The latest academic voodoo doll tossed at Fossil Fuels is a study claiming that the industry gets $65 billion in “implicit” subsidies in the US.
The authors of the latest paper assume the broken climate models work, and then guesstimate what the cost of all that theoretical warming would be with economic models that aren’t much better. It’s a paywalled paper, but they don’t appear to account for all the net benefits of coal, oil and gas which include, keeping people alive and fertilizing forests and fields around the world for free. These aren’t guesstimates from the future but known good and great gifts from the last century or two.
Greening the Earth. Zaichun Zhu, (2016)
Send them the bill: the fossil fuel companies are subsidizing taxpayers
How much is a hundred years of free fertilizer worth?
If only academic institutions were more than Big Gov advertising agencies they might also have considered that fossil fuel companies are never paid for their part in boosting agricultural yields, nor in greening the forests. Some 18 million square kilometers of Earths surface has more biomass. Arid regions of the world are 11% greener, mostly thanks to CO2 and deserts are shrinking. If CO2 actually caused much warming we might even be overrun with cheap soy and corn and crops could grow another 1,200 kilometers closer to the North Pole.
Cold weather kills 20 times more people than heat. If Kotchen can assume CO2 causes warming (despite the lack of evidence for that), it follows then that it must have saved countless lives. How many more senior citizens would die prematurely if they are forced to pay more for electricity and thus can’t afford to turn the heater on in winter? In the UK alone, in one winter there were at least 20,000 more deaths. All over the world, people die more in cooler weather, even in hot Brisbane.
Fossil fuels makes farmers richer, food more affordable, keeps people warm, greens the planet, employs thousands, pays taxes, saves forests from being razed for Drax, moves nearly everything that needs to move, and creates more flowers.
In a fair world, Yale should give back all government funding until it raises its standards and stops producing politically biased, incompetent studies.
The producer benefits of implicit fossil fuel subsidies in the United States
Matthew J. Kotchen, PNAS
There are real and substantial financial implications to fossil fuel producers of policies that seek to correct market failures brought about by climate change, adverse health effects from local pollution, and inefficient transportation. The producer benefits of the existing policy regime in the United States are estimated at $62 billion annually during normal economic conditions. This translates into large amounts for individual companies due to the relatively small number of fossil fuel producers. This paper provides company-specific estimates, and these numbers clarify why many in the fossil fuel industry oppose more efficient regulatory reform; they may also shape the way policymakers view the prospects for additional subsidies going forward.
“The financial benefit because of unpriced costs borne by society is comparable to 18% of net income from continuing domestic operations for the median natural gas and oil producer in 2017–2018, and it exceeds net income for the majority of coal producers. “
And yet the companies themselves don’t even try to defend what they do? Why?
Kotchen notes that he contacted all of the companies included in his study and found that none of them had anything to say about implicit subsidies.
See the chart of how desperate plants are for carbon dioxide. The fertilizer carefully released to the world by the gas oil and coal industries is a gift to farmers and consumers, keeping the price of pumpkins low.
REFERENCE
Zaichun Zhu, et al (2016) Greening of the Earth and its drivers, Nature Climate Change, Letter, doi:10.1038/nclimate3004
All very well, but can we also remember that the man-made “carbon pollution” is just 3 or 4 per cent of the natural carbon dioxide increase that is occurring.
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La la la…I can’t here you!..La la la….
– Adam Bandt
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By evolution standards we opened Pandora’s Box by harnessing fossil fuels.
It is a poison to our species.
Don’t believe me?
Kindly have a sip.
Evolution was/is changing into more complex chemical interactions as water is lost in space by evaporation and collision from objects.
Our planet has always had an over population problem and moved on land as waters recede.
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What is the source of 97% of CO2 increase?
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(Very slight) Global Warming. At least of the ocean surfaces. 98% of all CO2 is dissolved in the oceans.
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I’m not sure what you are getting at. Michael claimed that the 100ppm or so increase in CO2 was 3% human and 97% not human. Are you saying it is coming out of the oceans?
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Pay attention professor.
TdeF has been saying that consistently for a number of years.
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And we humans can trace our ancient origins to the oceans. Most fish do not have lungs, they filter oxygen from the water with gills. Sharks cannot stop moving. Later fish can operate their gills with muscles. Humans though have 400sq.metres of wet tissue though which we can absorb oxygen and release CO2. 0.04% coming in and 8-14% CO going out. We are sea creatures and carry our salt water in our blood. We cannot live long without salt, which is why ancient Egyptians were paid in salt or salty beer. And the Romans in sal, salt and the origin of salary. The problem with cash in a non manufacturing society is that there is nothing much to buy except food.
Anyway, the cycle of sunshine to produce O2 and carbohydrates was established in the oceans, the source of all life on earth. Just because we cannot imagine breathing under water does not mean that fish and underwater plants do not have an abundant supply of oxygen and output carbon dioxide. I have read that floating phytoplankton produce half the world’s O2.
So yes, the oceans are the source of all life. It revolves around sunlight, oxygen and carbon dioxide which used to be plentiful, not in dire shortage as today. It’s hard to imagine the jungles which existed in the time of 150 tonne dinosaurs, but nothing like that exists today. All our oil, gas, coal is made from ancient forests and plant matter.
And CO2 is special. It is so easily compressed and freezes easily too, under pressure and the pressure in the ocean goes up 1 atmosphere every 10 metres, so a lot of the CO2 is a liquid sloshing around.
Without the oceans we would not have any rain, no lakes, rivers, streams, crops, plants. Without the oceans we would have no weather either. So yes, it is all about the oceans. And the huge amount of gas and energy they contain, swirling around at up to 7 km below the surface.
Now heat the surface and see what happens to the dissolved CO2. I would call it the warm beer effect.
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And I have yet to read an explanation of how CO2 heats the oceans without heating the air first. And over 33 years the thin air, 1/1400th of the heat capacity of the oceans has not warmed more than 0.3C. These temperature records are awarded down to 0.001C, which is ridiculous.
So by Occam’s razor is increased CO2 due to ocean surface warming or is ocean warming due to increased CO2. Your choice.
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Well OK. Please write more about these topics that I am ignorant of.
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Consider equilibrium. All physical systems have it. It underlies all of physics and chemistry. Conservation and equilibrium. So CO2 is in both the air and the water. Who decides how much is in each? Certainly not humans. So the CO2 level was 0.025% was there before the invention of the internal combustion engine and now it is .04%. Why?
The answer is that ‘obviously’ we did it. Except that should be provable. After all you can tell the difference between fossil fuel CO2 and much more modern CO2. And that analysis shows that there is very little fossil fuel CO2 still in the air, well under 4%. The world size equilibrium dwarfs our little output and the oceans swallow it in rapid exchange. Which is why the CO2 graph shows no detail from human activity, although we can see the little bumps from the seasons. So temperature determines CO2, not the other way around.
And the half life of CO2 in the air is not 80 years as the IPCC says in one report or thousands of years as in another. It is about 5 years and the equilibrium is very rapid. The system is self cleaning.
Even with the Exxon Valdez and the billions spent clearing the beaches, beaches which were not cleaned in the project were clean in the same time. It turns out that the planet cleans itself and any chemical with stored energy is food for something. And oil is old rotted plant matter, not some industrial product.
Enough?
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TdeF has written at length and frequently about these topics. As you have been around here for quite some time Gee Aye, I am surprised that you now need to ask!
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Thanks TdeF.
Another Tour de Force! Very nicely explained.
I thought the Oil was the product of rotting animal matter, but it might not be.
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Six terrestrial volcanos burb out CO2 , and the North Atlantic rift belches CH4 . Not to mention the thousands of chimneys and potholes along the tectonic plates and the spas and springs known for their mineralised bubbly water. if all the humans died tomorrow the Earth would continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere .
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And the oceans would take it all. In fact if you look at the CO2 graph, you can see no evidence of volcanoes, bushfires, a world shutdown of cars and aircraft. It’s as if humans do not exist.
This idea that we humans are significant on a planetary scale plays to our newfound arrogance, masters of the planet, masters of the universe. Except that it’s not true. With our agriculture, cities and mining, we are barely scratching the surface. Literally.
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And it’s been fifty years since we put a man on the moon and we are no closer to putting man on mars. NASA would rather be weather experts. But to predict climates, you have to be water experts.
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Hi TdeF.
Good old Henry’s Law. It means that there’s more than enough CO2 in the oceans to throw the climate models into a flat spin. All it takes a little bit of warming, and then the oceans outgas, and then (apparently) we get more CO2 – induced atmospheric warming, more ocean warming, more CO2 etc etc.
A runaway greenhouse – if it were to happen – would have occurred billions of years ago. When do you think we should tell the children?
Cheers,
Speedy.
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Fully agree.
I also note that the Wikipedia entry on Henry’s law has been rewritten to downplay the dependence of outgassing on surface temperature, given that air pressure is near constant. Warm the liquid, more gas leaves. The warm beer effect. Everyone knows it. it’s the very obvious explanation for CO2 climbing.
Meanwhile we are supposed to believe the CO2 heats the air and the air heats the oceans and that is destroying the Great Barrier Reef. And ridiculously that as the oceans get hotter, they absorb more CO2. Ocean acidification it is called. All that is contrary to what is obvious in a glass of fizz.
Poor old Henry’s law has been edited to downplay the obvious. They even go to say that temperature has little effect. It just changes a constant in an equation. Now that’s devious.
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Any thoughts on the calcite compensation depth & the ocean floor sediment sequestration of the C [ carbonate] in the calcite?
[& the continuing reduction in the dissolved CO2 that this facilitates i.e. keeping the solubility product of CO2 ” hungry”]
00
An English translation of the full Voltaire passage
So while they pull down statues of leaders and put up ones of Greta, nobody dares stop the absurdity.
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This comment is vying with the first one for status of most off-topic comment hijack award.
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What would you like my comment to say?
Wait a sec. Novel idea. How about you write your own.
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How much is a hundred years of free
fertilizerfood worth?Photosynthesis: The process in green plants and certain other organisms by which carbohydrates are synthesized from carbon dioxide and a source of hydrogen (usually water), using light as an energy source. Most forms of photosynthesis release oxygen as a byproduct.
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Yes the term fertilization effect is an unfortunate misnomer. Fertilizer is like vitamins, supplying essential trace materials. In contrast CO2 is the global food supply, together with water supplying almost all of the mass of the plant plus all of its energy.
Watching a child grow is watching processed CO2 be reprocessed.
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Yes David,
“Yes the term fertilization effect is an unfortunate misnomer.”
Very much like saying “Increase the oxygen in the air the animals breath is like a fertilizer to animals especially humans.”
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Taxes are a negative subsidy and fossil fuels are the most heavily taxed commodity on the planet.
Although, how can you expect anyone who buys in to the bogus unscientific claims coming from the IPCC to get anything right. Especially things that require applying higher order brain functionality to filter superfluous emotional triggers, as opposed to relying only on the primitive emotional responses being invoked to support what’s otherwise unsupportable.
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I am with Trump on this one – more fake news. Its impossible both logistically and practially to stop using fossil fuels – we derive more energy from them than any other source . All of the scenarios that require “zero carbon” are logistically impossible.Making coal,
gas and oil more expensive won’t change that.
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But..but fusion power is only 20 years away..
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As it has been for 60 years.
Join the miaculous battery in a couple of years club.
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Lies and damn lies
We are committing economic suicide as a nation bowing down go the global elite
Universities no longer fulfilling their primary functions and unless completely revamped are just part of the elitist cabal
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Practicality and logistics aside, it’s completely unnecessary and wholly ineffective even if the IPCC was correct about the effect of CO2 emissions. It’s more than just fake news, as believing in this nonsense will lead the developed world to purposefully harm itself, perhaps even to the point of no return.
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Then there is the opportunity cost.
When I studied economics in the 90s (as a mature age student) one of the things we learned was the opportunity cost. The opportunity cost is the forgone benefit that would have been derived by an option not chosen.
Leaving coal in the ground has an opportunity cost, the benefit lost by not using coal to produce other goods.
Solar panels and windmills have opportunity costs, one foregone benefit being the benefit that would have been derived from land covered by solar panels or windmills that could have been used for something else.
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How do you know that it is C02 that is responsible. nitrogen, land cover change and climate change by way of global temperature, precipitation and sunlight changes all contribute to the greening effect. According to modelling (so it must be wrong, according to the wisdom of this blog), C02 contributes 70% of the observed greening.
In other studies C02 absorption in crops is highest in the mid latitudes, but unchanged in the tropics, or in the high latitudes, a pointer to the role that nitrogen or temperature or sunlight or all of them combined has on chloroplast production. Notably yields have not significantly improved.
But yes a 5 year old letter should outweigh all the other evidence
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More nonsense from Peter. Major food crop yields have greatly improved since man’s CO2 emission became significant (as well as global total production).
It’s not only the effect of CO2, it’s all the other leverage that fossil fuels provide, chemicals, energy, machinery.
e.g. Global grain yields have gone up about 200% since 1960
This means only politics/wars prevent the world being hunger free and more land can be left free for nature.
https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields
It’s a massive win for fossil fuels all round.
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On the map in this post, some of the darkest green (greatest leaf area change) is in the Arctic region.
Peter, does your modelling agree with this?
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Peter, your lack of knowledge is showing. It is ok to quote papers of wackademics in their ivory towers but you need to get out and talk to the farmers that are using green houses and/or very large poly tunnels to grow vegetables and adding CO2 to those enclosed structures to get large increases in production.
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Growth is dictated not by total resources available, but by the scarcest resource. It’s called the Liebig law of the minimum. The CO2 fertilisation is real but only if there are no nutrient limitations.
The anthropogenic warming effect is also contributing to green-up in boreal regions but in no way does it offset deforestation elsewhere.
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Simon the deserts don’t exactly have an abundance of nutrients so why are they greening?
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Actually deserts have adequate nutrients robert, what they don’t have is water.
CO2 allows plants to use water much more efficiently. Thus CO2 is not only fertalising plants, but allowing them to grow where the water availability was previously insufficient.
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Simon,
“The anthropogenic warming effect is also contributing to green-up in boreal regions but in no way does it offset deforestation elsewhere.”
Where’s you evidence for this anthropogenic warming effect? Urban heat islands is the only major effect, and land use change is humans’ major effect causing ‘heating’ of the environment. Atmospheric CO2 does not heat, it is plant food.
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You could add soil microbes or lightening and thunderstorms ( which bring down soluble nitrogen to the soil) to your list of variables. However only CO2 has increased on the global scale which has resulted in 11% more greening of the planet for the last 20years.
40
The big problem has and still will be, the advertising industry miss representation.
There must be a scientifically based code.
The same old chestnut- Advertising -Misrepresentation-coal smoke
Follow this link https://www.powermag.com/doe-backs-projects-to-produce-hydrogen-from-coal-biomass/
And you will see what I mean. Modern coal plants do not produce the crap shown here.
It is likely the original image has also been photo shopped?
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From your link
Productivity gains between the 1950s and 1990s was rapid, growing 2-3 fold over this period. Since the turn of the millennium however, cereal yields in the UK have been relatively stagnant.
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opps this was a reply to 7.1
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An interesting article regarding the use of the “Wonder Fuel”. (Hydrogen) could be used to replace fossil fuel gasses in Power generation turbines ..
IT CANNOT !
https://www.powermag.com/the-power-interview-ge-unleashing-a-hydrogen-gas-power-future/?itm_source=parsely-api
at best they can ru “High Hydogen” content fuel (50%) before thay have serious issues with materials , leakage, safety etc
Hydrogen has 1/3 the energy content of Methane, but burns much hotter and faster,, both of which are major problems
Whilst burning hydogen does not produce CO2, it does produce serious levels of NOx ! A serious pollutant.
How true the old …. “ There is No free lunch”….. Saying
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Yes – this was my puzzlement too. How has it been determined that CO2 has been the main driver of claimed “greening” of areas of the world that were previously too dry or too cold, or both? Temperature increase (especially with less severe winters) might be a significant factor as well – possibly the main factor. Extra CO2 on its own doesn’t lead to wetter regional climates.
And CO2 is not a fertiliser per se (whether free or not). How much of the greening can be attributed to the application of vast amounts of (non-free) NPK fertiliser in many regions over the last couple of generations?
And there wasn’t much mention of the negative impact of warmer temperatures … such as the melting of permafrost, the shrinking of glaciers, the shrinking of Arctic sea-ice, and the release of methane.
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Let me help you out Tilba , CO2 is a fertiliser and so much more .
https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/greenhouse-carbon-dioxide-supplementation.html
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“CO2 is not a fertiliser per se”. Correct. It is the entire plant.
Photosynthesis is the combination of water, sunlight and CO2 to form ‘hydrated carbon dioxide’, otherwise known as carbohydrate. From this all life is built. It is why the old plant matter forms our gas, peat, coal, oil.
Plants are almost entirely water and carbon dioxide. Humans add a bit of calcium and iron and a few more metals in tiny amounts. Plants do not come from the ground, they come from the water and carbon dioxide in the air. And such fresh water as it in the air comes from evaporation from the oceans or there would be no lakes, rivers, streams, rain.
However the trace elements are needed, most notable Nitrogen , Phosphorous, potassium (Kalium), calcium and various metals. Nitrogen can be absorbed by some plants so that is solved. And the metals are only required in tiny amounts. In humans, the total amount of iron would be a six inch nail. Otherwise we burn like wood because we are carbon dioxide life forms.
So of the three elements, CO2 is the one is very short supply. Sunshine is a given. Oxygen is 22% of the atmosphere. And the one which totally limits all plant growth is CO2, at only 0.04%. Which is why greenhouses uses CO2. Worse, if CO2 levels ever fell under 0.02%, almost all life on earth would cease.
And what warmer temperatures? Where?
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It’s okay … I majored in Biology in high school, and have two subsequent science degrees.
One article: Permafrost melt in Siberia
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The last ice age ended a mere 11,000 years ago. New York was under 1km of ice.
This warming is continuing slowly and it has phases. They are finding trees under the receding ice on what was called Greenland for a reason not long ago. None of that is rapid, catastrophic, man made, tipping point armageddon warming.
It is just the life of an ever changing planet where the aborigines were trapped by rising seas and England cut off from Europe and the Mediterranean crashed into the Black Sea in the biblical flood. You can see where it happened. Noah. Almost living memory and some certainly recorded history from cave paintings in France. well below sea level
And none of it caused very recently by the internal combustion engine.
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No – but the point of Global Warming science is that (a) the rate of temperature change since 1850 is significantly faster than it was over most of the last 11,000 years, and (b) the burning of fossil fuel is contributing to that increased rate.
And it’s not just the running of ICE vehicles – it is also caused by very large numbers of coal-fired power stations, and much else (including industrial-scale agriculture).
It seems to me you hold two contradictory views: (1) that the planet isn’t getting hotter, but (2) the planet is getting hotter but it’s just what it is – we’re in an interglacial period.
There are even views that a warmer planet (and more CO2) is a good thing.
I don’t doubt that we are contributing to global warming through the emitting of greenhouse gases … however I do have a lot of questions concerning what we should do about it.
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CO2 is in equilibrium, like everything else. We did not invent CO2. We did not determine how much is in the atmosphere. There is only a correlation between rising temperatures and increasing CO2 and industrialization, but the temperature rising started at the end of the little ice age in the 1880s. Correlation is not causation.
However highly soluble CO2 is in rapid equilibrium with the CO2 in the oceans, as is oxygen. Fish breathe. Plants need oxygen too. Consider then that 98% of all the CO2 gas is dissolved in the world’s giant oceans. What would happen if the surface heated even a little.
Answer that and you will start to doubt man made CO2 levels. And as I can prove, there is a difference between fossil fuel CO2 which has no radioactive C14 and biosphere CO2 which has C14 from cosmic rays. This is the basis of radio carbon dating. So you can prove absolutely that man’s contribution to CO2 in the air is under 4% in total. And CO2 is good for us. So what is the problem?
Use those science degrees and study this G. J. Fergusson Royal Society 1958.
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“Best Climate Change Temperatures”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/03/26/best-climate-change-temperatures/
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(a)”the rate of temperature change since 1850 is significantly faster than it was over most of the last 11,000 years”
11,000 years is a blink of a geologic eye..
1850 til now even more insignificant.
What temp?
Surface?
Which surface?
A statement based on overly generalized assertions and grossly composite measurements incapable of the level of accuracy required.
Calling it ‘science’ embarrassing.
(b) has been refuted by observation and laughably labeled ‘the Pause’.
Is why Global Warming ain’t science.
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You continually blow the 3 degrees, Biology is the only one you fess up too.
What science are the others, you know for relevance?
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MP
Third degree! An explanation of thye comments?
00
Its true that the planet has been warming and liberating vast amounts of CO2 from natural sources, which would account for the greening. We need to go back to the MWP and RWP to resolve the issue of human induced greening.
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C02 increase mostly stimulates chloroplast production – so greener. it does not stimulate production. As I said yields have not changed, unless you add NPK, water and sunlight.
This is the lame defense for the of dumping C02.
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There is imagined science and real science.
It would be helpful if you understood how trees grow. This from Wikipedia about the experiments of Dutchman Jan Batiste Van Helmont around 1620. He was arrested by the church for these experiments. No one understood that carbon dioxide existed or imagined that air could be heavy, so he could only conclude that trees were made from water. He was half right.
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i’m linking to research and you are….
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Teaching.
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Look up incorrigible.
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Incorrigible, can also be a French word.
I think “harnessed” is more appropriate with the sense of not having any idea where you’re going until the reinsman gives a tug to tell you.
KK
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TdeF
Remember that quote about leading and thinking
20
Horses for courses Peta.
Depends on what’s lacking in your soil and the requirements for the crop you are growing. Australia is largely deficient in P.
On my old block I was heavy in legumes (N fixation) and input nothing to the pasture, trace elements were fed to the cattle via lick, what they did not require was excreted for the pastures.
My new block was poorly managed previously and the soils lacking, (want to destroy your paddocks, put horses in them) I use NPK here and am sowing legumes. Ph is a big player as acidic soils lock up some trace elements, so lime is next.
Water is by far the major requirement, grass will grow without the PK, added N is a bonus, Co2 is a necessity, the more the merrier.
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H2O makes Australia a carbon sink.
https://theconversation.com/record-rains-made-australia-a-giant-green-global-carbon-sink-26646
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That’s right EG. Your linked event was also reported by Detmers et al. (2015) detailing inverse modelling of CO2 data obtained from satellite (GOSAT) borne sensors. See: https://doi.org/10.1002/2015GL065161 . The enhanced sink the latter authors detected for 2011 amounted to some 2800 Mt CO2-e. This contrasts with our reported NGGI emissions for the same year of just 552 Mt CO2-e!
Ha ha! some might say. The year 2011-12 was a very strong La Nina period. What else would you expect with widespread flooding rains? That concerned me also. Fortunately the GOSAT satellite sensor readings have been overlapped by NASA’s OCO-2 satellite. In a recent report – https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2915/the-atmosphere-getting-a-handle-on-carbon-dioxide/ a map is included showing the most persistent carbon dioxide “anomalies” seen by OCO-2 (i.e. where the carbon dioxide is always systematically higher or lower than in the surrounding areas). Positive anomalies are most likely sources of carbon dioxide, while negative anomalies (blue colourations on the map) are most likely to be sinks, or reservoirs, of carbon dioxide. The entire Australian continent is coloured blue. Credit: NASA/JPL Caltech.
Note that these findings (last Link) incorporated most of the strong El Nino weather pattern in 2014-16 cf. Detmers et al. conclusions {first Link} obtained in a strong La Nina weather pattern. Once a sink always a sink? Quo vadis – 2021?
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Good sleuthing.
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Yes Tilba Tilba, “CO2 is not a fertiliser per se (whether free or not).” it is an essential plant food!
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The only plant food.
As plants evolved before humans in a CO2 rich atmosphere, they prospered from capturing sunlight and CO2 into carbohydrates which in turn allowed them to grow and capture more. And slowly they ate all the CO2 until there was very little left but we now had an oxygen planet. Then new lifeforms came which could power themselves with oxygen and eating plants.
And of course newer specialized ones, predators which could live on other animals. But it all started with the most primitive photosynthesis capturing solar energy. So all plants are made from CO2 and thus all other life. And they all burn oxygen to combust the stored energy in carbohydrates.
So CO2 and H2O are the two essential molecules of life. And the energy which powers all life is captured solar energy. And we are told CO2 is pollution and thus all life on earth is pollution and polluting.
And as you read this, you are burning carbohydrates and generating CO2 and wondering whether you should be banned by the Greens.
21
CO2 and so forth are produced by money printing. Money printing can produce as much of anything that you like.
00
If only more people had an in depth understanding of what and how things are produced. Solar energy and electricity are produced by money printing. If you are blessed and are good with the financial elite, you can produce any emission you like in any quantity that you like.
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Re “If only more people had an in depth understanding of what and how things are produced. ”
There is a discussion (intermixed with other subjects) down the comments from
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2021/03/17/differences-in-covid-trends-confusing/#comment-141191
around this and how real skills are not implicit in the degrees waved by new hires, the difference between “design intent” and “design implementation” and how easy it is to lose those skills.
00
” …. C02 absorption in crops is highest in the mid latitudes, but unchanged in the tropics … ”
True. My measurements on the Pacific shoreline of the Sunshine State confirm this. CO2 levels are higher overnight because there is no photosynthesis taking place. The level starts to drop after sunrise, but begins to increase again around noon. The mangroves, sea grasses and coastal woodlands upwind have sucked up the amount they can handle, and start to close their stomata. This is the “Dry Tropics”, but 10 years after Cyclone Yasi, I have recently cleared 3+ tonnes of re-growth, some of it 15m high.
50
“correct market failures brought about by climate change, adverse health effects from local pollution, and inefficient transportation. ”
I count five absurd statements. What Climate Change? Where? What market failures? How are they produced by Climate Change? Why is Carbon dioxide pollution let alone ‘local pollution’ and how is transportation ‘inefficient’. Just try a horse and cart against today’s mass transit systems powered by coal.
The premise of this article is not founded in fact but by Green fantasy. And Economists should be kept away from public policy. They do not agree with each other given the same facts. Unaccountable social engineering based on unproven theories.
If you think Climate models stink and have never had a single prediction come true, economic models are even worse and pushing economic models based on Climate models should be an indictable offence.
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After 33 years of this Global Warming and fifteen years of ‘Climate Change’, where is it warming exactly? The world just had one of the coldest years on record, particularly North America and Australia and many other places. So where has the Climate Changed? Or is that a process so subtle the instruments cannot detect it?
Or are all the windmills working to reduce the temperature? And if so, why are we building more? If not, why are we still building them?
And why is CO2 still going up steadily, as if humans have no effect? If the aim of the $1.5Trillion a year is to reduce CO2, why is it untouched by the biggest world expenditure since WWII? And why are we continuing?
The real economic question is what is happening to all those thousands of billions of dollars? And the moral question is whether they are being spent wisely? Otherwise it is the biggest waste of money in human history. And that is criminal.
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on of the coldest years on record?
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/2020-tied-for-warmest-year-on-record-nasa-analysis-shows
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And would NASA lie to us? They put the last man on the moon fifty years ago and have been looking for a job ever since.
What do they have to say about the Middle Ages warming and the Little Ice Age which ended in the 1880s and the Roman warming? That’s why they say ‘on record’ by which they mean, their records.
Plus even if 2020 tied with 2016, so? It means however that the years 2015,2017,2018,2019 were cooler.
And freezing 2021 has been a weather shocker for NASA who started this whole man made Global Warming thing in 1988.
It was supposed to be getting steadily rapidly inexorably warmer. That was their story in 1988. Now it is news if the temperature does not go down.
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So you have no proof for your assertion? And I will point out here that disparagement is not an argument, but it does show your ethical and moral values in a very bad light
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If 2020 ties with 2016, that means temperatures are going up? You do not need to question my ethical and moral values to answer this question.
141
Or alternatively that according to NASA, the temperature has not increased in 5 years. How is that warming?
71
There you go making another disparaging insertion with no links.
71
Peter Fitzroy,
It doesn’t take very long for you to descend into name-calling does it?
The great John Coombes would so often remind his troops – and yes, I have been present on occasions when he did so:
“Always fight the issue, never fight the man.
As soon as you start fighting the man, you have lost the argument.”
As I said to you in a recent post, wake up, Peter.
By descending into questioning another’s ethics, as you have yet again done here, when all that that person might reasonably be accused of is that they are endeavouring to educate you in basic science, you have just lost both the argument and the plot.
Wake up, Peter Fitzroy.
Thanks, TdeF, I admire you for your patience with this bloke.
Regards,
Paul Miskelly
31
Wasn’t it the cold that brought down Nasa’s Challenger.
51
We should be thinking about the world’s biggest solar collector, the oceans cover three-quarters of the planet. What is happening in the atmosphere is not necessarily a reflection of the future, because the ocean oscillations are leading the charge.
110
Agreed. And at 350x the weight and 4x the specific heat of the thin atmosphere, the greatest heat storage on the planet is in the world’s oceans which are on average 3.5km thick and never freeze.
110
The point of Global Warming mechanics is that the additional greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trap heat brought in by the sun. What goes on in the oceans is important, but not the main issue – the atmosphere is.
112
Yeah, industrial CO2 will be the death of us.
https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-relentless-rise-of-carbon-dioxide/
11
Consider that water has a pressure of 1 atmosphere in 10 metres. That means the top 10 metres of water weighs as much as the entire atmosphere.
Now consider that the average depth of the ocean is 3.4km. So the ocean weighs as much as 340x the atmosphere.
Add the fact that air is an insulator, not great at storing heat. The ocean is 4x better.
Now say again that the oceans are not important. In fact they are the weather. Studying the effects on the atmosphere is not studying the causes, the ocean cycles and on a grander scale, the sun cycles.
Plus every time the models are wrong, what do they blame? Ocean cycles. Which they do not and cannot predict.
101
we are not aquatic. Can you explain why the atmospheric C02 has climbed so precipitously
115
50% in 120 years is not precipitously. It’s 0.42% per year. Seasonal variations are bigger. And there is no evidence of human activity in the graph.
And see #1.3.1 for the simplest of answers to your question.
101
And who said you are not aquatic. You are waterproof. And you can swim. No different then to dolphins, seals, whales. All mammals which went back to a water life. You can see their legs. It’s why they have flat tail flukes and the movement is up and down where fish tails are vertical and their movement side to side. Formerly Quadruped mammals, they have feet. And they have joints and toes. And the flippers have fingers. Which brings me to Ian Thorpe and his size 17 feet. If anyone wore flippers that size, they would be banned.
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50% is 150 year is not precipitous? Then what is?
you can not live the ocean, we would soon dehydrate, or our skin will absorb water and tissues will soon rip apart from immense turgidity. bit of a race really
TdeF are you going to try to say something even remotely logical?
110
‘Can you explain why the atmospheric C02 has climbed so precipitously?’
I think the NASA graph is a false reading, something happens to CO2 under pressure. This precipitous height will have disappeared in a few hundred years.
41
Plant stomata is a better proxy for CO2 than Antarctic ‘lazy’ cores and they indicate that long before the industrial revolution there was more variability than the NASA graph shows.
The Greenland ice cores also show CO2 variability and these can be matched with other proxies and observation.
31
The idiots that produced that report need to get out and live in the real world.
Where I live in the south of France we are still having single figure degree C temperatures at night which is not normal, our high hill still has snow in it and got another load added a few nights ago – don’t tell me that last year and this year are the hottest in actuality, they might be in the world of computer models and ‘adjusted’ temperature readings but not in real life.
171
That wasn’t funny Fitz.
01
It wasn’t meant to be
14
Good point, I will ignore comments in this class from now on
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Yes indeed TdeF, evidence for CO2 warming the atmosphere is in short supply —
Studies like an observational study (Zhang et al., 2020https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs42832-020-0047-1) determined “temperatures of atmospheric air with substantially higher CO2 concentration (ranging from 3200 ppm to 16,900 ppm) were lower than that with the lower CO2 concentration (480 ppm)”
Another study that did a computer modeling (Drotos et al., 2020-https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16000870.2019.1699387) assessed that when CO2 goes beyond 4 times pre-industrial – at 1,120 ppm “climate sensitivity decreases to nearly zero” but also of not is the climate cyclically cools by 10 K.
41
Of course these recent papers only confirmed what was already known from Van Gardingen et al., 1995, and Balkenhol et al., 2016.
30
For me both the “fertiliser effect” and the “greenhouse effect” are both misnomers. They are both highly inaccurate terms used to dumb down a subject. CO2 is not a fertiliser because it is the base building block of all life on earth. Fertilisers in agriculture are regarded as additives only. Same as greenhouse effect – the atmosphere works nothing like a greenhouse. Anyone who has worked in a greenhouse knows the greatest force in that structure is the reduction of cross air flow (convection) by the physical nature of both the roof and more importantly the walls. The walls/ roof of a greenhouse stop the OUTSIDE cooler air coming in. The small retention of heat by those same walls/ roof is only a minor force. Arrhenius had it all wrong way back in the late 1800’s. I have never understood how CO2 got to be rated as a “pollutant” – you might as well call water a toxin as it responsible for 100% of drowning deaths. It’s all silly.
101
Trolls here claim that coal is subsidised to divert attention from discussion about wind and solar taxpayer funded subsidies.
But they are referring to company tax deductions for expenses incurred in producing taxable profit and fuel excise rebate on fuel used off public roads, the fuel tax being for road maintenance and building of roads.
140
In particular, when the Federal government introduced a tax on diesel, ostensibly to pay for National road infrastructure, two things were clear. This mainly hit trucks and farmers. And the miners in particular build their own roads which ultimately become private property, valuable infrastructure. So they were given an exemption because it meant they were paying for the roads twice.
However in the language of the Green party, this is a subsidy, not paying an unfair and inapprorpiate tax. These companies do not pay tax because they should not and they are building our roads for free.
151
So right TdeF. Not only Greens use that ridiculous argument. Some of our agriculture export competing countries have also used that crazy argument to allege Australian farmers gets subsidies!! I can remember our supposed ally(??) US making such a claim – but it was back in the Obama /Democrats administration. So, maybe that explains a lot.
91
The Greens also have a habit of double counting the emissions from coal;
1. When it is loaded on board ship for export (estimated emissions when it is burnt)
2. Coal burnt in Australia.
And then the Greens criticise Australia for being, in their deception, responsible for higher emissions than our statistics report.
51
How is that double counting? They’re counting the emissions of exported coal plus the emissions of coal used in Australia. Are you saying it is double-counted on an international scale (emissions are also counted in the importing countries)?
111
Coal only burns once, and emissions are only released once.
70
If someone were to buttonhole me on the street and demand I make some statement about or defense of the “subsidies” I receive by my use of not fully priced fossil fuels, or being able to externalize the “costs” of my lifestyle, or my entitlements by way of my relatively pale skin (I am approximately as dark as many north Africans I have met, but that is no defense), I am sure I would have no comment as well.
Why provide any ammunition to someone who is apparently unbalanced and why debate with someone obviously ignorant?
61
As they say KK, never argue with an idiot, they will only drag you down to their level and beat you over the head with experience.
60
Kevin
Many years ago I was given the advice that, in such a situation, you quote the reference and leave the recipient to do the reading. You do not tell them what it means
00
In the US, fossil fuels are rarely subsidized, but rather given tax breaks, which technically aren’t subsidies. The media erroneously combines tax breaks and subsidies under the “subsidies” banner, so as to say, “look, fossil fuels receive subsidies, too” and fool a majority of the people. Of course a subsidy is the government giving money, and a tax break simply lets you keep more of what was yours to begin with. No one is “given” anything.
81
Hmm … it seems to me it’s a distinction without a difference. If an oil company pays less company tax per dollar profit than someone making – say – donuts or bicycles, it is indeed a subsidy.
216
Not being taxed is not a subsidy. That’s sophistry. A subsidy is when you are given cash, not when you do not pay the same tax as someone else, for whatever reason. You could not live on such subsidies. And no one pays them.
161
Imagine a starving family. And you offer them a tax break.
121
Indeed, however the tax dummies also ignore that income taxpayers can be eligible for tax deductions, for example payment to a tax agent to complete an income tax return is a deductible expense.
71
I don’t believe it is “sophistry” – it is a rational position in the real world. Lots of institutional churches, non-profits, and charities are given major tax breaks – their operations are subsidised, because their operation is seen as a good thing for society.
Same with oil companies – receiving tax breaks (allegedly to incentivise further exploration and investment). And I think comparing oil industry subsidies via tax breaks to other forms of subsidies to renewables is fair enough. Apples and apples.
115
Once again, “Imagine a starving family. And you offer them a tax break.”
Churches are not subsidized. The government does not take their money. This is not a subsidy or a gift or charity.
The government is not infinitely rich. It has no money, it only has your money. And it chooses not to take money from the poor. That is not a subsidy, no matter how you twist it.
141
If the family is below the tax threshold, then a tax break is of no use to them. But a rich family getting a tax break (because they’re cute, or good-looking, or whatever) are being subsidised.
Churches are hardly poor – seem the real estate around Australian cities that the Pope owns?
19
That is quite silly. Nonsense.
Most of the Australian tax is paid by the richer families. As you say, the poorer families pay nothing and receive free benefits.
In effect more than half Australian families pay zero net tax.
So how does the Australian government subsidize the so called rich? In fact the government has no money and half of Australian families subsidize the other half. And pay all the wages of the government employees.
61
And the churches do not profit from their land. They are not businesses, farmers, manufacturers. They provide a valuable service and such buildings as are on the land are gifts from their parishioners. There is no public money being spent. To class them as rich is to redefine rich because they have the title to land, nothing more. Try eating it.
61
I guess one difference could be, renewables get subsidies and tax deductions. They are businesses, they also get to deduct expenses.
50
Tax deductions must be on items acceptable and expenses incurred in earning the income that becomes taxable income after legal deductions.
This is the often not understood difference between revenue and profit.
80
The great groan in the business community was when the Chief Economics Correspondent for the ABC Emma Alberici demonstrated quite clearly that she had no idea of the difference between revenue and profit. Which shows how much good a degree in economics was for financial comprehension. An accountant would know, but not the lead presenter on Lateline and other ABC shows.
131
Another media ignorance relates to severance payments, they report that a CEO left with $ millions but fail to look into that “package of remuneration”, salary and benefits such as outstanding holiday pay and long service leave, superannuation entitlement invested in a superannuation fund, shareholding often part of an incentive scheme based on performance, that is Return On Investment for the shareholders/achieving profit goals in financial year budgets, and similar.
Age pensioners also fail to understand their own taxpayer funded “package” that consists of a fortnightly payment plus benefits which added together, as a few of us as work colleagues once researched, amounts to about twice the “cash” payment in value. In other words $22,000 pension a year is worth $44,000 to the age pensioner. To self fund they would need investments returning $44K pa.
71
Yes of course – but oil companies can claim as deductions a range of “intangibles” – and expenditure that does not relate to producing income, that you or I or the donut-maker cannot. Hence it is a subsidy.
113
Nonsense.
All companies have the same tax laws applicable regardless of the business conducted and legal tax deductions are only for expenses incurred in earning income or revenue which becomes taxable income after legal tax deductions.
71
I think you should do a little background research before using words like “nonsense” – might save you further embarrassment.
US oil companies have a range of tax subsidies available to them so the effective tax rate they pay is significantly lower than for other industry groups.
And there is no need to repeat your phrases – I know how taxation deductions operate.
09
Oh the joy and agony of first world problems,agonizing about how toxic the building block of life as we know it must be.
Impossible to parody this madness,total hysteria as pseudo intelligent carbon based life forms flagellate themselves over releasing CO2 trapped in insoluble forms..
Soon enough,we will enjoy real world problems,as Gang Green cripples and destroys those civil structures that our parents built to counter the real world problems they overcame.
The basics of home heating,clean water,sewage removal and electricity for every home,comfort,luxury and time freeing innovations…All very recent successes on a global scale,incomplete in many regions..
Gang Green and their fellow gulls want to cast these things aside..
I say “Yes” let us help them.
Round them all up and release them to new land,free from the “Living Hell” of hydrocarbon energy..
Let them live what they demand be imposed on all.
I want to feel their pain,really I do,I cannot tolerate utter idiots any longer.
Free Gang Green!.
Oh to be free of Gang Green and the Parasitic Overload.
My Grandfather used to pray,”Dear Lord protect me from the Do-Gooders”…Now I see his wisdom.
161
I would like to see it start with Canberra or the ACT more correctly, let them access fully ‘green’ power only, nothing connected to any co2 emitting source, and sit back and enjoy, will anyone miss a few days a week of production of whatever it is they produce in that place with the lawn on the roof.
61
And if Climate Change is faux science, many leaders in the economics would could not do their own tax return, especially politicians. The world’s best treasurer and former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating was famous for not doing his tax return while leading us into the recession we had to have in his banana Republic. Or Deputy Labor leader and previous Australian Treasurer, Frank Crean.
The Greens have the same problem with profits and revenue. All of them seem to have an instinctive feel for the money though and today it is in Windmills and solar panels and big batteries and anything Green. Not Green energy, Green cash. And they portray coal, oil, wood, gas, petrol, diesel as Black money because everyone knows carbon is black. And Carbon dioxide is a pollutant, even if it is essential to all life, harmless, in short supply and invisible.
71
Economics has always been called ‘the dismal science’ and I thought it appropriate. They make Climate forecasters look good. However words change and this from Wikipedia
“The dismal science” is a derogatory alternative name for economics coined by the Victorian historian Thomas Carlyle in the 19th century (originally in the context of his argument to reintroduce slavery in the West Indies). The term drew a contrast with the then-familiar use of the phrase “gay science” to refer to song and verse writing. The latter phrase later appeared as the title of a book by Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science.
So now to the dismal science, gay science we can add climate science.
71
And as Dr. Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace (although the new owners deny that now) said his organization was invaded by communists in the late 1980s. Then by rent seeking lawyers. It’s was about the money, hundreds of millions a year.
Then in his great book ‘confessions of a Greenpeace dropout’ he says he only met one other scientist in Greenpeace. A German woman and she was a chemist. Greenpeace remains a science free zone. It’s still all about the money. And the tax breaks as a non profit. Because they are Green. Green Chlorophyll by the way is a long chain hydrocarbon.
111
Reported in The Weekend Australian years ago was a comment from former Howard Government Treasurer Peter Costello, he had recently returned from Europe where in Germany he met with a former German Government Minister for Foreign Affairs, a Green.
Costello was not prepared to divulge full details of their conversation but indicated that the German Green said that The Australian Greens are far to the left of International greenism.
No wonder many here refer to the Greens as The Watermelons. Green outside, red inside hidden until opened.
51
During October 2015 just before the UN IPCC Paris Conference UN Official Christiana Figureres admitted that climate change agenda was a deception tp divert attention away from the Marxist attack on free market capitalism.
121
Yes Dennis lets not forget,
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”
She even restated that goal ensuring it was not a mistake: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”
91
Don’t forget about the contribution from the timber and paper industries, https://twosidesna.org/paper-production-supports-sustainable-forest-management/
From link : Each year, forests in North America grow significantly more wood than is harvested. In the U.S., average net annual increase in growing-stock trees on timberland is about 25 billion cubic feet.2 In 2017, Canada harvested just over 5.5 billion ft3 of timber, well below the estimated sustainable wood supply level of 7.8 billion ft3.3
This is an old gem that does the heads in of climate zealots, now que the trolls that will spruik about carbon footprints of processing etc..LOL.
51
Not many years ago the then alliance government of Tasmania converted State Forests set aside for sustainable logging for the timber industry into UN Agenda 21 -Sustainability based National Parks managed or mismanaged by National Parks & Wildlife funded by each state government where public land was handed over.
The Abbott led Coalition Government elected in September 2013 with the then Coalition Tasmania State Government tried to overturn the National Park listing but were unable to gain UN support. They did however manage together with the Newman led LNP Queensland Government to overturn Labor’s “wild river legislation” blocking development such as dams and irrigation farming projects.
Recently, 2018 from memory, the NSW Coalition Government managed to get legislation passed that enables them to build new dams in National Parks (or raise dam walls), but of course the Greens and other activists are fighting against this legislation and holding up progress.
I read a stupid obviously Green comment in The Daily Telegraph today, Letters, claiming that dams will never stop floods because they will never hold heavy rainfall, or words similar. Really, so what about water storage for people being harvested?
61
I’ve had the ‘Dams are worthless because evaporation rates outweigh rainfall’ argument before but no ‘environmentalist’ can explain if so then how do bodies of water stay full for years or permanently and what’s the harm in trying?
The simple answer is Greens dislike people and themselves and will go to any length to make life difficult to win any outrageous claim regardless of the real world damage to lives of free people, have a look at the psychopaths here arguing against solid science and you get an idea of what were dealing with.
72
“Evaporation outweigh rainfall”? Dams work by concentration. That is so obvious it hardly needs explaining.
The catchment area can be 100x to 1000x the final area and the surface area is reduced by 100 to 1000. Evaporation is reduced by the same ratio from the same water.
We in the SE corner of Australia should be very glad for the 26 locks built on the Murray before WWII. In the last drought the river was full of water. Which was funny when an Adelaide film crew went to document the empty river and found it full and supplying the long garden on both sides. Those locks would not be allowed to be built today and tragically we are not building more locks and dams.
There have been no major dams built in 50 years, which is tragic with double the population. However we have giant unused desalination plants which will take decades to pay off. Even if they are never used.
We form committees to wonder why whole areas run out of water when it is so plentiful, as at the moment. A few Sydney harbours a day from the dams in NSW. Could we please start building dams. We have a lot of water, but it doesn’t rain every year. And a drought in Australia can be a decade. As Tim Flannery said, even the rains which fall will not fill the dams. Tell that to the people in the river valleys of Brisbane and Sydney.
It should be required that anyone advising the government on policy is qualified in their field. So how did a group of nobodies become ‘Climate Commissioners’ on government wages setting government policies?
101
Of course this is not about CO2 but it is part of the same Watermelon Green madness. You would think the Greens live to destroy the economic viability of their own society. And they are the ones who buy Teslas and have the highest frequent flyer points and live in the inner city so they are totally dependent on everyone else to provide their food and services. A sort of idiot elite, the Eloi of the Time Machine.
111
On dams, Egypt has always had an 11 year cycle of rain and drought, which matches the solar cycle. The British revolutinized Egypt by building a dam at Aswan. It could hold a year of water and more importantly, prevent flooding so Egyptians did not have to abandon the Nile valley each year. The floods would fill the vally, up to 35 metres.
However when Nasser took over from the British, he build a much higher dam just a few hundreds meters upriver and created Lake Nasser. This holds 11 years of water and waterproofed Egypt, a linear country where 90% of the population live on the Nile in one long valley plus the delta area up to Alexandria.
My point is that Australia has similar cycles and in the last 50 years we should have been building dams too and this business of environmental flows is disastrous, releasing 10% of all our water in the middle of the worst drought in a century. Greens say they love the environment. They just hate people, farmers, crops, factories, dams, coal, livestock. Strangely they are dependent on them all.
Now they tell us that CO2 is pollution. As I have tried to lay out, CO2 is us. That’s real science.
61
There’s more benefit from FF:
http://phzoe.com/2021/03/25/trend-of-chlorophyll-in-water/
40
Excellent,
Thanks Zoe.
10
“My dad farmed. He had a saying. There is a reason AIDS has an “S” on the end. To keep farmers from applying for it.”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2021/03/26/french-farmers-are-pissed-again/#comment-1424895
And the French farmers have the “dungerstreuers” out again
10
“David Bidstrup guest post. Hydrogen hopes.”
https://catallaxyfiles.com/2021/03/27/david-bidstrup-guest-post-hydrogen-hopes/
00
Just remember Tom Foolery’s 2007 prediction that, by 2020, the dams will be dry and Sydney would only survive on desalination plants. It is a great shame that people like Foolery (and others) have the ear on politicians, who think that CAGW is a big issue with the majority of voters. I’m sure that the only way Foolery got a PhD was to buy a packet of Corn Flakes.
10
[…] Forget “implicit” subsidies: Fossil fuels subsidize the whole world: feeding people and … […]
00