China Abandons Paris Agreement, Making U.S. Efforts Painful and Pointless

by D. Furchgott-Roth, Jul 26, 2023 in TheHeritageFondation


It was a bad week for anyone who thought China would cooperate on emissions reduction. President Xi Jinping reiterated that his country would set its own path on the issue and not be influenced by outside factors, according to the Washington Post and Bloomberg. This contradicts Xi’s 2015 Paris Agreement pledges to reduce its carbon emissions at the latest after 2030.

Xi’s remarks came while climate envoy and former secretary of state John Kerry was visiting Beijing to reopen a dialogue. This was shortly after Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived, and just before former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, the architect of opening China to the West 50 years ago, came for a visit.

The clear signals from China are a deliberate slap in the face to America and provide a rationale for a bill sponsored by Representative Chip Roy (R., Texas) to defund Kerry’s climate-change office at the State Department. The bill is cosponsored by over two dozen other House Republicans.

This should not be news, because Xi gave the same message last fall. In October 2022, he said that China would not abandon coal-fired power plants before renewables could substitute for the lost fossil fuel. But this substitution will not occur because fossil fuels generate substantially more energy than renewables.

Untold Story of Climate’s Holocene Gift to Humanity

by V. Jayaraj, Jul 14, 2023 in CO2Coalition


News reports of summer heatwaves often perversely misrepresent a modern climate favorable to human flourishing in order to fearmonger the false narrative of catastrophic global warming.

The geological epoch of the Holocene, which roughly corresponds to the last 11,700 years, is a time of warmth that has been vital in fostering the diversity and adaptability of life on our planet – not a curse as popularly portrayed. The relevance of the Holocene interglacial period to humanity’s survival cannot be overstated.

The development and maintenance of life on Earth have been greatly aided by the Holocene – sometimes called the age of man.

Nearly 12 millennia back, the Holocene ended glacial stages known as the Wisconsin in North America and Weichselian in Europe, which had begun between 75,000 and 100,00 years ago. As previously ice-covered regions became accessible for colonization, plant and animal species expanded their geographical range and the Earth’s overall biodiversity.

This period saw the rise of ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley and China, each of which made contributions to the advancement of human culture and numbers. There were a mere 170 million people on earth at the end of the first century, about half the population of the U.S. in 2023. Today the world has more than 8 billion people.

 

Continuer la lecture de Untold Story of Climate’s Holocene Gift to Humanity

Climate Self-Regulation: Is The Earth Cooling Itself?

by E. Gardey, Jul 14, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch


Climate change activists are dogmatic. Greenhouse gases released by human activity are warming the Earth by trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Thus, doom and gloom and civilizational collapse await us if we don’t decrease the number of cows, gas-guzzling cars, and factories.

But is it really that straightforward? [emphasis, links added]

In a Wall Street Journal column published Sunday, Andy Kessler proposes that Earth’s atmosphere is actually able to regulate itself such that temperatures remain relatively constant despite changes in greenhouse gases or the radiation of the sun.

The mechanism for doing so, Kessler believes, is a negative feedback loop. This is a natural process by which the negative effects of a reaction cause that reaction to slow down or stop.

The hypothesis on climate self-regulation, which is termed the Iris Effect, was first proposed by atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen in 2001. It postulates that cirrus clouds in the tropics dissipate in reaction to rising temperatures. 

Additional radiation can then escape from Earth’s atmosphere, causing a cooling effect. Kessler calls this a “safety valve.

In an interview with Kessler, Lindzen, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said, “This more than offsets the effect of greenhouse gases.

A heatwave isn’t the end of the world

by T. Fazi, July 18, 2023 in UnHerd


As I write this, in my favourite local café in Rome, the temperature outside is close to 40°C. So yes, it’s hot. Yet, thanks to a relatively old invention — air conditioning — I’m able to work in comfort. The 10-minute bike ride back home will be tougher than usual, but it won’t kill me. Like most people here, I consider these temperatures to be a nuisance — but that’s about it.

According to the news, however, I should be terribly concerned — terrified, in fact. Everyone’s running headline stories about the “extreme”, “record-breaking” and “deadly” hot weather sweeping across Asia, the US and, most notably, Europe. Here, the heatwave was unofficially named Cerberus, the multi-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades, before being replaced by Charon, the man who ferries the dead there. Rome is being called the “infernal city”. To be honest, I can think of several much more hellish places around the world at the moment — cities plagued by poverty, terrorism and war. And yet we are told that the current heat waves are a taste of the “hell” that awaits us as a result of climate change.

Record Temperature In China Not All It Seems

by P. Homewood, Jul 18, 2023 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


BEIJING, July 17 (Reuters) – A remote township in China’s arid northwest endured temperatures of more than 52 Celsius (126 Fahrenheit) on Sunday, state media reported, setting a record for a country that was battling minus 50C weather just six months ago.

Temperatures at Sanbao township in Xinjiang’s Turpan Depression soared as high as 52.2C on Sunday, state-run Xinjiang Daily reported on Monday, with the record heat expected to persist at least another five days.

The Sunday temperature broke a previous record of 50.3C, measured in 2015 near Ayding in the depression, a vast basin of sand dunes and dried-up lakes more than 150 m (492 ft) below sea level.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-logs-522-celsius-extreme-weather-rewrites-records-2023-07-17/

I can’t see the heatwave in Beijing particularly affecting that family crossing the road! Looks like they’re having a nice day out.

But back to Sanbao, which sits in the Turpan Depression that is as much as 150m below sea level. According to Wikipedia, the Turpan has a harsh desert climate, and is counted as one of the Furnaces of China. It is believed to be the second or third deepest depression on Earth. it is also the hottest and driest area in China during the summer.

Is The Dry Getting Drier?

by W. Eschenbach, Jul 16 , 2023 in WUWT


So I was wandering through the marvelous KNMI website, and I came across data for the Palmer Self-Correcting Drought Severity Index. This is an index that measures the drought conditions in some given area. The source website says:

The scPDSI (self-correcting Palmer Drought Severity Index) is a variant on the original PDSI of Palmer (1965), with the aim to make results from different climate regimes more comparable. As with the PDSI, the scPDSI is calculated from time series of precipitation and temperature, together with fixed parameters related to the soil/surface characteristics at each location.

Now, the KNMI site only offers linear trends of data. But if you look at the bottom of the KNMI page linked above, or other pages at that level of inquiry, you’ll find that there is an option to download the NetCDF version of the data. As in this case, this NetCDF data is often gridded.

And using that NetCDF gridded file lets me make a graphic showing the average scPDSI for the globe.

Figure 1. Yes, indeed, Australia is a dry country

Nobel Winner Says Climate Science Now A ‘Massive Shock-Journalistic Pseudoscience’

by T. Andy, July 13; 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch


Dr. John F. Clauser, a joint recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, has criticized the climate emergency narrative calling it “a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people.”

Along with two others, Dr. Clauser, an experimental and theoretical physicist, was the 2022 recipient of the Nobel Prize for work done in the 1970s that showed “quantum entanglement” allowed particles such as photons to effectively interact at great distances, seemingly to require communication exceeding the speed of light. [emphasis, links added]

He has criticized the awarding of the 2021 Nobel Prize for work in the development of computer models predicting global warming, according to a coalition of scientists and commentators who argue that an informed discussion about CO2 would recognize its importance in sustaining plant life.

In a statement issued by the CO2 coalition, “Nobel Laureate John Clauser Elected to the CO2 Coalition Board of Directors”, CO2 Coalition Dr. Clauser said that “there is no climate crisis and that increasing CO2concentrations will benefit the world.”

He criticized the prevalent climate models as being unreliable and not accounting for the dramatic temperature-stabilizing feedback of clouds, which he says is more than fifty times as powerful as the radiative forcing effect of CO2.

Dr. Clauser notes that bright white clouds are clearly the most conspicuous feature in satellite photos of the Earth.

These clouds are mostly produced by the evaporation of seawater by sunlight. They variably cover one-third to two-thirds of the Earth’s surface.

Most of the energy incident on the earth is in the form of visible sunlight. Clouds reflect sunlight energy back into space before it can reach the Earth’s surface to heat it.

 

Understanding the role of the sun in climate change

by N. Scafetta, July 6, 2023 in Andy May Blog


Although the sun provides nearly all the energy needed to warm the planet, its contribution to climate change remains widely questioned. Many empirically based studies claim that it has a significant effect on climate, while others (often based on computer global climate simulations) claim that it has a small effect.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) supports the latter view and estimates that almost 100% of the observed warming of the Earth’s surface from 1850–1900 to 2020 was caused by man-made emissions (AR6 WG1, pages 63, 425, and 962). This is known as the anthropogenic global warming (AGWT) theory.

I addressed this important paradox in a new study published in Geoscience Frontiers. The conundrum appears to arise from two sets of uncertainties: (i) the historical decades and long-term variations in solar activity are unknown; (ii) the sun may affect Earth’s climate through various physical mechanisms many of which are not fully understood and are not incorporated into the global climate models (GCMs).

It is important to notice that the AGWT is based solely on computer global climate model simulations that use total solar irradiance (TSI) records with very low multidecadal and long-term variability. The models also assume that the sun affects the climate system only through radiative forcing, although there is evidence that other solar processes related to solar magnetic activity (solar wind, cosmic rays, interplanetary dust, etc.) also affect the climate.

The total solar irradiance (TSI) records

 

 

Where Does Ocean Heat Come From?

by Dr M. Wielicki, May 24, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch


First, do we really know the temperature and thus heat content of the ocean?

The ocean is vast and covers ~70% of the Earth’s surface, making it the largest system on the planet. Despite its size, only a small portion of the ocean has been explored and mapped in detail.

It is estimated that <20% of the world’s oceans have been mapped and explored to date. [emphasis, links added]

This is largely due to the difficulties and challenges associated with ocean exploration, such as the high pressure and extreme environments found in the deep ocean, as well as the high cost of research vessels, equipment, and technology.

Most of the ocean that has been explored in detail is located near the coasts or in shallow waters, where it is more accessible to research vessels and equipment, but usually far away from the heat sources of mid-ocean ridges.

The deep ocean, which makes up the majority of the ocean’s volume, remains largely unexplored, with less than 5% of the ocean floor having been mapped in high resolution.

Advances in technology, such as underwater drones and submersibles, are helping to improve our understanding of the ocean and its ecosystems, and it is likely that our knowledge of the ocean will continue to expand in the coming decades.

Temperature measurements in the ocean are typically taken using a variety of instruments. These instruments can be deployed from research vessels or from moored or drifting buoys, and they collect temperature data at different depths throughout the ocean.

The amount of the ocean that is measured for temperature varies depending on the method of measurement and the specific objectives of the research.

However, it is estimated that significantly less than 10% of the world’s oceans have been sampled for temperatures at depths greater than 2,000 meters.

Despite the relatively limited coverage of temperature measurements in the deep ocean, there are ongoing efforts to improve our understanding of the ocean’s temperature structure and variability.

Solar Activity: Cycle 25 Surpasses Cycle 24

by J. Vinos, Jul 6, 2023 in WUWT


Over the past two decades, solar activity has been characterized by an extended solar minimum spanning two solar cycles, known as the Clilverd Minimum. This phenomenon is currently affecting the climate, but before we can understand its impact, we must address the significant discrepancy between the solar effects observed in paleoclimate proxy records and modern observations. The relationship between solar signals and climate response is complex and not fully understood. However, there is substantial evidence from models and reanalyses that the relationship exists. A recent hypothesis is that the solar signal modulates heat and moisture transport to the Arctic, which explains its relatively small effect during a single solar cycle. However, when an anomaly in solar activity persists over several cycles, as it did during the 70-year modern solar maximum, its effect accumulates and has a large impact on the planet’s energy budget. Understanding this mechanism is critical to understanding the overall impact of solar activity on our climate.

Current Solar Activity

The monthly sunspot number for June 2023 reached 163.4. While this figure may be revised slightly, it’s likely to stand as the highest number seen in over two decades, since September 2002. Solar Cycle 25 is relatively young, only three and a half years old, which means there are ample opportunities over the next three years to surpass this month’s 20-year record. Based on recent data, it seems very likely that Solar Cycle 25 will surpass Solar Cycle 24 in terms of activity.

Figure 1. Daily and monthly sunspot numbers over the past 13 years, as provided by SILSO.

Contradicting Data, Media Claim Canadian Wildfires And Heat Waves Made Worse By Climate Change

by H.S. Sterling, Jul 5, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch


Thus, it can’t be proof of climate change. And, as noted in Climate at a Glance: U.S. Heat Waves:

  • In recent decades in the United States, heat waves have been far less frequent and severe than they were in the 1930s.
  • The all-time high-temperature records set in most states occurred in the first half of the twentieth century.
  • The most accurate nationwide temperature station network, implemented in 2005, shows no sustained increase in daily high temperatures in the United States since at least 2005.

That’s right, neither heat waves nor wildfires, whether in Canada or elsewhere are getting worse.

The fear and actual damage generated by wildfires each year are bad enough without the bought-and-paid-for mainstream media making it worse by encouraging the misdirection of resources from taking actions that address the true causes of wildfires to the battle against climate change.

There is no evidence climate change has or will cause more heatwaves, droughts, or resulting wildfires

New Book: ‘Geological Impacts On Climate’ Now Available

by T. Richard, Jul 5, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch


A new book by Climate Change Dispatch writer and contributor James Kamis is now available!

Kamis has been a leading proponent of the theory that geological events heavily influence the planet’s climate, something only now being recognized by the so-called science ‘gatekeepers.’

The book, “Geological Impacts on Climate,” provides evidence that increased tectonic activity, whether locally or globally, equates to more heat and chemically charged, heated fluid release from active geological features into our oceans, sub-glacial polar areas, and atmosphere.

This altered heat and fluid have acted to significantly influence, and in some cases, completely control climate and climate-related events.

To describe this new theory, the term “Plate Climatology” was coined in 2014 and published on Climate Change Dispatch.

Sections of the book that substantiate this theory include:

The building block principles of the theory were conceived by integrating Kamis’ observations and ideas with information from various scientific disciplines.

Climate Computer Games

by M. Kile, May 28, 2023 in WUWT


Complexity and perplexity go together like a horse and carriage, or in this case, like the climate and a modeller. When probability claims masquerade as genuine predictions about reality, and international agencies and governments promote alarmism at every opportunity, when confirmation bias distorts the search for truth, the outcome is the “climate change” hyperbole and “saving-the-planet” activism that is now disrupting every aspect of our lives.

A Twitter Debate on Clintel’s IPCC AR6 Critique

by A. May, July 5, 2023 in WUWT


In May 2023, Clintel published a book (see figure 1) criticizing AR6 (IPCC, 2021), a publication that was supposed to summarize climate science research to date. We found that AR6 was biased in its reporting of recent developments in climate science, and they ignored published research contrary to their narrative that humans have caused all the warming since the Little Ice Age (the so called “preindustrial”), and that recent warming is somehow dangerous. Comments and reviews of the Clintel volume can be seen hereand on Judith Curry’s website here.

This post discusses a twitter debate about possible mistakes in the Clintel volume, specifically the Chapter 6 (written by Nicola Scafetta and Fritz Vahrenholt) discussion of the evidence that changes in the Sun affect Earth’s climate. We argue that recent evidence supports a role for the Sun in modern climate change, and the IPCC argues that the Sun has not contributed to recent (since 1750, see AR6, page 959, figure 7.6) warming or recent climate change.

We will see that Theodosios Chatzstergos, who also argues for no contribution from the Sun seems to confuse opinions with facts, and considers opinions different from his own as “mistakes.” This is a common problem with younger scientists, and undoubtably it is a product of poor scientific training in universities today. Opinions, regardless of who holds them, are not facts. Differing opinions, based on the same pool of evidence, are not mistakes, they are just different opinions. It is easy to see how “climate science” has devolved into “climate politics.”

Dr. Judith Curry praised the Clintel volume on twitter, which led to criticism from Dr. Theodosios Chatzstergos. Chatzstergos claims that Scafetta and Vahrenholt’s Chapter 6 had several errors, claims that I discuss in detail below.

Chatzstergos Point 1:

The Holocene CO2 Dilemma

by R. Hannon, June 2023, in WUWT


This post evaluates the relationship of global CO2 with regional temperature trends during the Holocene interglacial period. Ice core records show that CO2 is strongly coupled with local Antarctic temperature and slightly lags temperature over the past 800,000 years (Luthi, 2008). Whereas the emphasis has been on CO2 and temperature lags/leads, this study focuses on Holocene millennium trends in different latitude-bounded regions.

The Contrarian Antarctic

The Holocene is fortunate to have hundreds of proxy records analyzed by Marcott, 2013, and more recently Kaufman, 2020, to establish regional and global temperature trends. The Holocene interglacial occurs approximately during the past 11,000 years. In general, global temperature trends from proxy data show a Holocene Climatic Optimum (HCO) around 6000 to 8000 years ago and a subsequent cooling trend, the Neoglacial period, culminating in the Little Ice Age (LIA). The global mean temperature is comprised of regional trends that tend to have a concave down appearance during the Holocene shown in Figure 1a.

The exception is the Antarctic shown in red which has a concave up shape. The Antarctic reached an early Holocene Climatic Optimum between 9000 to 11000 years ago. While global and most regional temperatures were warming, Antarctic cooled to a minimum around 8000 years ago. While global and other regions show progressive cooling during the Neoglacial, the Antarctic was flat and erratic. This contrary Antarctic temperature behavior during the Holocene has also been noted by Andy May here.

Observations

Climate change is routinely claimed to be largely controlled by greenhouse gases, especially CO2. This was concluded, in part, by the strong relationship between CO2 from Antarctic ice core bubbles and local Antarctic temperature trends. While CO2 mimics Antarctic temperatures very well, ninety percent of Earth’s surface temperature trends do not demonstrate a positive correlation to CO2 during the Holocene. Arctic and Northern Hemisphere temperatures become cooler during increasing CO2 levels. Tropical proxy temperatures don’t seem to be influenced by CO2.

Model simulated temperatures which are strongly influenced by CO2 do not accurately history match Holocene global proxy temperatures and tend to largely reflect Antarctic trends. The fact that CO2 correlates well to Holocene temperatures for only the Antarctic, or <10% of our planet’s surface, yet CO2 is considered as the dominant influence on climate change is a scientific dilemma.

Download the bibliography here.

Why A Strong El Niño In 2023 Is Unlikely

by R. Cutler, May 25, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch


Global warming completely stopped in 2018. Temperatures will likely remain steady until 2025 and may decline slightly by 2030.

A strong El Niño in 2023 is unlikely.

I’ll explain all of my predictions — after we hear from the experts. [emphasis, links added]

NOAA recently predicted a 55% chance of a strong El Niñoin late 2023.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) threw more fuel on the fire when it announced, “There is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record.

Obviously, the MSM had a field day with this. Take for example this headline from USA Today: “Scientists warn an El Niño is likely coming that could bring scorching heat to Earth.”

Rather than taking the well-worn path of pointing out flaws in the predictions of NOAA, the IPCC, or the WMO, I’ll instead show how the sun is likely responsible for almost every detail in global temperaturesover the last 125 years, and that it is also responsible for triggering strong El Niños.

Two empirical, or black-box models were created to predict global temperature. The first model uses solar magnetic field data from the Wilcox Solar Observatory (WSO).

The second model uses sunspot data from WDC-SILSO, the Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels. Both predictions will be compared to global temperature anomaly data from NOAA.

Solar magnetic field data collection began in 1976. The complete WSO dataset can be viewed in a single graphic, often referred to as a butterfly diagram.

It looks complicated, but it’s really not. It’s just a plot of solar magnetic field intensity over time as a function of the sun’s latitude. The two colors represent north and south polarity magnetism.

Unlike the Earth, where magnetic north has conveniently stayed in the Northern Hemisphere for the last 780,000 years, the sun’s magnetic field changes polarity every 11 years.

From The Alps To Australia To Europe And More, Cold Is Wreaking Havoc Globally

by P. Gosselin, May 30, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch


1. Alaska’s fourth cold winter in a row

Alaska was once seen as a beacon of hope in the AGW coal mine: but after four cold winters in a row, culminating in a historically cold winter season in 2022-23, the Last Climate Frontier has certainly lost that status – the catastrophists will now have to look elsewhere to bolster their narrative.

According to NOAA’s data, and despite the agency’s official forecasts that consistently heralded “warmer than average” seasons, the last four winters in Alaska have shown a strong cooling trend. [emphasis, links added]

The Old Farmer’s Almanac is also off its rocker. It predicted a “much milder than normal winter” for 2022-23 with below-average snowfall. That was wrong on both fronts.

Historic snowfall totals of more than 250 cm fell across much of Alaska, and Anchorage set a new record for leftover snow that stayed on the ground well into April.

April was also a historically cold month across Alaska, with an average temperature of -8.7 degrees Celsius, which is 5.5 degrees Celsius below the multi-decadal norm, and the fourth coldest April in 99 years of NOAA records.

The snow has now continued into May, tumbling even more records.

2. More and more new cold records “Down Under”

Icy polar air masses continue to dominate large parts of Australia – most recently in the west. Moreover, a continent-wide cold air outbreak from Antarctica is expected in the second half of this week.

Australia is cooling, and the proof is in measurements: For the past six years, it has been colder than average Down Under, and the list of cities that have recorded the coldest seasons since records began is growing(such as Brisbane last winter).

May 2023 continues this cooling trend, with the lowest May temperatures on record already recorded in a number of locations early in the month – including Cooma, Omeo, Bombala, and Canberra.

In Sydney last Sunday, the lowest temperature recorded at the start of autumn in 85 years (since 1938) was 7.1°C.

Over the weekend, it was the west’s turn to freeze.

Large parts of Western Australia just experienced the coldest May morning in at least two decades. On both Sunday and Monday morning, the temperature in Broome, for example, dropped to 11.5 °C, the lowest autumn reading since 1999.

3. May snow in Europe – even in Spain

At a glance – Global cooling – is global warming still happening?

by J. Mason, May 23, 2023 in SkepicalScience


At a glance

Earth’s surface, oceans and atmosphere are all warming due to our greenhouse gasemissions, but at different rates. Some places are also warming much faster than others: parts of the Arctic for example. That variability is partly because other phenomena act to offset or enhance warming at times. A good example are the effects of La Nina and El Nino, an irregular variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean that can influence temperatures and rainfall patterns right around the world.

El Nino causes even warmer years whereas La Nina tends to peg temperatures back to an extent. Thus 2016 – an El Nino year – was the warmest year on record, according to the USA-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but other recent years have not been far behind – 2020 and 2019 are in second and third place respectively. The worrying thing is that 2019 only saw a mild El Nino and 2020 was “neutral” – there were neither El Nino or La Nina conditions. And even with a La Nina featuring, 2021 and 2022were, respectively, still the seventh and sixth hottest years on record.

The year 1998 featured a massive El Nino and consequent temperature spike that was a strong outlier, well above the steady upward trend. That spike and the subsequent return to a more “normal” warming pattern led to claims in the popular media that global warming had “paused” or had even stopped. This was a typical misinformation tactic that, as usual, time has proved wrong. As things currently stand, the top ten warmest years have all been since 2010 and 1998 is nowhere to be seen any more. By modern standards, it simply wasn’t warm enough.

Please use this form to provide feedback about this new “at a glance” section. Read a more technical version via the link below!


Click for Further details

In case you’d like to explore more of our recently updated rebuttals, here are the links to all of them:

Myths with link to rebuttal Short URLs
Ice age predicted in the 1970s sks.to/1970s
It hasn’t warmed since 1998 sks.to/1998
Antarctica is gaining ice sks.to/antarctica
CRU emails suggest conspiracy sks.to/climategate
What evidence is there for the hockey stick sks.to/hockey
CO2 lags temperature sks.to/lag
Climate‘s changed before sks.to/past
It’s the sun sks.to/sun
Temperature records are unreliable sks.to/temp
The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics sks.to/thermo
We’re heading into an ice age sks.to/iceage
Positives and negatives of global warming sks.to/impacts
Global cooling – Is global warming still happening? sks.to/cooling

“No Bricks, No Glass, No Cement” – What Net Zero 2050 Demands According to Government-Funded Report

by . C. Morrison, Apr 29, 2023 in WUWT


No bricks, the walls and foundations made of compacted earth, cement made from clay and glass scavenged from demolition skips are just some of the construction changes needed to comply with Net Zero by 2050. The latest paper from Government-funded U.K. FIRES looks to “minimise new construction”, and notes the shape of the urban environment will change, allowing for “denser living and reduced transport needs”.

The latest U.K. FIRES paper seems to have slipped out quietly at the end of last year and has to date attracted little publicity. But the group, which comprises a number of academics led by Cambridge engineering professor Julian Allwood, made headlines around the world recently with previous work noting that all flying and shipping must stop by 2050, beef and lamb must be banned, and only 60% of energy will be available to cook food and heat homes. The group, which receives £5 million from Government sources,  is interesting because it bases its recommendations on the brutal, and many would argue honest, reality of absolute Net Zero. It does not assume that technological processes still to be perfected or even invented will somehow lead to minimal disturbance in comfortable industrialised lifestyles. It could be further argued that its continued existence and pronouncements are important, since they highlight the dishonesty and deceit that surrounds many other Net Zero promoters.

U.K. FIRES sees the future of construction based on stone, earth and timber, along with components “reused and repurposed” from demolition. Recycled steel, cement and bricks can be used, although this will be “constrained” – rationed might be a better word – by a supply of “non-emitting electricity under high demand”. Transformational construction changes will take longer to achieve, state the authors, but the U.K.’s ambitious target of a 45% reduction in emissions by 2030, “can only be achieved through reduced material demand”.