This is an update of articles that I have read that I want to mention but only have time to provide a brief summary. I have also included links to some other items of interest. Previous commentaries are available here.
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.
California Transition
Ron Stein describes Governor Newsom’s “obliviousness to the reality that the so-called energy transition is only an electricity transition”. California is further down the road than New York so this problem is not evident in New York yet. Stein explains:
Governor Newsom has no comprehension that wind turbines and solar panels can only generate electricity occasionally. Wind turbines and solar panels cannot make any of the more than 6,000 products now made from crude oil, or fuels for all forms of transportation. The Governor does not comprehend that wind turbines and solar panels are themselves 100% made from the products from oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil! Further, electricity CANNOT exist without crude oil as all the parts and components of every electricity generation system (coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar) are also made from the oil derivatives manufactured from oil.
He concludes that “It is appalling that wealthy California, with its ‘green mandates,’ continues to burden its residents with humongous costs to transition to just electricity and support unethical, immoral, and hypocritical actions to obtain exotic minerals and metals from poorer developing countries to achieve that electricity transition.” New York is headed down the same path.
Carbon Credit Markets
Recall that New York hopes to reach “net-zero” by 2050 and that means that carbon credits will be needed.
Carbon credits are created from projects that avoid the generation of GHG emissions or that remove GHGs from the atmosphere. These projects include “nature-based solutions,” such as reforestation and regenerative agriculture efforts, and “engineered solutions,” such as combusting methane emitted from landfills to generate electricity and direct air capture.
Many climate activists including the most vocal Climate Act proponents insist upon stringent limits on the use of these credits in New York. I believe they oppose all but the “nature-based” solutions and want stringent limits on those.
Irina Slav has a knack for making me laugh when she describes idiotic climate transition policies. In this post she describes the latest climate policy meeting (the Conference of Parties) created a global carbon market. In theory this would enable countries around the world will be able to buy and sell carbon credits.
Could they have put it in an even more needlessly complicated way? Probably, but they must have been in a hurry to make their contribution to global carbon market efforts, as in, subvert these efforts by arguing one side of the carbon trading equation is actually a trick and it should not be included in said equation until we make it a lot more complicated because it is clearly nowhere near complicated enough. We all know what sort of people like to make things complicated, don’t we? That’s right — the smart, confident erudites who work to make the world a better place for all of us with no thought of personal gain.
Many of the loudest voices in Climate Act debates are the erudites mentioned by Slav.
CO2 and Temperature
Thomas Shepstone describes an analysis by William Kininmonth, the former head of Australia’s National Climate Centre, that asks the question whether CO2 is really raising temperatures. He published the short paper raising and answering a key question: Does warm air warm the oceans or do warm oceans warm the air. Kinimonth points out that the air temperature in the tropics is regulated by the temperature of the ocean. He argues that the only physical mechanism for increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide to impact on tropical ocean temperature is through an increase in temperatures due to the greenhouse effect. He concludes that “Recent global warming has its origins in ocean warming, is natural, and has nothing to do with changing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.”
This issue is one of the reasons why I am skeptical of the claims that observed warming is caused by GHG emission. I don’t know why anyone would expect that warmer air over oceans would heat the water. Last time I boiled water I made sure the heat source was under the pan. On the other hand, changes in cloud cover and the amount of sunlight reaching the ocean sure as heck could warm the oceans. Cycles in cloud cover are not understood nor are the natural ocean cycles. Given that we do not understand natural variability claiming GHG changes are causing warming is baloney.
Weather is Not Climate
Weather is not climate – two examples. The first example of the mainstream media mistakenly claiming an extreme weather event is caused by climate change was written by Dr. Cliff Mass. He is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society and professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington. He explained that when the press has reached out to him for comments about the recent extreme weather events in the Pacific NW, he refuted their claims that bomb cyclones and atmospheric rivers have become either more frequent or more powerful. “The data just doesn’t support such claims.”
Roger Pielke, Jr. describes an instance where the Washington Post pushes the same narrative that extreme weather events are incontrovertibly exacerbated by climate change. His article includes quotes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that say there is no evidence of trends and then presents data supporting that conclusion. He also shows how the choice of data used can lead to a different answer. He notes:
The Post’s reporting reminds us that there is a lot of misinformation out there related to climate, and hurricanes in particular. With The Washington Post and an IPCC author apparently willing to misrepresent what the IPCC concluded on hurricanes in service of a political hit, it can be very difficult for curious non-experts to know what’s what.
Follow the Money
Daniel Greenfield points out that the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties 29th edition held in Baku was all about money.
In accordance with demands from Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim oil states, COP29, as the UN conference is known, didn’t actually agree to move away from oil and gas.
It did however agree to give third world countries a whole lot of money.
The Biden-Harris administration had started out by offering $200 billion to third world kleptocracies. Azerbaijan demanded $250 billion. The Saudis called for a $500 billion payout. Eventually a deal was set at $300 billion: far short of the $1.3 trillion the third worlders wanted.
He concludes that “COP29 has demonstrated that the only purpose of the UN climate conferences is wealth redistribution from the first world to the third.”
In another example, Project Veritas notes that EPA is getting money out for climate change things before the Trump Administration comes in. Key Quotes from Brent Efron, Special Advisor for Implementation, Environmental Protection Agency:
“Now it’s how to get the money out as fast as possible before they [Trump Administration] come in … it’s like we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing gold bars off the edge.”
“Over the last year we’ve given out $50 billion dollars for climate things…so to go work for one of these places would be really cool.”
“We gave them [nonprofits] the money because… it was an insurance policy against Trump winning. Because they aren’t [a government agency], they’re safer from Republicans taking the money away.”
The Physics of Net Zero
Richard Lyon describes the underlying reason why Great Britain cannot run on “renewable energy”. I think he does a good job giving examples of the concepts that he uses to make his argument that even though there is a massive quantity of wind and solar energy available it does not matter. “But while energy quantity is necessary, it’s not sufficient.” He explains that to do work we need a change in energy from one place to another. It might be the difference in gravitational energy between the top of a hill and the bottom. Or in chemical energy between a battery and a toy. He notes that the energy gradient is created by a difference in energy density and defines energy density as the amount of energy stored per unit of “stuff”. He concludes that “It’s this energy density that limits the usefulness of an energy source.” Through the use of examples he explains an important physical reality that shows that no jurisdiction can ever run on renewable energy.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 