“The atmospheric heat transport on Earth from the Equator to the poles is largely carried out by the mid-latitude storms. However, there is no satisfactory theory to describe this fundamental feature of the Earth’s climate.” Leon Barry, George C. Craig & John Thuburn (2002)
3.1 Introduction
Nearly all the energy that powers the climate system and life on Earth comes from the sun. Incoming solar radiation is estimated at 173,000 TW. By contrast geothermal heat flow from radiogenic decay and primordial heat is estimated at 47 TW, human production of heat at 18 TW, and tidal energy from the Moon and the Sun at 4 TW. Other sources of energy, like solar wind, solar particles, stellar light, moonlight, interplanetary dust, meteorites, or cosmic rays, are negligible. Solar irradiance, thus, constitutes over 99.9 % of the energy input to the climate system.
Update: You may be able to watch the debate on Youtube around August 24th, the link that worked for a short time has been taken down.
The debate I announced here between Steve Koonin and Andy Dessler took place Monday August 15th, it was very educational and illuminating. I will try and write more about it in a few days.
In short Andy Dessler said that economic models suggest that climate change is a negative for human civilization and not positive at all. But he avoided putting any numbers to this assertion.
Dessler believes that wind and solar produce electricity cheaper than fossil fuels, and that they can provide most of our power. Koonin counters that the only reason wind and solar are cheaper is that the cost of fossil fuel backup and the required changes to the U.S. grid are not included in the solar and wind costs. Koonin shows an estimate of $2.4 trillion to upgrade our electric grid to work with mostly wind and solar.
Koonin stated that the costs of climate change are minimal, and in 100 years will not be noticeable because the world economy will grow so much in that time. Climate change, even in the worse scenarios, only reduces growth very slightly, by 4% or less, and everyone will still be better off. He notes that in the past global warming and climate change have benefited mankind since people are much better off today and much more resilient to climate change than 100 years ago. He also points out that the poor of today should not be made to suffer because the elites (that is the U.S. and the western world) believe, without evidence and only based on models, that fossil fuels are polluting. He adds that solar and wind are not pollution free.
Koonin quotes U.S. economist Anthony Downes, who once said:
“The elite’s environmental deterioration is often the common man’s improved standard of living.”
From “Up and down with ecology- the ‘issue attention cycle,'” by Anthony Downs (link)
Obviously Koonin won, the swing was 25% in his favor. Let us hope that these results are not changed online like they were in the last big climate change debate.
“The complicated pattern of sun-weather relationships undoubtedly needs much further clarification, but progress in this field will be hindered if the view prevails that such relationships should not be taken seriously simply because the mechanisms involved in explaining them are not yet identified.”
Joe W. King (1975)
2.1 Introduction
As shown in Part I of this series, the early 1980s saw a reversal in the consensus about an important sun-weather effect and studying the topic was discouraged. The adversarial academic environment resulted in very few scientists dedicating their research efforts to this subject. Despite the difficulties, important advances have been made regarding the sun-climate effect. Lack of interest and disregard for a competing climate change mechanism hypothesis by mainstream climatologists has resulted in these advances being ignored. They remain under-cited and unknown to most supporters and skeptics of the CO2 hypothesis. More importantly, they are not discussed in most climate papers, they are simply ignored.
“Probably no subfield of meteorology has had as much effort devoted to it as the effects of solar variability on weather and climate. And none has had as little to show for the research labor.” Helmut E. Landsberg (1982)
1.1 Introduction
The sun has been correctly identified as the source of climate since the dawn of human intelligence, and consequently the sun was worshipped in many ancient cultures. Large sunspots are visible with the naked eye when the sun is low on the horizon and partially obscured by dust or smoke. Several myths and iconography suggest sunspots were known to ancient cultures from America, Africa, and Asia, however, the first written mention of a sunspot comes from Theophrastus’ De Signis Tespestatum c. 325 BC. This first written record of solar variability was already linked to a climatic effect, since Theophrastus mentions it is related to rainfall. Theophrastus is considered the father of botany and was a student of Aristotle. He succeeded Aristotle as the head of the Lyceum when Aristotle, teacher of Alexander the Great, had to flee Athens due to anti-Macedonian sentiment. Theophrastus’ mention in passing of sunspots must have referred to common knowledge from the past, since he lived during the Greek grand solar minimum of 390–310 BC (Usoskin 2017) and it is very unlikely that anybody at that time could have seen a sunspot with their naked eyes. Most naked-eye sunspot observations known to us come from China, where records have been found starting from 165 BC. The oldest known drawing of actual sunspots is from the Chronicon ex chronicis by John of Worcester, dated in the manuscript to December 1128, during the Medieval grand maximum in solar activity.
I was annoyed at the news media arguments about whether we are in a recession. The news media are supposed to explain things, not confuse everyone with silly quotes from competing “experts.” Every freaking thing these days is political, but as someone who makes his living by investing, I need to know if we are in a recession. The news media (even the WSJ) are useless these days, that meant figuring it out. Usually, a recession doesn’t matter to me, I’d just ride it out, but with inflation nearly 10% per year, recessions matter.
Andrew Dessler and Steven Koonin will debate the resolution “Climate science compels us to make large and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.” Dessler will take the affirmative, and Koonin will take the negative. Dessler is a Professor of Atmospheric Science at Texas A&M University and Koonin is a Professor of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU, his background is in theoretical physics.
They had separate back-to-back long-form interviews with Joe Rogan this past winter, Koonin’s interview is here, and Dessler’s is here. Koonin’s best-selling book, Unsettled, was the focus of both interviews. Koonin’s book emphasizes that the ideas that humans are causing climate change and climate change is dangerous are not “settled” facts and may very well be incorrect. Dessler did not dispute the facts and analysis presented in Koonin’s book but thought that Koonin did not tell the whole story about human-caused climate change. This debate will allow them to discuss their differences on climate change, it should be very interesting.
The debate will convene at The Sheen Center, 18 Bleecker Street in Lower Manhattan, at 6:30 pm East Coast time on Monday, August 15, 2022. Tickets are available to attend in person or to participate in the live stream. A recording of the event will also be available about a week after the debate. I will be watching the debate on the live stream ($7.43 with tax); I hope all of you do as well.
There will be the traditional pre- and post-debate polls of the in-person audience views on the debate resolution, it isn’t clear if the on-line audience will be polled before and after. I’ll let you know when I find out. You might recall that in the last major climate change debate in 2007, at IQ2US, the website was tampered with and changed to report the wrong results, see here for the details. I notice that sometime in the past few months, the IQ2US results for the 2007 debate have been removed entirely, even the false results are gone.
The GWPF has just released a new report, written by John Constable describing the economic impact of their green policies, and it isn’t pretty. Some highlights:
EU electricity prices to households are 80% above the rest of the G20, and EU industrial prices are 30% above the G20, natural gas prices to households are double the G20.
The high prices are likely responsible for a reduction in electricity consumption. This is not good since the quality of life is closely correlated to energy consumption. Energy consumption is also the main determinant of health and environmental quality.
Carbon dioxide abatement costs are many times higher than even the high-end estimates of the social cost of carbon, suggesting that the economic harm of the EU’s carbon mitigation policies is higher than the possible (or projected, if you prefer) cost of global warming.
Employment in European wind and solar industries has fallen since 2008, subsidies failed to add jobs in Europe, as the equipment is now purchased from China. The only area of renewable job growth is in biofuels, basically cutting down trees and making ethanol from food. Biofuels are also responsible for a lot of Europe’s toxic air pollution.
Message to governments: Don’t kill human creativity with political stupidity
By Franco Battaglia and Guus Berkhout
This is from an interview of Professor Guus Berkhout by Professor Franco Battaglia, published July 20, 2022 in La Verità, a daily newspaper in Italy. Berkhout is a retired professor of geophysics from the Technical University of Delft and a co-founder of CLINTEL. Battaglia is a professor of chemistry at Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia.
Q: Can you tell me something about CLINTEL?
A: Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL) is an independent foundation active in the field of climate change and energy transition. CLINTEL was initiated by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout with the objective to make the many critical climate organizations around the world combine forces and work closely together against one-sided information and false conclusions promoted in the news media. CLINTEL was founded by Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok (author of the book The State of the Climate) in March 2019.
For decades We have been told that we must not let global warming exceed two degrees Celsius above the “pre-industrial” global average temperature. Recently the IPCC lowered this limit to 1.5°C. In the latest IPCC report, called AR6, pre-industrial is defined as before 1750, but they use global temperatures from 1850-1900 as representative of the period because global average surface temperatures are not available for 1750.[1] The U.S., Europe, and much of Asia were industrialized by 1900, so their numbers are clearly not representative of the period of interest, unless temperatures remained constant from 1750 to 1900, which is unlikely.
Why the focus on 2°? In a 2014 comment in Nature, David Victor and Charles Kennel tell us that there is little scientific basis for the 2°C figure, but it was a simple focal point and it “sounded bold and perhaps feasible.” (Victor & Kennel, 2014). Then they admit the goal is “effectively unachievable.”
What is the “pre-industrial?” Did it have an ideal climate that we wish to return to? The year 1750 was in the coldest and most miserable part of the Little Ice Age (LIA). The LIA was the coldest period in the Holocene Epoch, or since the last glacial period ended about 12,000 years ago, at least in much of the Northern Hemisphere.
The Netherlands has become a prosperous country by excelling in many sectors. That excellence was based on a well-educated population. Think of the professionals in our public transport, who are widely praised for their punctuality and comfort. I also mention the engineers in our energy sector who provided affordable, reliable, and clean energy 24/7. And especially our agricultural sector, which is seen worldwide as a textbook example of how to farm intensively in an increasingly sustainable way. I could go on and on. The Netherlands was a country to be proud of. How could it go so wrong in such a short time?
