Climate change and other predictions of Imminent Doom

[Typhoon]

On heatwaves.

Dr Judith Curry | Heatwaves and hot air

[Typhoon]

"Models only say what they're told to say"

https://wmbriggs.com/public/Briggs.Mode ... dToSay.pdf

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

"Models only say what they're told to say"

https://wmbriggs.com/public/Briggs.Mode ... dToSay.pdf

Really?...... how about off the catwalk?....'>......

[Simple Minded]

"Models only say what they're told to say"

https://wmbriggs.com/public/Briggs.Mode ... dToSay.pdf

Really?...... how about off the catwalk?....'>......

Sounds like there is money to be made by sending the professional sports players to modeling school....... could save the NFL & NBA billions....

[Typhoon]

"Models only say what they're told to say"

https://wmbriggs.com/public/Briggs.Mode ... dToSay.pdf

Really?...... how about off the catwalk?....'>......

If only . . .

[Typhoon]

Science | U.N. climate panel confronts implausibly hot forecasts of future warming

Model algorithms are only as good as their, in this case a massive number of, underlying assumptions and approximations are accurate.

A textbook example of GIGO [Garbage In, Garbage Out].

[Typhoon]

FT | ‘Greenflation’ threatens to derail climate change action

[paywalled]

Fossil fuels will be needed in the green transition but vital supplies are being squeezed

Ruchir Sharma| August 2 2021

The writer, Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s chief global strategist, is author of ‘The Ten Rules of Successful Nations’

The world faces a growing paradox in the campaign to contain climate change. The harder it pushes the transition to a greener economy, the more expensive the campaign becomes, and the less likely it is to achieve the aim of limiting the worst effects of global warming.

New government-directed spending is driving up demand for materials needed to build a cleaner economy. At the same time, tightening regulation is limiting supply by discouraging investment in mines, smelters, or any source that belches carbon. The unintended result is “greenflation”: rising prices for metals and minerals such as copper, aluminium and lithium that are essential to solar and wind power, electric cars and other renewable technologies.

In the past, the transition to a new energy source provided a big boost to the old one. The advent of steam power inspired the makers of sailing ships to innovate more in 50 years than they had in the previous 300. Electricity had a similar impact on gas lighting. Now, building green economies will consume more oil in the transition period, but producers are not responding the same way because political and regulatory resistance has darkened the future of fossil fuels.

Even as oil prices rise, investment by the big hydrocarbon companies and countries continues to fall. Instead, oil powers are reinventing themselves as clean energy powers. One broker recently wrote that of his firm’s 400 institutional clients, only one was still willing to invest in oil and gas. Even in shale oil, a corner of the market dominated by private players, rising prices are triggering an unusually weak increase in supply.

Two of the most important metals for green electrification are copper and aluminium. But investment in these metals has also been depressed by environmental, social and governance issues. The world needs more copper to stop global warming, but environmentalists recently helped block a new Alaska mine over rival concerns: the impact on local communities and salmon.

ESG used to be a luxury of rich nations. No longer. These pressures are restraining supplies even from Latin America, once the wild west of global mining. Almost 40 per cent of copper supply comes from Chile and Peru, and in both countries mining projects that used to take five years can now take 10 or more. One big copper project in Peru, scheduled to open in 2011, remains unfinished owing to resistance from the local community. This year alone, Chile has adopted two sweeping environmental rules and is considering a new royalty that could make some of its biggest mines unprofitable.

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China’s role as a big commodity supplier has also been turned on its head. A decade ago, the country was still overproducing raw materials such as iron ore and steel and dumping the excess in foreign markets. Now, Beijing has cut production as part of its campaign to reach carbon neutrality. Nearly 60 per cent of aluminium comes from China, which recently capped new smelting because of its fat carbon footprint.

This certainly looked like the green thing to do. Aluminium is one of the dirtiest metals to produce. Yet it is also one of the metals most vital to solar and other green energy projects, and it is set to face a particularly sharp increase in demand in coming decades, according to the World Bank.

In the 2000s, analysts were bullish on commodity prices, owing to demand from China. Now, if they are bullish it is because of increasing demand from green projects. The green economy is the new China.

Renewable technologies require more wiring than the fossil fuel variety. Solar or wind power plants use up to six times more copper than conventional power generation. Over the past 18 months, as governments announced new green spending plans and pledges, analysts steadily increased their estimates for growth in demand for copper. Green regulation is thus spurring demand as it tightens supply, fuelling greenflation. Since the low point early last year, the price of copper is up more than 100 per cent, while aluminium is up 75 per cent. Unusually, their upward climb has barely weakened with recent signs of waning momentum in global growth.

Solving this conundrum — how to supply enough dirty old material to build a new green economy — will require balance. Blocking new mines and oil rigs will not always be the environmentally and socially responsible move. Governments, and greens in particular, need to recognise that trying to shut down the old economy too fast threatens to push the price of building a cleaner one out of reach.

[Doc]

r5t1wcoy8lM

[Typhoon]

Well, the IPCC has released yet another climate report.

The mainstream media are hyperventilating about "imminent doom" unless "we" "act now".

A reminder

229961379_383581196460223_3168091408613588135_n.jpg (174.37 KiB) Viewed 13624 times

The report studiously ignores the acknowledged reality that the climate models run too hot.

CMIP6-vs-CMIP5-vs-HadCRUT4-1979-Apr2020.jpg (141.52 KiB) Viewed 13624 times

The most recent versions, CMIP6, being more not even wrong.

I've now lost count of how many imminent doomsdays that I've not only survived, but thrived, despite credentialed expert predictions.

The abject reality is that the track record of secular experts in predicting the future, notably an apocalyptic one, is no better than that of religious fundamentalists predicting the date of the end time.

For the detail curious and/or masochistic

Climate Etc. | IPCC AR6 WG1 discussion thread

[noddy]

the difference this time is we are starting down the barrell of millions upon millions of irrelevant, angry humans who no longer believe the world is going to keep on getting better, and they have a chance of a better lifestyle.

this is what kept the boomers trucking all that time, the optimism for a brighter future with year upon year of lifestyle improvement to maintain the faith.

anyone born today is going to watch all that fade away, so we need a narrative to make it sound good.

thusly, you arent losing living standard, you are saving the world!

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

I'll entertain that there is the war dimension to it too.

Some things make a lot of sense if one takes seriously the post-WWII wargaming that the next really big war was to be fought with weather machines & biological weapons and that everyone needed to develop in that area, pronto.

It's not a secret that the Soviets wanted to melt the artic, which included such plans as damning the pacific.

I'll say it's a bit conspirazoid but it is really out of the bounds to suggest: the Soviets go from openly talking about it to funding a scientific consensus around global cooling and the Americans fund a bunch of environmental protection paramilitary groups which take off in popularity out of nowhere.

Then almost concurrently with the fall of the Soviets, suddenly the Americans have their own scientific consensus. It's not that the globe is cooling, it's too darn hot and we should pay to freeze everything into the way things work now.

============

Can't find it now, but I once came across a map of crop yield on a hotter planet. It asserted that a hotter planet would lead to a decline in yield for the US, Mexico, Australia, India...and Africa would be in big trouble.

I don't need to list who would benefit, but there is a lot of self-interest all around.

[Typhoon]

the difference this time is we are starting down the barrell of millions upon millions of irrelevant, angry humans who no longer believe the world is going to keep on getting better, and they have a chance of a better lifestyle.

this is what kept the boomers trucking all that time, the optimism for a brighter future with year upon year of lifestyle improvement to maintain the faith.

anyone born today is going to watch all that fade away, so we need a narrative to make it sound good.

thusly, you arent losing living standard, you are saving the world!

A non G7 nation might say 'What to you mean "We", Kemosabe'.

Which is why PR China, India, various SE Asian nations, and perhaps African nations want nothing to do with this Western self-flagellation.

[noddy]

Right, but you can see the obvious attraction for politicians and "thought leaders"

its the first time in history that promsing people they will pay more for less and live worse, is a viable platform.

[Doc]

Right, but you can see the obvious attraction for politicians and "thought leaders"

its the first time in history that promsing people they will pay more for less and live worse, is a viable platform.

It is all for the "greater good".
gvPKTVK10JE

[Typhoon]

I'll entertain that there is the war dimension to it too.

Some things make a lot of sense if one takes seriously the post-WWII wargaming that the next really big war was to be fought with weather machines & biological weapons and that everyone needed to develop in that area, pronto.

It's not a secret that the Soviets wanted to melt the artic, which included such plans as damning the pacific.

I'll say it's a bit conspirazoid but it is really out of the bounds to suggest: the Soviets go from openly talking about it to funding a scientific consensus around global cooling and the Americans fund a bunch of environmental protection paramilitary groups which take off in popularity out of nowhere.

Then almost concurrently with the fall of the Soviets, suddenly the Americans have their own scientific consensus. It's not that the globe is cooling, it's too darn hot and we should pay to freeze everything into the way things work now.

Unlikely, I would assert - it is not something that can be disproved by evidence. Rather, "climate change" has become both a secular religion for the gullible and a wonderful wealth transfer opportunity for, well, the well-connected opportunists.

The field of atmospheric physics used to be the consolation prize for B grade physics students - obscure and little funded. Thanks to "global warming" it's grown, since the late 1980's, into a multi-billion dollar per year activity. Research grants, dedicated supercomputers, academic advancement, government jobs and growing bureaucratic power and influence, fees for consultants, guaranteed taxpayer-subsidized profits for those involved in the wind and solar power and electric vehicle industries. And so on.

Too many vested interests now.

Can't find it now, but I once came across a map of crop yield on a hotter planet. It asserted that a hotter planet would lead to a decline in yield for the US, Mexico, Australia, India...and Africa would be in big trouble.

I don't need to list who would benefit, but there is a lot of self-interest all around.

Actual cereal crop yields make a mockery of drought and yield predictions.

cereal-yield.png (516.46 KiB) Viewed 13570 times

[Typhoon]

How to turn messy offal into a beautiful sausage a.k.a. data processing.

Climate Audit | The IPCC AR6 Hockeystick

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

"Hide the decline......."

Go Thicc On The Stick.....;>.....

[Typhoon]

Medium | The Transmission Fetish [paywalled?]

Why is the Biden administration proposing transmission solutions for generation problems?

In April, the Department of Energy announced the availability of $8.25 billion in loans for electrical transmission projects. Advertised as the fulfillment of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, the hope for the project is to create jobs and to strengthen America’s most precious piece of infrastructure: the electricity grid.

The time is ripe for such a project. As Gina McCarthy, former President and Chief Executive Officer of the Natural Resources Defense Council and now first-ever Climate Advisor to the President, put it, “After the Texas transmission debacle this winter, no one can doubt the need to invest in our electric grid. The steps that the Departments of Energy and Transportation are taking today, when combined with the grid investments outlined in the American Jobs Plan, will turbocharge the building of major new electricity transmission lines that will generate new jobs and power our economy for years to come.”

McCarthy’s correct that the transmission goals fit neatly with Biden’s jobs plan. And it pairs well with the Democrats’ commitment to building out renewable energy. Solar and especially wind are built far from the populations who need their energy, so more transmission is required to service consumers. Transmission should also alleviate the intermittency problem: if the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining where you are, then electricity can be sent from where turbines spin and panels bask in sunlight.

McCarthy was clever to bring up Texas: the conventional wisdom tells us that if Texas had been able to import energy more easily from its neighbors, its blackouts would have never happened. While natural gas and nuclear faced their own problems during the February cold snap, renewables fared the worst. Due to their intermittency, it’s as if one-fifth of the Texas grid switched off when it was most needed. At their lowest points in the crisis, wind produced 0% and solar produced 2% of their rated capacity. Greater transmission would have meant more imports, which might have made up for Texas’s shortfalls.

There’s only one problem: Texas’s neighbors were also hit by the cold-snap, whose effects stretched from Canada to Corpus Christi. Even without the cold-snap, winter’s shorter days meant solar had even less to offer. Moreover, the wind wasn’t blowing anywhere between Houston and Haverhill, Massachusetts at crucial moments in the crisis. In other words, transmission couldn’t save Texas because it was trapped in what Meredith Angwin calls the “fatal trifecta”: overreliance on 1) intermittent renewables; 2) just-in-time natural gas; and 3) electricity imports. So why are Gina McCarthy and the Biden administration telling the nation and the world that the problem is the solution?

The reasons are ideological and political. McCarthy’s former employer, the NRDC, owes its vision of the future to environmentalists who cut their teeth during the 1970s energy crisis. Amory Lovins, one of the movement’s biggest figures, thought energy generation itself was a problem that could be fixed by making things more efficient. In 1976, he wrote the seminal “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?” where he argued against the “hard path” of centralized production of energy. Instead, he offered a decentralized “soft path” based on energy efficiency. In fact, thinkers like Lovins feared nuclear energy and preferred “natural” energy sources like wind and solar because they generate less energy. For Lovins and his ilk, wind and solar’s intermittency is a virtue, hence their boosterism of transmission. If you can move the electricity around efficiently it will make up for the unreliability.

The political reasoning is simpler. As the environmental movement has grown, a patronage network between renewables and the Democrats has grown with it — the Biden administration is floating the idea of sourcing 40% of our power from solar by 2035, after all. On top of that, the environmental movement’s success has made it so that Democratic voters equate climate solutions with renewable technology. So the Democrats are in a bind: they have to deliver on their promises to voters and industry allies, but to do so means squeezing efficiency out of low output sources like wind and solar. Transmission build-outs are how they mean to do that, but transmission solutions can’t solve supply problems (as in Texas) because efficiency isn’t generation.

If we look northeast from the Lone Star state towards Knoxville, we see a different story. Tennessee faced the same crisis as Texas but weathered it well. Why? In part because of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which has only 3% of its generation from renewables. Instead, the TVA gets over 70% of its clean energy from nuclear, which is 39% of its energy portfolio overall. The TVA didn’t have to rely on transmission or efficiency schemes to handle a crisis. In Tennessee, the grid proved resilient — and that’s in large part thanks to nuclear.

The Biden administration isn’t wrong to focus on weather and grid resiliency. Responding to climate change requires state action and the grid, which underpins nearly every aspect of our lives, needs to be stewarded for us and for posterity. But they’ve inherited a bad ideology that has permeated their leadership. The NRDC still pushes for the closure of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California, just as it did under McCarthy’s tenure. Once she left, the group helped force the closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York — emissions rose and now the New York grid is more fragile. Transmission can’t fix grid fragility alone. There’s nothing wrong with a robust transmission system. But selling transmission as a solution when it can’t solve the problem is irresponsible. We need reliable clean power generation and only nuclear power can fit the bill. It’s the most resilient, low-carbon, and robust source of energy we have.

We don’t need more false prophecies from the 70s, but we do need more nuclear — for a prosperous, abundant, and radiant tomorrow.

[Parodite]

E5K5i5Wv7jQ

[Typhoon]

E5K5i5Wv7jQ

"Correlation is not causation"

Indeed.

Correlation = 94.71%

s_c_chart.png (114.45 KiB) Viewed 13237 times

[Typhoon]

IEEE Spectrum | Whatever Happened to the Population Bomb?

In 1960, Science published a paper by Heinz von Foerster predicting that on Friday, 13 November 2026, the "human population will approach infinity if it grows as it has grown in the last two millennia." Just a few years after this preposterous doomsday alarm, the annual growth of global population peaked at about 2.1 percent and immediately began to decline. By 2020 the growth rate stood at just a bit more than 1 percent, the result of the steadily declining total fertility rate (TFR), the number of children born to a woman during her reproductive period.

[Doc]

IEEE Spectrum | Whatever Happened to the Population Bomb?

In 1960, Science published a paper by Heinz von Foerster predicting that on Friday, 13 November 2026, the "human population will approach infinity if it grows as it has grown in the last two millennia." Just a few years after this preposterous doomsday alarm, the annual growth of global population peaked at about 2.1 percent and immediately began to decline. By 2020 the growth rate stood at just a bit more than 1 percent, the result of the steadily declining total fertility rate (TFR), the number of children born to a woman during her reproductive period.

We always have the Carter catastrophe to fall back on

https://www.cantorsparadise.com/the-car ... 5fd636381c

The Carter Catastrophe
A Bayesian argument for why humans will soon be extinct


Though, if true, there is little to be done about it, if there is anything at all. So at least that will probably take the politics out of it.

[Typhoon]

IEEE Spectrum | Whatever Happened to the Population Bomb?

In 1960, Science published a paper by Heinz von Foerster predicting that on Friday, 13 November 2026, the "human population will approach infinity if it grows as it has grown in the last two millennia." Just a few years after this preposterous doomsday alarm, the annual growth of global population peaked at about 2.1 percent and immediately began to decline. By 2020 the growth rate stood at just a bit more than 1 percent, the result of the steadily declining total fertility rate (TFR), the number of children born to a woman during her reproductive period.

We always have the Carter catastrophe to fall back on

https://www.cantorsparadise.com/the-car ... 5fd636381c

The Carter Catastrophe
A Bayesian argument for why humans will soon be extinct


Though, if true, there is little to be done about it, if there is anything at all. So at least that will probably take the politics out of it.

One could apply the same argument to the human population at any time in history and assert that "humans will soon become extinct".

That the global human population is larger that at any previous time in history is an existence proof that there is a flaw in the underlying assumptions and/or reasoning.

[Typhoon]

The Register | Motivated by commerce, not conscience, Google bans ads for climate change consensus contradictors

Publishers won't get ads, advertisers won't get a voice, nobody will be spared weeks* of tedious culture wars

*Er, decades.

[Doc]

IEEE Spectrum | Whatever Happened to the Population Bomb?

In 1960, Science published a paper by Heinz von Foerster predicting that on Friday, 13 November 2026, the "human population will approach infinity if it grows as it has grown in the last two millennia." Just a few years after this preposterous doomsday alarm, the annual growth of global population peaked at about 2.1 percent and immediately began to decline. By 2020 the growth rate stood at just a bit more than 1 percent, the result of the steadily declining total fertility rate (TFR), the number of children born to a woman during her reproductive period.

We always have the Carter catastrophe to fall back on

https://www.cantorsparadise.com/the-car ... 5fd636381c

The Carter Catastrophe
A Bayesian argument for why humans will soon be extinct


Though, if true, there is little to be done about it, if there is anything at all. So at least that will probably take the politics out of it.

One could apply the same argument to the human population at any time in history and assert that "humans will soon become extinct".

That the global human population is larger that at any previous time in history is an existence proof that there is a flaw in the underlying assumptions and/or reasoning.

In 1960 it was assumed people would continue to have the same number of children. There wasn't much data that showed people tend to have less children when they have security in old age.

We are between 8 and 9 billion currently. The planet has been shown to be capable of supporting 18 billion. The projection are that the population will stabilize at 11 billion. If civilization were to collapse it would support much fewer of course. Then there would be a "Great Reset" of another sort.