It’s mystifying and terrifying that our lives, livelihoods, and living standards are increasingly dictated by activist, political, bureaucratic, academic, and media elites who disseminate theoretical nonsense, calculated myths, and outright disinformation.
Not only on pronouns, gender, and immigration – but on climate change and energy, the foundation of modern civilization and life spans. [emphasis, links added]
We’re constantly told the world will plunge into an existential climate cataclysm if average planetary temperatures rise another few tenths of a degree from using fossil fuels for reliable, affordable energy, raw materials for over 6,000 vital products, and lifting billions out of poverty, disease, and early death.
Climate alarmism implicitly assumes Earth’s climate was stable until coal, oil, and gas emissions knocked it off-kilter, and would be stable again if people stopped using fossil fuels.
In the real world, climate has changed numerous times, often dramatically, sometimes catastrophically, and always naturally.
Multiple ice ages and interglacial periods, Roman and Medieval warm periods, a Little Ice Age, major floods, droughts, and dust bowls all happened – long before fossil fuels.
Tornadoes, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events are not getting more frequent or intense.
You might argue that Harvey and Irma marked a sudden increase in major hurricanes in 2017 – but that’s only because after Wilma there would have been a record twelve years of zero Category 3-5 hurricanes.
We need to ignore the fearmongering, look at the actual records, and recognize that dangerous upward trends simply aren’t there.
We must insist that alarmists distinguish and quantify human influences versus natural forces for recent temperature, climate, and weather events – and show when, where, and how human activities replaced natural forces.
The only places man-made temperature and climate catastrophes exist are in Michael Mann and other GIGO computer models.
These climate models are worthless for policymaking because they aren’t verified by actual measurements, don’t account for urban heat island effects, and cannot incorporate the vast scale and complexity of atmospheric, planetary, and galactic forces that determine Earth’s climate.
In reality, people and the planet are threatened far more by global cooling than by warming.
Even a couple of degrees drop in average global temperatures would drastically reduce growing seasons, arable land, plant growth, wildlife habitats, and agricultural output – especially if it’s accompanied by reductions in plant-fertilizing atmospheric CO2 levels.
Plants, animals, and people would face starvation.
We’re also told ruling elites could prevent this imagined crisis by switching us to wind, solar, and battery power. (They also want to eliminate cows and modern agriculture, over misplaced concerns about methane and fertilizer, but that’s an udder discussion.)
Build a coal, gas, or nuclear power plant – and unless governments shut it down or cut off fuel supplies, the plant provides plentiful, reliable, affordable electricity nearly 24/7/365 for decades.
Build a massive sprawling wind or solar installation, and you have to back up every kilowatt with coal, gas, or nuclear power – or with millions of huge batteries – for every windless, sunless period.
The economic and ecological effects would be ruinous.
Coal, gas, and nuclear plants can be built close to electricity-intensive urban centers. Tens of thousands of wind turbines and billions of solar panels must go where there’s good wind and sunshine, far from urban areas, connected by high-voltage transmission lines.
In fact, for Net Zero, says the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world would need 50,000,000 miles of new and upgraded transmission lines by 2040!
All those “clean, green, renewable, sustainable, affordable” wind, solar, and battery systems, backup generators, transmission lines, and electric vehicles would require millions of tons of iron, copper, aluminum, manganese, cobalt, lithium, concrete, plastics, and numerous other metals and minerals.
Onshore wind turbines require nine times more materials per megawatt – and offshore turbines need fourteen times more than a combined-cycle natural gas power plant, the IEA calculates. Solar panels and EVs have the same problem.
To get these materials, billions of tons of overlying rock must be removed to reach billions of tons of ores – which then must be processed in huge industrial facilities that use mercury and toxic chemicals, emit vast quantities of greenhouse gases and toxic pollutants, and are powered by coal or natural gas.
Many components of these “green” technologies are derived from oil and natural gas.
The US and other Western facilities control and recycle these pollutants. Chinese and Russian facilities pay little attention to air and water pollution, workplace safety, fossil fuel use, efficiency, and emissions – yet they supply over 80% of “renewable” energy raw materials because the West increasingly bans mining and processing and makes energy prohibitively expensive to operate mines and factories.
Pseudo-renewable energy worldwide would cost hundreds of trillions of taxpayer dollars, would have to be subsidized by trillions of taxpayer dollars, and would dramatically increase electricity rates.
Electric vehicle, appliance, and heating mandates would double or triple all these infrastructure, materials, mining, and land-use requirements, ecological impacts, and costs.
American residential electricity prices in 2023 ranged from 10.4¢ per kilowatt-hour (Idaho) to 28.4¢ per kWh (California).
British families paid 47¢ per kWh! UK factories and businesses paid up to three times what their US counterparts did. German families, factories, and businesses are in the same capsizing boat.
But EU industrial leaders say energy prices must continue rising to cover the soaring costs of the “energy transition.”
If they don’t, factories, jobs, and emissions will move overseas. But if they do, families will freeze jobless in the dark.
What many call the Climate Industrial Complex has a monumental stake in perpetuating this situation. Collectively, its members have incredible power, control much of government and education, hold enormous financial stakes in green tech subsidies, and often censor contrarian viewpoints.
Just as ominous, if it becomes clear that the Brave New World of Net Zero Energy cannot provide sufficient affordable electricity and other necessities for modern industries, healthcare, and living standards, two-thirds of America’s ruling elites favor food and energy rationing to combat climate change and retain their anti-capitalism, anti-growth agenda. It’s likely the same in Europe and Canada.
The Biden Administration and other governments are already dictating the kinds of vehicles we can drive and what appliances and heating systems we can use.
They’re already exploring ways to limit the kind and size of homes we can live in, how warm and cool we can keep them, how often we can travel by air, the kinds and amounts of meat we can eat, and many other aspects of our lives.
Meanwhile, China, India, Indonesia, and dozens of other countries are building hundreds of coal and gas generating units – further underscoring the insanity and futility of trying to control energy sources, quantities, and emissions.
This is what America’s 2024 state and national elections are about – and elections in Europe, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere.
The longer these elites remain in power, the more our liberties, lives, and living standards will resemble life a century ago under authoritarian regimes. Vote accordingly.
Paul Driessen is a senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environmental, and human rights issues.
Think about why Ar is typically used as a filler gas in dual-pane windows, whereas why CO2 or H2O is not. It’s because Ar is a monoatomic with few DOF (Degrees of Freedom) and thus a minimal ability to transit energy from one pane to the other.
Now analogize that dual-pane window to the Earth | Atmosphere | Space system (tip the window so it’s horizontal)… the bottom pane would be the planet’s surface, the filler gas would be the atmosphere, the top pane would be space.
With Ar as the filler gas, energy transfer between panes is low. Now use CO2 or H2O as a filler gas… you’ll find the amount of energy transited between the panes rises dramatically.
As I stated above, the monoatomics (Ar) are IR non-radiative (non-absorptive); and the homonuclear diatomics (N2, O2) cannot emit (nor absorb) unless their net-zero magnetic dipole is perturbed via collision at the same time that a resonant photon incides upon the molecule. They dilute the radiative polyatomic molecules, thus reducing the efficiency with which energy is transited from the planet’s surface to the upper atmosphere, and they dilute the number of radiative molecules per mole parcel of atmosphere emitting to space.
If the climate alarmists really wanted to cool the planet, the quickest, safest, cheapest and easiest way of doing so would be to remove all Ar from the atmosphere… it has no part in sustaining flora or fauna, and its removal would cool the atmosphere by just less than 1 K (by no longer diluting the polyatomics, so there would be more molecules with higher DOF per mole parcel of air to transit energy away from the surface, and more radiative emitters per mole parcel of air to emit in the upper atmosphere (the majority of said radiation being upwelling owing to the mean free path length / altitude / air density relation).
It’s compressible to high pressures without fear of conflagration; it’s used in industry; and it’s fairly low-energy to remove from the atmosphere.
But then, it was never about ‘fixing’ anything… it’s all about presenting fake solutions to fake problems to keep their gravy train going.
Now, want to see something really mind-blowing?
Radiant Exitance =
= ε σ (T^4_h – T^4_c ) A_h
= (ε c (e_h – e_c )) / 4
= σ / a * Δe
= Faraday’s Constant (Ah) * (Molar Mass of Atmosphere / Ratio of Atoms Per Particle)
= Faraday’s Constant (Ah) * Moles of electrons per Mole of atmospheric particles
= (((Faraday’s Constant (J electron -1 ) * Number of Electrons per Mole of Atmosphere) / 3600) / Stefan-Boltzmann Constant)^0.25
= (((Faraday’s Constant (J mol -1 ) * Moles of Electrons per Mole of Atmosphere) / 3600) / Stefan-Boltzmann Constant)^0.25
Those are all equivalent equations… I’ve calculated to a precision of 3.8 parts per 100 trillion on all of them. I’ve constructed a model atmosphere consisting of 16 constituent molecular and atomic species at their real-world concentrations, then calculated for increased CO2 concentration (available upon request)… increased CO2 concentration causes cooling, not warming.
Astute observers will note that the ‘3600’ means time is baked into the thermodynamic equations.
Astute observers will also note that the equations above prove that CO2 does not (cannot) cause CAGW as the climastrologists claim it to be occurring.
Water vapor, far from being a ‘global warming’ gas as the climastrologists claim, acts as a literal refrigerant (in the strict ‘refrigeration cycle’ sense) below the tropopause:
The refrigeration cycle (Earth) [A/C system]:
A liquid evaporates at the heat source (the surface) [in the evaporator], it is transported (convected) [via an A/C compressor], it gives up its energy to the heat sink and undergoes phase change (emits radiation in the upper atmosphere, the majority of which is upwelling owing to the mean free path length / altitude / air density relation) [in the condenser], it is transported (falls as rain or snow) [via that A/C compressor], and the cycle repeats.
CO2, being a radiative polyatomic, contributes to a lesser extent to this cooling, mainly because at prevalent Earthly temperatures, CO2’s latent heat capacity doesn’t come into play.
So we live, at the surface of the planet, in what can be analogized to the evaporator section of a world-sized AC unit… H2O, CO2 and other polyatomics are coolants, and the monoatomics (Ar) and homonuclear diatomics (N2, O2) act much like noncondensable gases in an AC unit… they dilute the concentration of cooling molecules and thus reduce the efficiency at which energy is transported from the planet’s surface to space.
Monoatomics (Ar) have no vibrational mode quantum states, and thus cannot emit (nor absorb) IR. Homonuclear diatomics (O2, N2) have no net magnetic dipole and thus cannot emit (nor absorb) IR unless that net-zero magnetic dipole is perturbed via collision.
In an atmosphere consisting of solely monoatomics and homonuclear diatomics (ie: no polyatomic radiative molecules), the atoms / molecules could pick up energy via conduction by contacting the surface, just as the polyatomics do; they could convect just as the polyatomics do… but once in the upper atmosphere, they could not as effectively radiatively emit that energy, the upper atmosphere wouldwarm, lending less buoyancy to convecting air, thus hindering convection… and that’s how an actual greenhouse works, by hindering
convection.
For homonuclear diatomics, there would be some collisional perturbation and thus some emission in the atmosphere, but by and large the atmosphere could not effectively emit (especially at higher altitudes, where the chance of collision decreases exponentially with altitude).
Thus the surface would have to radiatively emit that energy (which is currently ~76.2% of all energy removed from the surface via radiation, convection and evaporation) instead… and a higher radiant exitance implies a higher surface temperature.
The easiest lie to tell is an inversion of reality as the climastrologists have done with water vapor and CO2… this kindergarten-level lie promulgated by the climastrologists has gone on for far too long.
Wow, 47¢ kWh-1 is prohibitively expensive (and given that they continue pushing intermittent grid power supplies such as wind and solar while attempting to crush the fossil fuel industry, that can only go up). Didn’t the alarmists claim wind and solar was so cheap as to be practically unmeterable?
We’re paying 9.8¢ kWh-1 for the first megawatt, then 6.9¢ kWh-1 after that. I look forward to the day that this entire scam is unwound and those pushing it are held accountable for the increased costs to billions of people.
The entire CAGW charade is built upon the flimsy foundation of a misuse of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation… it is provably a mathematical scam too complex for most people to unwind.
Think about why the Kiehl-Trenberth ‘Earth Energy Balance’ graphic j(and all subsequent similar graphics) can get 390 W m-2 surface radiant exitance… it’s because they treat the planet’s surface as if it were an idealized blackbody object (which assumes emissivity = 1 and emission to 0 K by definition), which inflates radiant exitance of all objects.
{ Do keep in mind that idealized blackbody objects don’t actually exist… they’re idealizations. The closest we can come is laboratory blackbodies that have high absorptivity and emissivity at certain wavebands. }
It’s as though they isolated each object into its own system so the objects could not interact via the ambient EM field. That’s unphysical. That’s not how the real world works. Objects interact via the ambient EM field, which is why energy does not spontaneously flow from cooler to warmer (ie: up an energy density gradient)… because a warmer object will have higher energy density at all wavelengths than a cooler object.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/Wiens_law.svg/1024px-Wiens_law.svg.png
That also inflates the calculated radiant exitance of each object, so to get their equations to balance, they subtract the wholly-fictive ‘cooler to warmer’ energy flow from the real (but too high because it was calculated for emission to 0 K) ‘warmer to cooler’ energy flow.
That’s not how the S-B equation is meant to be used:
https://i.imgur.com/QErszYW.gif
q = ε σ (T_h^4 – T_c^4 ) A_h
= 1 σ (T_h^4 – 0 K) 1 m^2
= σ T^4
The first line above is the form of the S-B equation meant to be used by real-world graybody objects.
The second line above is applying the definitional conditions of an idealized blackbody object.
The third line is the form of the S-B equation meant to be used by idealized blackbody objects (but which the climastrologists use upon real-world object… sometimes with emissivity <1, often not… the K-T ‘Earth Energy Balance’ graphic assumes emissivity = 1).
Temperature is equal to the fourth root of radiation energy density divided by Stefan’s Constant (ie: the radiation constant).
e = T^4 a
a = 4σ/c
e = T^4 4σ/c
T^4 = e/(4σ/c)
T = ^4√(e/(4σ/c))
T = 4 √(e/a)
q = ε σ (T_h^4 – T_c^4 ) A_h
∴ q = ε σ ((e_h / (4σ / c)) – (e_c / (4σ / c))) A_h
Canceling units, we get J sec -1 m -2 , which is W m -2 (1 J sec -1 = 1 W).
W m -2 = W m -2 K -4 * (Δ(J m -3 / (W m -2 K -4 / m sec -1 )))
∴ q = (ε c (e_h – e_c )) / 4
Canceling units, we get J sec -1 m -2 , which is W m -2 (1 J sec -1 = 1 W).
W m -2 = (m sec -1 (ΔJ m -3 )) / 4
One can see from the immediately-above equation that the Stefan-Boltzmann (S-B) equation is all about subtracting the radiation energy density of the cooler object from the radiation energy density of the warmer object.
It is easy to see, then, that the S-B equation for graybody objects isn’t meant to be used to subtract a fictive ‘cooler to warmer’ energy flow from the incorrectly-calculated and thus too high ‘warmer to cooler’ energy flow, it’s meant to be used to subtract cooler object radiation energy density (temperature is a measure of radiation energy density, the fourth root of radiation energy density divided by Stefan’s constant) from warmer object radiation energy density. Radiant exitance of the warmer object is predicated upon the radiation energy density gradient.
You will note that everything stated above strictly hews to the fundamental physical laws, whereas the climastrologist claims imply energy flowing from a cooler atmosphere to a warmer surface in violation of 2LoT.
And that is the basis for the CAGW scam… they even extended that misuse of the S-B equation by bastardizing it into their ‘forcing formula’ (used in IPCC AR6):
4 ε σ T^3
So they’re now just making up equations that fit their narrative, and ‘adjusting’ the data to cool the past and thus make the present seem warmer… that is how far off the tracks this scam has careened.
Years ago, during ClimateGate 2.0, one of the climastrologists reflected upon how much longer they’d be able to keep up this sort of sophistry. As long as people remain unversed in simple logic and mathematics, they can continue… educate yourselves, people.
Just more push for a UN Global Government why else was the UN founded in the first place it wasn’t for Peace that’s for sure