that climate change is real and that human activity is its primary cause. So how bad can it get?” Pauley asked. “According to some scientists, the possibility of worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction isn’t out of the question. It’s a harsh warning to say the least.”
Jane Pauley features NASA scientist Peter Kalmus who declares “I do want people freaking out.” on climate.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab climate scientist Peter Kalmus: “Here’s why race justice and climate justice are one & the same: The oppressive extractive plutocracies that colonize and kill black bodies and colonize and kill our planet are one and the same.”
Business Insider:Two climate scientists were kicked out of a major science conference in Chicago on Thursday. NASA’s Peter Kalmus and Rose Abramoff went onstage to urge other researchers to take climate action. They told Insider the American Geophysical Union told them they’d be arrested if they returned. …
NASA’s Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, shouted during his onstage disruption: “Our science is showing that the planet is dying. It’s terrifying. Everything is at risk. As scientists, we have tremendous leverage, but we need to use it. We can wake everybody up.”
Kalmus blames “capitalism” for the alleged climate crisis. “Can’t you all see? The real villain was capitalism all along.” Watch: Peter Kalmus weeps over climate in April 2022: “We have been trying to warn you guys for so many decades that we are heading towards a F*cking catastrophe.” – “We are going to lose everything. And we are not joking. We are not lying. We are not exaggerating.” – We have to stop financing of fossil fuels. We have to stop new fossil fuel projects. we don’t have any carbon budget left.” – “It is going to literally take us to the brink of civilizational collapse. and we have to stop it right now.”
2022: UK Independent: Nasa climate scientist Peter Kalmus breaks down in tears at protest after chaining himself to doors of JPMorgan Chase – Peter Kalmus and others were later arrested after blocking the entrace to a JP Morgan-Chase building in LA – His protest in LA involved scientists chaining themselves to the doors of a JPMorgan Chase building…“We’re going to lose everything,” Kalmus said in a video of the moment. “And we’re not joking, we’re not lying, we’re not exaggerating.” Dr Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, was participating in a protest organized by Scientist Rebellion as part of a global day of action by scientists around the world. His protest in LA involved scientists chaining themselves to the doors of a JPMorgan Chase building.
Hallie Jackson of NBC – Aug. 22, 2023:“So what would that even do? Declaring an emergency can unlock special powers for a president in a crisis without needing approval from Congress, thanks to a law passed nearly 50 years ago. Since then, every President has declared at least one emergency during their time in office. Former President Trump for example, signing one in the pandemic. Former President George W. Bush declaring one after 911.”
“Now 57% of voters support the naming of a new national emergency on climate if Congress doesn’t do more, according to recent polling.”
“If President Biden were to do that it could mean new incentives for example, to cut greenhouse gas emissions, speed up EV production and build more renewable energy centers.”
In 1932, Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty of the New York Times won the Pulitzer Prize for his glowing reports of happiness and progress in the Soviet Union. He followed that with denials of the genocide-by-famine in the Ukraine, in which Stalin engineered the death by starvation of four million peasants. Duranty’s peers at the time described his reporting as “the most enlightened, dispassionate dispatches from a great nation in the making which appeared in any newspaper in the world.”[1] But the verdict of Duranty biographer Sally J Taylor in “Stalin’s Apologist” (1996) was that his output involved “some of the greatest lies history has ever known”.
Prizes for journalists are akin to the beads and mirrors offered to grateful savages. High-profile print and TV journalists locally – I’d better not name them — have been showered with recent prizes for Canberra stories involving more spin than substance.
An international renewables-lobby outfit called Covering Climate Now (CCN) this week announced its 2023 prizes for media’s best hyping of the non-existent “climate crisis”, objectivity be damned. This “crisis” was most recently elevated to “global boiling” by the UN’s top idiot and socialist Antonio Guterres. And who should feature among the CCN prize-winners but our taxpayers’ very own Australian Broadcasting Commission. The ABC’s podcast “Who’s gonna (sic) save us?” won the radio/podcast category. The CCN commendation:
This engaging podcast tells the story of people who are standing up for their convictions and pushing back against organizations and companies acting with disregard for the climate crisis. The production draws the listener in with moments of high drama, like an Aboriginal woman boldly approaching an energy executive at a company board meeting to present “cease and desist” papers for trespassing on her people’s land, followed by a discussion about how Australians are using the law to stop climate change … Highlighting how everyone can take action, the podcast speaks to audiences in a way that sounds like an everyday conversation.
As a journalist myself, I don’t like outfits that work to turn journalists into propagandists, whether for “climate crises”, renewables or anything else. I remember 30-40 years ago, when the media had more ethics, my boss at BRW magazine banned journos from making extra money from media-training consultancies. Those outfits coached company chieftains on how dodge around aggressive interviewing. But today the ABC not only solicits and accepts prizes from media-corrupting groups like CCN, but has joined several international consortia dedicated to censoring inconvenient views which the censors label as ‘misinformation’.
CCN is a creature of the leftist Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, and the dark-green Guardian. It has persuaded close to 600 media groups to sign up to “educate” the public about supposed climate peril, and to stifle evidence that then campaign for Net Zero is sabotaging the West’s fossil-fuel-derived prosperity. As it boasts,
CCNow collaborates with journalists and newsrooms to produce more informed and urgent climate stories, to make climate a part of every beat in the newsroom — from politics and weather to business and culture — and to drive a public conversation that creates an engaged public.
CCN’s 600 rogues’ gallery includes news-syndicating giants Reuters, Bloomberg and AFP, along with a host of print, TV and radio channels such as Al Jazeera, CBS, NBC, Deutsche Welle, Lancet, New Scientist, NZ Herald, Teen Vogue, Science Alert(Australia), Nature, and of course The Conversation(Australasia). CCN claims its members indoctrinate a two-billion strong audience.
The ABC has not signed up to CCN because it would be too naked a breach of its statutory charter for taxpayer-funded impartiality. It’s signed up instead to “truthist” coalitions like Reconciliation Australia and the troubled RMIT/ABC Fact Check. It’s also in alliance with UK-based BAFTA-albertwhich wants to “set the cultural agenda” by promoting leftist memes in TV shows, documentaries and movies.
Last year the ABC joined the BBC’s “Trusted News Initiative” (TNI) – an international censorship alliance and, according to Robert Kennedy Jr, a cartel that labels material hostile to leftism as “misinformation”. TNI, with ABC assistance, stifles internet sites opposing Deep State narratives about Covid, elections, climate, and renewables being the cheapest form of energy (checked your power bill lately?)
So, what about the ABC’s prize from Covering Climate Now? It’s for the podcast called Who’s gonna (sic) save us, which is “a co-production of the so-called “science team” at ABC Radio National and triple j’s Hack.” Its brand logo involves, appropriately, a drum being banged, and a diversity-tick youth of colour screaming into a megaphone. In the background is a mob waving placards like “Don’t be a fossil fool”, “Go Solar! Save the planet”, and the hackneyed one about “No Planet B”. The text below reads,
We’re all looking for a way through the climate crisis. [Better, “climate madness”]. Who’s going to get us there — and how will they do it? Meet the people who are trying to draw the map to a better future.
These people, led by Climate Minister Chris Bowen, are giving us a “better future” involving tripling of household energy bills and, probably, blackouts.
The podcast’s presenter is Jo Lauder, who we’re told has “reported extensively on climate change, the environment and young people.”
So I messaged her, “Hi Jo, isn’t it hypocritical to be carrying on about climate change while jetting to hang out in New York?” No reply yet.
The “Who’s gonna (sic) save us” series ran intermittently late last year. Although its ABC Listen app says we can “hear the world differently” the Jo Lauder series is same-old climate guff, with episodes of up to 50 minutes including “Citizens assemble!”, “Standing up for the climate”, “[activist] Scientists on strike”, “We fought the law”, “Community power”, and “Who do YOU think is going to [as distinct from ‘gonna’] save us?”
Dutifully, I listened in for well over an hour, absorbing Jo’s material:
“Who is your climate hero? Think big and small. Is it Saul Griffith, with his ambitious plan for decarbonising the entire nation or, hey! the world, or a small local like the gang at Totally Renewable Yackandandah who are focused on transforming their community’s future?”
“Traditionally Australia’s electricity system has been dirty, and heavily centred around coal communities. But there’s a shift happening. Towns around the country – from Yackandandah to Shackleton to Marlinja – are using renewables to take control of their energy. The benefits are flowing back into local communities, and remote places are finally getting reliable power.”
I’d say that if Yakandandah wants to go right off the (coal-assisted) grid, good luck to them when the wind drops.
Who, by the way, is that ABC world-decarbonising climate hero Saul Griffith? The podcast invite reads,
Saul Griffith has an ambitious plan to save the planet. And it all begins at home. It’s an electrified revolution for the Australian household!
Saul turns out to be (thanks, Wikipedia) a successful Australian-American engineer and inventor from a Greenpeace-oriented family, now back in Wollongong after great times with Silicon Valley startups like Otherlab and Squid Labs (no relation to Squid Games). He advocates forcing every citizen into compliance with the Net Zero agenda. He’s also truly on board with the need for urgings from the likes of the ABC. Jo Lauder’s podcast opens with him saying, “Don’t under-appreciate the importance of storytellers. We need story-tellers more than anyone right now. We need the storytellers to make it OK for you to give up the V8 [desirable car engine].”
As he’s written, (it sounds to me like one of those Soviet-era five-year plans):
Across the board we now need [renewables] adoption rates of 100%. This complete adoption rate [e.g. for electric cars] is required by the end-game decarbonization we ultimately need… A 100% adoption rate is only achieved by mandate—and robust financial incentives to back it up… The challenge of 100% adoption presents a giant conflict that we need to address head-on: the “free market” as we know it is not up to the task… This is not to say that businesses and the market don’t have roles; they are critical [I welcome that he rejects the North Korean model]. But in emergencies, ideologies must be put aside. When Mother Nature arm wrestles with the invisible hand, she will always win. As my friend, the economist Skip Laitner, says, the free market needs an invisible foot to give it a swift kick in the ass now and then…
We can rebuild a prosperous and inclusive middle class, as we enjoyed after World War II, with tens of millions of good new jobs that are vital and prideworthy. If America does it right, everyone’s energy costs will go down. [Should that read, “up”]. Everyone has a role to play in the war effort.
We now face a climate emergency as challenging as all of our other 20th-century emergencies combined. [e.g. World War One, the Great Depression, Hitler, Stalin, Tojo and the Cold War combined]. It requires mass mobilization with extraordinary speed and resources. Without a doubt, you are worried, scared, or worse. That’s reasonable, but we can’t do nothing, and this is also a vast opportunity to make the world, and our economy, better for everyone. (My emphases).
Call me out for misinformation but isn’t the real question, “Who’s gonna [sic] save us from Covering Climate Now, Saul Griffith, Buffoon Bowen and the ABC?”
Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 and available here
[1] Conquest, R. Reflections on a Ravaged Century, Oxford University Press, New York. 1986, p. 320.
With all the recent interest in rare or extreme weather events, I got to wondering … what makes a weather event rare or extreme?
With that in mind, here’s a thought experiment whose relevance will be made clear shortly.
Imagine some woman works in the Tennessee Valley plant of a big corporation. It’s a 24/7/365 operation. The Regional Manager likes to visit each plant, spend a day or more there, and stir things up. So the woman decides to record the comings and goings of the Regional Manager. At the end of the year, she graphs it up and it looks like this:
Figure 1. Dates of visits of the Manager to the plant.
When she runs the numbers, she finds out that the Regional Manager’s been visiting the Tennessee Valley plant about one day in five.
So here are two questions.
In Figure 1, is a visit by the Regional Manager a “rare event”?
In Figure 1, are these visits “extreme events”?
Obviously, no. Something that happens about one time out of five is neither rare nor extreme.
Why is this a relevant thought experiment? Well, like I said, I was wondering what makes an event “rare” or “extreme”. So I went to “THE SCIENCE”, which in this case are the Glossaries of the two latest IPCC Assessment Reports. Here are the definitions from the Fifth (AR5) and Sixth (AR6) Assessment Reports.
Extreme weather event
An extreme weather event is an event that is rare at a particular place and time of year. Definitions of rare vary, but an extreme weather event would normally be as rare as or rarer than the 10th or 90th percentile of a probability density function estimated from observations.
and
Extreme weather event
An event that is rare at a particular place and time of year. Definitions of ‘rare’ vary, but an extreme weather event would normally be as rare as or rarer than the 10th or 90th percentile of a probability density function estimated from observations. By definition, the characteristics of what is called extreme weather may vary from place to place in an absolute sense.
I cracked up when I saw those definitions.
Why?
Well, because on average, one observation out of every five is “as rare or rarer than the 10th or 90th percentile of a probability density function estimated from observations”.
So the IPCC is claiming that one weather observation in five is “rare” … here’s how that plays out for a few years of daily Chicago Midway Airport temperatures. This shows the IPCC-defined “extreme Chicago temperatures”.
Figure 2. Daily average temperatures at Midway Airport, Chicago. Horizontal red lines show the 10th and 90th percentiles of the observed temperatures. Yellow area shows the one in five temperature records that exceed those percentiles. Middle white area encompasses the 80% of the data between the 10th and the 90th percentiles.
I swear, the inmates are in charge of the IPCC asylum.
CODA: This post is about extreme weather events. About a month ago, in a post called “The IPCC Says No Climate Crisis” I highlighted that the IPCC agreed with a recent study pointing out how little change there’s been in extreme weather events.
In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet.
Can’t say it any better than that. And the IPCC itself agrees. Here, shown as white squares in the first data column, are the areas of the weather where the IPCC says there is no significant change in frequency or strength.
Figure 3. IPCC AR6 Table 12.12. The column entitled “Already Emerged In Historical Period” shows climate phenomena that the IPCC says have or haven’t changed due to “global warming”.
Let’s be clear about this. The following are the areas where the IPCC itself, in the graphic above, says there is low scientific confidence in the existence of any visible “global warming” effects in the form of weather extremes:
Air Pollution Weather (temperature inversions)
Aridity
Avalanche (snow)
Average rain
Average Wind Speed
Coastal Flood
Drought Affecting Crops (agricultural drought)
Drought From Lack Of Rain (hydrological drought)
Erosion of Coastlines
Fire Weather (hot and windy)
Flooding From Heavy Rain (pluvial floods)
Frost
Hail
Heavy Rain
Heavy Snowfall and Ice Storms
Landslides
Marine Heatwaves
Ocean Alkalinity
Radiation at the Earth’s Surface
River/Lake Floods
Sand and Dust Storms
Sea Level
Severe Wind Storms
Snow, Glacier, and Ice Sheets
Tropical Cyclones
So when folks claim things like “We’re already seeing the effects of global warming in storms/cyclones/floods/coastal erosion/fire weather/sea level/etc.”, feel free to tell them that the IPCC and reality itself both beg to disagree.
Now, you can clearly see above that the IPCC itself agrees wholeheartedly with the paper “A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming”. Both the paper and the IPCC Table 12.2 above say that to date there is very little sign of any change in almost all measures of extreme events.
Since my earlier post, however, there’s been a disturbing development. Despite the paper agreeing with the IPCC, in an act of venal scientific malfeasance, the usual alarmist “scientists” including the serial liar Dr. Michael Mann have intimidated the publisher of the paper into withdrawing the paper.
I cannot find any report of any specific statement that these underhanded “scientists” found to be false. They just claimed unspecified problems with “the selection of the data, the analysis, and the resulting conclusions” … yeah, right. There’s an excellent discussion of the issues here.
Climate cowards. They can’t defeat an argument, so they try to censor it. Here’s the most subversive part of the paper they’ve censored …
Can’t have scientists saying things like that … it’s just not done.
But the good news is, you know these climate thugs are running scared when they have to illicitly prevent the publication of ideas that might do significant damage to their to-date-endless climate money gravy train …
My very best to all,
w.
USUAL CAVEAT: When you comment, please quote the exact words you are discussing. This avoids endless misunderstandings.
Just how fast is the climate “crisis” accelerating?
If the mainstream media is to be believed, the climate “crisis” is accelerating fast. Everything is so much worse than last year, and next year will be much worse than this year, and so on.
But just how much more potent is the greenhouse effect now than last year? It’s something that is not made obvious in discussion of emissions (globally seemingly flatlining according to EDGAR) or even as reflected in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
The consequences of climate change arise downstream of the physical drivers. The most important driver of present interest is CO2 concentrations, to which global atmospheric temperature increases are related by a logarithmic function. As we know, CO2 concentrations are inching up year by year, but the thing that is dinned into us more often than anything else is the importance of the CO2emissions themselves, in other words our current account spending, when the problem is in fact the overdraft.
This way of thinking only gets you so far, because if this “pollutant” was cleansed from the atmosphere, every living thing on Earth would die. Some pollutant. Situation “normal” we consider to be 280 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere by count of molecules, and it is against this benchmark that the climate “crisis” is judged.
Well, I decided to crunch the numbers to find out just how objectively worse this year’s climate is compared to last year’s in terms of the potency of the CO2 in the atmosphere.
I also wanted to answer a subsidiary question: How much better would things have been this year, if the UK had not existed at all?
Some interesting numbers 1: the mass of the atmosphere
According to Wiki, the mass of the atmosphere is 5.15*1018 kg, or 5.15 petatonnes. Of that, about 3.13*1015 kg is CO2, or 3.13 teratonnes. [Remembering that CO2 is heavier than the other molecules.]
In Denierland, I said that the present mass of C [not CO2] in the atmosphere is 850 Gt, which equals 3.12*1015 kg CO2, close to Wiki’s figure.
Allowing 0.04 % CO2 to equal this figure, you get 1 ppm CO2 ≈ 8 Gt (billion tonnes).
Some interesting numbers 2: global emissions of CO2
According to EDGAR, the total quantity of CO2 emitted globally in 2022 was 38.5 Gt. This is 3.85*1013 kg, or roughly 1% of the quantity of CO2 already in the atmosphere.
However, not all our emissions end up getting added to the atmospheric stock. Again referring to Wiki I find that 57% of humanity’s emissions were absorbed in 2012. I’m going to say that is reduced to 50% today, which is the same figure I used in Denierland (benefitting the alarmist case). So of the 38.5 Gt emitted, 19.25 Gt net is added to the atmosphere.
Net added last year / Existing stock = Proportion added last year
19.25 / 3120 ≈ 0.006
This is about 1 part in 167, so it would take a further 167 years for CO2 levels to double from today’s, given no change in our behaviour. [We are already well on the way to doubling from 280. This illustration would take us from 420 to 840 in 2190 AD, although we would probably run out of fossil fuels before then.]
We already have the estimate that 1 ppm CO2 ≈ 8 Gt, so we estimate too that the 19.25 Gt we added last year would have increased the CO2 concentration by 19.25 / 8 ≈ 2.4 ppm.
In May last year (Wiki again) the concentration of CO2 was 421 ppm. So on these numbers, it should now be 423.4 ppm.
What about the UK’s contribution to this increase? According to EDGAR, the UK emitted 0.34 Gt CO2 last year. This is 0.88 % of global emissions, meaning that we are responsible for 0.0088 * 2.4 ppm, or 0.0212 ppm out of the increase of 2.4 ppm.
Some interesting numbers 3: global temperature change
We know that every time you double the CO2 concentration, you get the same increase in global temperature. What this means is that every ppm you add is worth less in terms of warming potential than the previous. It also means that, if you have a baseline level of CO2 (280 ppm) it is easy to calculate the temperature difference resulting from any other concentration of CO2, with a couple of caveats.
Caveat 1: you have to put in a number for transient climate response (TCR). TCR is the fast-acting part of climate change, the bit that is relevant to a human timescale, before long-term feedbacks have reached equilibrium. Lewis & Curry (2014, ?Climate Dynamics) estimated this to be 1.33 K per doubling using an energy budget approach. Big computers give higher numbers. I’m very generously (for the alarmist case) going to call TCR = 2 K here. However, TCR is not instantaneous; it’s relevant to 2100. So the temperature change reported here would be in train but not wholly realised.
Caveat 2: there are other things going on other than CO2 concentrations going up. There are other greenhouse gases (in particular methane), and natural cycles, volcanoes, etc. This elementary analysis ignores all those.
The function you end up with (I don’t know if this is standard, or idiosyncratic) to calculate the temperature change from the baseline is:
Or in words, the temperature change from the baseline equals TCR times the logarithm base 2 of the present CO2 concentration divided by the baseline concentration (280 ppm).
We can now estimate the temperature increase from the baseline by plugging in TCR = 2 K and CO2 = 423.4. The answer you get is that the global climate should be an average of
1.193 K
warmer than it was in the pre-industrial baseline situation (or it will be once the short-term feedbacks are settled).
If you plug in last year’s concentration (421 ppm) you get
1.177 K
So the annual increase in temperature in this idealised situation would be 0.016 K between 2022 and 2023, or a sixtieth of a kelvin.
What about the UK’s contribution to the temperature increase over the baseline? What if we had disappeared last year? What if, in 2022, the UK’s 0.34 Gt had not been emitted?
With the UK, the estimated increase over the baseline was 1.193 K. Without the UK, the estimate is
1.193 K
(Yes, it’s the same number because of insufficient significant figures.) In fact, on these estimates, the UK’s contribution to climate change last year was:
0.00014 K
Or roughly 1/7000th of a kelvin.
Bottom line
Although temperatures are rising, they (or the part driven by CO2 emissions at any rate) are rising at a non-threatening and incremental rate. With parameter estimates favouring the alarmist cause, the effect of CO2 emissions last year was of the order of a sixtieth of kelvin. The UK’s contribution to global warming from CO2 emissions last year was about 1/7000th of a kelvin, again with parameter estimates favouring alarm.
If these temperature changes drive other variables and give rise to dangerous weather etc, then it seems unlikely that any such changes would be noticeable on a year-to-year basis.
The climate “crisis” is not accelerating.
Editorial
Oh, for a leader who would stop dictating every aspect of our lives, and let us get on with them.
UN Environment Program Press Release of new study with Yale Center for Ecosystems & Agriculture: “Rapid urbanization worldwide means every five days, the world adds buildings equivalent to the size of Paris, with the built environment sector already responsible for 37 percent of global emissions. A report published today by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Yale Center for Ecosystems + Architecture (Yale CEA), under the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC), offers solutions to decarbonize the buildings and construction sector and reduce the waste it generates.” …
“Until recently, most buildings were constructed using locally sourced earth, stone, timber, and bamboo. Yet modern materials such as concrete and steel often give only the illusion of durability, usually ending up in landfills and contributing to the growing climate crisis,” said Sheila Aggarwal-Khan, Director of UNEP’s Industry and Economy Division. “Net zero in the building and construction sector is achievable by 2050, as long as governments put in place the right policy, incentives and regulation to bring a shift the industry action,” UNEP’s Aggarwal-Khan added.
Government regulation and enforcement is also requiredacross all phases of the building life cycle – from extraction through end-of-use – to ensure transparency in labeling, effective international building codes, and certification schemes…“The decarbonization of the buildings and construction sector is essential for the achievement of the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.
Nairobi, 12 September 2023 – Rapid urbanisation worldwide means every five days, the world adds buildings equivalent to the size of Paris, with the built environment sector already responsible for 37 per cent of global emissions. A report published today by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Yale Center for Ecosystems + Architecture (Yale CEA), under the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC), offers solutions to decarbonize the buildings and construction sector and reduce the waste it generates.
The report, Building materials and the climate: Constructing a new future, offers policy makers, manufacturers, architects, developers, engineers, builders and recyclers a three-pronged solution to reduce “embodied carbon” emissions and the negative impacts on natural ecosystems from the production and deployment of building materials (e.g., cement, steel, aluminium, timber, biomass):
Avoid waste through a circular approach: building less by repurposing existing buildings is the most valuable option, generating 50-75 per cent fewer emissions than new construction; promote construction with less materials and with materials that have a lower carbon footprint and facilitate reuse or recycle.
Shift to ethically and sustainably sourced renewable bio-based building materials, including timber, bamboo, and biomass. The shift towards properly managed bio-based materials could lead to compounded emissions savings in many regions of up to 40 per cent in the sector by 2050. However, more policy and financial support is needed to ensure the widespread adoption of renewable bio-based building materials.
Improve decarbonisation of conventional materials that cannot be replaced. This mainly concerns the processing of concrete, steel, and aluminium – three sectors responsible for 23 per cent of overall global emissions today – as well as glass and bricks. Priorities should be placed on electrifying production with renewable energy sources, increasing the use of reused and recycled materials, and scaling innovative technologies. Transformation of regional markets and building cultures is critical through building codes, certification, labelling, and the education of architects, engineers, and builders on circular practices.
The three-pronged Avoid-Shift-Improve solution needs to be adopted throughout the building process to ensure emissions are slashed and human health and biodiverse ecosystems are protected. The solution also requires, in its implementation, sensitivity to local cultures and climates, including the common perception of concrete and steel as modern materials of choice.
“Until recently, most buildings were constructed using locally sourced earth, stone, timber, and bamboo. Yet modern materials such as concrete and steel often give only the illusion of durability, usually ending up in landfills and contributing to the growing climate crisis,” said Sheila Aggarwal-Khan, Director of UNEP’s Industry and Economy Division.
“Net zero in the building and construction sector is achievable by 2050, as long as governments put in place the right policy, incentives and regulation to bring a shift the industry action,” she added.
To date, most climate action in the building sector has been dedicated to effectively reducing “operational carbon” emissions, which encompass heating, cooling, and lighting. Thanks to the growing worldwide decarbonisation of the electrical grid and the use renewable energies, these are set to decrease from 75 per cent to 50 per cent of the sector in coming decades.
Since buildings contain materials produced in disparate regions across the globe, reducing “embodied carbon” emissions from production and deployment of building materials requires decisionmakers to adopt a whole life-cycle approach. This involves harmonized measures across multiple sectors and at each stage of the building lifecycle – from extraction to processing, installation, use, and demolition.
Government regulation and enforcement is also requiredacross all phases of the building life cycle – from extraction through end-of-use – to ensure transparency in labelling, effective international building codes, and certification schemes. Investments in research and development of nascent technologies, as well as training of stakeholders in the sectors, are needed, along with incentives for cooperative ownership models between producers, builders, owners, and occupants to the shift to circular economies.
“The decarbonisation of the buildings and construction sector is essential for the achievement of the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. By providing cutting-edge scientific insights as well as very practical recommendations to reduce embodied carbon, the study ”Building materials and the climate: Constructing a new future” advances our joint mission to decarbonise the sector holistically and increase its resilience”, said Dr. Vera Rodenhoff, Deputy Director General for International Climate Action and International Energy Transition of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), which together with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has funded the study.
Case studies from Canada, Finland, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Peru, and Senegal, demonstrate how decarbonisation takes places using “Avoid-Shift-Improve” strategies: developed economies can devote resources to renovating existing ageing buildings, while emerging ones can leapfrog carbon-intensive building methods to alternative low-carbon building materials.
Cities worldwide can drive the implementation of decarbonisation. Many are already integrating vegetated surfaces, including green roofs, façades, and indoor wall assemblies to reduce urban carbon emissions and cool off buildings, increase urban biodiversity and more.
NOTE TO EDITORS
About the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
UNEP is the leading global voice on the environment. It provides leadership and encourages partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.
About the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC)
Founded at COP21, hosted by UNEP and with 289 members, including 40 countries, the GlobalABC is the leading global platform for all buildings stakeholders committed to a common vision: A zero-emission, efficient and resilient buildings and construction sector.
About Yale Center for Ecosystems + Architecture (Yale CEA)
Yale CEA unites researchers and practitioners across multiple fields, synthesising innovations in science, art and humanities towards ecosystems that prioritise the requirements of living organisms and ecologies. Our mission is to transform the DNA of the Built Environment, which is currently the sector responsible for the largest real-time climate change impacts and the consumption/production of toxic, non-renewable resources.
UN Environment Program Press Release of new study with Yale Center for Ecosystems & Agriculture: “Rapid urbanization worldwide means every five days, the world adds buildings equivalent to the size of Paris, with the built environment sector already responsible for 37 percent of global emissions. A report published today by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Yale Center for Ecosystems + Architecture (Yale CEA), under the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC), offers solutions to decarbonize the buildings and construction sector and reduce the waste it generates.” …
UN plan promises massive emission cuts in the construction sector – the most polluting and toughest to decarbonize…building materials (e.g., cement, steel, aluminum, timber, biomass)…materials that have a lower carbon footprint…[to] promote construction with less materials and with materials that have a lower carbon footprint and facilitate reuse or recycle.
Shift to ethically and sustainably sourced renewable bio-based building materials, including timber, bamboo, and biomass…Priorities should be placed on electrifying production with renewable energy sources, increasing the use of reused and recycled materials, and scaling innovative technologies.
“Until recently, most buildings were constructed using locally sourced earth, stone, timber, and bamboo. Yet modern materials such as concrete and steel often give only the illusion of durability, usually ending up in landfills and contributing to the growing climate crisis,” said Sheila Aggarwal-Khan, Director of UNEP’s Industry and Economy Division. “Net zero in the building and construction sector is achievable by 2050, as long as governments put in place the right policy, incentives and regulation to bring a shift the industry action,” UNEP’s Aggarwal-Khan added.
Government regulation and enforcement is also requiredacross all phases of the building life cycle – from extraction through end-of-use – to ensure transparency in labeling, effective international building codes, and certification schemes…“The decarbonization of the buildings and construction sector is essential for the achievement of the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.
When the BBC’s disinformation correspondent lied on her CV
Marianna Spring admitted she made an “awful misjudgement” when playing up her role in coverage of the Russia World Cup for the BBC
6 SEPTEMBER 2023 5:21 PM
We all make mistakes when we are young, and sometimes they grow in irony as time passes. Case in point: Marianna Spring, the BBC’s disinformation correspondent who, I can reveal today, was once caught red-handed lying in her CV to win a job.
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Five years ago, in 2018, Spring was looking for work as a Moscow stringer for US-based news site Coda Story. In her application to editor-in-chief Natalia Antelava, she included a CV in which claimed to have worked alongside BBC correspondent Sarah Rainsford on the corporation’s coverage of the football World Cup held in Russia.
The entry in her CV read: “June 2018: Reported on International News during the World Cup, specifically the perception of Russia, with BBC correspondent Sarah Rainsford.”
This claim was, unfortunately, pure disinformation. In reality, she had merely met Rainsford in a couple of social situations. The claim was a lie.
The New European claims she learned her hard lesson, and now upholds the highest standards of journalistic integrity as BBC’s disinformation correspondent.
Here’s a sample of Mariana’s writing;
Covid denial to climate denial: How conspiracists are shifting focus
Published 16 November 2021 By Marianna Spring Specialist disinformation reporter, BBC News
Members of an online movement infected with pandemic conspiracies are shifting their focus – and are increasingly peddling falsehoods about climate change.
Matthew is convinced that shadowy forces lie behind two of the biggest news stories of our time, and that he’s not being told the truth.
“This whole campaign of fear and propaganda is an attempt to try and drive some agenda,” he says. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s climate change or a virus or something else.”
Originally from the UK, Matthew has been living in New Zealand for the past 20 years. The country is one of several that have aimed to completely stamp out Covid-19 through strict lockdowns.
Troubled by the New Zealand government’s approach, he turned to social media for news and community. The online groups he joined – opposed to vaccines and masks – exposed him to completely unfounded conspiracies about sinister global plots behind the Covid-19 pandemic.
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The White Rose network
It’s part of a larger pattern. Anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine Telegram groups, which once focused exclusively on the pandemic, are now injecting the climate change debate with the same conspiratorial narratives they use to explain the pandemic.
The posts go far beyond political criticism and debate – they’re full of incorrect information, fake stories and pseudoscience.
Thank goodness for people like Marianna Spring, who after allegedly lying on her CV, went on to help us understand conspiracy theorists who criticise the urgent need for government enforced Covid lockdowns are just like conspiracy theorists who oppose renewables, and deny we are in the midst of a climate crisis.
The Guardian and Reuters, along with other mainstream media outlets and news services, are covering a “landmark” hearing in a case a group of small island nations are bringing to have carbon dioxide emissions from developed nations considered pollution under the Law of the Sea treaty, requiring countries to take action to prevent or mitigate emissions. Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is not pollution but rather is a naturally occurring gas necessary for life on earth and is not toxic at levels more than 10 times what they are today. Nor does data show carbon dioxide emissions are driving dangerous ocean or weather conditions which specifically threaten island nations justifying them having standing to bring a lawsuit.
In a landmark hearing, small island nations disproportionately affected by the climate crisis will take on high-emitting countries in a court in Hamburg, Germany, on 11 September, in what is being seen as the first climate justice case aimed at protecting the ocean.
During the two-day hearing, the nations – including the Bahamas, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Antigua, and Barbuda among others – will ask the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (Itlos) to determine whether greenhouse gas emissions absorbed by the marine environment should be considered pollution.
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Most countries have obligations under the legally binding UN convention on the law of the sea to take measures to prevent, reduce and control marine pollution.
If the case, brought by the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (COSIS), is successful, these obligations would include carbon-emission reduction and protection of marine environments already damaged by CO2 pollution.
Foremost among the claims made by COSIS is that rising CO2 is: causing sea levels to increase at a rapid rate threatening to swamp the islands; producing more extreme weather; and acidifying the seas. Each of these claims is false.
Concerning rising seas and island nations, Climate Realism has published multiple posts showing that island nations are not being swamped by rising seas, here, here, and here, for example. Indeed, data shows that they are expanding in size, development, and population.
Nor is purported CO2 induced climate change causing worsening tropical storms threatening islands survival, as demonstrated in Climate Realism reports here and here, for instance.
Also, contrary to COSIS assertions, the world’s seas are not becoming dangerously acidic due to rising CO2. This idea has been thoroughly refuted by the EPA’s own data and by other research as presented here, here, and here.
In short, COSIS’ Law of the Sea claims raised in the international court in Germany lack merit. COSIS can’t show that increased carbon dioxide is a pollutant because it is necessary to life and not toxic at any foreseeable levels. Nor can COSIS demonstrate that increased CO2 it is causing dangerous climate change in general, much less that it is producing any of the specific harms which they cite as evidence of climate damage, because none of the problems they claim are occurring are, in fact, taking place.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News. In addition to directing The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, Burett puts Environment & Climate News together, is the editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and the host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.
Making climate policy the answer to weather risks is a distraction & fraud on the public
It was modestly funny when Hurricane Sandy, after it came ashore in 2012, had to be hurriedly renamed Superstorm Sandy (a title with no formal meteorological meaning) because it was no longer a hurricane.
Local politicians blabbed in the aftermath about climate change to help unlock Obama disaster aid, and also to duck questions about inadequate preparation. But the storm itself was no different from many that had battered the Northeastern seaboard for centuries. The difference was how many people and structures were in its path.
Nothing is funny in the aftermath of the Maui wildfire, which swept through a town and killed at least 115. But it’s noteworthy that Joe Biden refrained from his usual clamor about a climate crisis. He didn’t even mention the word climate in his speech when visiting the island.
Perhaps Mr. Biden’s off-key anecdote about a kitchen fire at his Delaware home was his ad-lib substitution. Whatever the reason, his aides apparently understood that climate talk would come across as criminal and cowardly in the face of the true causes of the Maui disaster.
High winds are a common occurrence. Dry conditions are a common occurrence. Invasive grasses taking over abandoned pineapple and sugar plantations were a known menace, complicated by unhelpful land-use policy.
Emergency sirens weren’t sounded. Water wasn’t available due to political squabbles over allocation rights. The local utility was instructed by Hawaii’s Legislature to meet ambitious renewables targets rather than spend on reducing fire risk. Firefighters reportedly left the scene early believing they had extinguished the initial blaze.
Maui itself is an island surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, with vagaries more immediate and potent than any caused by a 0.3% fluctuation in the planet’s long-term energy balance due to atmospheric CO2.
Blue-green algae gave us oxygen to breathe and yet we don’t blame blue-green algae for everything oxygen-breathing organisms do. Likewise, nothing very useful comes from trying to explain every weather-related misfortune in terms of human-caused carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Weather is a product of climate, we should specify; our climate is currently influenced by atmospheric CO2 of 419 parts per million.
But hurricanes, fires, floods and heat waves also occurred when the concentration was 280 parts per million, and tended to claim more lives than they do now.
Whatever man’s role in climate change, whatever the merits of regulating CO2, making climate policy the answer to weather risks is a distraction and fraud on the public. Nearly one-third of all greenhouse gases have been released since Al Gore won his 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for a climate movie. These emissions have an estimated half-life in the atmosphere of 120 years. Your electric car isn’t going to change that.
By now, though, activists and lobbyists have a picture on the wall, blown up to five times life-size, of a certain type of voter willing to believe anything, even that Joe Biden’s pork-ridden Inflation Reduction Act meaningfully addresses a warming planet.
Meanwhile, a Nobel Prize laureate in physics who decries the “application of scientific disinformation for opportunistic purposes” can expect to be disinvited from giving a speech to the International Monetary Fund, as the 2022 laureate John Clauser recently was. His offending words, which are hard to dispute in the dictionary sense: “I believe that climate change is not a crisis” (emphasis added).
A crisis, after all, usually calls for concerted, immediate action. Why is it that nothing is ever seriously proposed or enacted, including Mr. Biden’s bag of handouts for “green” energy interests, that would actually have a detectable effect on weather and climate now or in the future?
To stress something not usually emphasized, the science is still largely a science of computer simulations. For now, though, it suggests a relatively manageable human adaptation to a slowly warming planet, mainly through everyday decisions about where and how to live, build and work. Once again, a weather-related disaster is too important to cheapen for the sake of the ‘narrative.”
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Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
