A mix of one of Joan Crawford’s most famous acting scenes from Sudden Fear with Greta Thunberg’s climate fear.
Global Warming
Ocean Front Properties Still All The Rage Despite “Sea Rise”
(This post was originally uploaded in Jun, 2015)
SEE OTHER POSTS AS WELL:
- Maldives Building MORE Airports (AKA: Climate Change is a Joke!)
- Global Warming Good For Island Growth
- UCSB Students Note Rising Sea Levels
Breitbart makes fun of the idea that loans and insurance could ever be had if these Islands are soon to underwater… unless these banks and insurance companies know that “Climate Change” is more political than science
Great news from the scuba-diving tropical paradise Maldives. They’ve just opened another airport.
This means that the Indian Ocean island nation now has four international airports and seven domestic ones. Quite a lot for a country with a population of less than 400,000. Presumably they have high hopes for their tourist industry as they develop luxury resorts on ever more remote atolls.
[….]
Here’s the World Bank: “Climate change presents a challenge for every island in the Maldives, which all lie on the sea level. Any changes in the climate will greatly affect the Maldivian way of life.”
Here’s the UN Foundation: “Climate change is a serious threat to low lying islands like Maldives whose landmass is close to sea level. The projected rise in sea level over the next century due to climate change is commonly agreed to be about one meter. The highest point on this island nation is one meter. Learn more about the existential threat of climate change on this island and learn more about how the country is pressing for global action on climate change.”
And let us never forget the tragically moving, yet cheery-in-the-face-of-disaster underwater cabinet meeting staged by the Maldives government in 2009 to draw international attention to the terrible and imminent threat these poor islands face.
Luckily I have thought up a brilliant solution to this problem. Maybe the lucky Maldives (the thriving tourist paradise) could help the unlucky Maldives (the one about to be drowned by global warming) with money and material aid. Perhaps it could use its vast tourist revenues to mitigate against any problems caused by this terrible “climate change” thing. Perhaps it could use its 11 airports to help evacuate the other Maldives’ climate refugees.
(GATEWAY PUNDIT): Seven years ago ABC News warned viewers that New York City will be under water by 2015 due to global warming. (See also NEWSBUSTERS)
New York City underwater? Gas over $9 a gallon? A carton of milk costs almost $13? Welcome to June 12, 2015. Or at least that was the wildly-inaccurate version of 2015 predicted by ABC News exactly seven years ago. Appearing on Good Morning America in 2008, Bob Woodruff hyped Earth 2100, a special that pushed apocalyptic predictions of the then-futuristic 2015. The segment included supposedly prophetic videos, such as a teenager declaring, “It’s June 8th, 2015.”
“One carton of milk is $12.99.” (On the actual June 8, 2015, a gallon of milk cost, on average, $3.39.) Another clip featured this prediction for the current year: “Gas reached over $9 a gallon.”
The only way food would be soo high is if Obama’s war on affordable energy works it’s course!
How come Manhattan property is through the roof!
(Breitbart) In 2006, on NBC’s Today Show, former-Vice President Al Gore predicted that Manhattan would be flooded in “15 to 20 years.” He added, “In fact the World Trade Center Memorial site would be underwater.” Just 3 years ago, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority predicted that within the next ten years, “Irene-like storms of the future would put a third of New York City streets under water and flood many of the tunnels leading into Manhattan in under an hour because of climate change[.]”
By hook or crook, through super storms or glacier melt, Global Cooling Global Warming Climate Change has doomed the Big Apple.
What we have here are two of the most respected environmental voices among the political Left — Gore and the government — warning of dire flooding hitting Manhattan within the next 10 years. And at least according to their activism, the predominantly left-wing, Global Warming believers of Manhattan are listening. Furious about the lack of wealth-distribution that will save the planet and their small island, just 6 months ago, more than 300,000 took to the streets of Manhattan to protest.
And yet, a funny thing is happening in the real world of the free market. Manhattan might be the elite media/entertainment/intellectual hub of the cult of Global Warming, but where the rubber meets the bottom line, the cult obviously doesn’t really believe in its own propaganda. If they did, Manhattan real estate prices would be collapsing, not hitting record highs as they currently are.
If people truly believe an area is going to be flooded as soon as in the next decade, those same people would be selling off their real estate. Not just to escape but to sell before conditions worsened and real estate prices bottomed out further. As the deadline loomed closer, prices would decrease further.
What’s happening, though, is the exact opposite.
The average Manhattan home price is now over $1.7 million. With some apartment prices now breaking nine figures, it’s time to take a look at the booming New York real estate market and explore where middle class families fit into the picture.
At 157 West 57th Street, the most expensive New York home sale was just completed with the penthouse of this new building going for over $100 million.
Howard Lorber, the chairman of Douglas Elliman, the city’s largest residential brokerage, told me that there is no sign of this trend slowing down. He called New York a safe place for people around the world to invest in real estate.
Maybe what’s happening is that Manhattan’s left-wing Global Warming believers are suckering right-wing Climate Deniers into buying doomed real estate at record prices?
THE ELITE
How come those that warn us about sea rise keep buying property by the sea?
BILL GATES:
(BREITBART) Microsoft founder Bill Gates has been exposed as the ultimate climate-denier with the purchase of a $43 million oceanfront home.
Riddle me this…
If you truly believe in Global Cooling, Global Warming, Climate Change, or whatever-these-proven-frauds-are-calling-it-now is a real and imminent crisis, that means you believe the oceans are destined to rise and flood the coasts and that this will happen in your lifetime… So why would anyone who professes to believe such a thing — as Gates regularly does — invest $43 million in oceanfront real estate?
They wouldn’t — unless they are a madman or a liar, and when it comes to Gates and the rest of the climate phonies, my money is always on the latter.
The facts are this…
If you judge Gates by his meaningless words, he is not a climate denier. But where it matters… In his actions, his behavior, his multi-million dollar investments, Gates is one of the biggest climate deniers in the history of climate denying.
No one — not even if you’re worth billions — pisses away $43 million. Which proves that just like CNN and Barack Obama, Bill Gates is a Climate Change activist who knows it’s all a hoax (and trust me, it is) because no one who truly believes the oceans will flood the coasts would invest 43 million goddamned dollars on a doomed house that sits right on the ocean…..
JOHN KERRY:
(DAILY WIRE) In 2017, Kerry bought historic waterfront property at Seven Gates Farm in Chilmark. Using a private realty trust, Kerry paid $11.75 million for 18.5 acres and a house overlooking Vineyard Sound.
“The seven-bedroom house dates to 1924 and sits on one of 39 original sites that were created over time by the Seven Gates Farm Corporation on land originally collected by Nathaniel Shaler in the 19th century,” The Vineyard Gazette reported. “The Seven Gates Farm property is tucked into a rolling hillside with distant views of the Elizabeth islands, where Mr. Kerry, a member of the Forbes family on his mother’s side, has long ties.”
The ironic juxtaposition caught the attention of Charlie Kirk, a conservative commentator and founder of Turning Point USA. “If Joe Biden’s special ‘Climate Envoy,’ John Kerry, actually believed in Global Warming & rising sea levels, why would he live in a $12,000,000 waterfront mansion on the island of Martha’s Vineyard?”
Kerry’s house is not far from the mansion bought by former President Barack Obama, who famously declared that his 2008 election marked “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
The Obamas bought a 29-acre beachfront plot with a nearly 7,000-square-foot main house. It’s got seven bedrooms and 8½ bathrooms, TMZ reported last year. But Obama spent eight years in the White House saying melting ice caps would cause sea levels to rise, at some point washing over islands and pushing into oceanside communities. Take a look here.
That, too, drew reaction on social media. “If you truly believe that climate change is going to be as devastating as the pundits are saying (ex: the island of Manhattan will soon be underwater), why would you gamble $15M to buy an island estate directly on the water?”….
OBAMA:
(YAHOO NEWS) …Marty Nesbitt, a close friend of the Obamas and chairman of the Obama Foundation, purchased a tract of land in Hawaii for $8.7 million in 2015, miles from where the two families would visit every Christmas during the president’s time in office, and is building a trio of houses on the beachfront estate.
The Obamas are believed to be planning to occupy at least one of the houses when construction is complete.
The project has been controversial locally, in large part because the developers requested and received an exemption from Hawaii’s environmental laws to leave in place an old sea wall on the beach.
Environmental experts say sea walls contribute significantly to beach erosion and should be removed, but plans were submitted to the state to expand the sea wall on the property.
The Obamas own an $11.75 million mansion in Martha’s Vineyard, near the water as well…..
GORE:
- Even Al Gore, whose warnings about the danger of climate change have been among the most dramatic from a politician, has invested in property overlooking the ocean he says will wipe out coastal towns. (WASHINGTON EXAMINER)
FAILED PREDICTIONS
- For more than 50 years Climate Alarmists in the scientific community and environmental movement have not gotten even one prediction correct, but they do have a perfect record of getting 41 predictions wrong. In other words, on at least 41 occasions, these so-called experts have predicted some terrible environmental catastrophe was imminent … and it never happened. And not once — not even once! — have these alarmists had one of their predictions come true. aei
Below are the 41 failed doomsday, eco-pocalyptic predictions (with links):
1. 1967: Dire Famine Forecast By 1975
2. 1969: Everyone Will Disappear In a Cloud Of Blue Steam By 1989 (1969)
3. 1970: Ice Age By 2000
4. 1970: America Subject to Water Rationing By 1974 and Food Rationing By 1980
5. 1971: New Ice Age Coming By 2020 or 2030
6. 1972: New Ice Age By 2070
7. 1974: Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast
8. 1974: Another Ice Age?
9. 1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life (data and graph)
10. 1976: Scientific Consensus Planet Cooling, Famines imminent
11. 1980: Acid Rain Kills Life In Lakes (additional link)
12. 1978: No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend (additional link)
13. 1988: Regional Droughts (that never happened) in 1990s
14. 1988: Temperatures in DC Will Hit Record Highs
15. 1988: Maldive Islands will Be Underwater by 2018 (they’re not)
16. 1989: Rising Sea Levels will Obliterate Nations if Nothing Done by 2000
17. 1989: New York City’s West Side Highway Underwater by 2019 (it’s not)
18. 2000: Children Won’t Know what Snow Is
19. 2002: Famine In 10 Years If We Don’t Give Up Eating Fish, Meat, and Dairy
20. 2004: Britain will Be Siberia by 2024
21. 2008: Arctic will Be Ice Free by 2018
22. 2008: Climate Genius Al Gore Predicts Ice-Free Arctic by 2013
23. 2009: Climate Genius Prince Charles Says we Have 96 Months to Save World
24. 2009: UK Prime Minister Says 50 Days to ‘Save The Planet From Catastrophe’
25. 2009: Climate Genius Al Gore Moves 2013 Prediction of Ice-Free Arctic to 2014
26. 2013: Arctic Ice-Free by 2015 (additional link)
27. 2014: Only 500 Days Before ‘Climate Chaos’
28. 1968: Overpopulation Will Spread Worldwide
29. 1970: World Will Use Up All its Natural Resources
30. 1966: Oil Gone in Ten Years
31. 1972: Oil Depleted in 20 Years
32. 1977: Department of Energy Says Oil will Peak in 1990s
33. 1980: Peak Oil In 2000
34. 1996: Peak Oil in 2020
35. 2002: Peak Oil in 2010
36. 2006: Super Hurricanes!
37. 2005 : Manhattan Underwater by 2015
38. 1970: Urban Citizens Will Require Gas Masks by 1985
39. 1970: Nitrogen buildup Will Make All Land Unusable
40. 1970: Decaying Pollution Will Kill all the Fish
41. 1970s: Killer Bees!
Update: I’ve added 9 additional failed predictions (via Real Climate Science) below to make it an even 50 for the number of failed eco-pocalyptic doomsday predictions over the last 50 years.
42. 1975: The Cooling World and a Drastic Decline in Food Production
43. 1969: Worldwide Plague, Overwhelming Pollution, Ecological Catastrophe, Virtual Collapse of UK by End of 20th Century
44. 1972: Pending Depletion and Shortages of Gold, Tin, Oil, Natural Gas, Copper, Aluminum
45. 1970: Oceans Dead in a Decade, US Water Rationing by 1974, Food Rationing by 1980
46. 1988: World’s Leading Climate Expert Predicts Lower Manhattan Underwater by 2018
47. 2005: Fifty Million Climate Refugees by the Year 2020
48. 2000: Snowfalls Are Now a Thing of the Past
49.1989: UN Warns That Entire Nations Wiped Off the Face of the Earth by 2000 From Global Warming
50. 2011: Washington Post Predicted Cherry Blossoms Blooming in Winter
But somehow this time will be different, and the ‘experts’ and 16-year olds of today will suddenly be correct in their new predictions of eco-doom and eco-disaster? Not.
[….]
This is my most concise expose of climate fraud. Please pass it around to everyone you know and your elected officials. The video is short, but cuts right to the heart of the matter.
The Medieval Warming Period
First posted in January of this year [2015],
but re-posted because of the amount of traffic
it has been getting. Updated [AGAIN] a bit as well.
Listen carefully, very carefully. This is [one of] the most important climate change clip you will ever watch – and only 4mins long. Watch and judge yourself. ABSORB the graph shown. THINK on it. USE your brain.
SEE:
- “For someone to think that 1998 or 2010, or even 2014 are the warmest years… you have to be smoking something.” ~ RPT [Me]
Here are a few evidences — of the many — that indicate it was much warmer in the past and that 2014 wasn’t even near the warmest year [even assuming this to be true!]. The first piece of evidence to show is a recent studies dealing with giant clams.
CLAMS
Clams hold pearls and insights to Earth’s climate history. Two recent studies examining clams and coral samples in the South China Sea suggest the climate was warmer during the Medieval period than during modern times.
Two studies out of the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that the climate was warmer in the Roman and Medieval warm periods than today, despite much lower atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide.
“This new paper adds further material to the substantial body of real-world proxy evidence establishing that today’s global temperature is within natural ranges of past changes,” Dr. Hong Yan with the Institute of Earth Environment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Studying giant clams and coral reefs, scientists were able to reconstruct sea surface temperature changes going back 2,500 years. What the clam and coral data show is the Roman and Medieval warming periods impacted East Asia and the western Pacific. The study provides further evidence against the theory that there was little global temperature variation until the 20th century.
Both Chinese studies provide evidence for what is called the Medieval Warm Period, which took place during the late Roman Empire and Middle Ages. The period preceded a time of cooling known as the Little Ice Age…..
More from the Chinese Academy of Sciences via Watts Up With That:
Two recent papers, one is in Earth-Science Reviews and the other is in Chinese Science Bulletin, have studied key chemical contents in micro-drilled giant clams shells and coral samples to demonstrate that in the South China Sea the warm period of the Middle Ages was warmer than the present.
The scientists examined surveys of the ratio of strontium to calcium content and heavy oxygen isotopes, both are sensitive recorders of sea surface temperatures past and present. The aragonite bicarbonate of the Tridacna gigas clam-shell is so fine-grained that daily growth-lines are exposed by micro-drilling with an exceptionally fine drill-bit, allowing an exceptionally detailed time-series of sea-temperature changes to be compiled – a feat of detection worthy of Sherlock Holmes himself.
By using overlaps between successive generations of giant clams and corals, the three scientists – Hong Yan of the Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Yuhong Wang of Fudan University, Shanghai – reconstructed a record of sea-surface temperature changes going back 2500 years.
The Roman and Mediaeval Warm Periods both showed up prominently in the western Pacific and East Asia. Sea surface temperatures varied considerably over the 2500-year period.
Changing patterns of winter and summer temperature variation were also detected, disproving the notion that until the warming of the 20th century there had been little change in global temperatures for at least 1000 years, and confirming that – at least in the South China Sea – there is nothing exceptional about today’s temperatures.
Dr. Yan said: “This new paper adds further material to the substantial body of real-world proxy evidence establishing that today’s global temperature is within natural ranges of past changes.” Dr. Soon added: “The UN’s climate panel should never have trusted the claim that the medieval warm period was mainly a European phenomenon. It was clearly warm in South China Sea too.”
(WUWT)
NORTHWEST PASSAGE
Another example is that in the the 1500’s till the late 1800’s passages that are now iced over allowed for what is termed as the Northwest Passage… Exxon or cars weren’t around then?
“If you are like me and bit foggy on the Northwest Passage, here is a five cent refresher. The British coined the term Northwest Passage for the potential northern oceanic pass that would allow vessels to move between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The earliest explorations for the fabled passage were by Cortes in 1539. The late 1500’s were marked by British explorers, Martin Frobisher, Humphrey Gilbert, and John Davis. Several expeditions followed, all with little success of finding the passage but tempered by the acquisition of new lands. Some attempts lead to deaths of entire crews. Notable of these is the Sir John Franklin expedition in which all of the crew members were lost to starvation, scurvy, cannibalism, and lead poisoning from food sealed in tins. The first to transverse the Northwest Passage was Sir Robert McClure using a combination of both sledge and ship. Ironically this was done during the search for Franklin’s team in which McClure’s own ship became trapped in the ice for three winters. The passage was finally conquered entirely by sea by the Norwegian Amundsen in 1906.”
UPDATE
New York Times Mentions by Mistake
(WESTERN JOURNAL) The New York Times ran an editorial Saturday about the effect climate change had on discovering the Northwest Passage that appears to contradict claims the Arctic ice is melting at cataclysmic rates.
Global warming would have helped famed fur trader Alexander Mackenzie discover a Northwest Passage connecting North America to China, according to a NYT editorial from author Brian Castner.
His piece contains one significant caveat: Mackenzie’s 1789 trip happened during an era of above normal ice packed in the North that occurred before widespread fossil fuel use.
“Mackenzie paddled during the Little Ice Age, a few centuries of below-normal cold,” Castner wrote before noting Mackenzie’s failed attempt probably would have been successful had temperatures been at normal ranges.
“If he had undertaken his trip during average conditions, or at our current global temperatures, he would not have been stopped by ice,” he added.
“If the ocean hadn’t been icebound, would the fur trade have followed him down the river to China?
Would a summer Deh Cho have been Canada’s own Mississippi River? Would settlers have wagoned in, a northern Oregon Trail?”…
VIKINGS
Another hint are the Vikings and how they flourished.
Here are some great excerpts from a book[s] on the subject that include Icelandic and Greenlandic Vikings:
- The warm climate during the MWP [Medieval Warming Period] allowed this great migration to flourish. Drift ice posed the greatest hazard to sailors but reports of drift ice in old records do not appear until the thirteenth century (Bryson, 1977.)
- The Norse peoples traveled to Iceland for a variety of reasons including a search for more land and resources to satisfy a growing population and to escape raiders and harsh rulers. One force behind the movement to Iceland in the ninth century was the ruthlessness of Harald Fairhair, a Norwegian King (Bryson, 1977.)
- Vikings travelling to Iceland from Norway during the MWP were probably encouraged by the sight of pastures with sedges and grasses and dwarf woodlands of birch and willow resembling those at home.
- Animal bones and other materials collected from archaeological sites reveal Icelandic Vikings had large farmsteads with dairy cattle (a source of meat), pigs, and sheep and goats (for wool, hair, milk, and meat.) Farmsteads also had ample pastures and fields of barley used for the making of beer and these farms were located near bird cliffs (providing meat, eggs, and eiderdown) and inshore fishing grounds. Fishing was primarily done with hand lines or from small boats that did not venture across the horizon (McGovern and Perdikaris, 2000.)
- The Greenland Vikings lived mostly on dairy produce and meat, primarily from cows. The vegetable diet of Greenlanders included berries, edible grasses, and seaweed, but these were inadequate even during the best harvests. During the MWP, Greenland’s climate was so cold that cattle breeding and dairy farming could only be carried on in the sheltered fiords. The growing season in Greenland even then was very short. Frost typically occurred in August and the fiords froze in October. Before the year 1300, ships regularly sailed from Norway and other European countries to Greenland bringing with them timber, iron, corn, salt, and other needed items. Trade was by barter. Greenlanders offered butter, cheese, wool, and their frieze cloths, which were greatly sough after in Europe, as well as white and blue fox furs, polar bear skins, walrus and narwhal tusks, and walrus skins. In fact, two Greenland items in particular were prized by Europeans: white bears and the white falcon. These items were given as royal gifts. For instance, the King of Norway-Denmark sent a number of Greenland falcons as a gift to the King of Portugal, and received in return the gift of a cargo of wine (Stefansson, 1966.) Because of the shortage of adequate vegetables and cereal grains, and a shortage of timber to make ships, the trade link to Iceland and Europe was vital (Hermann, 1954.)
THE SUN
To support the sun being involved, here is another short video:
Another example of this warming comes from the production of wine and the trading boom and crop and animal growth and productivity during this medieval warming period in the Roman Empire. Vineyards on the Salisbury Plains, and other parts on England that wopuld be impossible today:
Farmers and peasants in medieval England launched a thriving wine industry south of Manchester. Good wines demand warm springs free of frosts, substantial summer warmth and sunshine without too much rain, and sunny days in the fall. Winters cannot be too cold — not below zero Fahrenheit for any significant period. The northern limit for grapes during the Middle Ages was about 300 miles above the current commercial wine areas in France and Germany. These wines were not simply marginal supplies, but of sufficient quality and quantity that, after the Norman conquest, the French monarchy tried to prohibit British wine production.
TREES
And my final example, one I used in a more layman way with high school students at West Ranch High School was the following. I have wanted to get this copied and up for a long time, and I have the time now. But for the tree lovers, the following will be new information to them surely… and note how the 1990 IPCC graph at the top of this post matches the Chinese one below. This much warmer weather/climate (by three[+] degrees) allowed for higher tree lines in the past:
…3-Degrees Warmer
Tree rings can be counted to date the time of an event, and their summertime width is greater under good growing conditions (warmth, rainfall) than during poor growing seasons (cold, dry). They are limited by the distance back in time researchers can find live trees, dead trees, or buried wood from an earlier time which can be accurately dated to its growth period.
In mountainous northwestern Pakistan, more than 200,000 tree-ring measurements were assembled from 384 long-lived trees that grew on more than twenty individual sites. The 1,300-year temperature proxy shows the warmest decades occurred between 800 and 1000, and the coldest periods between 1500 and 1700.128
Mountain tree line elevations are another sensitive and highly accurate proxy for temperature change. A number of studies of European tree lines testify to the fact that tree lines, farming, and villages moved upslope during the Medieval Warming and back with the Little Ice Age.
A recent study of tree line dynamics in Western Siberia showed that advances in tree lines during the warmer weather of the 20th century were “part of a long-term reforestation of tundra environments.” Two Swiss scientists, Jan Esper and Fritz-Hans Schweingruber, note that “stumps and logs of Larix sibirica can be preserved for hundreds of years” and that “above the tree line in the Polar Urals such relict material from large, upright trees were sampled and dated, confirming the existence, around A.D. 1000, of a forest tree line 30 meters above the late 20th century limit.” They also note, “this previous forest limit receded around 1350, perhaps caused by a general cooling trend.” Thus, the Siberian tree lines testify to the Medieval Warming and the Little Ice Age well outside of Europe.129
Lisa J. Graumlich of Montana State University combined both tree rings and tree lines to assess past climate changes in California’s Sierra Nevada. The trees in the mountains’ upper tree lines are preserved in place, living and dead, for up to 3,000 years. Graumlich says:
A relatively dense forest grew above the current tree line from the beginning of our records to around 100 B.C., and again from A.D. 400 to 1000, when temperatures were warm. Abundance of trees and elevation of tree line declined very rapidly from A.D. 1000 to 1400, the period of severe, multi-decadal droughts. Tree lines declined more slowly from 1500 to 1900 under the cool temperatures of the Little Ice Age, reaching current elevations around 1900.130
Graumlich’s tree evidence confirms both of the last two 1,500-year cycles: the Roman Warming/Dark Ages climate cycle and the Medieval Warming/Little Ice Age. Severe drought, which has been documented in California during the latter part of the Medieval Warming, obscured the timing of the shift from the Medieval Warming to the Little Ice Age. However, both events were clearly evident.
Cave stalagmite cores confirm the global nature of the 1,500-year cycle found in ice cores, seabed sediments, and trees. Their carbon and oxygen isotopes and their trace element content vary with temperature. Moreover, the stalagmites go back further in time than the tree evidence. One German stalagmite goes back more than 17,000 years. Cave stalagmites have been found in Ireland, Germany, Oman, and South Africa whose layers all show the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warming, the Dark Ages, and the Roman Warming.131 A number of the stalagmites also show the unnamed cold period that preceded the Roman Warming.
In southern Ontario, pollen shows that the warmth-loving beech trees of the Medieval Warming gradually gave way to cold tolerant oaks as the Little Ice Age came on—and then the forest became dominated by pine trees. The oak trees have been making a comeback in Ontario since 1850 and the beech trees can be expected to resurge as the Modern Warming continues in the centuries ahead.132
Remains of prehistoric villages in Argentina were analyzed by Marcela A. Cioccale of the National University of Cordoba to determine where Argentina’s native peoples lived over the past 1,400 years. Using carbon-14 dating, she found that the inhabitants clustered in the lower valleys during the Dark Ages period, and then moved higher up the slopes as the Medieval Warming brought “a marked increase of environmental suitability, under a relatively homogeneous climate.”133 Habitation moved up as high as 4,300 meters in the Central Peruvian Andes around 1000 as the Medieval Warming not only raised temperatures but created more stable conditions for farming. After 1320, people migrated back down the slopes as the colder, less stable climate of the Little Ice Age set in.
Yang Bao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reconstructed China’s temperature history for the last 2,000 years from ice cores, lake sediments, peat bogs, tree rings, and the historic documents that date back farther in China than in any other country. He found China had its highest temperature during the second and third centuries, toward the end of the Roman Warming. China’s climate was also warm from 800 to 1400, cold from 1400 to 1920, and then began to warm again after 1920.134 (See Figure 4.1.)
Figure 4.1: 2,000 Years of Chinese Temperature History
Source [for above figure]: Y. T. Hong et al., “Response of Climate to Solar Forcing Recorded in a 6,000-Year Time-Series of Chinese Peat Cellulose,” The Holocene 10 (2000): 1-7.
[128] J. Esper et al., “1,300 Years of Climate History for Western Central Asia Inferred from Tree Rings,” The Holocene 12 (2002): 267-77.
[129] J. Esper and F. H. Schweingruber, “Large-Scale Tree Line Changes Recorded in Siberia,” Geophysical Research Letters 31 (2004): 10.1029/2003GLO019178.
[130] L. J. Graumlich, “Global Change in Wilderness Areas: Disentangling Natural and Anthropogenic Changes,” U. S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-15-Vol. 3, 2000
[131] F. McDermott et al., “Centennial-Scale Holocene Climate Variability Revealed by a High-Resolution Speleothem 018 Record from SW Ireland,” Science 294 (2001): 1328-331; S. Niggemann et al., “A Paleoclimate Record of the Last 17,600 Years in Stalagmites from the B7 Cave, Sauerland, Germany,” Quaternary Science Reviews 22 (2003): 555-67; U. Neff et. al., “Strong Coherence between Solar Variability and the Monsoon in Oman between 9 and 6 kyr ago,” Nature 411 (2001): 290-93; and Tyson et al., “The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warming in South Africa,” South African Journal of Science 96, no. 3 (2000).
[132] I. D. Campbell and J. H. McAndrews, “Forest Disequilibrium Caused by Rapid Little Ice Age Cooling,” Nature 366 (1993): 336-38
[133] M. A. Cioccale, “Climatic fluctuations in the Central Region of Argentina in the last 1000 years,” Quaternary International 62, (1999): 35-47.
[134] Yang Bao et al., “General Characteristics of Temperature Variation in China during the Last Two Millennia,” Geophysical Research Letters 10 (2002): 1029/2001GLO014485.
- S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years (Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 63-66.
SOME MORE TREE EVIDENCES:
Greta’s Thunberg’s Northern Sweden Was 3°C Warmer 9300 Years Ago…Trees once grew where tundra is today:
9300-year old vegetation remnants found under receding glaciers in Northern Sweden show that the trees once grew where tundra exists today, meaning it was warmer (NO TRICK ZONE)
A new Swedish publication titled New Presence Of Beaver (Castor fiber L) in the Scandes sustains warmer-than-present conditions and a patchily treed and rich mountainscape finds that trees once grew up to 700 meters above today’s current treeline in Northern Sweden (Lapland, locations 1 and 2).
Over the past 120 years the climate has warmed, and so there’s been glacier and ice patch shrinkage. This has unveiled earlier vegetation and life.
The concerned vegetational remnants that were found represent tree exclaves in ice-empty glacier cirques, the study says.
Found were megafossils of pinus sylvestris with signs of being gnawed by beaver (Castor fiber L.) from different sites in northern Sweden which today are tundra.
They age 9500-9300 cal. yr BP and are located 400-700 m above present-day tree lines.
[….]
These exposed megafossil remnants represent former tree stands that were later on extirpated and entombed by snow and ice for many millennia. At -0.6°C/100 m lapse rate, it means it was then over 3°C warmer than now in this region at a time when atmospheric CO2 concentrations were well below 300 ppm.
For a great interactive map one should see this link embedded in the below graphic, after the excerpt from WUWT. The full (translated to english) study can be found HERE….
MISC. EVIDENCES
The idea of a medieval warm period was formulated for the first time in 1965 by the English climatologist Hubert H. Lamb[1]. Lamb, who founded the UK Climate Research Unit (CRU) in 1971, saw the peak of the warming period from 1000 to 1300, i.e. in the High Middle Ages. He estimated that temperatures then were 1-2 ° C above the normal period of 1931-1960. In the high North, it was even up to 4 degrees warmer. The regular voyages of the Vikings between Iceland and Greenland were rarely hindered by ice, and many burial places of the Vikings in Greenland still lie in the permafrost.
Glaciers were smaller than today
Also the global retreat of glaciers that occurred in the period between about 900 to 1300[2] speaks for the existence of the Medieval Warm Period. An interesting detail is that many glaciers pulling back since 1850 reveal plant remnants from the Middle Ages, which is a clear proof that the extent of the glaciers at that time was lower than today[3].
Furthermore, historical traditions show evidence of unusual warmth at this time. Years around 1180 brought the warmest winter decade ever known. In January 1186/87, the trees were in bloom near Strasbourg. And even earlier you come across a longer heat phase, roughly between 1021 and 1040. The summer of 1130 was so dry that you could wade through the river Rhine. In 1135, the Danube flow was so low that people could cross it on foot. This fact has been exploited to create foundation stones for the bridge in Regensburg this year[4].
Clear evidence of the warm phase of the Middle Ages can also be found in the limits of crop cultivation. The treeline in the Alps climbed to 2000 meters, higher than current levels are[5]. Winery was possible in Germany at the Rhine and Mosel up to 200 meters above the present limits, in Pomerania, East Prussia, England and southern Scotland, and in southern Norway, therefore, much farther north than is the case today[6]. On the basis of pollen record there is evidence that during the Middle Ages, right up to Trondheim in Norway, wheat was grown and until nearly the 70th parallel/latitude barley was cultivated[4]. In many parts of the UK arable land reached heights that were never reached again later.
Also in Asia historical sources report that the margin of cultivation of citrus fruits was never as far north as in the 13th century. Accordingly, it must have been warmer at the time about 1 ° C than today[7].
Archeology and history confirm interglacial
Insects can also be used as historical markers for climate. The cold sensitive beetle Heterogaster urticae was detected during the Roman Optimum and during the Norman High Middle Age in York. Despite the warming of the 20th century, this beetle is found today only in sunny locations in the south of England[8].
During the medieval climate optimum, the population of Europe reached hitherto unknown highs. Many cities were founded at this very time with high-altitude valleys, high pastures and cultivated areas, which were at the beginning of the Little Ice Age again largely abandoned[9].
The Middle Ages was the era of high culture of the Vikings. In this period their expansion occurred into present-day Russia and the settlement of Iceland, Greenland and parts of Canada and Newfoundland. In Greenland even cereals were grown about this time.. With the end of the Medieval Warm Period the heyday of the Vikings ended. The settlements in Greenland had to be abandoned as well as in the home country of Norway, during this time, many northern communities located at higher altitudes[10]. The history of the Vikings also corresponds very well to the temperature reconstructions from Greenland, which were carried out using ice cores. According to the reconstructions, Greenland was at the time of the Vikings at least one degree warmer than in the modern warming period[11].
[1] Hubert H. Lamb, The Early Medieval Warm Epoch and Its Sequel, in Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology 1 (1965) 13-37
[2] Jean M. Grove, Roy Switsur, Glacial geological evidence for the medieval warm period
[3] Climate News, The Alpine Glacier and the Eisman Ötzi
[4] Wolfgang Behringer, Cultural History of the Climate: From the Ice Age to Global Warming (also Google Books )
[5] Hubert H. Lamb: Climate and Cultural History, Reinbeck 1989
[6] Wilfried Weber, The Development of the Northern Wine Ranges in Europe
[7] De’Er Zhang, Evidence for the existence of the medieval warm period in China
[8] John M. Steane, The Archeology of Medieval England and Wales
[9] Thomas Gale More, Global Warming: A Boon to Human and Other Animals
[10] Willi Dansgard et al., Climatic changes, Norsemen and modern man. Nature 255 24-28
[11] Science Skeptical, Is Greenland Greener? No – colder
INTERACTIVE MAP (linked)
More here: “Medieval Warm Period Project”
UPDATE
This comes by way of WUWT!
Michael Mann and his team of data manglers like-minded scientists like to tell us the Medieval Warming Period was just a “regional” event rather than global, because if it was global, that destroys their narrative. This new study shows it also occurred in South America, and adds to the growing body of southern hemisphere locations. as we can see in this map below, note the red markers where it was warmer than normal. Sure seems global to me.
The above UPDATE is really a larger — more in-depth interactive map.
Dr. Steven E. Koonin Discusses His Book: “Unsettled”
For the average American, climate science may as well be divination. Without extensive training in the subject, consumers and policymakers often learn only what advocates, media, and governments choose to report. At a time when “following the science” may seem like a policy unto itself, the question of what the science actually says has never been more important—or unclear.
Steven E. Koonin’s new book, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells us, What it Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, explains the science for policymakers and everyday people with clarity and candor, informed by decades in the trenches of climate science as a researcher, professor, and Under Secretary of Science in the Obama Administration’s Department of Energy.
Please join the Manhattan Institute on May 25, 2021 at 1pm EDT for a virtual book talk with Steven E. Koonin, in conversation with Mark P. Mills, about Unsettled, the state of climate science, and its implications for energy and environmental policy.
Tucker Goes on Epic Rant About Government Overreach
NATIONAL REVIEW: Biden’s War on Gas Stoves
- ….Gas-stove hysteria isn’t new among progressives. In the past, as its inclusion in the Washington Post climate newsletter suggests, gas stoves were treated as a climate issue. It’s not just stoves; progressives are coming for your gas-powered furnace as well. Some progressives want to ban gas-powered anything and replace them with electric equivalents powered by wind and solar. That’s what motivated the inclusion of tax credits for electric appliances in the Inflation Reduction Act, which was, as the press acknowledged after it passed, really a climate-and-health-care bill…..
NATIONAL REVIEW: Kathy Hochul Proposes Ban on Natural Gas in New York’s New Builds
- New York governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday called to ban natural gas heating and appliances in the state’s new buildings in an effort to fight climate change. [….] Hochul’s proposal, made during her state-of-the-state address, comes after a U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission official sparked outcry by suggesting gas stoves might soon be banned over alleged health risks. However, commission chairman Alexander D. Hoehn-Saric issued a statement Wednesday saying the commission does not plan to ban the appliances. Hochul’s focus, however, was on climate change when she proposed a ban on the use of fossil fuels by 2025 for newly built smaller structures and 2028 for larger ones. The proposal would also see the state ban the sale of new fossil-fuel heating systems beginning in 2030….
- New York state may see a ban on gas stoves in new buildings and homes by the end of the decade, as officials seek to combat climate change. [….] If passed, New Yorkers may see only electric stovetops in new developments by 2030. ….
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A WALTER WILLIAMS column many years ago:
Lifestyle Nazis Update (02/16/2000)
Without any real evidence, Mrs. Obama has claimed that poor Americans are trapped in what she calls “food deserts,” where they must apparently trudge for miles outside of their dismal neighborhoods to buy a piece of fruit or some celery sticks. According to Mrs. Obama, a food desert is an inner city without a grocery store. She envisioned spending millions of federal dollars to plant grocery stores in those blighted areas so the “poor” won’t have to buy food at mini-marts.
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan actually attended Al Sharpton’s National Action Network annual convention in April 2012. There he told an absurd story about how Barack Obama, who attended Harvard University, knows what “it’s like to take a subway or a bus just to find a fresh piece of fruit in a grocery store.” No fruit at Harvard?
The story may be ridiculous, but Michelle Obama was dead serious about extorting $400 million from American taxpayers to solve the nonexistent problem of food deserts.
In reality there are no such things as food deserts. Researcher Roland Sturm at the Rand Corporation studied food desert claims and found that individuals in urban areas can get any kind of food they want within a couple of miles. He suggested we call these areas “food swamps,” rather than food deserts.
In addition, researcher Helen Lee at the Public Policy Institute in California found that in poor neighborhoods, citizens had twice as many fast-food restaurants and convenience stores as wealthier neighborhoods had, and more than three times as many corner stores. These areas had twice as many supermarkets and large-scale grocery stores as wealthier neighborhoods.
The truth was exactly the opposite of Mrs. Obama’s claim, but hers satisfied the mind-set of the utopians, who believe they alone could solve problems that never existed. Mrs. Obama later began a second crusade to force restaurants and schools to serve “healthy” foods, ban “junk food,” and bully restaurants into serving smaller portions.
Michelle Obama worked in 2010 to get Congress to pass a nutrition bill that would give the Department of Agriculture new powers to regulate school lunches. The bill was passed in December of that year, and now that the regulations have gone into effect, it is having a devastating impact on students and their angry parents.
Under Department of Agriculture edicts, cinnamon rolls and chili are banned. School bands and groups can’t sell candy bars for fund-raising. The government is now mandating portion sizes, including how many tomatoes must go into a salad!
Children are permitted to refuse three items on a tray, but not fruits and vegetables. Of course, the Food Police can’t yet force them to eat their veggies, but it’s not far-fetched to think they might someday. After all, the Obamas have rammed through legislation that initially demanded that nuns buy insurance coverage for contraception and pregnancy. Fortunately the Supreme Court ended that requirement in 2014.
The new federal guidelines, thanks to Michelle Obama, now limit caloric intake to between 750 and 850 a day for schoolchildren. Teenagers require between 2,000 and 3,000 calories a day to be healthy and grow, and high school athletes need up to 5,000 calories per day. In short, the First Lady is responsible for malnourishing kids through the school lunch program.
In 2006 the three-term mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, decided to add the title “Food Police Chief’ to his list of duties in the Big Apple. That year, he banished trans fats from city restaurants and, in 2010, forced food manufacturers to alter their recipes to include less sodium. He failed, however, to remove salt shakers from the tables. Patrons who receive a dish of food at a New York restaurant that they deem not salty enough may still simply add salt.
In spring 2012 Bloomberg decided that New Yorkers had to be protected even more from themselves, so he issued an edict banning soft drinks larger than sixteen ounces. The ban applied to restaurants, movie theaters, stadiums, and arenas.
In August 2012 Bloomberg banned the distribution of baby formula in city hospitals unless it is medically necessary because he, a man, had decided that new mothers should always breast-feed regardless of their weight, professions, or other personal details. Free formula provided to mothers was also eliminated. Bloomberg determined that breast-feeding is best for children and that new mothers should not have a voice in the decision regardless of their circumstances. But Bloomberg did want women to have freedom of choice to kill their young before they are born. He was willing to give moms the option to abort their unborn babies, but not to feed formula to those who are living.
What is next for those like Obama and Bloomberg? Mandated calisthenics each morning at six? Currently the United States seems to be incubating and hatching utopian tyrants at an alarming rate.
Comedian Konstantin Kisin OWNS Woke “Climate Change” Culture
When I first saw this I thought it was the British House of Commons. But after I saw the podium in a larger video to post here I said to myself, “I know where that is!” I posted a while back a “debating of an issue”… it is Oxford Union Society!
Anyways, here is the MORE THAN EXCELLENT screed. The NEW YORK POST has a good intro on this, but TWITCHY says it all:
This is the first time we’ve come across Konstantin Kisin who is a Russian/British comedian/podcaster/speaker, etc. and wow … he really did a fantastic job of putting the woke youth in their place when it comes to climate change.
And it’s not just what he says, but how he says it.
- “The only thing that wokeness has to offer is to brainwash bright young minds like you to believe you are victims”
Stu Burguiere Debunks The Green Delusion (POWERLINE UPDATE)
Stu Burguiere says you shouldn’t laugh at all of the mainstream media’s climate change stories. The truth behind China’s emissions and the current “Green Delusion” is debunked by Stu.
UPDATED w/POWERLINE!!
Wind and solar installations produce electricity well under 50 percent of the time, a fact that never will change. So, in a “green” world, how do you keep the lights on? Battery storage, liberals tell us. (The electric grid is not a storage device. Electricity on the grid must be consumed in the moment in which it is produced.) Amazingly, however, no environmentalist or liberal has made any effort to demonstrate that battery storage on the scale needed is possible, let alone affordable. In fact, it is not even remotely possible.
Francis Menton has just published a PAPER on energy storage. He summarizes his findings at HIS WEB SITE:
The main point of the paper is that an electrical grid powered mostly by intermittent generators like wind and sun requires full backup from some source; and if that source is to be stored energy, the amounts of storage required are truly staggering. When you do the simple arithmetic to calculate the storage requirements and the likely costs, it becomes obvious that the entire project is completely impractical and unaffordable. The activists and politicians pushing us toward this new energy system of wind/solar/storage are either being intentionally deceptive or totally incompetent.
Thus, for example:
Consider the case of Germany, the country that has gone the farthest of any in the world down the road to “energy transition.” My Report presents two different calculations of the energy storage requirement for Germany in a world of a wind/solar grid and no fossil fuels allowed…. One of the calculations, by a guy named Roger Andrews, came to a requirement of approximately 25,000 GWh; and the other, by two authors named Ruhnau and Qvist, came to a higher figure of 56,000 GWh. The two use similar but not identical methodology, and somewhat different assumptions. Clearly there is a large range of uncertainty as to the actual requirement; but the two calculations cited give a reasonable range for the scope of the problem.
THIS IS THE PORTION POWERLINE CUT OUT OF THEIR EXCERPT
….To give you an idea of just how much energy storage 25,000 (or 56,000) GWh is, here is a rendering (also from my Report) of a grid-scale battery storage facility under construction in Queensland, Australia by Vena Energy. The facility in the rendering is intended to provide 150 MWh of storage.
Remember that 150 MWh is only 0.15 of one GWh. In other words, it would take about 167,000 of these facilities to provide 25,000 GWh of storage, and about 373,000 of them to get to the 56,000 GWh in the larger estimate…..
And against these projections of a storage requirement in the range of tens of thousands of GWh, what are Germany’s plans as presented in this “20-fold expansion” by 2031? From my Report:
In the case of Germany, Wood Mackenzie states that the planned energy storage capacity for 2031, following the 20-fold expansion, is 8.81GWh.
Rather than tens of thousands of GWh, it’s single digits. How does that stack up in percentage terms against the projected requirements?:
In other words, the amount of energy storage that Germany is planning for 2031 is between 0.016% and 0.036% of what it actually would need. This does not qualify as a serious effort to produce a system that might work.
This absurd situation is duplicated in every other jurisdiction that has purported to mandate wind and solar energy. For example, California:
The Report cites another article from Utility Dive stating that the California Public Utilities Commission has ordered the state’s power providers to collectively procure by 2026 some 10.5 GW (or 42.0 GWh) of lithium-ion batteries for grid-scale storage:
The additional 10.5 GW of lithium-ion storage capacity, translating to at most about 42 GWh, would take California all the way to about 0.17% of the energy storage it would need to fully back up a wind/solar generation system.
This is a joke. There are nowhere near enough batteries in the world to back up the world’s need for electricity, nor will there ever be. My colleague Isaac Orr prepared this simple graph, which shows the entire battery capacity of the world as projected in 2030 against the electricity consumption of a single state, Minnesota:
Is there a single place, anywhere in the world, that has actually satisfied its citizens’ need for electricity through wind or solar energy, plus batteries, as liberals now demand for all of us? No, actually, there isn’t:
Here’s what tells you all you need to know: not only is there no working demonstration project anywhere in the world of the wind/solar/storage energy system, but there is none under construction and none even proposed.
The whole green energy project is a gigantic fraud. A handful of shysters are getting rich, along with some activists and politicians, while the rest of us will be left holding the bag. In the dark.
Leftism Causes Mental Illness, Fear & Unhappiness (#Science)
Liberal Women Tend To Be More MENTALLY ILL & Unhappy According To THE SCIENCE, Vote Democrat. Several Studies show higher rates of mental illness reported and unhappiness among liberals but aprticularly liberal women.
Tucker Carlson was asked several months ago about being called a bigot and he said he has no problem with black people, he has an issue with liberal women. Millennial women tend to vote 70 percent Democrat which over represents to amount who report having a mental illness.
Perhaps the issue is that liberals and democrats don’t read the news and refuse to challenge their world view hence they fall for every possible hoax; Jussie smollett, mike brown, covington catholic, kyle rittenhouse, ukrainegate and russiagate, etc etc
(Dennis Prager Show – Tue, Oct 11, 2022) A psychiatrist writes in the NY Times that she is seeing very confused teenagers. She fails to draw the obvious conclusion: it’s the left that has convinced them that their past is rotten (America is founded on racism), their present is hopeless (gender confusion) and their future is non-existent (the earth is burning up).
Conservative Politician Calls Trudeau A Hypocrite To His Face
Trudeau’s platitudes were pointless.
Ford Lightning EV Truck Encapsulates Well Government …
… Failure Through Mandates, Penalties, And Subsidies
In Creating A False Supply/Demand Market
Based on An Industry Propped Up By The Same
(I am now committed to calling the “Alternative Energy” industry “Alt-Energy” to harken to the “Alt-Right” craze of the media… and it’s negative connotation.)
One funny comment on the channel was this:
- I’m sure everyone (except Ford) appreciates you demonstrating Lightning’s towing capacity.
Another good comment, based on the drop in performance* when these batteries are cold, is this:
- Can’t wait to see winter and snow performance numbers on these.
* CLIMATE/WEATHER IMPACT ON EVs
Another factor regarding optimal output and electric vehicles is hot and cold weather. I will let a wonderful WIRED MAGAZINE article explain:
…EV drivers have other factors to consider in winter weather: How far they can go, and how long it will take them to recharge.
Cold temperatures can hurt both, especially when it gets as severe as Winter Storm Jaden, which has triggered states of emergency across the country and will subject more than 70 percent of the US population to subzero temperatures over the next few days. That’s because the lithium-ion batteries that power EVs (as well as cellphones and laptops) are very temperature sensitive.
“Batteries are like humans,” says Anna Stefanopoulou, director of the University of Michigan’s Energy Institute. They prefer the same sort of temperature range that people do. Anything below 40 or above 115 degrees Fahrenheit and they’re not going to deliver their peak performance. They like to be around 60 to 80 degrees. As the temperature drops, the electrolyte fluid inside the battery cells becomes more sluggish. “You don’t have as much power when you want to discharge,” says Stefanopoulou. “The situation is even more limited when you want to charge.”
Modern cars are designed to take that into account, with battery thermal management systems that warm or cool a battery. But while an internal combustion engine generates its own heat, which warms the engine and the car occupants, an EV has to find that warmth somewhere else, either scavenging the small amount of heat that motors and inverters make or running a heater. That takes energy, meaning there’s less power available to move the wheels.
Additionally, to protect the battery—the most expensive component of an EV—the onboard computer may limit how it’s used in extreme low temperatures. The Tesla Model S owners manual warns: “In cold weather, some of the stored energy in the Battery may not be available on your drive because the battery is too cold.”…
In a conversation between EV owners and others at WATTS UP WITH THAT, a comment that sums up the above but in a short paragraph, reads:
- It’s not just bigger, it’s huge. Unlike an IC powered car, where cold weather won’t really affect it much, an electric car is severely disadvantaged. Drop outside temperatures down to -10 degrees F (not uncommon in Chicago) and that 300 mile range drops to 75 miles. Commute 20 miles to work on a frigid winter morning and 20 miles home in slooow traffic in a snowstorm with lights, wipers, and defroster on hi, and you just might not make it.
THE DAILY MAIL notes that “[e]lectric cars have 40 per cent less range when the temperature dips below freezing, new research has revealed.” Wow. Canadians are well-aware of the issue — as are the people in the northern states.
IN~OTHER~WORDS, this “venture is a giant boondoggle and these charging-stations would never survive outside of transferring wealth from business owners and those that drive the economy to cover this failure of a “choice.”
I was also “challenged” a bit, not really a challenged as much as a friendly observation — to which I just wish to record my response, as, it is a decent summation to the video regarding the review of the EV Ford Truck. My friend noted:
- I think you’re tilting at windmills with this anti EV trend. The market should decide, and EV’s are getting really good. Can they replace a diesel f250? No, but for running around town they’re pretty damn good. I guess your issue is with government mandates.
After a somewhat silly response I continued with this:
On a more serious note, yes, pushing technology that does not work well at all in replacing fossil fuels as sound (solar, wind, current battery tech, etc.) through subsidies and edict… yes, THAT is the issue. This video highlights [encapsulates] the result of government largess IN THAT people have a false impression these vehicles are just as good and would in a free and open market fail. Europe is moving to make natural gas and nuclear “green,” because (a) they are, and (b) they work. The U.S. has the most corrupt and politicians that vote legislation based on a Utopian ideal (say, a Bernie Sanders, AOC, etc.) or personal enrichment (say McConnell or Pelosi, etc.). Reality bites and refuses to let go… even Newsom extended Diablo Canyon nuclear plant life instead of shutting it down. Why? because it works, wind and solar wanes at best…
- … The U.S. would need up to four additional South Dakotas to develop enough clean power to run all the electric vehicles, factories and more….. (RPT: State Sized Chunks Land for a Zero-Carbon Economy)
It is an impossible goal, but many miss out on inculcating that fact into their thinking. Thomas Sowell notes the biggest difference between “conservatives” and “the Left” are these simple and basic questions:
1) compared to what?
2) at what cost?
3) what hard-evidence do you have?
Which even if someone were to read just my “BATTERY” section of my EV Post, they will encounter thinking unheard of in their normal diet of “clean energy” thinking. “At What Cost” (https://tinyurl.com/yk49tusp)
So, the “short answer” to my fellow compatriot on a similar life journey is, that that video shows the failure of what a large government “buying widgets” can do:
- “A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge” — George Gilder
Via an Interview by Dennis Prager [EDITOR’S NOTE: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” no one needed in the real world (things made that it could not use, or people did not want based on what a politician or leader in a controlled environment “thought” people would need). This economic law enforcers George Gilder’s contention that when government supports a venture from failing, no information is gained in knowing if the program works. Only the free-market can do this: I-PENCIL]
Environmentalist Doomsday Predictions
All fails BTW (SLAY NEWS):
- “‘The trouble with almost all environmental problems,’ says Paul R. Ehrlich, the population biologist, ‘is that by the time we have enough evidence to convince people, you’re dead. … We must realize that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.’” —The New York Times, 1969.
- “No real action has been taken to save the environment, [Ehrlich] maintains. And it does need saving. Ehrlich predicts that the oceans will be as dead as Lake Erie in less than a decade.” —Redlands Daily Facts, 1970.
- “Scientist Predicts a New Ice Age by 21st Century: Air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the next century. … If the current rate of increase in electric power generation continues, the demands for cooling water will boil dry the entire flow of the rivers and streams of continental United States. … By the next century ‘the consumption of oxygen in combustion processes, world-wide, will surpass all of the processes which return oxygen to the atmosphere.’” —The Boston Globe, 1970.
- “The world could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts. … ‘In the next 50 years,’ the fine dust man constantly puts into the atmosphere by fossil fuel-burning could screen out so much sunlight that the average temperature could drop by six degrees. If sustained ‘over several years’—‘five to 10,’ he estimated—‘such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!’” —Washington Post, Times Herald, 1971.
- “Dear Mr. President: … We feel obliged to inform you on the results of the scientific conference held here recently. … The main conclusion of the meeting was that a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experienced by civilized mankind, is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon. The cooling has natural cause and falls within the rank of processes which produced the last ice age. … The present rate of the cooling seems fast enough to bring glacial temperatures in about a century.” —Brown University, Department of Geological Sciences, 1972.
- “However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing.” – Time Magazine, 1974.
- “Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age. Telltale signs are everywhere—from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7 [degrees] F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.” —Time magazine, 1974.
- “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.” —Associated Press, 1989.
- “Unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return.” —former Vice President Al Gore, 2006.
- “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” —Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), 2019.
Green Energy Is An Impossible Task
Before the main post, here is a 2014 Google FLASHBACK where sanity prevailed a bit:
We came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.
[….]
“Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”
Google Joins the Common Sense Crew On Renewable Energies – Finally! (RPT)
POWERLINE!
I will add an older post below this excellent POWERLINE blogpost:
Liberals tell us that we are in the midst of a transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar energy. The reality is that no such transition is taking place, nor will it. This video by Professor Simon Michaux, who doesn’t take issue with global warming hype, explains one of several reasons why this is true: the mineral requirements of a wind- and solar-based energy system can’t possibly be met.
This description accompanies the YouTube video:
The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels, is much larger than first thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to meeting demand. Current reported mineral reserves are also not enough in size. Most concerning is copper as one of the flagged shortfalls.
Before the video, here are a few screenshots from it. This one shows the principal metals needed for a wind and solar energy system, and compares those requirements with actual production of those commodities as of 2019, the last “normal” pre-covid year. Note that 189 years worth of copper production, 400 years of nickel production, 9,921 years of lithium production, 1,733 years of cobalt production, 29,113 years of germanium production, and so on, would be needed for the first 20 years of wind and solar installations. Then we would have to do it all over again. Talk about a lack of sustainability!
This chart looks at known global reserves of key minerals, as a percentage of what would be needed to replace fossil fuels. Note, for example, that known lithium reserves amount to less than 3% of what would be needed to replace fossil fuels with wind, solar and batteries, for the first 20 years. Known cobalt reserves amount to less than 4% of what would be needed for the first generation, and so on. Keep in mind, too, that mining projects typically take something like 20 years to come on line. Longer, if the environmentalists get their way.
[….]
Another point that is often overlooked is that mining companies exploit the lowest-cost minerals first–those that are most plentiful and easiest to extract. If demand increases exponentially, then much more expensive sources will be brought into play. This means that the cost of basic minerals like copper, nickel, cobalt and so on will skyrocket as demand increases, perhaps by orders of magnitude. I don’t think anyone has even attempted to assess the full cost of a “green” energy system when those price increases are taken into account.
HERE IS MY RECENT ELECTRIC VEHICLE UPDATE
BATTERIES
In an excellent post linking to a German documentary (30-minutes) and study showing the devastation to Chili of lithium mining, we find the following:
German ZDF public television recently broadcast a report showing how electric cars are a far cry from being what they are all cracked up to be by green activists.
The report titled: “Batteries in twilight – The dark side of e-mobility” [now not available] shows how the mining of raw materials needed for producing the massive automobile batteries is highly destructive to the environment. For example, two thirds of the cobalt currently comes from the Congo, where the mining rights have been acquired by China. Other materials needed include manganese, lithium and graphite.
Every electric car battery needs about 20 – 30 kg of lithium.
The mining of the raw materials often takes place in third world countries where workers are forced to work under horrendous conditions and no regard is given to protecting the environment. When it comes to “going green”, it seems everything flies out the window….
- The production of lithium through evaporation ponds uses a lot of water – around 21 million litres per day. Approximately 2.2 million litres of water is needed to produce one ton of lithium. (EURO NEWS)
AGAIN… here is a Facebook post of the same thing regarding Lithium Fields:
This is a Lithium leach field.
This is what your Electric Car batteries are made of.
It is so neuro-toxic that a bird landing on this stuff dies in minutes.
Take a guess what it does to your nervous system?
Pat yourself on the back for saving the environment.
Chile, 2nd largest lithium producer, is having water-scarcity problems as this technology takes so much water to produce battery-grade lithium. 2000 tons: 1 ton.
And the current version of the “inflation reduction act” wants 100% of EV battery components produced in the US.
Lead, nickel, lithium, cadmium, alkaline, mercury and nickel metal hydride.
Batteries are a collection of things that are extremely deadly.
Alternative fuels/energy is a DIRTY BUSINESS… but the left who live in the seclusion of the New York Times and MSNBC would never know this. I can show a graph showing skyrocketing carbon emissions worldwide for the past decade and that the temperature has dropped during this time by a small amount, and it is like showing them instructions to build an IKEA bookcase with instructions written in Gaelic!
MINING FOR MINERALS/METALS
What about the impact and supply of the materials needed to produce batteries? TreeHugger has a good post that mentions some of these environmental pitfalls. These issues involve many devices we use daily (cell phones, lap-top computers, rechargeable batteries, etc.), but add to this burden a mandated or subsidized car industry:
…lithium batteries take a tremendous amount of copper and aluminum to work properly. These metals are needed for the production of the anode & the cathode, cables and battery management systems. Copper and aluminum have to be mined, processes and manufacturing which takes lots of energy, chemicals and water which add to their environmental burden.
[….]
First of all, this study emphasizes that there would be less Lithium available than previously estimated for the global electric car market. It also states the fact that some of the largest concentrations of Lithium in the world are found in some of the most beautiful and ecologically fragile places, such as The Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. The authors note:
“It would be irresponsible to despoil these regions for a material which can only ever be produced in sufficient quantities to serve a niche market of luxury vehicles for the top end of the market. We live in an age of Environmental Responsibility where the folly of the last two hundred years of despoilment of the Earth’s resources are clear to see. We cannot have “Green Cars” that have been produced at the expense of some of the world’s last unspoiled and irreplaceable wilderness. We have a responsibility to rectify our errors and not fall into the same traps as in the past.”
[….]
The report estimates that there would be less Lithium available than previously estimated for the global electric car market, as demand is rising for competing markets, such as cellular telephones and other electronic devices. At the same time, due to a great concentration of Lithium found in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina (70% of the world’s deposits), the United States and other developed countries needing the material will be subject to geopolitical forces similar to those they have already encountered from the member countries of OPEC…
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In an excellent article we see the projected demands on other metals involved in the battery and transit goals:
….Regarding the demand for the different minerals, in the case of aluminum, according to our results, the demand for minerals from the rest of the economy would stand out, with the requirement for batteries having little influence. Copper would have a high demand from the rest of the economy, but it would also have a significant demand from vehicles, infrastructure and batteries. Cobalt would be in high demand because of the manufacture of batteries with the exception of the LFP battery that does not have this mineral, in the case of its demand from the rest of the economy it can be stated that it would be important but less influential than the demand for batteries. Lithium would have very high requirements from all the batteries and with a reduced demand from the rest of the economy. Manganese would have an important but contained demand coming from LMO and NMC batteries, since the requirements for this mineral would stand out in the rest of the economy. Finally, nickel would have a high demand from NMC and NCA batteries, but its main demand would come from the rest of the economy.
The batteries that would require the least materials are the NCA and LFP batteries. The NMC battery has been surpassed in performance and mineral usage by the NCA. The LiMnO2 battery has a very poor performance, so it has been doomed to disuse in electric vehicles. In addition, the LFP battery, the only one that does not use critical materials in the cathode (other than lithium), also has poor performance, requiring very large batteries (in size and weight) to match the capacity and power of batteries using cobalt.
Charging infrastructure, rail and copper used in electrified vehicles could add up to more than 17% of the copper reserve requirement in the most unfavourable scenario (high EV) and 7% in the most favourable (degrowth), so these are elements that must be taken into account…..
(GEEDS)
Half of all Cobalt made goes into electric cars.
Are Electric Vehicles really clean? | They run on dirty energy and blood of children as young as 6. | Electric cars drive human rights abuse and child labour. | China is one of the villains in this story. | Are electric carmakers equally guilty too? | Palki Sharma Upadhyay tells you.
TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE….
…. lithium is also not the only battery ingredient with a dark side. Perhaps the darkest of all is cobalt, which is commonly used, alongside lithium, in the batteries of many electric vehicles.
More than half of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). According to a 2016 Amnesty International Report, 20% of the cobalt exported from the DRC comes from artisanal mines, in which miners use either their hands or very basic tools to dig out rocks from tunnels deep underground, often for as little as $2 a day.
Worse still, UNICEF estimates 40,000 of the workers in these mines are children under the age of 18, with some as young as 7 years old. Cobalt mining also comes with serious health risks. Chronic exposure to dust containing cobalt can cause the potentially fatal lung disease “hard metal lung disease.” Many fatal accidents have also been caused by mines not being constructed or managed safely.
Clearly then, in the face of such widespread environmental damage and human rights abuses, the ethics of electric vehicles is far more complicated than the expensive car adverts and glowing newspaper headlines would have us believe…..
(VARSITY)
LAND NEEDED
Why were federal tax subsidies extended for wind and solar by Congress? Again. For the umpteenth time! We are against subsidies because they distort markets. Those politicians who support these market-distorting policies should at least be forced to answer the question: “How much is enough?” Taxpayers have been subsidizing wind and solar corporations for more than 40 years! These companies have gotten fat and happy on your money, and Congress keeps giving them more of it. This video is based on a Texas Public Policy Foundation report that explains why it’s long past time to stop wind and solar from stuffing their bank accounts with your tax dollars.
- To give you a sense of scale, to replace the energy from one average natural gas well, which sits on about four acres of land, would require 2,500 acres of wind turbines. That is a massive amount of land. You would have to cover this entire nation with wind turbines in an attempt to replace the electricity that we generate from coal, natural gas, and nuclear power, and even that would not get the job done. (CFACT)
This is from a recent BLOOMBERG article:
At his international climate summit in April, President Joe Biden vowed to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. The goal will require sweeping changes in the power generation, transportation and manufacturing sectors. It will also require a lot of land.
Wind farms, solar installations and other forms of clean power tend to take up more space on a per-watt basis than their fossil-fuel-burning brethren. A 200-megawatt wind farm, for instance, might require spreading turbines over 13 square miles (36 square kilometres). A natural-gas power plant with that same generating capacity could fit onto a single city block.
Achieving Biden’s goal will require aggressively building more wind and solar farms, in many cases combined with giant batteries. To fulfill his vision of an emission-free grid by 2035, the U.S. needs to increase its carbon-free capacity by at least 150%. Expanding wind and solar by 10% annually until 2030 would require a chunk of land equal to the state of South Dakota, according to Princeton University estimates and an analysis by Bloomberg News. By 2050, when Biden wants the entire economy to be carbon free, the U.S. would need up to four additional South Dakotas to develop enough clean power to run all the electric vehicles, factories and more.
WRECKING OUR PLANET TO SAVE IT
Earth Day 2021 is April 22nd. Therefore, eco-activist groups will be preaching the gospel of wind & solar power and the importance of biodiversity. What those trying to “save the planet” fail to understand (or more likely ignore) is that these two priorities are in direct conflict. Wind & solar require far more land than nuclear, natural gas and coal power. They are also far more destructive to regions of high biodiversity as well as large birds, bats and endangered species. As we celebrate Earth Day, let’s consider the significant environmental consequences of attempting to provide electricity through low density, unreliable sunshine and breezes.
Vice President Joe Biden aims to be the most progressive president on the issue of climate change. The man who spent most of 2020 hiding in the basement believes the future of energy is renewable energy like wind and solar. Biden should go back to the basement, watch Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Humans,” and rethink his advocacy for renewable energy. Wind and solar are not the answer, and the idea of converting our fossil fuel-based economy into renewables could be a devastating take-down to society.
- What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change: Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us. So what will? (SPETRUM)
- Shocker: Top Google Engineers Say Renewable Energy ‘Simply won’t work’ (WATTS UP WITH THAT)
- Polluting the Beauty and Cleanliness Of Our World With Renewable Energy (RPT)
- Wind and Solar More Harmful To Environment Than Helpful (RPT)
FLASHBACK
- What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change: Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us. So what will? (SPETRUM)
- Shocker: Top Google Engineers Say Renewable Energy ‘Simply won’t work’ (WATTS UP WITH THAT)
- Polluting the Beauty and Cleanliness Of Our World With Renewable Energy (RPT)
- Wind and Solar More Harmful To Environment Than Helpful (RPT)
So it seems that these more left leaning environmentalists think it is okay to spend billions of tax-payer money and regulate businesses on ideas that do not work anywhere but in Utopian dreams. Let’s end with WUWT quoting these Google Ph.D.s and then segway out with commentary:
“Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”
I must say I’m personally surprised at the conclusion of this study. I genuinely thought that we were maybe a few solar innovations and battery technology breakthroughs away from truly viable solar power. But if this study is to be believed, solar and other renewables will never in the foreseeable future deliver meaningful amounts of energy.
Apple as well is struggling with it’s Utopian — only works on paper — dreams.
POWERLINE notes that “yesterday’s Wall Street Journal story about the production difficulties of the Arizona supplier that Apple selected to make sapphire screens for the iPhone 6 was fascinating in its own right, but there was one little detail in the story that zipped by too quickly.” Continuing they quote the WSJ:
Mr. Squiller, the GT operations chief, told the bankruptcy court that GT lost three months of production to power outages and delays building the facility.
Whoa, slow down there a moment: what’s this about power outages? I’d sure like to know more of the full story here. Was this simply bad engineering on site, or was there a problem with the local grid or the energy sources supplying the grid in that area? Grid stability is going to be a more serious issue going forward as we compel more and more “renewable” (meaning “less stable”) energy as part of the EPA’s mania to restructure the electricity sector through the Clean Air Act.