Articles of Note

I have been so busy lately with net-zero transition implementation issues that I have not had time to put together an article about every relevant topic I have discovered.   This is a summary of articles that I think would be of interest to my readers.

I have been following the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) since it was first proposed and most of the articles described below are related to the net-zero transition.  I have devoted a lot of time to the Climate Act because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm than good. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Videos

• Good news about climate  Judith Curry explains why the climate and environment is going fine.
• More praise for Climate Change the Movie.   Fergus Kelley writes “A rare and refreshing rebuttal of that incredibly powerful climate change conspiracy.”
• Climate Discussion Nexus has a “backgrounder” video look at “how scientists use temperature proxies to estimate past climate conditions … and in some cases misuse them because they’re so sure what the evidence should say that they ignore what it does say.”
• Steve Milloy discusses the economy-killing ‘climate’ agenda with Stuart Varney on FOX Business.

Zero-Emissions Freight Sector Fantasy

Charles Rotter wrote a masterful takedown of the latest net-zero transition fantasy – the national goal of a zero-emissions freight sector. 

The Biden-Harris zero-emissions freight initiative, with its lofty ambitions and sweeping promises, is emblematic of a broader trend in contemporary environmental policymaking: prioritizing grandiose goals over grounded feasibility studies and economic realism. This plan, rather than being a practical roadmap for any type of environmental improvement, is a political statement intended to signal virtue rather than effectuate its stated goals.

In summary, this “strategy” is nothing more than a modern-day environmental quixote, tilting at windmills of pollution with a lance of impracticality and a shield of buzzwords like “environmental justice.”

The Climate Act is no different than this strategy.

Impact of NYS GHG Emissions on Global Temperature

Parker Gallant Energy Perspectives published Actual Impact of CO2 Emissions On Global Temperature that was written and researched by Pav Penna.  Penna researched the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent teport:

IPCC estimates that the impact on temperature of a trillion tonnes of atmospheric CO2 emissions is “likely in the range of 1.0 to 2.3°C” – a very broad range indeed. This is equivalent to 0.00001 to 0.000023°C per megatonne. IPCC’s “expert opinion” suggests a “best estimate” of 1.65°C per trillion tonnes of CO2.

Using that number, if New York’s 2021 GHG emissions were eliminated the impact on global temperature would be 0.00044 deg C.  A quantity that cannot be measured.

Net-Zero Transition Issues

Epic Emissions Engagement:  Irina Slav describes the inevitable collision of the Big Tech companies who are counting on carbon credits to achieve net-zero status and the staff at the Science Based Targets initiative that these companies fund.  She concludes:

It’s a catastrophe unfolding in slow motion and it was unavoidable. Call it a case of Frankenstein’s monster and while the monster of climate activism cannot run away from its corporate creators and wreak havoc on the global village, taming it has become increasingly hard. The monster has developed an overwhelming sense of mission that has trumped any and all other considerations, including survival. The fight between green money and green muscle may end up being the show of the decade.

Mark P. Mills – When Politics and Physics Collide.  The belief that mandates and massive subsidies can summon a world without fossil fuels is magical thinking. 

While policies can favor one class of technology over another, neither political rhetoric nor financial largesse can make the impossible possible. Start with some basics. It’s not just that currently over 80 percent of our energy needs are met directly by burning oil, natural gas, and coal—a share that has declined by only a few percentage points over the past several decades; the key fact is that 100 percent of everything in civilized society, including the favored “green energy” machines themselves, depends on using hydrocarbons somewhere in the supply chains and systems. The scale of today’s green policy interventions is unprecedented, targeting the fuels that anchor the affordability and availability of everything.

Bjorn Lomborg explains that Trillions in taxpayer subsidies haven’t made wind and solar power cheaper or better for Americans:

A new study looking at the United States shows that to achieve 100% solar or wind electricity with sufficient backup, the US would need to be able to store almost three months’ worth of annual electricity. It currently has seven minutes of battery storage.  Just to pay for the batteries would cost the US five times its current GDP. And it would have to repurchase the batteries when they expire after just 15 years.

Francis Menton describes a report by Thomas Pyle of the Institute for Energy Research put out a list of “200 Ways the Biden Administration and Democrats Have Made it Harder to Produce Oil & Gas.”  He goes on to show there is not much to show for all those efforts.  He concludes: “Our current rulers think that they have infinite ability to tell the people how to live, and infinite money to force the people to change their ways. They are wrong, and reality will catch up to them, if only gradually.”

Electric Vehicles

Robert Bryce has been skeptic about electric vehicles for 14 years and prepared ten charts that explain the current situation.  Also of note is that electric car demand plunges across Europe.

Natural Climate Change

One of the main points in Climate the Movie is that clouds are a major driver of climate change.  This article describes a theory that explains long-term solar variation and its effects on clouds. Javier Vinós concludes that there are two pieces of good news.

The first is that solar activity cannot rise above the 20th century maximum. It is not like CO₂, which can keep going up. The Sun’s activity can stay high or go down, but it cannot go up, so the warming should not accelerate and should not be dangerous.  The second piece of good news is that if much of the 20th century warming is due to the Sun, then there is no climate emergency.