Un hobby&#8230;

Math Confirms Foolishness of Climate Alarmism

23 août 2024 Alain Préat

by G. Wrightstone, Aug 11, 2024 in WUWT

The science of climate change often is presented in complicated language that speaks of computer models and the theoretical inputs and outputs thereof and concludes that the globe is on the verge of “boiling.” Well, leave it to three physicists — steeped in calculus and such arcane matters as the behavior of molecules and the nuclear charge of atoms — to simplify the analysis and arrive at a much less alarming determination.

“Straightforward calculations … show that eliminating U.S. CO₂ emissions by the year 2050 would avoid a temperature increase of 0.0084 degrees Celsius,” states a brief paper authored by Drs. Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; William Happer, Princeton University; and William A. van Wijngaarden, York University, Toronto. On the Fahrenheit scale, the value of averted warming is 0.015 degrees.

In short, the amount of warming averted by eliminating CO₂ emissions in the United States would be too small to measure. The paper bolsters the position of those who argue that a changing climate is the product of natural forces, that human-induced carbon dioxide emissions can have only a minuscule effect on global temperature, and that CO₂ is a valuable plant food and not a pollutant.

Rather than using theoretical assumptions about various factors that are fed into computers, the paper’s calculation relies almost exclusively on “observable data” that are widely accepted and publicly available, says Dr. Happer.

“This is something anybody with a calculator can figure out,” said the scientist, who may be best known for his contribution to a laser-based technology for destroying incoming ballistic missiles as part of the so-called Star Wars program of the 1980s. Continuer la lecture de Math Confirms Foolishness of Climate Alarmism →

climate-debate

Less Extreme Pacific Weather … Number Of Typhoons Trending Downward Over 70 Years!

23 août 2024 Alain Préat

by P. Gosselin, Aug 8, 2024 in NoTricksZone

Pacific typhoons forming in the month of July have been trending downward for 70 years

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) presents the latest data for Pacific typhoons — going back to 1951.

Although bad weather happens all the time, climate alarmists are desperate for weather extremes, searching across the internet in order to produce some headlines – thus hoping to keep the hoax going. Unfortunately they won’t find much in terms of typhoons forming in the Pacific.

July trend down

Today we look at the data from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) for the number of typhoons formed in the Pacific in the month of July, now that the July data are available:

Data source: JMA.

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better to know...?, energy and fields

Natural Gas Industry’s Smear of Coal Is False and Self-Defeating

24 juillet 2024 Alain Préat

by G. Wrightstone, July 22, 2024 in RealClearEnergy

Smearing coal has become a marketing strategy of a natural gas industry that embraces pseudoscientific views of coal combustion as being hazardous.

In so doing, gas supporters give credence to a fallacious regulatory regime of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which erroneously classifies carbon dioxide as a pollutant and assigns health effects to low-level pollution without scientific proof. To boot, a false representation of coal, oil and natural gas as environmental bogeymen is perpetuated.

Perhaps the most enthusiastic user of this foolish ploy is Toby Rice, CEO of Pittsburgh-based EQT Corp., who introduced two years ago a global plan to replace coal with liquefied natural gas. Promoting his product as a “decarbonizing force” in June at a RealClearEnergy conference, the head of the country’s largest gas producer (check the video link above to see his part), said:

“What we would like to do at EQT … is focus people on a really practical solution that will allow us to provide energy security for the world and address people’s concerns over global emissions. And that path is very simple: transition the world from coal to gas.”

Although natural gas emits less carbon dioxide than coal when burned, the underlying premise of Rice’s pitch rests on the popular myth that CO₂ emissions will overheat the planet. The organization we lead, the CO₂ Coalition, has overwhelming evidence from top scientists showing that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide not only poses no danger but is beneficial to plant growth and crop production.

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The ‘Climate Emergency’ is a Myth, Says Nobel Prize Winner John Clauser. Here’s Why He’s Right

23 juillet 2024 Alain Préat

by Dr R. Kalveks, June 8, 2024 in DailySceptic

In a recent lecture, Nobel Laureate physicist John Clauser exposed how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models and analyses, which are relied upon by politicians and activists to support claims of a ‘climate crisis’, do not meet basic standards of scientific enquiry. Clauser received his Nobel prize in 2022 for the observational measurement of quantum entanglement and understands well the problem of distinguishing a physical signal from background noise.

Clauser shows that, when corrected for the IPCC’s error prone arithmetic and statistics, the observational data do not support the power imbalance claimed to be responsible for global warming. Furthermore, the outputs of climate models are at variance with the observational record. Clauser discusses the roles of convection, clouds and their variability in providing a negative feedback mechanism, and proposes that this acts as a thermostat that stabilises surface temperatures. Clauser’s conclusion is that claims of a ‘climate crisis’ lack scientific substance and that Net Zero policies are an unnecessary hindrance.

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Energy Flows in the Climate System

It is useful to start with a simplified depiction of the solar energy flow that reaches the Earth, its transformation by the Earth’s climate system and the resulting (mostly thermal) energy flow that leaves the Earth’s atmosphere. This is shown in Figure 1, taken from a recent IPCC report.

The IPCC diagram shows an energy imbalance, being the difference between the incoming visible and UV solar radiation 340 W/m², less the amount reflected (100 W/m²), less the outgoing infra-red (IR) thermal radiation (239 W/m²). The claimed imbalance at the Top of the Atmosphere is 0.7 W/m² (give or take 0.2) and the IPCC asserts that this is driving the continuing warming of the climate system.

Table. 1. Top of Atmosphere Energy Flows. Energy flows at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere, with their errors as per Figure 1. The balance is calculated from its components.

The radiation measurements necessary for this calculation are carried out at different wavelengths by instruments carried by satellites, and observational errors are inevitable. Combining the uncertainty ranges in the incoming, reflected and outgoing streams shown in Table 1, by using the standard statistical Root Mean Square rule, shows that the error margin in the calculated imbalance is actually 3 W/m², some 15 times greater than the 0.2 W/m² error margin claimed by the IPCC. In short, there is no observedenergy imbalance. The claimed imbalance of 0.7 W/m² is swamped by observational error, and, from a scientific perspective, it is described by Clauser as a “fudge”.

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climate-debate

New Study: Central Europe Was ‘2-5°C Warmer Than Present’ Throughout Most Of The Holocene

23 juillet 2024 Alain Préat

by K. Richard, July 22, 2024 in NoTricksZone

There were millennia during the past glacial (when CO2 levels were under 200 ppm) that were as warm or warmer than today.

Four central Europe reconstructions, using collected evidence from disparate biomarkers, indicate there were periods (for example, 54,000 to 51,000 years ago, the Bølling–Allerød interstadial, 14,700 years ago) during the last glacial when temperatures were as warmer than (or similar to) today (Zander et al., 2024).

Temperatures throughout the Holocene (8,000 to 4,000 years ago), when CO2 hovered around 265 ppm, were 3.5°C (and up to 5°C) warmer than today. Modern temperatures are among the coldest of the last 10,000 years.

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Continuer la lecture de Carbon Dioxide and a Warming Climate are not problems →

Carbon Dioxide and a Warming Climate are not problems

16 juillet 2024 Alain Préat

by A. May & M. Crok, May 29, 2024 in AmJEconSociology

Dear signatories of the Clintel World Climate Declaration

We are very excited to announce the publication of our peer reviewed paper titled “Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems“. It was published in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. The paper was written by Andy May, retired petrophysicist and currently climate writer and blogger, and Clintel director Marcel Crok.

Crok and May coordinated the ambitious Clintel project to analyse the IPCC AR6 report, which last year led to the publication of the Clintel book The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC. In the book we document serious errors and biases in the latest IPCC report.
The new paper is largely based on the many interesting findings of that book.

The new paper gets a lot of attention, mostly positive and some critical (of course). This has led to an impressive attention score (which gives an indication of how much the paper is being discussed on blogs and on X/twitter). The paper is already in the 99th percentile.

It was a little expensive (2330 euros) to make the paper open access so we decided not to do that this time. But our submitted version can be downloaded for free.

Signatories of the World Climate Declaration could help us boosting the paper even further by writing about it on blogs and/or discussing the paper on X (twitter).

Andy May has been responding very promptly to some of the criticism on the paper, see here, here and here.

The full abstract of the paper can be read below:

climate-debate

Cooling The Niño

16 juillet 2024 Alain Préat

by W. Eschenbach, July 14, 2024 in WUWT

This is a two-part post. The first part is to correct an oversight in my recent post entitled Rainergy.

The second part is to use that new information to analyze the effect of clouds on the El Nino region.

So, to the first part. In my post Rainergy, I noted that it takes ~ 80 watts per square meter (W/m2) over a year to evaporate a cubic meter of seawater. Thus, the evaporation that creates the ~1 meter of annual rain cools the surface by – 80 W/m2.

Then the other day I thought “Dang! I forgot virga!”

Virga is rain that falls from a cloud but evaporates completely before it hits the ground.

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climate-debate

Causality Analysis Finds Temperature Changes Have Determined CO2 Changes Since The Phanerozoic

16 juillet 2024 Alain Préat

by K. Richard, July 15, 2024 in NoTricksZone

Popular claims that CO2 changes drive temperature changes currently or throughout the distant past “are based on imagination and climate models full of assumptions.”

A comprehensive new study details a stochastic assessment determination of the sequencing of CO2 variations versus temperature variations since the 1950s, over the last 2,000 years (the Common Era), and throughout the last 541 million years.

The robust conclusion is that the causality direction – with the understanding that causes lead and effects lag – clearly shows the temperature changes lead and CO2 changes lag on yearly, decadal, and centennial/millennial scales. In other words, “the reverse causality direction [CO2]→T should be excluded.”

The claim that CO2 increases drive temperature changes is thus a “narrative” only, as the claim that “humans, through their emissions by fossil fuel burning, are responsible for the changes we see in climate” can be regarded as a “non-scientific issue.”

The author has had a series of peer-reviewed scientific papers published supporting this same T→CO2 conclusion (Koutsoyiannis et al., 2022, Koutsoyiannis et al., 2020, Koutsoyiannis et al., 2023, Koutsoyiannis, 2024, Koutsoyiannis, 2024) in just the last few years.

Since these papers challenge the prevailing anthropogenic global warming (AGW) narrative so acutely, Dr. Koutsoyiannis has understandably been the recipient of antagonism bordering on vitriol from AGW proponents. This includes comments from peer-reviewers. So, in an apparent effort to foster transparency, he has made the peer reviewers’ comments on this latest paper public. Here is the link to these commentaries:

Peer reviewers’ exchanges with Koutsoyiannis in “Stochastic assessment of temperature–CO₂ causal relationship in climate from the Phanerozoic through modern times.”

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climate-debate

Hunga Tonga volcano: impact on record warming

11 juillet 2024 Alain Préat

by J. Vinos, July 9, 2024 in WUWT

1. Off-scale warming

Since the planet has been warming for 200 years, and our global records are even more recent, every few years a new warmest year in history is recorded. Despite all the publicity given each time it happens, it would really be news if it didn’t happen, as it did between 1998 and 2014, a period popularly known as the pause.

Figure 1. Berkeley Earth temperature anomaly

Since 1980, 13 years have broken the temperature record. So, what is so special about the 2023 record and the expected 2024 record? For starters, 2023 broke the record by the largest margin in records, 0.17°C. This may not sound like much, but if all records were by this margin, we would go from +1.5°C to +2°C in just 10 years, and reach +3°C 20 years later.

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See https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.12579

Peer reviewed skepticism

11 juillet 2024 Alain Préat

by D. Wojick, July 9, 2024 in WUWT

A fine skeptical journal article waded through green pal review. Wonder of wonders!

The journal is the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. The article title is perfectly clear: “Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems”.

But it is an “Early View Online Version of Record before inclusion in an issue” so get it before it gets too hot for the Journal. I understand it is very popular so the green screams are deafening.

Alas it is paywalled but the lengthy free Abstract is as clear as the title. Here is the conclusion:

“Observations show no increase in damage or any danger to humanity today due to extreme weather or global warming (Crok & May, 2023, pp. 140–161; Scafetta, 2024). Climate change mitigation, according to AR6, means curtailing the use of fossil fuels, even though fossil fuels are still abundant and inexpensive. Since the current climate is arguably better than the pre-industrial climate and we have observed no increase in extreme weather or climate mortality, we conclude that we can plan to adapt to any future changes. Until a danger is identified, there is no need to eliminate fossil fuel use.”

The authors are Andy May and Marcel Crok and as the first parenthetical reference above indicates they are building on prior work. Their 53 References are not paywalled and quite interesting. Continuer la lecture de Peer reviewed skepticism →

Originally posted at ClimateREALISM

Media Reports Earth’s ‘1.5C Temperature limit’ was ‘breached for 12 months in a row’ – Nothing Bad Happened

11 juillet 2024 Alain Préat

by A. Watts, July 10, 2024 in WUWT

Recently, several media outlets claimed that June 2024 was the hottest June on record globally and that it topped off a string of 12 or 13 warmer than normal months, which they blamed on human-induced climate change. Each of the news stories made false claims of reaching climate tipping points, extreme weather events, and that the extended streak of hot temperatures proved a “climate crisis” was at hand.

Here are some of the headlines: Temperatures 1.5C above pre-industrial era average for 12 months, data shows (The Guardian,) June sizzled to a 13th straight monthly heat record, but July might break string (National Public Radio,) and World in line for hottest year as 1.5C limit breached for 12 months in a row (Financial Times.)

That ongoing 1.5C temperature limit scare-story has people around the world rattled. For example, this infographic from The Asia-Pacific branch of the International Union of Food workers (IUF) says (bold author’s):

Global warming caused by human activities reached approximately 1°C over the past 170 years, increasing at 0.2°C per decade. Scientists warn that an average rise of more than 1.5°C in the surface temperature of the earth compared to pre-industrial levels will be catastrophic for the environment and human health.

But despite 12 months of the globe being above the so-called temperature limit, nothing bad happened on a global scale. Claims of climate catastrophe once we passed the so-called 1.5C temperature limit, never happened. The limit was nothing more than a political talking point from the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, as described in this Associated Press article: The magic 1.5: What’s behind climate talks’ key elusive goal. The AP wrote, “in a way both the ‘1.5 and 2 degree C thresholds are somewhat arbitrary,’ Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson said in an email. ‘Every tenth of a degree matters!’”

Now, despite surpassing that arbitrary limit, the “crisis” progressive politicians and alarmists in the mainstream media have been warning about failed to materialize.

First let’s check the global temperature. The source of all these news stories comes from a recent press release by Copernicus, part of the European Commission. A graph by Copernicus, seen in Figure 1 below, illustrates the “limit” and the 12-month temperature peak:

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climate-debate

High-frequency climate forcing causes prolonged cold periods in the Holocene.

22 juin 2024 Alain Préat

by E. van Dijk et al., May 08 2024, in Nature (OPEN ACCESS)

Abstract

Understanding climate variability across interannual to centennial timescales is critical, as it encompasses the natural range of climate fluctuations that early human agricultural societies had to adapt to. Deviations from the long-term mean climate are often associated with both societal collapse and periods of prosperity and expansion. Here, we show that contrary to what global paleoproxy reconstructions suggest, the mid to late-Holocene was not a period of climate stability. We use mid- to late-Holocene Earth System Model simulations, forced by state-of-the-art reconstructions of external climate forcing to show that eleven long-lasting cold periods occurred in the Northern Hemisphere during the past 8000 years. These periods correlate with enhanced volcanic activity, where the clustering of volcanic eruptions induced a prolonged cooling effect through gradual ocean-sea ice feedback. These findings challenge the prevailing notion of the Holocene as a period characterized by climate stability, as portrayed in multi-proxy climate reconstructions. Instead, our simulations provide an improved representation of amplitude and timing of temperature variations on sub-centennial timescales.

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Climate Activists Are Wrong About Which Energy Source Reduces Air Pollution

20 juin 2024 Alain Préat

by S. Graham, June 20, 2024 in WUWT

oday’s media are filled with concerns about air pollution. But few people know which energy source has produced the greatest modern reduction in air pollution. The answer isn’t wind or solar energy.

During the 1950s, my grandfather had a coal furnace in his basement, like many homes in Chicago. Five days after a winter snowfall, the snow was covered with a visible black film of dust from coal furnaces. Our younger generation does not know the original reason for “spring cleaning.” Every spring, homeowners would wash their inside walls to remove coal dust.

It was the rising use of gas fuel, primarily natural gas along with propane, that produced the greatest reduction in air pollution in the United States and across the world. Gas furnaces and stoves have replaced wood in businesses and homes in developed nations. And natural gas power plants have replaced coal-fired plants to generate electricity, with gas becoming the leading fuel for industry.

Natural gas and propane are clean-burning fuels that emit no harmful pollutants when burned. When gas heating is substituted for coal or wood heating, indoor particulate pollution is reduced by 1,000 times.

Today, 70% of US homes use natural gas or propane, a percentage that has been rising for decades. Gas fuels have also become the leading heating and cooking source in Europe, providing 83% of heat energy in the Netherlands and 78% in the United Kingdom. But there are still 70 million wood stoves in Europe.

The World Health Organization estimates that 2 billion people in developing nations still cook using open fires or inefficient stoves fueled by kerosene, biomass (wood, charcoal, animal dung, or crop waste), and coal. These fuels generate harmful indoor air pollution. Indoor air pollution is estimated to cause more than 3 million deaths annually in poor nations. Emerging nations need gas fuels to boost health and well-being.

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Major problems identified in data adjustments applied to a widely used global temperature dataset

20 juin 2024 Alain Préat

by Ceres Team, Feb 22, 2022 in CeresScience

new climate science study, involving a panel of 17 experts from 13 countries, has just been published in the scientific journal, Atmosphere. The study looked at the various data adjustments that are routinely applied to the European temperature records in the widely used Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) dataset over the last 10 years.

unclassified

Has the Sun’s true role in global warming been miscalculated?

20 juin 2024 Alain Préat

by CeresTeam, Oct 2023 in CeresScience

A new international study published in the scientific peer-reviewed journal, Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, by 20 climate researchers from 12 countries suggests that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) might have substantially underestimated the role of the Sun in global warming.

The article began as a response to a 2022 commentary on an extensive review of the causes of climate change published in 2021. The original review (Connolly and colleagues, 2021) had suggested that the IPCC reports had inadequately accounted for two major scientific concerns when they were evaluating the causes of global warming since the 1850s:

The global temperature estimates used in the IPCC reports are contaminated by urban warming biases.
The estimates of solar activity changes since the 1850s considered by the IPCC substantially downplayed a possible large role for the Sun.

On this basis, the 2021 review had concluded that it was not scientifically valid for the IPCC to rule out the possibility that global warming might be mostly natural.

The findings of that 2021 review were disputed in a 2022 article by two climate researchers (Dr. Mark Richardson and Dr. Rasmus Benestad) for two main reasons:

Richardson and Benestad (2022) argued that the mathematical techniques used by Connolly and colleagues (2021) were inappropriate and that a different set of mathematical techniques should have been used instead.
They also argued that many of the solar activity records considered by Connolly and colleagues (2021) were not up-to-date.

They suggested that these were the reasons why Connolly and colleagues (2021) had come to a different conclusion from the IPCC.

This new 2023 article by the authors of the 2021 review, has addressed both of these concerns and shown even more compelling evidence that the IPCC’s statements on the causes of global warming since 1850 are scientifically premature and may need to be revisited.

The authors showed that the urban component of the IPCC’s global temperature data shows a strong warming bias relative to the 98% of the planet that is unaffected by urbanization. However, they also showed that urbanized data represented most of the weather station records used.

While the IPCC only considered one estimate of solar activity for their most recent (2021) evaluation of the causes of global warming, Connolly and colleagues compiled and updated 27 different estimates that were used by the scientific community.

Several of these different solar activity estimates suggest that most of the warming observed outside urban areas (in rural areas, oceans, and glaciers) could be explained in terms of the Sun. Some estimates suggest that global warming is a mixture of human and natural factors. Other estimates agreed with the IPCC’s findings.

For this reason, the authors concluded that the scientific community is not yet in a position to establish whether the global warming since the 1850s is mostly human-caused, mostly natural or some combination of both.

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Olympics 2024: how extreme weather could impact Paris games

19 juin 2024 Alain Préat

by S. King, , June 18 2024, BBC

The summer Olympics and Paralympic games in Paris are just over a month away and there is concern about the potential effects of extreme heat.

Some parts of Europe have already registered temperatures over 40C and it is not unreasonable to suggest that elsewhere in Europe will experience heatwaves in the coming months.

In a report published on Tuesday, Lord Coe, President of World Athletics, says “climate change should increasingly be viewed as an existential threat to sport”.

Intense heat could affect the events, competitors, spectators and officials.

Changing climate of Paris

We don’t know what the forecast will be for Paris during the Olympic period, but Meteo France – the national weather service – has said that summer is likely to be warmer than average, external.

France has experienced deadly summer heatwaves in the past.

The highest recorded temperature in Paris is 42.6C set at the end of July 2019.

And more recently in 2022, during the Olympic period, a lengthy heatwave saw maximum temperatures reach 36C.

That year the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies in France estimated heat-related deaths of 11,000 throughout the summer.

At the last Olympics in Tokyo in 2021, extreme heat made it “torturous” for athletes and volunteers, according to local meteorologists.

It was the hottest Olympic Games on record with sweltering temperatures of 34C and humidity of 70%, which would have made it feel like 47C.

Tennis player Daniel Medvedev spoke of “dying on court” during the heat of a match.

Other competitors vomited and fainted on the finish line because of the high temperatures.

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climate-debate

Climate Propaganda Cabals Ramp Up the Heat for Summer

19 juin 2024 Alain Préat

by K. Hansen, June 18, 2024 in WUWT

Covering Climate Now [CCNow], the Columbia University-based climate propaganda outfit, which claims the ability to reach over 2 billion people worldwide with its ready-to-use, ready-to-share and content-directed climate alarm stories, is ramping up and issuing directives to climate journalists around the world.

Here are the main points that they insist that journalist around the world make in each and every story about Summer.

“Reporting Guidance: 2024’s Extreme Heat

Climate change is making extreme heat more frequent and more severe. Here are resources, sample copy, and tips to help you meet the moment.”

Now, I am a climate journalist myself and I admit that I am not entirely sure exactly what they mean by “tips to help you meet the moment”, nonetheless, I will share those tips with readers here. Why? So that when you see them repeated in your local newspapers, hear them on the radio, or watch some TV weatherman rattle them off, you’ll know the true source of the exaggerated statements and general misinformation.

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With Summer Heat Waves, The Media’s Having A Field Day Pushing Climate Change Lies

19 juin 2024 Alain Préat

by Editorial Board, One 18, 2024 in ClimatChangeDispatch

There’s a summer heat wave going on, which gives journalists the opportunity to fill up their stories with climate change boilerplate. [emphasis, links added]

It no longer matters whether any of it is true. Just the opposite, in fact. If you point out the truth, you’re accused of being a denier.

Sure, the data doesn’t show an increase in the number or intensity of hurricanes or tornadoes or wildfires. Yet every time one or the other strikes, the press robotically connects that event to “climate change.”

Every tornado season, we hear about how climate change is making them more frequent and more deadly. Except the facts don’t support the narrative.

Meteorologist: Why Claims Of The Ocean Having A ‘Record-Breaking Hot Streak’ Are Falsetts,

by A. Watts, June 15, in ClimateChangeDispatch

A recent ScienceNews (SN) article claims that ocean temperatures are out of control in a year-long record-breaking hot streak. This is false. [emphasis, links added]

Numerous ocean temperature datasets show no such record-breaking values. The source SN cited to support its claims was thoroughly discredited when it made similar “record-breaking” claims last year.

The entire claim of the article is based on one dataset, which is seen below in the SN article:

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Tooting’s Great Storm Of 1914

by P. Homewood, June 14, in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

May be a black-and-white image of 3 people, street, Rijksmuseum and text that says "商聞 THEGREATSTOR STOR SuNe1t. SEELY ነ Joly"

May be an image of street and Rijksmuseum

May be a black-and-white image of street and text

110 years ago today, much of SW London was hit by what was called The Great Storm.

Tooting was hit with floods, as the above photos show, an event still remembered today.

The Met Office report for the month highlighted how much rain fell in such a short period over much of London. There was also extreme rainfall in other parts of the country.

Note also the serious railway accident in Inverness four days later.

better to know...?, energy and fields

The world is using more oil, coal and gas than ever before and will use more. Net Zero is dead

by P. Homewood, June 14, NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

A recent flurry of forecasts offers us a range of different views on what’s happening to the global demand for, and use of, crude oil. One thing seems to be clear, however: the chances of net zero carbon emissions in the near term – ie, by 2050 – are basically zero.

The year so far has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride in this realm of uncertainty, with projections and forecasts more volatile than the market itself. Crude prices have remained relatively strong despite various occurrences across Europe and the Middle East that would have resulted in major upsets in decades past.

One major point of consensus related to global oil demand growth is the expectation that it will continue to be robust, driven by a combination of factors including economic recovery, increased travel, and surging industrial activity in non-OECD nations.

The only major body not seeing continued, massive growth is the International Energy Agency (IEA), which revised its numbers this week to predict that crude demand will rise by just 1 million barrels per day (bpd) next year and will (at last!) peak “towards the end of this decade” at 106 million bpd, up from 102 million at the moment. The IEA expects this growth to be led by non-OECD countries, particularly China and India. The IEA and others have highlighted the importance of these regions in driving global oil demand.

The IEA, which is funded by 31 industrialized nations through a dues structure, says that it believes growth in demand from India, China and elsewhere will be gradually outweighed by the expected rollout of electric vehicles and other green technologies. However, one should note that the agency has been shifting for a long time from being an analytical organisation to being essentially a green campaigning one, and its forecasts nowadays are as much attempts to influence markets as to genuinely predict them.

In contrast to the IEA, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) raised its 2024 global oil demand growth forecast to 1.1 million barrels per day, up from its previous estimate of 900,000 bpd. This revision is based on expectations for travel and tourism in the second half of the year. EIA projects even stronger demand growth for 2025 of 1.5 mbpd, again clashing with the IEA which sees just 1 mbpd that year, with non-OECD countries accounting for most of the growth. The US federal agency also raised its projection for crude prices to rise to an average of $87/barrel in Q4 2024 based on the rising demand.

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unclassified

Surveys Show Vast Bulk of Antarctica Is Stable or Growing