Tag Archives: The Guardian

Climate Cultists at The Guardian: This Time, It’s Evil Propane

From RealClearEnergy

By Tilak Doshi

Reporters at The Guardian never tire of demonizing fossil fuels. In its latest salvo, the newspaper –  funded in part by the green-billionaire Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – published a January 25 hit piece on the Propane Education and Research Council. PERC, funded by the U.S. propane industry, is a nonprofit that provides propane safety and training programs and invests in research and development of new propane-powered technologies. PERC, its critics charge, is “greenwashing” by downplaying “the full climate impacts of propane” and marketing it as “clean” energy. The Guardian article claims that PERC “has invested millions in a multiyear strategy to rebrand propane from what it’s called a ‘dirty fossil fuel’ to a so-called clean energy source.”

“Greenwashing”

The Guardian article’s accusation of PERC’s “greenwashing” cites Charlie Spatz, a research manager at the Energy and Policy Institute, who attended PERC’s 2022 board meeting. Spatz says that the fossil fuel industry has long tried to brand its products as renewable: “And so we’ve seen PERC, in some respects, catch up with the oil industry and natural gas industry to present their product as renewable.”

EPI self-describes as a “watchdog organization working to expose attacks on renewable energy and counter misinformation by fossil fuel and utility interests.” Oddly enough, for an organization that purports to reveal the hidden influence of fossil fuel and utility companies, the EPI is opaque about its own funders, and it is hardly disinterested itself. Its executive director, David Pomerantz, “spent eight years working with Greenpeace to move the electric sector away from fossil fuel and towards renewable energy.”

The article also quotes Faye Holder, a program manager at InfluenceMap, to support its greenwashing accusation. According to Holder, “All these talking points that you see about ‘clean gas’ and ‘gas is lower emissions’” are used in advertising. “But they are also all used in the direct lobbying to policymakers [making] climate policies that would otherwise threaten the role and the business of gas.”

InfluenceMap describes itself as a “global non-profit think tank working on the cutting edge of climate and sustainability issues.” It claims to use a funding methodology based on “best available records.” Relying on work traced to InfluenceMap, University College London geography professor Mark Maslin, a climate activist and “strategy advisor” to Net Zero Now, wrote that oil companies were spending $200 million a year promoting “climate change denial.”

According to a familiar trope, “oil money” is the culprit behind public skepticism about the “climate science consensus.” According to this view, “Big Oil” funds skeptical scientists and institutions that cast doubt on “consensus science” to pad their corporate profits. Politicians have embraced the arguments of climate evangelists, pushing to “save the planet” with emissions reductions and other climate regulations and policies. As the great essayist H. L. Mencken observed, “[t]he whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Investigative journalist Ben Pile examined the claim that oil company financial support accounts for “climate change denial” and found that the “methodology” employed by InfluenceMap consisted of estimates, not actual receipts:

It turns out that this “methodology” is far more subjective – some might say “woolly” . . . Rather than finding money and Big Oil actually commissioning evil deniers, a tower of “estimates” are produced. This is largely guessing, not the discovery of a cache of receipts.

Pile’s hard-hitting critique concludes that “InfluenceMap’s ‘methodology’ means nothing more than counting any reaction of any kind from any part of the industrial sector to the demand that it must volunteer to die as ‘denial.’” At the very least, the claim that oil companies and utilities are spending $200 million a year promoting “climate change denial” must be seen as unreliable if not entirely made up.

Indeed, as Chris Morrison of The Daily Sceptic reminds us, even a cursory assessment of open sources would find that the vast funds flowing into “climate research” and climate activism originate from green-billionaire foundations linked to the Rockefeller family, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill Gates, along with the Hewletts, Packards, and Gettys.

Image Credit: Cartoons by Josh

Propane: Scourge or Savior?

Propane is one of a group of liquefied petroleum gases, a co-product of natural gas extraction and crude oil refining. It burns more cleanly than gasoline, diesel, and coal. In the U.S., propane is used for space and water heating, cooking, and typically for outdoor barbecues. It can be an important energy source in non-urban areas where other heating fuels (electricity, heating oil, natural gas, and wood fuels) are limited or expensive – for example, when back-up power generation might be required. According to the 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey, about 11 million U.S. households used propane as a major fuel and about 42 million U.S. households used propane for outdoor grilling.

In attacking propane, The Guardian article – and others like it that run in that newspaper’s pages on an almost daily basis – does an injustice to the civilizational role that fossil fuels have played in human history. In his magisterial work on the role of energy from the Middle Ages to modern times, Vaclav Smil notes that the four pillars of modern civilization – cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia (for fertilizers) – would not be possible without fossil fuels. The same goes for goods and services that affluent countries take for granted, such as electricity, transport, home heating and cooling, clean water, wastewater and sewage treatment, hospitals, medicines and medical equipment – to name just a few.

Propane, or more generically, LPG, has a critical role to play, as the World Bank has noted. It would help almost 40 percent of the global population in developing countries wean themselves off dependence on polluting solid fuels such as dung, wood, and charcoal for indoor cooking and heating. LPG would help reduce household air pollution, improve health outcomes, reduce energy poverty, save nonrenewable biomass, and support local economic development. The World Bank advises developing countries on the need to promote the use of LPG as a clean cooking and heating solution.

Luxury Beliefs of The Privileged

The Guardian article is merely another symptom of the conceit of luxury beliefs that infect the intelligentsia of the modern West, cursed as it is by a Rousseauesque angst about modern industrial civilization. In berating the role of propane, as it does with other fossil fuels, the newspaper betrays a lack of empathy for 80 percent of the world’s population that depends on expanding the use of fossil fuels to escape poverty. According to the WHO, an estimated 3.2 million people die prematurely due to indoor air pollution caused by using dirty cooking and heating fuels. LPG is particularly instrumental in reducing this grisly toll.   

It’s time to remind ourselves that climate science is anything but settled, as argued authoritatively by Steve Koonin in his book Unsettled. Dr. John F. Clauser, joint recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, has criticized the climate emergency narrative, calling it “a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people . . . Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience.”

The widespread uprisings by farmers across Europe and the siege of Paris by farmers with tractors constitute a populist backlash against the debilitating fantasies of Net Zero. They are the most visible result today of the travails of a neo-Malthusian obsession that afflicts Western politicians, policymakers, and their preferred “woke” constituencies. The Guardian’s reporters would be well served to avoid “shock-journalistic pseudoscience” and adopt some modesty, and appreciation, for the role of fossil fuels in human flourishing – and survival.

Dr. Tilak Doshi is an energy economist, independent consultant and a Forbes contributor living in London. 

Guardian: A third of British Teenagers think Climate Change is Exaggerated

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

According to the Guardian, climate deniers have influenced teens by infiltrating youtube with disinformation videos.

Third of UK teenagers believe climate change exaggerated, report shows

YouTube criticised for amplifying lies about the climate with disinformation videos watched by young people

Helena Horton Environment reporterTue 16 Jan 2024 22.00 AEDT

A third of UK teenagers believe climate change is “exaggerated”, a report has found, as YouTube videos promoting a new kind of climate denial aimed at young people proliferate on the platform.

Previously, most climate deniers pushed the belief that climate breakdown was not happening or, if it was, that humans were not causing it. Now, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has found that most climate denial videos on YouTube push the idea that climate solutions do not work, climate science and the climate movement are unreliable, or that the effects of global heating are beneficial or harmless.

Researchers from the CCDH gathered a dataset of text transcripts from 12,058 climate-related YouTube videos posted by 96 channels over almost six years from 1 January 2018 to 30 September 2023. They also included the results of a nationally representative survey conducted by polling company Survation which found 31% of UK respondents aged 13 to 17 agreed with the statement “Climate change and its effects are being purposefully overexaggerated”. This rose to 37% of teenagers categorised as heavy users of social media, meaning they reported using any one platform for more than four hours a day.

…

Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the CCDH, said: “Scientists have won the battle to inform the public about climate change and its causes, which is why those opposed to climate action have cynically switched focus to undermining confidence in solutions and in science itself.”

This mentality has seeped into UK politics, with rightwing politicians having campaigned for years to persuade the public that net zero is unachievable and too expensive, and that technologies including electric cars and heat pumps do not work. The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has said recently that climate solutions are too expensive and rowed back on net zero commitments.

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/16/third-of-uk-teenagers-believe-climate-change-exaggerated-report-shows

What can I say? It’s not our fault if reality gives us plenty of evidence to refute nonsensical climate claims.

I mean, who can forget the hilarious cost blowout and failure, when German greens tried and failed to install a heat pump in their own headquarters?

Or the crazy energy price hikes, inflicted by politicians who claimed renewables are the cheapest form of power?

And let’s not forget the Chicago Tesla graveyard this weekend, caused by Tesla’s failing in the cold – nope, nothing to see here folks.

The fact is green solutions don’t work, and climate change isn’t a problem. It was always only a matter of time before teenagers realised this, and started rebelling against fake adult climate doomsday messaging.

Update (EW): The report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate is available here. The report appears to call for stepping up censorship and demonetisation of any content which criticises climate “solutions”, as well as content which criticises climate science. There’s a picture of Anthony Watts on page 20 of the report;

The New Climate Denial

How social media platforms and content producers profit by spreading new forms of climate denial.

…

2023 was the hottest year on record. Once unprecedented wildfires, floods, unbearable heat, and droughts are becoming normal to billions of people worldwide.2 It is difficult to deny the simple fact that our climate is changing in predictable and yet, still, even now, shocking ways. The awe we feel when Mother Nature bellows with rage can only be matched by our fear that her final judgment will be catastrophic for our species.

And yet, the sensible majority of us who seek to avert climate catastrophe find ourselves continually having to deal with a tidal wave of disinformation designed to delay action. These lies, welcomed, enabled, and often funded by oil and gas tycoons who benefit financially, are cynically used by political leaders to explain why they remain stubbornly incapable of taking urgent corrective action.

In this Enlightenment battle of truth and science versus lies and greed, those on the side of science appear to have succeeded in persuading the public that anthropogenic climate change is a reality, which is why those who seek to undermine climate science have shifted strategy.

In this report, for the first time, researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate have quantified the startling and important rise over the past five years in what we call “New Denial” — the departure from rejection of anthropogenic climate change, to attacks on climate science and scientists, and rhetoric seeking to undermine confidence in solutions to climate change. “New Denial” claims now constitute 70% of all climate denial claims made on YouTube, up from 35% six years ago.

…

CCDH-The-New-Climate-Denial_FINALHerunterladen

Wood burners more costly for heating than gas boilers, study finds

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

No S**t Sherlock!

Wood burners are a more expensive way to heat homes than gas boilers or heat pumps, research shows.

A study found that as well as causing significant health and environmental dangers for the home’s occupants and their neighbours, it is at least 15% more costly to heat a home using a wood burner rather than a gas boiler.

Rachel Pidgeon, of the charity Impact on Urban Health, which focuses on health inequalities in cities and which funded the study, said air pollution from wood burning in the UK had doubled over the past decade, with serious consequences for people’s health.

“This research dispels the myth that wood burning is a cheaper energy alternative whilst shining a light on the toxic effect it has on the air we breathe,” she said. “It’s vital that urban communities understand the connection between burning and the air pollution it creates.”

There was a 40% increase in sales of wood burners between 2021 and 2022. Research shows that more affluent people, attracted by the aesthetic appeal of a fire, are driving that increase.

However, a growing body of evidence highlights the environmental and health damage caused, with scientists saying that people who burn wood are subjecting themselves – and their neighbourhoods – to high levels of the most dangerous small particulate pollution, PM2.5, which can work its way deep into the body, causing a range of severe health issues including heart disease, strokes, asthma and cancer.

Last year, a study from Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, found that even “eco design” wood burning stoves produced 450 times more toxic air pollution than gas central heating, while older stoves, now banned from sale, produced 3,700 times more.

Another study found that wood burning in homes produced more small particle pollution than all road traffic in the UK.

The latest research, carried by Global Action Plan for Impact on Urban Health, found that the perception among the public was often that wood burners at least offered a cheaper source of energy.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/11/wood-burners-more-costly-for-heating-than-gas-boilers-study-finds

The pollution from wood burners has always been obvious to sane people. After all our ancestors decided hundreds of years ago that it probably was not a particularly good idea, though an improvement on burning dung I suppose.

But the climate change fundamentalists decided a long time ago that CO2 emissions were a much more important consideration than people’s actual health.

Global Heating Will Make Your Beers Taste Worse!

A new brainless pseudo- study of climate change.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

  h/t Ian Magness

.

Do Guardian readers actually believe this nonsense?

Climate breakdown is already changing the taste and quality of beer, scientists have warned.

The quantity and quality of hops, a key ingredient in most beers, is being affected by global heating, according to a study. As a result, beer may become more expensive and manufacturers will have to adapt their brewing methods.

Researchers forecast that hop yields in European growing regions will fall by 4-18% by 2050 if farmers do not adapt to hotter and drier weather, while the content of alpha acids in the hops, which gives beers their distinctive taste and smell, will fall by 20-31%.

“Beer drinkers will definitely see the climate change, either in the price tag or the quality,” said Miroslav Trnka, a scientist at the Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and co-author of the study, published in the journal Nature Communications. “That seems to be inevitable from our data.”

Beer, the third-most popular drink in the world after water and tea, is made by fermenting malted grains like barley with yeast. It is usually flavoured with aromatic hops grown mostly in the middle latitudes that are sensitive to changes in light, heat and water.

In recent years, demand for high-quality hops has been pushed up by a boom in craft beers with stronger flavours. But emissions of planet-heating gases are putting the plant at risk, the study found.

The researchers compared the average annual yield of aroma hops during the periods 1971-1994 and 1995-2018 and found “a significant production decrease” of 0.13-0.27 tons per hectare. Celje, in Slovenia, had the greatest fall in average annual hop yield, at 19.4%.

In Germany, the second-biggest hop producer in the world, average hop yields have fallen 19.1% in Spalt, 13.7% in Hallertau, and 9.5% in Tettnang, the study found.

The taste of beer does not just depend on the hops, but it explains part of the drink’s popularity, said Trnka. “Across the pubs of Europe, the most frequent debate except weather and politics is about the … beer.”

But weather and politics are both changing the taste of beers. World leaders have promised to try to stop the planet heating by more than 1.5C above preindustrial levels by the end of the century, but are pumping out too much greenhouse gas to meet that target.

The study found the alpha acid content of hops, which give beer its distinct aroma, had fallen in all regions.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/climate-crisis-will-make-europes-beer-cost-more-and-taste-worse-say-scientists

Can anybody honestly say that beer tastes any different to what it used to? Or worse?

Indeed, the explosion of new craft beers and styles tells the opposite story. Brewers are using their skills to produce better beers, taking advantage of the abundance of quality and varied ingredients from around the world. And they will carry on doing so.

As for the nonsense about falling hop yields, the UN data shows the exact opposite, both in Europe and specifically in Germany:

https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare

The best bit though is the Guardian’s claim that global heating will push up prices, because the very last paragraph includes this quote from a German hop farmer :

Record US Heat? More Guardian Lies!

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

If you tell a lie often enough, most people believe it!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/13/climate-breakdown-majority-americans-experienced-record-hot-summer 

Record heat?

Not according to NOAA:

The summer across the US as a whole was only the 15th hottest on mean temperatures, and 22nd for maximums, well below the 1930s.

Only one State, Louisiana, set a record temperature for the summer.

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/statewide/mapping/110/tmax/202308/3/rank

According to the US Climate Extremes Index, the percentage of the US with “much above normal temperatures” was not even unusually high, never mind most of the country, as falsely claimed by the Guardian:

The sum of (a) percentage of the United States with maximum temperatures much below normal and (b) percentage of the United States with maximum temperatures much above normal.

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/cei/graph/us/06-08/1

Moreover no new State records have been set for daily temperatures:

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/scec/

And even at Phoenix Airport, where we have been told the heat has been most extreme, the the temperature peaked at 119F, which is well below the 1990 record of 122F

http://climod2.nrcc.cornell.edu/

So all in all, the Guardian’s claims are pure and simple fraud.

Carbon Credits: The Predictable Unraveling of a Flawed System

From Watts Up With That?

Whaddya mean the Indulgences don’t live up to their hype?

The world of carbon credits has long been presented as a major tool for supposed climate woes. Advocates of this system have been quick to sing its praises, positioning it as the ultimate solution for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. But skeptics, like yours truly, have long pointed out the inherent flaws in such a system. Now, even The Guardian, a publication that has been a staunch advocate of climate alarmism, seems to be having second thoughts. It’s almost as if they’re saying, “Oops, maybe the skeptics had a point.”

The Guardian’s Late Awakening

The article from The Guardian delves deep into the world of carbon credits, questioning their actual impact on reducing emissions. It’s almost amusing to see them now asking:

“Carbon credits are supposed to offset the emissions caused by companies and individuals. But do they really reduce greenhouse gases?”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/19/do-carbon-credit-reduce-emissions-greenhouse-gases

A question that should have been asked and critically examined long before jumping on the carbon credit bandwagon.

The Mirage of Offsetting

The Guardian highlights a significant concern: the illusion of offsetting. Purchasing carbon credits doesn’t necessarily equate to genuine offsetting of emissions. Many of these credits are tied to projects that would have been executed regardless, meaning no real reduction in emissions.

“Many of the projects supported by carbon credits, such as the construction of windfarms and solar parks, would have been built anyway.”

In essence, it’s a system that allows companies to parade their “green” credentials without making any tangible changes to their carbon footprint.

The Inconsistencies of Carbon Credit Accounting

The article also sheds light on the convoluted and inconsistent world of carbon credit accounting. With no unified standard and a lack of rigorous oversight, it’s a system rife with potential for manipulation.

“There is no single standard for carbon credits, and critics argue that this has allowed projects that do not deliver real-world emissions reductions to flourish.”

It’s a system that skeptics have long warned about, and it seems these concerns were not unfounded.

A Misguided Approach

The Guardian’s article suggests that carbon credits, while potentially playing a role in the transition to a low-carbon economy, cannot replace genuine efforts to reduce emissions.

“While carbon credits can play a role in the transition to a low-carbon economy, they cannot replace genuine efforts to reduce emissions.”

But let’s be clear: the very premise of transitioning to a “low-carbon economy” based on the current climate narrative is questionable. The entire carbon credit system is built on a foundation of misguided intentions and collective alarmist groupthink.

Conclusion

The Guardian’s newfound skepticism towards carbon credits is a telling sign of the system’s inherent flaws. While it’s somewhat satisfying to see them finally question a system that skeptics have long criticized, one can’t help but wonder about the time, resources, and efforts wasted on such a flawed approach.

Genuine progress doesn’t come from blindly following trends or from virtue signaling. It requires a grounded, pragmatic approach. The carbon credit saga serves as a reminder that it’s high time we move beyond the current climate narrative’s fads.

H/T Alan B

Guardian: Offshore Wind Fail – The UK Government Must Make Cheap Renewables More Affordable

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

h/t Peta of newark; “The economics do not stand up” for investing in the cheapest form of energy?

‘Biggest clean energy disaster in years’: UK auction secures no offshore windfarms

Lack of interest was widely expected after government failed to heed warnings about soaring costs

Jillian Ambrose Energy correspondentSat 9 Sep 2023 01.20 AEST

Lack of interest was widely expected after government failed to heed warnings about soaring costs

No new offshore windfarms will go ahead in the UK after the latest government auction, in what critics have called the biggest clean energy policy failure in almost a decade.

None of the companies hoping to build big offshore windfarms in UK waters took part in the government’s annual auction, which awards contracts to generate renewable electricity for 15 years at a set price.

The companies had warned ministers repeatedly that the auction price was set too low for offshore windfarms to take part after costs in the sector soared by about 40% because of inflation across their supply chains.

…

Up to 5 gigawatts of offshore wind was eligible to compete, which could have powered nearly 8m homes a year. That would have saved consumers £2bn a year compared with the cost of using electricity generated in a gas power plant, according to the industry group Renewable UK.

…

The industry warnings intensified after Vattenfall said in July that it would cease working on the multibillion-pound Norfolk Boreas windfarm because rising costs meant it was no longer profitable.

…

Keith Anderson, the chief executive of ScottishPower, said: “This is a multibillion-pound lost opportunity to deliver low-cost energy for consumers and a wake-up call for government.

“We all want the same thing – to get more secure, low-cost green offshore wind built in our waters,” Anderson said. “But the economics simply did not stand up this time around.”

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/08/biggest-clean-energy-disaster-in-years-uk-auction-secures-no-offshore-windfarms

Isn’t the cost of building the plant part of the cost of supplying energy produced by that plant?

If the plant is too expensive to build, how can it’s energy product possibly be described as cheap?

If the Norfolk Boreas wind farm is too expensive to complete, how can it also be described as a potential supplier of the cheapest form of energy?

At least this hilarious debacle has exposed the fiction of cheap renewables. This is why the UK is desperately contemplating energy rationing grid protection measures – Britain can’t afford to build the “cheapest form of energy”.

The drop in British renewable investment appears to be part of a worldwide collapse in interest. A recent wind auction in the Gulf of Mexico only attracted lacklustre interest. A few days ago WUWT reported on a drop in support for wind in New Jersey. Back in June, WUWT also reported a “profound slowdown” in renewable investment in Australia.

Renewables – the energy source so cheap, nobody can afford to build them.

For more information on why renewables are impractical and unaffordable click here.

X-Weather is Climate Scoundrels’ Last Refuge

Pacific islands are growing

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

John Ray posted on his blog an update of climatists power play against scientific facts contrary to their beliefs. The saga is about the Alimonte et al. (2022) analysis of extreme weather events and the lack of evidence to attribute them to global warming.  In italics with my bolds Ray’s post is:

The “extreme events” issue

The very gradual process of global warming that we have seen so far has produced no direct ill-effects that we can see. Crops are more abundant than ever and some Pacific islands are growing rather than shrinking. So “extreme events” are the last refuge of the warmists. Bad weather generally is routinely branded as an extreme event and is attributed to global warming without any shred of evidence for the link.

Any causal statement requires controls.

You have to show that the “caused” event would not have happened without the “cause” specified. But that would require you to show what would have happened WITHOUT global warming — and that is impossible.

Single events might or might not be due to some influence or other but you have no way of showing what the influence was. It is known as the “attribution” problem and is in principle unsolvable where the event is a “one-off”, a hurricane, for instance. You have to have variations in the causal condition to correlate with the alleged caused condition. Would this hurricane have happened in the absence of global warming? We cannot know. We can only surmise. And a surmise is no proof.

So the attribution of individual extreme events to global warming is LOGICALLY false. It CANNOT be shown as be fact. But science is at ease with hypotheses so it remains a hypothesis that COULD be true even if proving it is currently impossible.

And an hypothesis can be tested in various ways. It is commonly tested by asking if it generates accurate predictions. And it could be held as preliminary support for an hypothesis that the incidence of extreme events has systematically increased as the globe has warmed. Is there a correlation? So has it? There are some claims to that effect but how well-founded are they? Have extreme events in fact become more frequent?

A recent study has addressed that hypothesis. They have looked at a big range of reports about extreme events and asked are such events becoming more frequent. For each of a range or event extremes they have gathered published information about whether such events are increasing in frequency over time. An abstract of the report concerned is given below.

It finds no evidence that any extreme event has become more frequent.
So the claimed connections are not only logically false
but they are empirically false too.

The study was published 18 months ago and various climate skeptics have quoted it approvingly. That approval has eventually got under the skin of the Warmists so they have tried to discredit the research concerned. And their antagonism to the paper has borne fruit. The paper was “withdrawn” by its publisher, which counts as evidence that it is faulty.

But is it faulty? A much quoted attack on the paper in “The Guardian” lists a whole array of orthododox Warmists who say it is faulty but detailed evidence of the faults is conspicuously missing. No detailed numbers are quoted and the issue is entirely a matter of numbers. The Guardian makes clear that orthodox scientists disagree with the paper but does not give chapter and verse why. Link to The Guardian below:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/22/sky-and-the-australian-find-no-evidence-of-a-climate-emergency-they-werent-looking-hard-enough

Note that some of the attacks from Warmists are of the most intellectually discreditable kind: “Ad hominem” attacks — attacking the motives of the authors rather than the evidence they put forward

And that none of the critics quote the detailed numbers is a major scientific fault.

If a scientist disagrees with the conclusions of a particular paper — as I have often done — he goes over the ground covered by the paper and shows where it went wrong. In this case the paper at issue is a meta-analysis so the data behind it is readily available. Its conclusions are readily tested by repeating the meta-analysis in some more cautious way. Nobody seems to have attempted that. “Do better” is the obvious retort to the Warmists but none seem even to have attempted that.

The next link takes you to an extensive discussion of whether the paper deserved withdrawal:

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/thread-extended-peer-review-of-the/comments

The abstract of the deplored paper follows:

A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming

Gianluca Alimonti et al.

Abstract

This article reviews recent bibliography on time series of some extreme weather events and related response indicators in order to understand whether an increase in intensity and/or frequency is detectable. The most robust global changes in climate extremes are found in yearly values of heatwaves (number of days, maximum duration and cumulated heat), while global trends in heatwave intensity are not significant. Daily precipitation intensity and extreme precipitation frequency are stationary in the main part of the weather stations. Trend analysis of the time series of tropical cyclones show a substantial temporal invariance and the same is true for tornadoes in the USA. At the same time, the impact of warming on surface wind speed remains unclear. The analysis is then extended to some global response indicators of extreme meteorological events, namely natural disasters, floods, droughts, ecosystem productivity and yields of the four main crops (maize, rice, soybean and wheat). None of these response indicators show a clear positive trend of extreme 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. It would be nevertheless extremely important to define mitigation and adaptation strategies that take into account current trends.

A 2015 study by 22 scientists from around the world found that cold kills over 17 times more people than heat. Thus the planet’s recent modest warming has been saving millions of lives.

Springer website reports the paper retracted August 23, 2023.  The article was revised by the authors and published at Environmental Hazards journal on August 3, 2023 as reported at Taylor & Francis online

Is the number of global natural disasters increasing?

We analyze temporal trends in the number of natural disasters reported since 1900 in the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). Visual inspection suggests three distinct phases: first, a linear upward trend to around mid-century followed by rapid growth to the turn of the new century, and thereafter a decreasing trend to 2022. 

These observations are supported by piecewise regression analyses that identify three breakpoints (1922, 1975, 2002), with the most recent subperiod 2002–2022 characterized by a significant decline in number of events. A similar pattern over time is exhibited by contemporaneous number of geophysical disasters – volcanoes, earthquakes, dry landslides – which, by their nature, are not significantly influenced by climate or anthropogenic factors. 

We conclude that the patterns observed are largely attributable to progressively better reporting of natural disaster events, with the EM-DAT dataset now regarded as relatively complete since ∼2000. The above result sits in marked contradiction to earlier analyses by two UN bodies (FAO andUNDRR), which predicts an increasing number of natural disasters and impacts in concert with global warming. Our analyses strongly refute this assertion as well as extrapolations published by UNDRR based on this claim.

Conclusion Alimonte et al.

Fearing a climate emergency without this being supported by data, means altering the framework of priorities with negative effects that could prove deleterious to our ability to face the challenges of the future, squandering natural and human resources in an economically difficult context, even more negative following the COVID emergency. This does not mean we should do nothing about climate change: we should work to minimize our impact on the planet and to minimize air and water pollution.

Whether or not we manage to drastically curtail our carbon dioxide emissions in the coming decades, we need to reduce our vulnerability to extreme weather and climate events. Leaving the baton to our children without burdening them with the anxiety of being in a climate emergency would allow them to face the various problems in place (energy,agricultural-food, health, etc.) with a more objective and constructive spirit, with the goal of arriving at a weighted assessment of the actions to be taken without wasting the limited resources at our disposal in costly and ineffective solutions.

How the climate of the twenty-first century will play out is a topic of deep uncertainty. We need to increase our resiliency to whatever the future climate will present us.We need to remind ourselves that addressing climate change is not an end in itself, and that climate change is not the only problem that the world is facing. The objective should be to improve human well-being in the twenty-first century, while protecting the environmentas much as we can.  And it would be a nonsense not to do so: it would be like not taking care of the house where we were born and raised.

Tony Thomas describes the climate scoundrels and their machinations at the Quadrant:  How Science is Done These Days

Footnote Add Another Scoundrel

Chinese Whispers

From Climate Scepticism

By  MARK HODGSON

For some weeks I have been watching videos on YouTube showing terrible images of devastating floods in northern China, in the Beijing region. That the images are terrible, and that the floods are devastating, there can be no doubt. So much so that China’s weather in the summer of 2023 seemed to me to fit the bill nicely for a bit of alarmism from the usual suspects (the BBC and the Guardian) to hype it up and mutter darkly about the “climate crisis”. And yet for a long time I could find no such reporting.

True, quite a bit of hype was devoted to a claimed high temperature record in a remote part of China where temperatures had not been measured with any accuracy (or at all) until recently. It was widely reported (though surprisingly, not with the usual levels of intensity) that temperatures at Sanbao in the Turpan depression reached 52.2C, thus setting a new high temperature record for China. Ironically, this record was set at a location which, in winter, can experience temperatures of -50C. Clearly it’s an incredibly inhospitable location, and therefore it’s no surprise that there are no weather records for Sanbao until very recently. As Paul Homewood said, in his de-bunk of this story:

Quite clearly, any record temperature set in the Turpan is meaningless and cannot be compared to other locations in China. It is merely the product of a micro climate.

There is also a second issue here. Sanbao has no official listing or any historical data, not according to KNMI at least. And the Shanghai Daily reported in 2010 that there were only three weather stations in the Turpan – Turpan City, Toksun and Dongkan, all at a much higher elevation than 150m below sea level.

In short we have no way of knowing whether it has been hotter in Saobao in the past, or whether the thermometer there is even properly sited and maintained.

You might just as well claim a record temperature next to the runway at Heathrow!

However, I digress, since my intention is mostly to write about the floods in China this year. After something of a delay the BBC did get around to reporting this story, and did so by giving the Guardian (never knowingly outdone when it comes to dramatic climate headlines) a run for its money with the heading “China’s summer of climate destruction”. It tells us:

China’s summer this year has seen both extreme heat and devastating floods.

And the flooding this time around has struck areas where such weather has been unheard of, with scientists – blaming climate change – warning that the worst is yet to come.

Rather strangely, in attempting to suggest (without actually using the word) that the floods are unprecedented in the areas in question, the BBC quotes a 38 year old as saying that they have never seen a flood there. In the long history of China, that is no time at all. However, as the article goes on to tell us, even Dr Zhao Li, from Greenpeace East Asia, admits that the increase in flood numbers can be partially explained by China developing better systems to monitor and record flood data.

As for the floods occurring in areas where a 38 year old has never seen them before, there is a man-made explanation, but it isn’t climate change:

Officials in China tried to ease the impact of recent floods by using a system of dams of waterways to change their direction.

The problem is that the water has to go somewhere, and it was Zhuozhou in Hebei Province which took the hit.

These are tough choices but, in the end, it becomes a government decision over who must suffer for the greater good.

Paul Homewood also debunks claims about the floods here, by picking up on that last point, and also pointing out that China’s production of cereal crops continues to show bumper yields, increasing six-fold in the last 60 years. While this may have a lot to do with agricultural improvements since the chaos of Mao’s massively destructive Cultural Revolution, crops don’t seem to be badly affected by climate change in China.

However, there is another point that Paul didn’t make in his piece, and that is that climate extremes (or “climate destruction”, as the BBC would have it) are nothing new in China. Wikipedia devotes a page to natural disasters in China, and it is heavily weighted towards 21st century floods. Whether it is due to a natural bias in favour of catastrophising 21st century climate, whether the 21st century really has been more catastrophic, or (as I suspect) because we have detailed weather records only for the recent past, is a moot point. Nevertheless, even Wikipedia has to mention (though not in any detail) the 1851-1855 Yellow River floods (yes, they lasted for five years) which “resulted in a change of the… river’s course, thereafter emptying into the Bohai Sea rather than into the Yellow Sea. This natural disaster is thought to have been a major cause of the Taiping Rebellion and Nian Rebellion.”

The 1931 floods rightly have a page of their own:

From 1928 to 1930, China was afflicted by a long drought. The subsequent winter of 1930–31 was particularly harsh, creating large deposits of snow and ice in mountainous areas. In early 1931, melting snow and ice flowed downstream and arrived in the middle course of the Yangtze during a period of heavy spring rain. Ordinarily, the region experienced three periods of high water during the spring, summer and fall, respectively; however, in early 1931, there was a single continuous deluge. By June, those living in low areas had already been forced to abandon their homes. The summer was also characterized by extreme cyclonic activity. In July of that year alone, nine cyclones hit the region, which was significantly above the average of two per year. Four weather stations along the Yangtze River reported rain totalling over 600mm (24in) for the month. The water flowing through the Yangtze reached its highest level since record-keeping began in the mid-nineteenth century. That autumn, further heavy rain added to the problem and some rivers did not return to their normal courses until November.

The floods inundated approximately 180,000 square kilometres (69,000sqmi) – an area equivalent in size to England and half of Scotland, or the states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut combined. The high-water mark recorded on 19 August at Hankou in Wuhan showed water levels 16m (53ft) above the average, an average of 1.7m (5.6ft) above the Shanghai Bund. In Chinese, this event is commonly known as 江淮水灾, which roughly translates to “Yangtze-Huai Flood Disaster.” This name, however, fails to capture the massive scale of flooding. Waterways throughout much of the country were inundated, particularly the Yellow River and Grand Canal. The eight most seriously affected provinces were Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Henan and Shandong. Beyond the core flood zone, areas as far south as Guangdong, as far north as Manchuria, and as far west as Sichuan were also inundated.

It is estimated that 53 million people may have been affected by the floods, and depending on whose estimates one believes, the dead may have numbered anywhere between 400,000 and four million. Widespread destruction was caused to cities, crops were destroyed on a vast scale, and disease was rife.

Just four years later, there was again terrible flooding on the Yangtse. Wikipedia tells us that deforestation exacerbated the floods (shades of Pakistan’s recent floods, methinks. And as the Wikipedia article makes clear, flooding on the Yangtse River has been a perennial issue:

The first major flood of the Yangtze River recorded in modern history occurred in 1911. Historical reports have indicated that the major flood covered 1,126 square kilometres and led to major devastation in Shanghai. It was reported that more than 200,000 died and hundreds of thousands were left homeless and destitute. Additionally, the flood also ruined important crops in surrounding farmland and destroyed food supplies in the cities and towns in the region.

So much for “modern” history. Fortunately, we have records of weather-related disasters in China before the twentieth century, and sadly there is no shortage of them. I have on my book shelves a biography of the Chinese Dowager Empress Cixi by Jung Chang, and it mentions a few of these incidents that occurred throughout Cixi’s life. I assume that only those that are central to the book’s narrative receive a mention. They are also not indexed, so I list the three references that I spotted from a quick perusal of the book.

On page 124 we learn:

…between 1876 and 1878, nearly half the Chinese provinces and up to 200 million people were hit by floods, drought and swarms of locusts – the biggest succession of natural calamities in more than 200 years and one of the worst in recorded Chinese history. Millions died of famine and disease, especially typhus.

Page 140:

Customs revenue helped save millions of lives. In …1888, when the country was struck by floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters, it could afford to spend ten million taels of silver to buy rice to feed the population.

Page 265:

In spring 1900, while Shandong was relieved by rainfall, the region surrounding Beijing was struck by a devastating drought. A contemporary missionary wrote: ‘For the first time since the great famine in 1878 no winter wheat to speak of had been planted…Under the most favourable circumstances the spring rains are almost invariably insufficient, but that year they were almost wholly lacking. The ground was baked so hard that no crops could be put in…’.

It can be clearly seen that China has a very long history of weather-related disasters. The above sketch does no more than scratch the surface. Perhaps, then, it is no great surprise that the Chinese authorities seem to be utterly unconcerned (regardless of the platitudes they mouth to western politicians) about greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. China has seen it all before, and what is occurring today is certainly not as bad as much that has happened in the past. Which brings us to a recent Guardian article with the heading “China continues coal spree despite climate goals” and the sub-heading “World’s biggest carbon emitter approving equivalent of two new coal plants a week, analysis shows”.

Given that China is responsible on an ongoing basis for around 30% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions each year, it is probably the only country in the world which might, by achieving net zero emissions, conceivably make a difference to any effects on the climate supposedly caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Yet clearly its leaders have no intention of doing any such thing, and its recent “ summer of climate destruction” isn’t a relevant factor so far as they are concerned. It does rather make one wonder why politicians in developed countries, especially the UK (responsible annually for around 3% of the volume of China’s emissions) are so desperate to achieve net zero, regardless of the cost. The Chinese have no doubt not forgotten the humiliations heaped upon them by European nations in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Their leaders must think it a wondrous thing that those same nations are now so willing to destroy their economies in the name of net zero, while apparently believing China’s hollow promises to do the same. Revenge is a dish best served cold, even if it does occasionally reach 52.2C in remote parts of China.

Shock News–Pavements Get Hot In Summer!

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

On a sunny day in mid-May, Bobby Hunt fell asleep by the side of a gas station in Phoenix. Hunt says he was waiting for a friend to pick him up.

“Next thing I know, I wake up in the hospital.”

Hunt was in a burn unit. He doesn’t remember much, just the bright lights.

“What am I doing here?” he recalled asking.

Almost three months later, Hunt stands in the empty chapel of Circle the City, the central Phoenix medical shelter for unhoused people where he’s been recuperating. He lifts his white T-shirt to reveal a lopsided, round scar the size of a medium pizza.

The burn appears to be about an inch deep, and mars the swath of intricate, black-inked tattoos of skulls and faces that once covered his back.

Below the big scar, a bandage covers another wound on his lower back. Hunt pulls the leg of his khaki shorts up to reveal a large, red rectangle where skin from his thigh was removed and grafted on to his back. He’s still in terrible pain.

Temperatures in the city of Phoenix reached at least 110F (43.3C) for 31 days in a row this summer. But even on a 98F (37C) day, like the one when Hunt was injured, sustained contact with the sidewalk can result in third degree burns – and potentially kill a person.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/28/phoenix-arizona-heatwave-burns-sidewalks-climate-crisis

The Guardian seems surprised that roads can get so hot in summer. Even here you would be advised not to walk barefoot on roads when it is hot. And the fact that this injury occurred in May when temperatures reached 98F says all you need to know about this latest pathetic little story. Phoenix temperatures tend to be at that level and a lot higher pretty much all summer:

The highest temperature there this year has been 119F, well below the record of 122 set in 1990.

The daily data profile is also noteworthy, as it shows that temperatures so far this summer have only been exceptionally high for about a two-week period in July, and a handful of days this month:

Of course, if Guardian journalists understood why roads and pavements get hot in summer, they would also appreciate why urban areas get much hotter than rural ones, and that the temperatures they regularly trumpet for cities like Phoenix are not representative.