Spot the Vested Interest: The $1.5 Trillion Climate Change Industry

Climate Change Business Journal estimates the Climate Change Industry is a $1.5 Trillion dollar escapade, which means four billion dollars a day is spent on our quest to change the climate. That includes everything from carbon markets to carbon consulting, carbon sequestration, renewables, biofuels, green buildings and insipid cars. For comparison global retail sales online are worth around $1.5 trillion. So all the money wasted on the climate is equivalent to all the goods bought online.

The special thing about this industry is that it wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for an assumption about relative humidity that is probably wrong. As such, it’s the only major industry in the world dependent on consumer and voter ignorance. This is not just another vested interest in a political debate; it’s vested-on-steroids, a mere opinion poll away from extinction. You can almost hear the captains of climate industry bellowing: “Keep ’em ignorant and believing, or the money goes away!”.

To state the obvious:

Policy, or the anticipation of new policy, has been one of the biggest drivers of the industry, the report shows.

Most industries this size exist because they produce something the market wants. They worry that competitors might […]

What consensus? Less than half of climate scientists agree with the IPCC “95%” certainty

I used to think there was a consensus among government-funded certified climate scientists, but a better study by Verheggen Strengers, Verheegen, and Vringer shows even that is not true.[1] The “97% consensus” is now 43%.

Finally there is a decent survey on the topic, and it shows that less than half of what we would call “climate scientists” who research the topic and for the most part, publish in the peer reviewed literature, would agree with the IPCC’s main conclusions. Only 43% of climate scientists agree with the IPCC “95%” certainty.

More than 1800 international scientists studying various aspects of climate change (including climate physics, climate impacts, and mitigation) responded to the questionnaire. Some 6550 people were invited to participate in this survey, which took place in March and April 2012. Respondents were picked because they had authored articles with the key words ‘global warming’ and/or ‘global climate change’, covering the 1991–2011 period, via the Web of Science, or were included the climate scientist database assembled by Jim Prall, or just by a survey of peer reviewed climate science articles. Prall’s database includes some 200 names that have criticized mainstream science and about half had only published in […]

SA Government won’t allow any non-leftist research — attacks Lomborg Centre

How easily it could collapse. What more proof do we need that the climate-crisis facade is maintained by hiding the counter arguments. Evidently the worst possible thing is for the public to be exposed to little pieces of paper with a message that runs against the creed.

The South Australian (SA) government is very very afraid, issuing statements yesterday, designed to intimidate Flinders University into rejecting the Lomborg Consensus Centre. They know that they can’t defend their “wind power” and “climate” policies, and the public will be up in arms when they realize how much money has been burned. (In 2012 Hamish Cumming estimated South Australian windfarms have saved 4% of their rated capacity in fossil fuels at a cost of $1,484 per ton.)

But it’s not about the environment or the economy, it’s about prestige, popularity and status.

If the SA government fails to stop the Lomborg Centre at Flinders University, they know they will be called nasty names by their peers. They admit as much in their bizarre statements, which effectively use political pressure against a university to keep it free of “political pressure”, and admits researchers can be bought to support an agenda. Flinders Uni will look […]

The Emissions Trading Scheme monster idea is back – but the conversation is booby-trapped with fake words

It’s a tax that’s “not a tax” and a “free market” that isn’t free.

Joy. An emission trading scheme (ETS) is on the agenda again in Australia. Here’s why the first priority is to clean up a crooked conversation. If we can just talk straight, the stupid will sort itself out.

The national debate is a straight faced parody — it could be a script from “Yes Minister”, except no one would believe it. Bill Shorten argues that the Labor Party can control the world’s weather with something that exactly fits the definition of a tax, yet he calls it a “free market” because apparently he has no idea what a free market really is. (What union rep would?) It’s like our opposition leader is a wannabe entrepreneur building a Kmart that controls the clouds. Look out Batman, Billman is coming. When is a forced market a free market? When you want to be PM.

The vandals are at the gates of both English and economics, and we can’t even have a straight conversation. The Labor Party is in flat out denial of dictionary definitions — is that because they can’t read dictionaries, or because they don’t want an honest […]

Wait ’til you see these numbers on Carbon Capture and Storage

Did you know CCS (carbon capture and storage) requires an industrial plant almost as large as the coal fired power station it is supposed to clean up? Or that it uses fully 40% of the energy of the entire output of the same station? It turns out to be such an onerous, costly pursuit it could only have been dreamed up by an enemy of coal.

The central problem is that under conditions we humans like to be in, the CO2 molecule emphatically wants to be a huge voluminous gas. To make it more compact and storable back in the small hole it came from, we either have to change it chemically, or forcibly stuff it in under some combination of extreme pressure or extreme cold. And there aren’t many cold sealed rock vaults in Earth’s thin crust, which rests on a 1000 degree C ball of magma. Any form of chemical, temperature or pressure change uses monster amounts of energy, and there is just no getting around it without fiddling with laws of chemistry. The whole idea of CCS is so insanely unfeasible that in order to stuff a beneficial fertilizer underground it […]

Shortens “aspirational” world 2030

There is only one good reason to buy The Age: cartoonist John Spooner

For foreign readers, there are two big headlines in Australia this week that Spooner is teasing us with.

One is about Shorten’s fantasy that Australia can go 50% renewable by 2030. This is an “aspirational ambition”, which, according to opposition leader Shorten, doesn’t need any kind of feasibility or budgeting before being announced as a policy. He plans to wave his magic wand and make aspirations happen, regardless of stuff like “money”, “Watts” and thousands of dead bats.

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Climate Death Squads funded by Big Oil strike people with lightning! How’s that for an ideated conspiracy?

Big Oil knows no bounds. Not only can it derail governments, and thwart the UN, World Bank, and IMF but now it may be sending out climate death squads to assassinate Arctic Ice Experts. These expert hit squads apparently push people down stairs, run them off the road, and strike them down with lightning. Lightning! (That is one mother of aTesla Coil.) James Bond could learn something. Q, where are you?

Prof Wadhams at Cambridge has been the go-to man for Arctic scare stories across the UK (h/t Delingpole). In 2012, Wadhams predicted Arctic Sea Ice was set to collapse in just four years. Last year, after years of a relentlessly surviving Arctic, even some alarmists threw Wadham under the bus, (so to speak) as being too “extremist”. But now he’s topped that.

You see, in January 2013 there were four leading Arctic experts in the UK, now there is one, and he is very very worried.

No, seriously, you can’t make this up. Let’s try to imagine how much more profitable Big Oil would be if every single Arctic climate expert in the World was dead. (Count the zeros…)

The utter futility of it all escapes Wadhams. After a […]

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Flinders Uni in panic, “repulsed” by hint of semi-skeptic, Bjorn Lomborg

What’s scarier than an Endless Global Drought? The fear that the public might… hear from a skeptic. Skeptical arguments are so dangerous that even the whiff of one will kill a $4million dollar project stone dead at conception. Be Gone Freak! Guess who has no answer to the questions skeptics ask? How they do advertise the dire state of their intellectual ammo? You might think I’m exaggerating. Bjorn Lomborg believes the IPCC science 100%, and uses the “denier” term to distance himself from the scientific skeptics. It’s like cloaking himself in garlic, except it doesn’t work — true believers still hate him and seek to shut him down. Lomborg wants to stop fossil fuel subsidies, the arch-enemy in the believers world, and that’s not enough. Furthermore he wasn’t going to work at the Australian Consensus Centre and it wasn’t going to discuss the climate, but two steps of purification is not enough. Lomborg commits the unforgivable sin of wanting to spend enviro-gravy in ways that actually help the poor and protect the environment. He wants measurements and accountability. And that makes him “repulsive” — just ask the students of Flinders University. The modern University needs no logical reason, […]

Pope’s popularity fall 17% — preaching the climate change religion not so popular?

Pope Francis put out his pro-climate encyclical eight weeks ago, getting mass media attention, but the latest Gallop poll shows the people were not so enthused:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Pope Francis’ favorability rating in the U.S. has returned to where it was when he was elected pope. It is now at 59%, down from 76% in early 2014. The pontiff’s rating is similar to the 58% he received from Americans in April 2013, soon after he was elected pope.

Is this about “climate change” — the encyclical has 245 paragraphs, 16 mentions of “climate”, 7 mentions of “carbon”, and more than 100 mentions of the “environment”. Moreso it reported around the globe as a “coup” on the climate issue by groups who normally think the Pope is wrong, silly and anachronistic. Furthermore, the biggest change has come among Catholics, Protestants, and especially conservatives. But he’s less popular among liberals too.

The drop in the pope’s favorable rating is driven by a decline among Catholics and political conservatives, two groups that have been ardent supporters of the modern papacy. Seventy-one percent of Catholics say they have a favorable image of Francis, down from 89% last year.

Labor wants to waste $100b to make Australian energy 50% renewable, more expensive, by 2030

The Coalition in Australia must be thrilled that Bill Shorten wants to make the next election about “climate change”. What a gift from Labor.

Just before the last election Labor had a plan to spend $60,000 dollars per person to try to change the weather by 2050. Labor lost nearly a quarter of their seats. Bill Shorten’s new election vision is to repeat the same mistakes. Like the G7 leaders, he wants symbolic and unachievable promises — only, unlike them, he’s making pie-in-the-sky, uncosted plans for 2030, not 2100. Five of the seven G7 nations are increasing their coal use. Get with the game Bill, other countries are winding schemes back and putting off the promises til long after most people alive today will be gone.

Shorten is pushing a dead dog. The sweet end of the wind and solar power deals have already been done and the numbers get uglier from here. As more and more of the grid is taken over by a massive erratic and unreliable supply, the marginal returns shrink, prices go up. The carbon “savings” falls. Full baseload back up must be maintained regardless, whirring away inefficiently on standby. The Labor Party are making […]

UK youth unconvinced about climate change — peak believers 30-50 years old

I’ve discussed the big ComRes/ITV survey before, which showed that 62% of UK citizens are skeptics and are not convinced that humans are changing the weather. This is the same interesting survey which also showed that the highest proportion of skeptics were in the educated upper middle class, and the lowest was in the unskilled workers and pensioners. I didn’t explain then that this survey also split the groups according to age. So here (finally) are those graphs. Fittingly the young are undecided and the wise are more skeptical. But surprisingly there is a peak believer age, and that’s around 35 – 44. Either this generation has been assailed with more propaganda than any other, or something else is going on.

Is this the beginnings of the youthful revolution? Only 20% 34% of 18 – 24 year olds would be called believers?

They quizzed 2047 people from across the UK early last year and I’ve graphed the results according to age, and the “peak believer” band is clearly visible. In all three questions I colored believers red, and skeptics blue. The undecided are grey.

People generally switch from the “don’t know” category when they are young into the skeptic camp […]

Solar activity was really at exceptional lows during the cold Maunder Minimum

Fig 3 (Part VI only) Sunspot drawing of by G.D. Cassini in 1671 (Oldenburg, 1671c).

What is surprising is just how much data we have on the Sun from 400 years ago.

For some aspects of solar activity we barely have a half a solar cycle. For example, on solar spectral changes: UV and Infrared light swing up and down through the solar cycle, but we only got a good grip on these important changes in the last ten years with the SORCE mission.

But on other aspects of solar activity there is much more long term data than I expected: 400 years ago quite a few people were carefully recording detailed drawings of sun spots (like Cassini in 1671, right). Others were reporting aurorae — up to 150 a year in parish records, newspaper reports, and scientific observations, which tells us something about the strength of the solar wind. There were also observations of the solar corona during eclipses at the time, which suggest the sun was less active as well.

Lately some (Zolotova et al) have said solar activity was not low during the cold Maunder Minimum period from 1645 – 1715. Usoskin and others have responded […]

Humans live from -50C to +40C, but two more degrees will kill us. Panic now.

Humans can adapt to live in locations where the monthly average is over 40°C, and as low as -50°C. That’s a 90°C range. The world has warmed by 0.9°C in 100 years (or less, depending on adjustments). This warming was so dangerous that global population only expanded from 1.7 to 7 billion.

Now, if the IPCC are right, we might heat up by another half a degree by 2100 — shifting those extremes from -49°C up to 41°C.

Prof. Andy Pitman, one of Australia’s leading climate scientists, responds to this risk with all the usual careful analysis we’ve come to expect from mainstream climate experts. Here’s another “children won’t know what snow is” type of Global Panic quote:

“I expect by 2050 … people just don’t go outside,”

— Professor Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at UNSW.

So that’s the end of golf, surfing, and picnics then. Somewhat confusingly, he also said (in the same interview) that we won’t necessarily notice that extra warmth: “… because humans acclimatise to heat quite quickly”. This is what 95% certainty looks like in 2015, ladies and gentlemen — abject panic and […]

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Who will be the next IPCC chairman?

The last time an IPCC chair position was up for grabs was in 2001, when things were not so politicized and aggressive, and there was not so much money and power on the table. Lobbying for this role is running hot and Tony Thomas compares the five men who are standing for this role. The position will be decided by October 8, and the new chairman will presumably be influential, or at least very visible, in Paris at the UNFCCC in early December. In the elections, there is one vote per country, so it is not so much about scientific credibility (and never was, think of Pachauri) but more about the powerful voting blocks that may form with small developing nations. Given that the new chairman will be in the media frequently and soon, this post is about being prepared. No matter who wins, I think the IPCC is unsaveable and needs to be shut down or deprived of funding as soon as possible. — Jo

Guest Post by Tony Thomas

Five candidates have put up their hand to become chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from October 8.

They are Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (Belgium), Hoesung […]

Lost knowledge — 10th Century cure for MRSA “Superbug”

by Jo Nova

If the “leech” doctors circa 1000AD were able to treat superbugs that modern doctors struggle with, I wonder what other knowledge has come and gone and had to be rediscovered?

How many lives have been lost because information was not there when they needed it?

Image: © The British Library Board (Royal 12 D xvii)

Judith Curry posted a link this week to a story about a medieval recipe for an “eyesalve” that rather surprised researchers when it worked against the ghastly MRSA superbug, which is resistant to almost all modern antibiotics.

The book is one of the earliest known medical texts, called Bald’s Leechbook. The recipe called for garlic, onion, wine, and bile from a cow. It was very specific — the mix had to be brewed in brass and then left for nine days. The researchers at the University of Nottingham followed it closely, then it was tested in the lab. Will it work on people, and what are the side-effects?

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The UK National Trust wants to stop floods with leeks and lightbulbs

Tony Thomas visited the UK and found old fading National Trust signs using scary photos of flood damage and warning people to “eat local” and change their light globes to stop more floods. He followed that thought to a 2005 web plea from the National Trust, to find them claiming floods are accelerating but using 20 year old photos to scare people with.

Years from now people will study climate propaganda and marvel at how stupid it was. — Jo

Guest Post by Tony Thomas

My wife Marg and I, two Antipodean yokels, wound up at the National Trust’s Bodiam Castle in Kent last month, awed at its 650-year history. After all, our colony’s iconic historical moment was in 1854, when someone broke a hotel lamp in Ballarat, Victoria and precipitated a scuffle between goldminers and police. The ringleader, instead of being quartered like Mel Gibson — sorry, William Wallace — acquired a seat in Parliament next year and eventually died in bed. That’s all you need to know about Australian history, unless you’re into sheep.

Marg and I had lunch and wandered out the back of the Bodiam cafe towards the Rother River. “Hey, come […]

Why are Wind Farms called “Farms”? It’s not like anything grows there.

Wind Farm, Wind Park, Wind Sheep, Wind Cows, & Wind-Flowers?

This week’s note on mangling English: Since when was an industrial plant a farm? Electricity does not grow, breathe, or look cute in photos. There is nothing biological to sell.

Some will say the term “farm” has broader definitions now. I say we might as well call a coal-fired-plant a “coal farm”, or Fukishima a “nuclear-farm” (that had a “farming accident”)?

The word “farm” has been stolen for its good PR value. Let’s take it back.

Industrial wind turbines are a massive subsidy swamp that produces almost nothing that can’t be provided in cheaper and more efficient ways elsewhere.

Can someone let Wikipedia know that Industrial Wind Turbines are not “Wind Parks” either?

 

 

Photo: “Windpark-Wind-Farm” by Philip May – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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Which country has the most skeptics? Australia tops name-calling, limited, biased, ambiguous survey!

Graham Readfearn, at Ecowatch, thought the USA would top the list. He was wrong:

Published in the journal Global Environmental Change, the study found that 17 percent of Australians were “climate skeptics.”

Norwegians come in second at 15 percent, followed by New Zealanders at 13 percent and then Americans at 12 percent. The UK tied for fifth with Sweden and Finland, where 10 percent of people were skeptics. The lowest ranked country for climate skepticism was Spain, where only two percent of people were classified as climate skeptics.

The real number of skeptics is much higher. A better, more accurate survey in Australia showed that about 53% of the Australian population are skeptical; I note they stopped that annual survey after getting these clear results.

This survey of surveys were more ambiguous than usual — “rising temperatures” from any cause is now man-made. The surveyors merely asked if you thought “rising temperatures” (magnitude unspecified) were “dangerous” , and so you know what to say, they added “for the environment”. All spin and attitude, otherwise meaningless. This is all so horribly confounded:

While the survey did not directly ask people if they accepted the science […]