Thanks for this. The public needs to understand that climate models are based on very unrealistic assumptions, and a financial conflict of interest is a key part of the reason why it persists. Bad assumptions lead to bad science.
Great post Jessica. The link you made in a prior post to the insurance industry is also a key point. By pushing the extreme scenarios, it makes it easier for insurers to justify walking away or pricing out the very customers who need the coverage the most.
Without the atmosphere or even just the GHGs especially WV there are no clouds, ice, snow, oceans or 30% albedo and Earth would become much like the Moon, a barren rock ball, 400 K lit side, 100 K dark thus negating the GHE. (UCLA Diviner)
“UCAR TFK 2009 GHE energy budget” uses 63 twice, a math error, and creates an “extra” 396 out of a S-B BB calculation moving energy from cooler to warmer w/o work and violating LoT.
Kinetic heat transfer processes of contiguous atmospheric molecules render a Black Body surface and “extra” GHE energy impossible.
There is no GHE or CAGW.
Science has a documented history of being wrong and abusing those who corrected it, e.g. Anaxagoras, caloric, phlogiston, plate tectonics, luminiferous ether, antiseptic surgeries, spontaneous generation, etc.
Since both GHE & CAGW climate “science” are indefensible rubbish alarmists must resort to fear mongering lies, lawsuits, censorship and violence.
1) I am afraid the article uses for its basic assumptions outdated data. Regrettably data and analysis from 2020 and even 2022 on the physical trends and factors influencing global warming are outdated. Currently we are seeing accelerated warming, potential reevaluation of equilibrium climate sensitivity for higher values and previously underestimated impacts (termination shock) of the desulphurization of fossil fuels.
2) There is a different approach of climate scientists and actuaries to risk - and I assume you are well aware of that. Risk assessment and risk perception are also different. You might want to clearly demonstrate that in your logic and analyze - having them mixed undermines the value of the analysis.
3)You are making a demonstration on how financial interests are distorting climate change research to more dramatic direction. It is a cherry picking of facts and connections and implied collusions, while lacking to show how vigorous efforts are there to distort and relativize, questions climate science for the sake of very strong financial interests which hope to get more profit before profit becomes meaningless. It is a fight of the status quo against those realising the profoundly changed circumstances. You can assemble an similar themed article easily with the total opposite conclusion :)
4) You overvalue scenarios (which is a common problem) - they are not there to tell this or that version of the future but to help our thinking of potential futures with their logic. They are pretty much all deemed to fail, but we use them regardless to justify our actions, like sorcerers were used to justify decisions in ancient times. The closer they are to natural science the less they are subjective, but it does not mean that they have escaped from model land (see Erica Thomson).
To Jessica: -- you know what's wrong with this -- it's all based on past data ---
Think about it for a moment.
Data - from which assumptions are made -- only comes from the past, i.e., it's already taken place. And - as fast as things are getting hotter / wetter / or drier / one can make all the assumptions one wants.
But assumptions will not always correctly predict what is in store - as far as Climate Change is concerned.
So all of this hand-ringing about whether or not the "assumptions" are either too high or too low -- is just wasted time.
The fact is: there are more and more people that are being more severely effected by what is actually happening -- which makes the case -- that it is getting hotter / the hurricanes are getting stronger / the tornadoes are just as vicious - but more frequent - causing more damage and killing more people:
--- because there are more people and stuff to damage - so get over it.
You recycle alarmist assertions which are demonstrably false and I recommend you post supporting authoritative data before repeating them.
I ask you - how can anything be called data that comes not from the past or the present?
Future data? Tomorrow never comes!
It is NOT getting hotter, the extreme weather events are not more frequent nor getting stronger than has been recorded in the records of the past for centuries.
The climate of the earth is changing, has been changing for millions of years, has been changed by cycles which have mostly all been identified as influences from outside the environment of planet earth and demonstrably not by the primary changes of so-called greenhouse gases which must include water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane as well a several others.
All the models have failed.
All the predictions about future change derived from the models have failed and they have failed by a greater margin each time - they are getting the answer wrong by a bigger margin.
You are correct about the deaths and disability absolute numbers, the more than eight thousand million living human souls on the planet today are living in a greater area of the planet and the spread is into inhospitable previously uninhabited territory and suffering from the climate being unsuitable for human habitation as it was from the distant past.
I can't imagine a less useful response to what was written than if Hamburglar joined the conversation to point out that nobody had any burgers to steal. Of course climate change is happening. Who in their right mind would say that it's static.
You have created a pleasant little tautology for yourself, full stop.
While methodology might be open to criticism, everything we know and experience tells us that global warming is real; that the melting of critical glasiers escalates, that catastrophic storms are more frequent and more damaging each year, that more people perish from extreme heat, that dessertifiction increases; that climate-caused migrations are increasing, and that doubters are causing delays in decarbonizing our energy proceses.
"everything we know"? 1. melting of critical glasiers escalates -- yes, but not too sure about "critical" 2. that catastrophic storms are more frequent -- not really per the facts 3. more damaging each year -- not when normalized for coastal development, GDP, number of people 4. that more people perish from extreme heat -- not factual when normalized for the 8 Billion and, actually, more die from cold (and the inconvenient truth that the life span is increasing and the population is now over 8 Billion despite all of these "deaths" and a slow down in number of babies born) 5. that dessertifiction increases; -- true but the Earth is greener than any time in the last 50 years thanks to better plant growth due to CO2 6. that climate-caused migrations are increasing -- false and people still choose to live where it is warmer 7. that doubters are causing delays in decarbonizing our energy proceses -- true with the exception that LNG is responsible for our greatest CO2 reduction gains and nuclear was fought by the "greens" for 40 years.
A very slow undulating rise of overall average temperature of the surface of the earth within a ice age is documented. The latest very slow ripple stopped in 2020 and is headed down.
None of this is powered by carbon dioxide; in the 65 years of my adult university level geophysics advances in knowledge one by one the cycles have been identified and the changes are all outside the earth - sun power going up and down, planet alignment altering around the sun, the tilt of the precession of the earth rotation, the variation of the orbit of the moon and the alteration of the magnetic fields of the sun are major instances.
The geological record demonstrates that the ocean temperature rises and is followed by a rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide and the ocean level falls and is followed by the drop in the level of carbon dioxide with no exceptions.
Why do people say the same easily refutable things every time this discussion heats up. Catastrophic storms becoming more frequent? Prove it with a chart over the last 100 years. More people perish? Prove that too. But you can't because neither of those things are true and if you weren't an ideologue you would realize it. Stop using data that is intentionally incomplete to support your chosen position. You and the rest of the folks whose hair is on fire are stuck in a constant feedback loop of intentionally poor data.
Let's not be so litteral. Replacing gas and oil furnaces, with geothermal heat pumps and solar awnings, should have a positive ROI. Basic capitalism at work. Treating this stuff as a cost is as silly as trickle down economics.
Replacing existing high efficiency burners with heat pumps and solar is a good idea? Surely geothermal is fantastic, but there is no reason to replace a perfectly functioning system unless the goal is to burn more energy creating unnecessary stuff. By the way, unless government subsidizes everything (which lefties hate hate hate unless it's for their preferred stuff) the cost of geo is incredibly high. As for solar awnings, the ROI is awful without those handouts places like California give to help the upper middle class adopt bad ideas.
I'm sitting in the middle of a 50-year old condo complex. We're not talking high efficiency burners. We're talking aging gas furnaces & hot water heaters reaching end-of-life. I want neighborhood scale geothermal, not unit-by-unit electric heat pumps. And, by the way, it's our gas utility that's building the pilots. They've already got the pipes in the ground. The ROI is phenomenal. Perhaps you should learn yourself some engineering & economics - it works a lot better than political ravings.
And, by the way, there's a reason the Texas panhandle is wall-to-wall windmills, with nary an oil derrick to be seen. Again... engineering & economics.
The economics are juiced heavily in favor of wind. Subsidies flow in much greater numbers of dollars to "green" energy than they ever flowed to oil despite the protestations of greens. Wind when running efficiently is fantastic. But it is variable which immediately creates problems for a functioning grid. And it takes far more resources per unit of land than do gas or nukes. I don't hate wind but I do very much disagree with forcing a market to exist by executive coercion and large subsidies. And it sticks rural dwellers with the loud, visually dominating structures that urban progressives will never see or hear.
You're ignoring a few things like externalities. Windmills and cornfields coexist rather nicely, and don't pollute ground water. No need for fracking to extract the last dregs of oil and gas. And we have things like pump storage for smoothing out power (you might want to take a look at how the NY State Power Authority has evolved over the years).
If you want serious efficiencies, the latest generation of nuclear systems leave everything else in the dust. (Personally, I want a nuclear powered car - when the chassis rusts out, bury the nuclear battery under the lawn, power the house, melt snow - but the politics will probably kill that, and then there's the disposal problem).
There is another problem with extreme scenarios. They make plausible unnecessarily costly policies which in the end means less actual reduction in CO2 emissions that more effective policies.
So what's the financial risk? We should be able to pay for a complete greening of our infrastructure, at a profit. It's a Capital Investment that should pay for itself in reduced fuel & maintenance costs, and increased property values. It's time to REINVEST in ThisOldNeighborhood.Net.
Thermodynamics first. It take more BTU to build a giant windmill, transport it to site and erect it on a huge concrete base than the BTU it produces in its lifetime.
So more fossil fuel used for windmill production than saved.
It takes more BTU to build the solar panels from silicon ore (not sand!), to transport them to site and erect them in structural arrays than the BTU they output.
So more fossil fuel used for solar panel energy produced without even mentioning that each windmill needs a gas powered generator to augment the output for times when the wind is too weak to turn the blades or is too strong to allow power to be generated.
Then there is the unreliability.
Wind stops, clouds hide the sun in daytime and there is no sun at night and neither give high baseline energy density.
All wind, solar, tidal, reverse hydroelectric industries are financially unviable and would not exist without fossil fuel wealth generated massive subsidies.
Lithium batteries. Notice how the quite small ones are bursting into flame unpredictably.
Note how there is currently a global capacity of heavy duty large batteries which will only power one medium sized US city for less than a day
Thanks for this. The public needs to understand that climate models are based on very unrealistic assumptions, and a financial conflict of interest is a key part of the reason why it persists. Bad assumptions lead to bad science.
Great post Jessica. The link you made in a prior post to the insurance industry is also a key point. By pushing the extreme scenarios, it makes it easier for insurers to justify walking away or pricing out the very customers who need the coverage the most.
"The climate change consulting business is valued at $2.2 billion, and is forecasted to reach well over $7 billion by 2033."
The Climate Change industry is very lucrative for those benefitting from it.
Further climate change is nonsense; follow the physics--listen to what William Happer has to say.
Actual science:
Without the atmosphere or even just the GHGs especially WV there are no clouds, ice, snow, oceans or 30% albedo and Earth would become much like the Moon, a barren rock ball, 400 K lit side, 100 K dark thus negating the GHE. (UCLA Diviner)
“UCAR TFK 2009 GHE energy budget” uses 63 twice, a math error, and creates an “extra” 396 out of a S-B BB calculation moving energy from cooler to warmer w/o work and violating LoT.
Kinetic heat transfer processes of contiguous atmospheric molecules render a Black Body surface and “extra” GHE energy impossible.
There is no GHE or CAGW.
Science has a documented history of being wrong and abusing those who corrected it, e.g. Anaxagoras, caloric, phlogiston, plate tectonics, luminiferous ether, antiseptic surgeries, spontaneous generation, etc.
Since both GHE & CAGW climate “science” are indefensible rubbish alarmists must resort to fear mongering lies, lawsuits, censorship and violence.
History repeats - recall
Peak Oil
Free nuclear electricity
Abundant US coal
Biodegradable plastic - see DOW
Just say No (to drugs)
WIN (whip inflation now)
Trickledown economics
Etc
Good article. Remember though, that the 'science is settled'. This means of course that new information can only be misinformation 😆
Nicely done - adding it to the course notes for my grad class
I would have four comments:
1) I am afraid the article uses for its basic assumptions outdated data. Regrettably data and analysis from 2020 and even 2022 on the physical trends and factors influencing global warming are outdated. Currently we are seeing accelerated warming, potential reevaluation of equilibrium climate sensitivity for higher values and previously underestimated impacts (termination shock) of the desulphurization of fossil fuels.
2) There is a different approach of climate scientists and actuaries to risk - and I assume you are well aware of that. Risk assessment and risk perception are also different. You might want to clearly demonstrate that in your logic and analyze - having them mixed undermines the value of the analysis.
3)You are making a demonstration on how financial interests are distorting climate change research to more dramatic direction. It is a cherry picking of facts and connections and implied collusions, while lacking to show how vigorous efforts are there to distort and relativize, questions climate science for the sake of very strong financial interests which hope to get more profit before profit becomes meaningless. It is a fight of the status quo against those realising the profoundly changed circumstances. You can assemble an similar themed article easily with the total opposite conclusion :)
4) You overvalue scenarios (which is a common problem) - they are not there to tell this or that version of the future but to help our thinking of potential futures with their logic. They are pretty much all deemed to fail, but we use them regardless to justify our actions, like sorcerers were used to justify decisions in ancient times. The closer they are to natural science the less they are subjective, but it does not mean that they have escaped from model land (see Erica Thomson).
To Jessica: -- you know what's wrong with this -- it's all based on past data ---
Think about it for a moment.
Data - from which assumptions are made -- only comes from the past, i.e., it's already taken place. And - as fast as things are getting hotter / wetter / or drier / one can make all the assumptions one wants.
But assumptions will not always correctly predict what is in store - as far as Climate Change is concerned.
So all of this hand-ringing about whether or not the "assumptions" are either too high or too low -- is just wasted time.
The fact is: there are more and more people that are being more severely effected by what is actually happening -- which makes the case -- that it is getting hotter / the hurricanes are getting stronger / the tornadoes are just as vicious - but more frequent - causing more damage and killing more people:
--- because there are more people and stuff to damage - so get over it.
Climate Change is happening -- full stop.
You recycle alarmist assertions which are demonstrably false and I recommend you post supporting authoritative data before repeating them.
I ask you - how can anything be called data that comes not from the past or the present?
Future data? Tomorrow never comes!
It is NOT getting hotter, the extreme weather events are not more frequent nor getting stronger than has been recorded in the records of the past for centuries.
The climate of the earth is changing, has been changing for millions of years, has been changed by cycles which have mostly all been identified as influences from outside the environment of planet earth and demonstrably not by the primary changes of so-called greenhouse gases which must include water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane as well a several others.
All the models have failed.
All the predictions about future change derived from the models have failed and they have failed by a greater margin each time - they are getting the answer wrong by a bigger margin.
You are correct about the deaths and disability absolute numbers, the more than eight thousand million living human souls on the planet today are living in a greater area of the planet and the spread is into inhospitable previously uninhabited territory and suffering from the climate being unsuitable for human habitation as it was from the distant past.
I can't imagine a less useful response to what was written than if Hamburglar joined the conversation to point out that nobody had any burgers to steal. Of course climate change is happening. Who in their right mind would say that it's static.
You have created a pleasant little tautology for yourself, full stop.
How the climategate sausage is made
While methodology might be open to criticism, everything we know and experience tells us that global warming is real; that the melting of critical glasiers escalates, that catastrophic storms are more frequent and more damaging each year, that more people perish from extreme heat, that dessertifiction increases; that climate-caused migrations are increasing, and that doubters are causing delays in decarbonizing our energy proceses.
"everything we know"? 1. melting of critical glasiers escalates -- yes, but not too sure about "critical" 2. that catastrophic storms are more frequent -- not really per the facts 3. more damaging each year -- not when normalized for coastal development, GDP, number of people 4. that more people perish from extreme heat -- not factual when normalized for the 8 Billion and, actually, more die from cold (and the inconvenient truth that the life span is increasing and the population is now over 8 Billion despite all of these "deaths" and a slow down in number of babies born) 5. that dessertifiction increases; -- true but the Earth is greener than any time in the last 50 years thanks to better plant growth due to CO2 6. that climate-caused migrations are increasing -- false and people still choose to live where it is warmer 7. that doubters are causing delays in decarbonizing our energy proceses -- true with the exception that LNG is responsible for our greatest CO2 reduction gains and nuclear was fought by the "greens" for 40 years.
A very slow undulating rise of overall average temperature of the surface of the earth within a ice age is documented. The latest very slow ripple stopped in 2020 and is headed down.
None of this is powered by carbon dioxide; in the 65 years of my adult university level geophysics advances in knowledge one by one the cycles have been identified and the changes are all outside the earth - sun power going up and down, planet alignment altering around the sun, the tilt of the precession of the earth rotation, the variation of the orbit of the moon and the alteration of the magnetic fields of the sun are major instances.
The geological record demonstrates that the ocean temperature rises and is followed by a rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide and the ocean level falls and is followed by the drop in the level of carbon dioxide with no exceptions.
Why do people say the same easily refutable things every time this discussion heats up. Catastrophic storms becoming more frequent? Prove it with a chart over the last 100 years. More people perish? Prove that too. But you can't because neither of those things are true and if you weren't an ideologue you would realize it. Stop using data that is intentionally incomplete to support your chosen position. You and the rest of the folks whose hair is on fire are stuck in a constant feedback loop of intentionally poor data.
Let's not be so litteral. Replacing gas and oil furnaces, with geothermal heat pumps and solar awnings, should have a positive ROI. Basic capitalism at work. Treating this stuff as a cost is as silly as trickle down economics.
Replacing existing high efficiency burners with heat pumps and solar is a good idea? Surely geothermal is fantastic, but there is no reason to replace a perfectly functioning system unless the goal is to burn more energy creating unnecessary stuff. By the way, unless government subsidizes everything (which lefties hate hate hate unless it's for their preferred stuff) the cost of geo is incredibly high. As for solar awnings, the ROI is awful without those handouts places like California give to help the upper middle class adopt bad ideas.
I'm sitting in the middle of a 50-year old condo complex. We're not talking high efficiency burners. We're talking aging gas furnaces & hot water heaters reaching end-of-life. I want neighborhood scale geothermal, not unit-by-unit electric heat pumps. And, by the way, it's our gas utility that's building the pilots. They've already got the pipes in the ground. The ROI is phenomenal. Perhaps you should learn yourself some engineering & economics - it works a lot better than political ravings.
And, by the way, there's a reason the Texas panhandle is wall-to-wall windmills, with nary an oil derrick to be seen. Again... engineering & economics.
The economics are juiced heavily in favor of wind. Subsidies flow in much greater numbers of dollars to "green" energy than they ever flowed to oil despite the protestations of greens. Wind when running efficiently is fantastic. But it is variable which immediately creates problems for a functioning grid. And it takes far more resources per unit of land than do gas or nukes. I don't hate wind but I do very much disagree with forcing a market to exist by executive coercion and large subsidies. And it sticks rural dwellers with the loud, visually dominating structures that urban progressives will never see or hear.
You're ignoring a few things like externalities. Windmills and cornfields coexist rather nicely, and don't pollute ground water. No need for fracking to extract the last dregs of oil and gas. And we have things like pump storage for smoothing out power (you might want to take a look at how the NY State Power Authority has evolved over the years).
If you want serious efficiencies, the latest generation of nuclear systems leave everything else in the dust. (Personally, I want a nuclear powered car - when the chassis rusts out, bury the nuclear battery under the lawn, power the house, melt snow - but the politics will probably kill that, and then there's the disposal problem).
Engineering and Economics trump ideology.
Why should they? Do they?
There is another problem with extreme scenarios. They make plausible unnecessarily costly policies which in the end means less actual reduction in CO2 emissions that more effective policies.
So what's the financial risk? We should be able to pay for a complete greening of our infrastructure, at a profit. It's a Capital Investment that should pay for itself in reduced fuel & maintenance costs, and increased property values. It's time to REINVEST in ThisOldNeighborhood.Net.
The risk is wasting tens of trillions of dollars over the next few decades and still having very little impact on future temperatures.
Thermodynamics first. It take more BTU to build a giant windmill, transport it to site and erect it on a huge concrete base than the BTU it produces in its lifetime.
So more fossil fuel used for windmill production than saved.
It takes more BTU to build the solar panels from silicon ore (not sand!), to transport them to site and erect them in structural arrays than the BTU they output.
So more fossil fuel used for solar panel energy produced without even mentioning that each windmill needs a gas powered generator to augment the output for times when the wind is too weak to turn the blades or is too strong to allow power to be generated.
Then there is the unreliability.
Wind stops, clouds hide the sun in daytime and there is no sun at night and neither give high baseline energy density.
All wind, solar, tidal, reverse hydroelectric industries are financially unviable and would not exist without fossil fuel wealth generated massive subsidies.
Lithium batteries. Notice how the quite small ones are bursting into flame unpredictably.
Note how there is currently a global capacity of heavy duty large batteries which will only power one medium sized US city for less than a day
This takes Green as a dichotomy. To invest more than necessary for some risks, means investing too little for others.