Chris Pearce's Blog

How Donald Trump’s policies will send America and the world into recession

I posted the following as a comment yesterday (17 Nov 2024) in reply to a person’s comment on my answer to a question at the Quora question and answer site. The search engines only pick up answers, so I thought I would post my reply here at WordPress as an article. This is the Quora page: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-global-emissions-rising-while-renewables-boom/answer/Chris-Pearce-12.

Trump’s political and economic agenda will send the US and the world backwards. Tariffs are no good for anyone. A 60% tariff on Chinese goods will increase prices in the US, pushing up inflation. US consumers will be able to afford fewer goods and services, forcing economic growth down. China will sell fewer goods to the US, reducing growth in China. And of course China will retaliate, increasing tariffs on US goods. US exports will contract, further dampening the US economy. China will still produce a large majority of things cheaper than the US. Importers will still buy from China although there might be a bit of a shift to other Asian countries, Mexico, etc., depending on who Trump puts tariffs on and at what rate.

Many other countries will suffer as they are important trading partners of China and/or the US. For example, China is Australia’s largest customer. A downturn in China will mean it buys fewer goods from Australia which will also face a downturn. Trump’s tariffs policy will result in an international trade war, pushing up prices all around the world, resulting in inflation (and higher interest rates), and reducing growth. A global recession is likely, which will include the US.

Manufacturing won’t return to countries with developed economies although some high tech stuff and some other specialised stuff may remain. But basically, developing countries produce things cheaper and this is why business relocated a lot of things to those countries from the 1970s onwards. Any major move by Trump to try and bring back manufacturing will be unlikely to succeed as it would mean even higher prices than those of imported goods plus tariffs.

Trump doesn’t know anything, including economics, despite having a degree in it. He was busy sending one of his casinos broke a while back when his bankers met with him. One of them said later that talking to Trump was like talking to someone who had skipped economics and accounting classes at college. He doesn’t seem to have learned much since then, based on his policies.

Going back to fossil fuels will push US energy prices up. Renewables are cheaper, and that includes all steps in the energy production process: capital costs, operation, maintenance and decommissioning, and excluding any subsidies or taxes. Renewables are also cleaner, safer, 24/7 with storage, have shorter lead times and won’t run out. Renewables are 20% of US electricity (30% globally) and increasing. Globally, renewable energy capacity grew 50% in 2023, the highest in two decades, while fossil fuels went nowhere. And businesses and the banks aren’t interested in them. This trend will doubtlessly continue regardless of Trump. And I think climate activists, even when glueing themselves to the road, are far preferably to MAGA types running amok. If Trump hops out of the Paris agreement, the US will join Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only other countries not in it.

US energy policy is determined by federal, state and local governments. Most of the electricity providers are municipal utilities and cooperatives. How are they going to be forced back into buying more expensive and more polluting energy sources for their grids in a competitive market? “The United States is a resource-rich country with enough renewable energy resources to generate more than 100 times the amount of electricity Americans use each year.” See Renewable Energy | Department of Energy. Fossil fuels are finite and will run out. Nearly all the cheap stuff is gone. Remaining reserves will become more and more expensive to dig up and process. And the problem with fracking, apart from the numerous adverse environmental effects, is that shale oil and gas is highly subsidised and not yet commercial.

We don’t need baseload power. The gap between energy peaks and troughs is growing. This doesn’t suit coal, gas and nuclear as responding to change in demand for electricity using these sources is slow, and plants takes a lot longer to start up or shut down. Renewables can be stored and used 24/7, and the quantity fed into the grid can be changed quickly. And it can be transported and exported. Storage costs have come down enormously and continue to fall.

The Australian prime minister’s response to Trump’s policies is to keep free trade, climate policies, and openness rather than isolationism. I’m sure that this would be the message or the hope of just about all countries, even China. It’s already the leading producer of wind, of solar and of hydro. Our PM is promoting us to be a renewable energy powerhouse exporting solar energy around the world. The US certainly won’t be the energy powerhouse of the world with fossil fuels and nuclear which are on the way out. Nuclear has fallen from 17% of global electricity to 9% over the last 25 years.

Further significant damage will be done to the American economy if Trump throws out 11 million illegals. The number has been high for about 25 years, through the Bush Jnr, Obama, Trump 1.0 and Biden eras. Most of the increase was during the Clinton and Bush Jnr years. Employment rates for illegals, and migrants generally, tend to be higher than for the native-born as migrants are younger. Taking illegals out of the economy could send the US into deep recession. Throwing them out could be impractical as many have married legal migrants or the native-born and had children who in turn have had their children. Who’s going to round up 11 million illegals and toss them out? Trump’s MAGA mob? And crime rates for migrants, including illegals (even from Haiti), are lower than for the American born.

The US economy is fairly strong. GDP growth of 2.7% is a lot better than most developed economies at the moment. Inflation is down to 2.6% which is good. High inflation and interest rates (and flat growth) in recent years was global and caused by an increase in demand coming out of the pandemic and higher energy prices due to Putin’s war, not Biden as the right seem to think. Kamala would have done better promoting the economy and other achievements rather than attacking Trump and his nonsense. But with voluntary voting, elections depend on who votes (probably those with the strongest views) rather than what most people want and can be a lottery, especially with the atrocious electoral college system.

Another big problem for the US will be Trump’s shocking picks for Cabinet positions. These people seem to have little or no relevant experience and often their views and actions seem to be at odds with what their departments would normally promote. Expect many resignations from these departments and a chaotic public sector. Kennedy (health) is an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. Zeldin (environment) is unlikely to care much about the environment. Wright (energy) is a fracking CEO and climate change denier. Hegseth (defence) is a religious fanatic, anti-establishment, said to be a Kremlin stooge, and was up for sexual assault. Gabbard (national intelligence) supports Russia. Gaetz (attorney-general) seems to have about as much regard for the law as Trump. And Musk (government efficiency) has reduced Twitter staff numbers greatly and also revenue and profit, but understands climate change. Will Trump allow him to keep making electric vehicles? Some of these people have hated Trump at some stage or he’s hated them or both. Any advanced economy needs a strong government sector to support it, including the departments above. Dismantling them will shrink the economy and reduce government services. That’s if Trump can get some of these ridiculous appointments, and other things, through the Senate. Many Republican politicians hate him.

One thing we can be thankful for with a Trump win is that his MAGA loons didn’t riot and potentially cause some sort of civil war. We can also be thankful that the Trump regime will only be there four years. Whoever wins the next election will be sure to wind back and abandon most if not all of Trump’s policies, and will obviously toss out his cronies from the top jobs, which will start at 8 am on day 1. I don’t think it’ll be the Republicans after the huge mess that Trump will likely make over the next four years. He is sure to get most of the blame for it from voters and rightly so. By then China will have continued to grow larger than the US. It is already larger on a purchasing power parity basis. I would much prefer a strong US as the leading nation rather than China, but Trump will send the US backwards.

A victory for science

For anyone interested in climate science, a US court has just awarded prominent climate scientist Michael Mann $1 million against anthropogenic climate change denier Mark Steyn for defamation. Here’s a question on it at the Quora site and my answer to it that I posted a little earlier.

Do you think Michael Mann’s defamation lawsuit will have a chilling effect on climate change skeptics?

It probably will or it should. Mann has just been awarded $1 million. This is a huge victory for science, not only climate science but in public health too where scientists have been subjected to a barrage of abuse over their work on coronavirus, vaccination, safety measures, etc. The fossil fuel industry has a large number of lawsuits against it for misleading people about climate change. I’d say that denier comments at Quora and on other social media probably won’t be a problem, but writing and posting an article on a denier blog site or other sites could be a problem if the writer accuses the scientist of fraud when none is apparent (except in the eyes of deniers).

Slander and libel against climate scientists has been rife since around 1990 when the fossil fuel industry invented anthropogenic climate change denial in response to moves to save energy and shift to cleaner energy sources plus the formation of the IPCC in 1989. The abuse probably increased after Michael Mann’s study that produced the so-called hockey-stick graph (not named by him) in 1998 and 1999 (which has been replicated by at least two dozen other studies and none showing otherwise) and again after the 2009 so-called “Climategate” episode where crook/s unknown stole emails from prominent scientists including Mann and tried to make out unsuccessfully that the scientists were into fraud. Six major inquiries cleared the scientists of any wrongdoing.

Mann brought two lawsuits, one against denier Tim Ball and denier outfit the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in 2011, and a second against deniers Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn and the denier outfits they posted blogs on, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Review magazine, in 2012. The CEI and NR tried to dismiss the lawsuit under anti-SLAPP legislation, which was denied and then denied again on appeal multiple times. Steyn had to pay legal costs. The cases against Simberg and Steyn dragged on although the two organisations wriggled free as the two writers were bloggers not employees.

Just a few hours ago, the Washington DC Superior Court awarded damages of $1 million to Mann to be paid by Steyn. Back in 2012, Simberg had compared Mann with Jerry Sandusky, a football coach convicted of sexually assaulting children. Simberg wrote of Mann that “instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.” What a total joke. We’re heading for dire consequences (environmental, economic and societal) if we continue indefinitely with fossil fuels. Steyn then reproduced the comment in an article in the National Review where he accused Mann of fraud. See the following among a heap of other articles in recent hours: ‘Climatologist Michael Mann wins defamation case: what it means for scientists’, at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00396-y#:~:text=Jury%20awards%20Mann%20more%20than,attacked%20because%20of%20their%20work.&text=US%20climate%20scientist%20Michael%20Mann,to%20a%20convicted%20child%20molester.

The case against Tim Ball went nearly forever too before finally being thrown out in 2019 due to Ball’s health and his claims having no credibility. See Tim Ball Pleads For Mercy As An Irrelevant Sick Old Man, Gets It, Declares Victory. In a similar case, the judge said: “a reasonably thoughtful and informed person … is unlikely to place any stock in Dr. Ball’s views.” In another case against Ball: “A B.C. Supreme Court judge has dismissed a libel action against ‘climate change sceptic’ Dr. Tim Ball on the basis that Ball’s writing is not sufficiently credible to inflict damage on the reputation of a professional climate scientist.” See Judge Dismisses Libel Claim, Climate ‘Sceptic’ Tim Ball Not Credible Enough To Take Seriously – DeSmog. In the Mann case, virtually none of the media (outside of denier blogs) picked it up as there was really nothing to report. There was no judgement made against the hockey stick or climate science. Ball only got into climate science in retirement.

But the latest victory against Steyn is big. Deniers have always hated Mann because he was seen as the person who snuffed out the idea that the Medieval Warm Period was global and warmer than now. It was one of the main things used by deniers to argue that the current warming is natural. He wasn’t the first person to do it and certainly not the last as more than two dozen other global studies have come to the same conclusion while none has found otherwise. Claims by deniers that the MWP was global and warmer than now are confined to rants on denier blogs and comments on social media rather than scientific studies. Mann is kind of the Charles Darwin of climate science. Darwin and his findings on evolution of course put paid to the ancient idea that everything was created by some god.

https://www.quora.com/Do-you-think-Michael-Manns-defamation-lawsuit-will-have-a-chilling-effect-on-climate-change-skeptics/answer/Chris-Pearce-12

Brisbane’s 200th birthday and the Moreton Bay castaways story

Next year, 2024, is Brisbane’s 200th birthday. This year is the 200th anniversary of the Moreton Bay castaways, an event that led to the founding of Brisbane, the now capital of the state of Queensland, Australia. The castaways were marooned on Moreton Island, just off Brisbane, 200 years ago this month. April 15 was the probable day they were beached although there was no mention of it in the media.

For several years, I have tried to get some interest in celebrating both Brisbane’s 200th birthday and the castaways’ 200th anniversary from the state government, relevant councils and historical societies. I have put various ideas to them, including a reenactment of the castaways’ journey over the eight months they were here. I have also written a script for a movie on the castaways’ story. It has excellent reviews, including a comment by a reviewer in Scotland: ‘The Castaways can become the most popular film in Australia especially, and given that Australian cinematography is booming, it has the ability for a transnational appeal.’ I am still seeking a producer although I have certainly had some interest.

The article below is one I wrote for Brisbane newspaper The Courier-Mail late last year. They haven’t contacted me though and I can’t see it published, so I thought I may as well publish it here.

Article.

Most readers will know that Brisbane was a convict town. But how did it start? Explorer John Oxley came across two very lost timber getters in the Moreton Bay region 200 years ago next year. One of them showed him the Brisbane River. He put in a favourable report to New South Wales governor Thomas Brisbane. A settlement was founded the following year.

But how did the timber getters come to be more than 800 kilometres from Sydney and 500 kilometres from the nearest white settlement at the time, Port Macquarie? Leading NSW citizen William Cox wanted good quality timber for some buildings in the Hawkesbury area. So he sent four of his men to the Illawarra 80 kilometres south of Sydney to fetch cedar. Ticket of leave convicts Richard Parsons, Thomas Pamphlett and John Thompson and full convict John Finnegan set off down the Hawkesbury River on 21 March 1823.

They got to within a few kilometres of their destination the next day when a stiff offshore breeze blew up. It strengthened and they had to lower the sail completely. They steered into the waves but the nine metre open boat was tossed about and got pushed further out to sea. The weather worsened with heavy rain and strong wind. With nightfall, they lost sight of land.

By morning, the rain stopped but gale force winds continued for five days. They ran out of drinking water and opened the five gallon keg of rum meant for the Illawarra sawyers as part payment for the cedar. The ocean stayed rough for 12 days before they could use sail.

They felt they were east of Van Diemen’s Land and headed north-west, thinking this would get them back to the Illawarra. Their physical and mental state deteriorated as their only sustenance was salty rainwater collected in the sail and the rum. Thompson, an old navy man, succumbed and his body was buried at sea two days later.

Land had been in sight for several days but Parsons, half owner of the boat, feared the surf would break it up and they would drown, so they continued sailing north. Finally, he declared he was dying. They saw a stream running across the sand and with difficulty got the boat to the beach.

After spending a sleepless night at the back of a sand-dune in pouring rain, they returned to the water next morning. But their boat had broken up overnight. They retrieved two of three bags of flour, intended for the sawyers, and some belongings. Their only item of clothing was an old rug jacket of Finnegan’s. Thinking the Illawarra and Sydney were still well to the north, they set off in that direction along the beach. They were actually on Moreton Island.

Rounding Cape Moreton and then Comboyuro Point, the castaways saw Moreton Bay with its expanse of water extending well to the south. They reached the South Passage and realised they were on an island. The men got the attention of Aborigines on the other side who came across the strait in their bark canoes and ferried them to Stradbroke Island. Pamphlett nearly drowned in the process.

They stayed with this group about 10 days and were fed plenty of fish. Later they found a canoe but it sank before they left the shallows. The castaways built their own boat from a large hollow log and set out to Peel Island and then the mainland, with Finnegan a reluctant traveller.

Leaving the boat on the beach, they continued northwards on foot. Soon they were at the mouth of a large river, the Brisbane, never before seen by whites. They followed its banks and tributaries, seeking a way to cross it. After a few weeks, they came to Oxley Creek and saw two canoes on the opposite bank. Pamphlett, the only reasonable swimmer of the three, swam across and took one of the boats. It allowed them to quickly return to the mouth of the river.

This time they kept ‘their’ boat. Pamphlett paddled it while Parsons, who feared the flimsy Aboriginal canoes, and Finnegan walked. They were able to cross a number of waterways in quick time. At one stage, when crossing to Clontarf Point, Pamphlett returned to fetch Finnegan when he saw him in a separate boat paddling madly. He had pinched it as it had a number of fish in it. But about 10 noisy Aboriginal men pursued him in a larger canoe.

The castaways feared for their lives, but the local fishermen forgave them, thinking the visitors were the ghosts of dead kinsfolk. The Indigenous people were nearly always most hospitable to the three lost men, providing them with food and shelter. The trio watched them catch fish, play games and go about their day to day lives. They attended intertribal fights and a kippa ceremony and lived on Bribie Island for a time.

This slowed their progress, but Finnegan in particular was quite happy to spend time with the Aborigines rather than return to Sydney to whatever fate might await him as a full convict who had been missing for some months.

Parsons and Finnegan headed north again while Pamphlett attended a series of organised fights. They got to the Noosa area and quarrelled. Parsons, known for his temper, tried to stab Finnegan with a knife. Finnegan returned to the southern end of Bribie and so did Pamphlett. Parsons continued to head north.

Late in the afternoon of 29 November 1823, Pamphlett spotted a boat while fishing off the beach with his Aboriginal friends. It wasn’t an Indigenous vessel but a cutter. On board was NSW surveyor-general John Oxley. He explained to Pamphlett that Sydney was many hundreds of miles to the south rather than to the north. Next day, Oxley picked up Finnegan who was coming back from some fights.

Finnegan showed Oxley the Brisbane River while Pamphlett assisted crew in other parts of the bay. The explorer was impressed and put in a report to the governor. Oxley, accompanied by botanist Allan Cunningham and surveyor Robert Hoddle, returned to Moreton Bay on 11 September 1824. A new colony of 14 soldiers, 30 convicts and a few civilian helpers was set up initially at Redcliffe under Lieutenant Henry Miller. Parsons had come back to Bribie Island and was rescued.

Back in the Hawkesbury area, Pamphlett committed another crime. He stole two 100 pound bags of flour in July 1826 and was sentenced to seven years at the newly established Moreton Bay convict colony. He briefly absconded in January 1833 before being returned to Sydney in October. He died at Penrith in 1838 of unknown causes, aged about 50. Finnegan was a government guide on several ships until 1828 before he disappeared from the records. Parsons died at Goulburn in 1864 aged 77 of constipation.

“Climategate” – the real story

You may have heard of “Climategate”. What became known by anthropogenic climate change deniers as “Climategate” was when a large number of emails between certain climate scientists at the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, UK, were hacked in 2009. The culprits were never found despite extensive police investigations although mathematician, miner and denier Stephen McIntyre of Climate Audit and his followers seemed to be prime suspects. He took up an interest in climate science about 20 years ago when aged in his mid 50s. It was sparked by the Michael Mann et al so-called hockey stick graph that McIntyre decided he didn’t like. This 1999 study using tree ring data over 1000 years found that the Medieval Warm Period (c.950–1250) was regional rather the global and was cooler than today. See graph below. Deniers had always assumed the MWP was global and warmer than now.

McIntyre has been talking nonsense about the study ever since, along with his sidekick, economist and denier Ross McKitrick. They wrote papers and met with politicians. Finally, the National Academy of Sciences investigated but it came up with similar results to Mann et al, in the North Report back in 2006 (but McIntyre and McKitrick kept carrying on). Indeed, more than two dozen studies have replicated Mann’s work. See, for example, graph below. McIntyre is full of misinformation and nonsense (including on Trump’s attempted coup). See Steve McIntyre – DeSmog. He actually found a data error in 2007 when checking GISS temperature data that subsequently reduced US average temperatures 0.15°C in 2000–2006 (but it made basically no difference to global average temperatures as the US is only 2% of the globe) and that’s about it.

McIntyre and his Climate Audit readers had been sending FOI requests to the East Anglia University’s Climatic Research Unit asking for raw temperature data of weather stations the unit obtained from weather bureaus through agreements with governments and also for emails relating to the IPCC’s AR4 report. Requests escalated by mid 2009 with the CRU receiving 58 requests in one week in late July. Perhaps McIntyre thought the CRU had nothing else to do. Clearly it was an attempt to compare the raw data with the published data and accuse the scientists of “manipulating” the data to create the impression of global warming. But the data was under confidentiality agreements with governments although the CRU was seeking agreement to put the data online.

A month later, and a few months before the Copenhagen Summit, thousands of CRU emails and computer files were hacked, with Climate Audit declaring: “A miracle has happened”. Climate Audit and other denier blogs madly pasted up copies of the emails with the view to trying to show anthropogenic global warming was a fraud. That was the initial main aim of the hacking. Various scientific organisations such as the AAAS, the AMS and the UCS put out statements on the scientific consensus of anthropogenic global warming. They confirmed basic science such as CO2 being a greenhouse gas, the fact that we’re releasing far too much of it for the environment to absorb, thus the rapid build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere, thus the rapid increase in temperatures. And of course raw temperature data is adjusted for things like urban heat islands, weather stations moving from hot spots in the middle of town to cooler spots in grassed areas at airports, and changes in temperature measuring instruments and methods. This is far more accurate than simply going with what the thermometers show.

None of this stopped the deniers, who had been brainwashed by the fossil fuel industry and its supporters since it basically started the anthropogenic climate change denial political movement in the 1980s when the industry realised that cutting back on fossil fuel use would harm it. Deniers also ploughed through the emails looking for anything and everything that might discredit the climate scientists and the science. This is why CRU director Phil Jones aimed to convince the UEA’s FOI managers (they are the ones who decide whether to release data, not the scientists) not to give out data to “greenhouse skeptics”. He emailed another scientist: “Think I’ve managed to persuade UEA to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit”. Good idea. Who wouldn’t do/say something similar in the circumstances.

The comment in Phil Jones’s email about Michael Mann’s “Nature trick to hide the decline” and similar quotes are actually misquotes, very common in denierland, and whole stories have been invented around “trick to hide the decline” in temperatures as the data went the wrong way for deniers’ liking. This is the actual email: “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The word “trick” is simply jargon for splicing different data sets together. This was done for two sets of tree ring data and actual temperatures. It can be done with other data sets too. The “nature trick” refers to tree ring data and the word “decline” refers to a decline in tree ring sizes in some high latitude areas since 1960, rather than anything to do with temperatures. See Clearing up misconceptions regarding ‘hide the decline’ for more. And besides, there was no temperature decline to hide. Global temperatures have been increasing rapidly since the 1970s.

Thus, hide the decline simply referred to the decline in tree rings in the era of anthropogenic global warming with CO2 levels increasing 100 times faster than coming out of the last glacial period and temperatures 40 times faster. Much of the natural environment can’t keep up. Tree ring data is thus less useful in recent decades and won’t be as accurate. In hindsight, different wording to “hide the decline” should have been used; the scientists should have known that deniers would misquote and misconstrue in their endless pursuit to discredit scientists and science.

Also, no one was trying to obstruct an FOI request. The UEA’s FOI managers are the ones who decide whether to fulfil an FOI request, not the scientists or any other academics or other people at UEA. There are many reasons an FOI request can be denied. The scientists made it clear to the FOI managers in meetings that the deniers would wrongly try and refute the correctness of the data and this could be damaging to reputations, careers, the CRU and the university. Besides, the data in question was under confidentiality agreements with governments although the CRU was seeking agreement to put the data online. At the time, more than 95% of CRU climate data had already been online for years. Then of course the illegal hacking took place.

Had the FOIs gone through before the hacking, and the data (plus denier commentary) published on denier blogs, the university and the scientists might have ended up with good grounds to launch a defamation case against McIntyre and his followers. Defamation is about making false statements harming reputations. In the end, there was a large number of inquiries (which wouldn’t have happened without the hacking) into the whole saga, all of which cleared the victims, i.e. the scientists, of any wrongdoing:

– The UK House of Commons found that “Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community”. It also found that “in the instance of the CRU, the scientists were not legally allowed to give out the data”.

– The US EPA “found this was simply a candid discussion of scientists working through issues that arise in compiling and presenting large complex data sets”.

– The Pennsylvania State University found that “there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had or has ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with an intent to suppress or to falsify data”. It also found that “the so-called ‘trick’ was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field”.

– An international Science Assessment Panel set up by the University of East Anglia found “no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit”.

– The US Department of Commerce found “no evidence in the CRU emails that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data”.

– The US National Science Foundation found “no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed”.

Thus the climate scientists and climate science were completely unscathed and kept going as before much to the annoyance of deniers. There was a lengthy police investigation that unfortunately didn’t find the culprit/s except that the hacking was via the internet and wasn’t an inside job.

The UK energy crisis

There’s been a lot of media lately about the energy crisis in the United Kingdom. Many of the remaining anthropogenic climate change deniers try and blame it on renewables. One of the deniers I spar with at Quora posted an article that takes this line. I replied as follows …

This article is by retired accountant Paul Homewood. Here’s the link to it at ACC denier Anthony Watts’ blog WUWT [What’s Up With That]: Power Markets In Crisis. It’s selective and he seems to be blaming the transition on renewables. Just about every country is transitioning to renewables, including China, which has stopped paying solar subsidies from 1 August 2021 as solar is so cheap.

The main energy problem for the UK is very high gas prices. These have only gone up in recent months and it’s a worldwide problem caused by excess demand compared with supply as the world emerges rapidly from the coronavirus downturn. A cold winter caused stored gas levels to fall sharply. At the same time, demand for gas has risen rapidly, especially in Asia and particularly China.

The UK has become increasingly reliant on gas over the decades. It’s become a major fuel in electricity generation. Also, more than 80% of households are now heating their homes with natural gas. Until recently, gas prices were a quarter of electricity prices. It’s a case of having put too many energy eggs in the one basket. Worse still, the UK has scant gas storage capacity or about 2% of annual demand. Other European countries have much more. See graph below. The UK Office of Gas and Electricity Markets in March warned the government of the risks of a price surge and low storage. The government didn’t do anything.

[image error]

Speaking of eggs in the one basket, the UK may have also done this with renewables, perhaps concentrating too much on wind. Part of the problem this year has been lack of wind. But the UK probably needs more energy from biofuels, solar, hydro, and green hydrogen. Things are moving in all these areas but more probably should have been done sooner. The UK would have done better to move faster towards renewables, given they are cheaper and cleaner.

Brexit certainly hasn’t helped. European gas prices are also at record highs, but European Union members can trade between each other and prices balance out. The UK is fine when energy prices are low but when they are high it is left very exposed to price shocks. There’s also the petrol shortages and subsequent high prices due mainly to a lack of truck drivers who mainly came from Europe but the pandemic and Brexit have kept them in Europe. The UK inflation rate is also rising.

Homewood says: “Arguably the biggest factor this year has been the doubling of EU carbon prices …”. But the EU says: “The effect of the gas price increase on the electricity price is nine times larger than the impact of the carbon price increase.” See Press corner.

He also talks about the “£12bn a year cost of renewable subsidies”, but doesn’t mention that subsidies to other energy sources, particularly fossil fuels, seem to be at least as much. This includes things like reductions in VAT on fuel bills and coal and nuclear decommissioning costs, cleaning up old coal mines. The European Commission a couple of years ago identified £10.5b for fossil fuels and £9.5b for renewables.

The frustrations of being an anthropogenic climate change denier

Here’s a recent classic frustrated, cranky and rather silly denier post deep down a thread on Quora where the search engines don’t go …

“Alarmists make the mistake of believing their own rhetoric, their own fiddled stats, and the constant repetition of falsehoods.

By the way, I have 4 “O” levels in English, speak 5 languages and have an “O” level in Latin AND Latin verse. Do you?

I am a “word sculptor”. You can write virtually what you want for “literary emphasis” Thus starting with AND if you want. I also speak/understand Swahili, though I cannot write or read it very well.

You make a point of avoiding your weak areas. Is dishonest.

Lets cut to the chase – name ONE BAD thing PRESENTLY from GW. You cannot.

Address the insulation versus windmills.

Address the record food production, a lot of it due to (1) more CO2 (2) to warmer weather (3) longer growing seasons (3) use of LESS water because the stomata not so open. (4) address the the fact that HALF of Britain would have to be covered in windmills to replace fossil fuels (5) address the alarmists denial of energy in Africa for their religious beliefs – if you exclude S.Africa and Egypt, the WHOLE of the rest of Africa uses less power than ONE medium American city

……I can hear you now, “Who cares? Let them suffer. GW, GW, GW,” on and on and on.

You will address these issues or the debate is over and I do not want to hear from you again. Have a nice day.”

Our ‘discussion’ had already gone back and forth a number of times as I tried to explain some science to this guy. And he kept telling me how smart he is. Here’s my response to the above …

“Deniers soon run out of scientific argument (or should I say pseudoscience and misinformation) and resort to rhetoric. And personal achievements have nothing to do with climate science either. I don’t mention my university prizes, for example, or that I’m an editor. Also, I have already addressed all of the issues you raise, often many times. I know how frustrating it must be for deniers these days but you need to read my posts. Then you won’t get “constant repetition”.

Fiddled stats. No stats have been fiddled. Weather bureaus around the world and large scientific organisations such as NASA and NOAA adjust raw temperature data for things like urban heat islands, weather stations moving (typically from warm spots in the centre of cities and towns to cooler spots in outer areas at airports) and changes in temperature measuring instruments and methods. But the difference between raw and adjusted series in recent decades isn’t great with both series showing a rapid increase in temperatures. See graph below. Note that the 1930s US heatwave wasn’t global. Adjustments are made to raw temperature data to make it more accurate than simply running with what the thermometer said in different places at different times.

Falsehoods. No, it’s called science. That we have anthropogenic climate change is abundantly obvious. This is due to our CO2 emissions. The natural environment adds and takes out CO2 from the system in roughly equal amounts; we only add it. This is why CO2 levels are increasing 100 times faster than coming out of the last glacial period and temperatures 40 times faster. Virtually all climate scientists agree with ACC. No scientific organisation takes a contrary view, nor do hardly any governments. They are not going to side with the pseudoscience and misinformation of a right wing political movement that was started by the fossil fuel industry in the 1980s when it realised that any move to reduce fuel consumption or move to cleaner energy sources would hurt it. So it shifted from a position where it agreed with the science to one of sitting on the fence to one of denial. But it’s gone the full circle. The likes of Exxon now once again agree with ACC. But there are still quite a few ACC deniers with their pseudoscience and misinformation floating around.

One bad thing presently from global warming. Try extinction rates hundreds of times higher than preindustrial. Also, the number of extreme weather events is 3–4 times more than 1980. The effects of extended drought, more flooding and other extreme weather is already having an adverse effect in some parts of the world. Desert areas are larger, e.g. the Sahara is 10% larger. Antarctic ice melt volume was six times greater in the 2010s than the 1980s. The ocean is 30% more acidic. Crops have lower nutrient levels. Weeds, insects and other pests tend to be a greater problem with warmer temperatures. Low lying farm land is more prone to saltwater intrusion with sea level rise. And there is a greater area burned from wildfires due to heat and drought.

The last time CO2 levels were as high as now was 3 million years ago, temperatures were a couple of degrees warmer than now (expected by 2100), and sea levels were at least 30 feet higher. This could happen again in centuries to come, flooding coastal cities (home to billions) and vast areas of low lying farmland. Collapse of the environment, the economy and society is quite possible if we don’t get rid of fossil fuels. Besides, renewables are cheaper and cleaner so why take the risk with fossil fuels which will run out anyway.

Insulation vs. windmills. I’m still not sure what you’re trying to show or prove with this. It’s hardly a tradeoff. If you relied on roof insulation in the UK and nothing else, you’d be cold nine months of the year. You’d need heating, lighting, etc. as well, and renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels. This includes construction, operation, storage, decommissioning and waste, and taking out subsidies.

Record food production. This is because there are more people to feed. Food production overall has risen, not due to extra CO2, but due to opening up more farmland, technology, science, and government and international organisation programs. Grain production, for example, has increased more than fourfold since 1950 while CO2 levels have risen about a third.

What happens with more CO2 is that the Earth is greening and plants are bigger, therefore they will need more water not less. But the main concern here is that we are releasing so much CO2 that the natural environment is only absorbing about half of it, thus the rapid build up of CO2 in the atmosphere, thus the rapid increase in temperatures.

Windmills covering half of Britain. The UK and most other places are transitioning away from fossil fuels. Coal has fallen sharply and is now less than 10% of UK energy, having been 70–80% several decades ago. Wind has increased rapidly and is up to 25%. The UK has about 11,000 wind turbines. So it’d need about 44,000 of them to go 100% wind. UK area is 240,000 sq km. They need to be about 100 metres apart. So you’d fit 100 of them into a square km. This means 44,000 of them would need 440 square km. Thus 440/240,000 = less than 0.2% or 1/500th of land area rather than half. Where do you get half from? I was in England for three weeks in 2019. I saw a lot of windmills in the countryside on sheep farms etc. The sheep don’t mind and the farmers are happy as they get paid. Other windmills are at wind farms. This is infinitely better than coal mines (which are atrocious for the environment), coal fired power stations (which are dirty and emit huge amounts of CO2) and trains pulling dirty wagons full of dirty coal all over the country.

Denial of energy in Africa for their religious beliefs. What’s all this about? Yes, Africa uses a lot less energy than advanced economies. What’s the hidden message for “alarmists” though? Left and centre left governments are more likely to give more aid to Africa than right and centre right governments.”

He didn’t get back. But he raised most of his issues again elsewhere on Quora and I pointed him to my posts here and elsewhere and could he actually read them rather than keep coming back with the same or similar nonsense. I’m cutting back on my efforts at Quora for obvious reasons.

The Medieval Warm Period was regional not global

Climate change deniers will deny anything and everything that vaguely looks like it might support anthropogenic global warming. They think the Medieval Warm Period wasn’t regional but global and that temperatures rose a lot all around the world and all at the same time. Because the MWP wasn’t due to our emissions, they argue that the current warming isn’t necessarily due to us either. Part of my response to a recent comment on the Quora site follows …

“The MWP was regional rather than global. And the warming didn’t happen at the same time but was spread out over many hundreds of years in different places at different times; some places cooled. Those hand-drawn denier graphs showing a large rounded lump for the MWP around 950–1250 CE are nonsense. Denier Anthony Watts thought he was showing how the MWP was global but he actually showed in detail and perhaps unwittingly how it was regional. See More evidence that the Medieval Warming Period was global, not regional.

The map he pins there (see below) shows more warming (red markers) than cooling (blue markers) in the high latitudes. But there are many green (wet) and yellow (dry) markers across the middle and lower latitudes where wet or dry dominated the climate rather than warm or cool. The map gives the impression that red (warm) dominates overall, but the particular map projection has the higher latitudes taking up far more of the globe than in reality.

If you click on “this map” in the fourth line of text, you’re taken here: Medieval Warm Period – Google My Maps. When you click on the markers or on the list of 1272 MWP studies that were used to put the map together, you’ll see that the studies found warming at very different times across the globe (and cooling, wet and dry at different times too), with sometimes part or all of the period extending outside the usual timeframe given for the MWP of around 950–1250.

On another page, he posts the following map relating to various studies on the MWP. It reveals warming to very different extents and at very different times across the globe. In some areas, there were several peaks. And some peaks lasted several centuries while others only a few years. Canada’s Boothia Peninsula’s MWP peak was around 600 CE. An area at the top of Norway peaked around 1480. And other areas recorded peaks at various times in between. …

[Michael] Mann’s hockey stick and the numerous replications of it reflect these ups and downs. There is warming (and cooling) on every continent but not all at the same time. It’s a similar story with other warm periods and also the Little Ice Age. In contrast, the current warming is global, or about 98% of the globe, and it’s all happening at the same time.”

Deniers also accuse scientists of trying to erase the MWP, usually that well known climate scientist Michael Mann tried to do this. An earlier part of my same response follows …

“No one erased or tried to erase the Medieval Warm Period. Michael Mann’s study started at 1000 CE, well after the start of the MWP. His graph therefore started high and fell through the end of the MWP, through the Little Ice Age, and then rose sharply in the current era, thus its hockey stick shape. More than two dozen studies have replicated his study. Here are some of them. Note that the blade is much longer in later studies due to the current ongoing rapid warming.”

On global warming

Here’s my exchange with one of the resident anthropogenic climate change deniers on the Quora site. I think it shows just how brainwashed and locked into their views some of these people are. It didn’t matter what I put to this guy, he just kept coming back with more nonsense. He just isn’t into facts or evidence. We’re lucky that the climate denial political movement, started by the fossil fuel companies in the 1980s, is no more than an amusing sideshow and the world is getting on with its transition away from fossil fuels to renewables. Only about 7% of people in the US remain dismissive of climate change, down from 15% in 2010, according to Yale polls. It tends to be lower still elsewhere.

The question on the Quora site was this: Why are warming temperatures causing a vicious cycle that leads to more warming? Here’s the exchange starting with this guy’s initial answer to the question. (My answer is at bottom of page.)

Him: well if your fire is set to high the heat in your home will continue to increase as it can’t escape, fortunately where there is nothing to hold the heat it can escape, the so called greenhouse gases only work in enclosed spaces.

Me: Heat will stay in a house or a car or a greenhouse or garden shed etc as the structure will keep the heat in. But this is nothing to do with the greenhouse effect or greenhouse gases. Outside in the atmosphere, greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane and water vapour absorb and reemit radiation in all directions including back to the Earth’s surface, thereby slowing the cooling. Thus the higher levels of gases such as CO2 are keeping more of the warmth in than when the level was much lower.

Him: Co2 is at ground level so if it was doing that you would notice your feet were hotter than the rest of you.

Me: CO2 is spread throughout the atmosphere. Even 100km up, its ppm is still over half that near the surface. At 5km, it’s still only a few % less than at a few hundred metres. It blows here, there and everywhere with the wind.

Him: Great that is why it is so hot at night and not in the day then as co2 is much higher at night.

Me: CO2 is only higher at night inside. That will happen due to people exhaling CO2, and especially when the windows are shut. Outside, CO2 isn’t higher at night and lower by day. Outside, it’s warmer by day and night than decades ago due to anthropogenic global warming.

Him: Well of course, it wouldn’t want to get cold would it? you really are getting desperate now. What exactly is the difference between co2 we breath out and co2 plants emit?

Me: Air exhaled is about 35°C or a couple of degrees lower than body temperature. If you put a bunch of people in a room and close the windows and doors, the temperature will obviously go up due to us exhaling and our body heat. The heat is trapped just as it is in any inside area, including a car and a greenhouse. This has nothing to do with any greenhouse effect; this occurs outside in the atmosphere.

All animals and plants are part of the system. Humans breathe in oxygen, nitrogen, CO2, etc (anything that’s in the air). It will use much of this oxygen but still exhale some of it. We exhale more CO2 than we inhale as what we exhale includes carbon from the food we eat. Plants use CO2 and then release about half of it back into the atmosphere. They also release oxygen. We exhale the carbon used by plants we consume. When we eat meat, the carbon passes through plants to the animals before we eat the meat. This is all part of the natural cycle and doesn’t add to CO2 levels in the atmosphere. But when we extract fossil fuels and use them, a huge amount of carbon comes out of the ground where it’s been stored for millions of years, thus transferring the carbon from under the ground to the atmosphere. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It always has been and always will be. Our huge volume of emissions is what’s pushing temperatures up rapidly and causing accelerating ice melt, sea level rise, more and worse weather extremes, adverse effects on the food chain, and increases in species vulnerability and extinction.

Him: We eat plants as well,are you saying we shouldn’t eat at all, because it might,there is no evidence to support it, have an effect on the climate?

Me: No. As I said, we’re part of the natural environment. Our breathing and eating doesn’t add to the stock of CO2. It’s our activities of extracting fossil fuels and using them that adds to CO2 levels, as I also said.

Him: well your assertion has no actual reality the amount of co2 that is produced by burning fossil fuels is less than 1 % of the total co2 in the atmosphere. Carbon is the building block of all life. And co2 is vital to all life to control respiration, it is time that the irrational demonisation of a vital gas ceased.

Me: We release about 4% of total CO2 emissions and the other 96% is natural. Thing is the natural environment adds and takes out CO2 in roughly equal amounts. We only add it. This is why we have rapidly increasing CO2 levels and consequently rapidly increasing temperatures.

Yes, CO2 is essential but we are releasing so much of it that the natural environment is only absorbing about half of what we put out, thus it builds up rapidly.

This is why the world is taking measures to reduce our emissions, such as shifting away from fossil fuels.

Him: 4% is a very generous overestimation on your part, Even the most ardent of war mists only claims 2%, although that is highly improbable.

Me: I’m not sure where 2% comes from or your “less than 1%”. 4% is the figure used by scientists and deniers although it’s a bit of an old figure now. Our emissions are about 37 Gt a year (2019). The natural environment emits about 750 Gt a year. So that’s 4.7%. The 4% figure is actually about a decade old, back when our emissions were about 30 Gt a year. But the point is that the natural environment adds and takes out CO2 in roughly equal amounts. We only add CO2, we don’t take any out (which is the bit deniers don’t mention), thus the rapid increase in CO2 levels and therefore the rapid increase in temperatures.

Him: Warmists, no 9dea where you plucked 4% from.

Me: Divide human emissions by total emissions. Read my previous post. There’s an abundance of stuff on all this online, for example:

How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?

Natural CO2 Emissions vs. Human CO2 Emissions

How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?

Geo explainer: carbon emissions – Geographical Magazine

Him: I have no reason to doubt there is an abundance of incorrect information on line, after all there are people who are making a fortune out of peddling this stuff. There is no scientific evidence in any of those links that supports your assertion.

Me: Perhaps you can tell me who is making a fortune out of this. The big money is still in fossil fuels. These figures on CO2 emissions are simply the quantity emitted by humans and the quantity emitted naturally. They have been around for ages and are accepted by scientists and generally by deniers. As I’ve said, the natural environment is responsible for releasing nearly all the emissions. Thing is a roughly equal amount is taken out of the system. We only add CO2; we don’t take any out. There is an abundance of evidence for this; you just don’t want to know about it. Perhaps you can tell me what you reckon the numbers are and perhaps show a reference, such as your less than 1% figure. But even if the figure was 1%, we would still be the cause of the increase in CO2 levels.

Him: People who get funded in universities to peddle it, frequently by those wanting to sell their less than green green solutions, that generally need fossil fuels to build.

Me: No, research funds aren’t allocated on the basis of what the research finds. Funds are allocated before the research starts or quite early in the process. Most funds come from government rather than companies and go to the institutions doing the research rather than directly to individuals who are usually on a fixed salary. Research findings are always checked very thoroughly via peer reviews. Errors in research methods or findings would be found, if not by the peer review process, then by many other academics, government scientists, students, interested readers, etc, even deniers who rarely if ever find anything although they claim they do. Where you do get dodgy research findings is from the research funded by those right wing think tanks funded by fossil fuel companies.

Companies in the renewables industry get quite a few subsidies from government although fossil fuels get a lot more. Subsidies to both are needed due to large capital outlays and also to ensure a smooth transition to renewables over a few decades. “Green solutions” do need power and this is usually through the network which still mainly uses fossil fuels. But renewables use less power, are cheaper and cleaner, have shorter lead times for construction, and don’t take a day to fire up.

Him: Who funds it, who benefits from the funding, what peer review process is in place?

Me: I’m sure you know the answers to these things. As I said, most funding is from government. Obviously the universities and science organisations and departments “benefit”, just like health, education, transport, police etc departments benefit from government funding which enables them to employ staff and provide a service. Peer review is common to any professional/academic journal whether to do with climate, other aspects of science, engineering, humanities, etc. Or do you regard the research and findings of studies in professional/academic journals in general to be fudged or nonsense or whatever?

Him: So you accept it is in the universities benefit to keep saying there is global warming then.

Me: No. If you read my posts, you will see that I said: “… research funds aren’t allocated on the basis of what the research finds. Funds are allocated before the research starts or quite early in the process.” (Jan 19). Besides, hardly any of the research these days sets out to show whether we’ve got anthropogenic global warming. AGW is a given. The research currently looks at various aspects of the warming, its effects, what we can do, etc.

Him: Anthropolgical global warming is far from a given, if you are saying that there is no research into it, that would explain why the incorrect assumptions made in the climate field are not being addressed. It’s as well we didn’t just say the earth is flat that is settled isn’t it?

Me: There has been an abundance of research into anthropogenic global warming. The findings are absolutely clear. The basics are extremely obvious. We are emitting a very large amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases which build up rapidly in the atmosphere because only about half of our emissions are absorbed by the natural environment. There is nothing else causing the warming. Scientists are not still trying to prove that our emissions are the problem because this has been shown to be the case in a vast amount of research. These days, the research concentrates on various aspects of the warming, its effects, what we can do, etc. There will always be those who don’t want to accept the science.

Him: There is an abundance of research that says the opposite. Why pick on one gas and not the others, it’s not as if C)2 is the highest proportional gas in the atmosphere, which keeps us from frying and freezing which is what the sun would do with out it, like e the moon that has a 500 degree variance between the light and dark side side.

Me: There is an abundance of pseudoscience that says the opposite, pushed by assorted folk with various backgrounds usually not related to climate science and who got into climate science as a career change or partial career change or in retirement. These people are often funded by the fossil fuel industry. Their ‘research’ usually appears on blogs rather than in academic journals because their work doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Give me the names of 1 or 2 of these people or articles and I’ll explain where the work falls down.

All gases are looked at. Greenhouse gases are the ones responsible for warming/cooling when their level increases/decreases. And it’s our emissions, mainly of CO2 and methane, that are causing the problems as we only add these to the system and don’t take any out. The natural environment adds and takes out in roughly equal amounts. The warmer temperatures caused by higher levels of CO2 means more evaporation and more condensation, therefore more water vapour which is also a greenhouse gas. For every degree increase caused by CO2, temperatures rise about another degree due to the extra water vapour. The man-made addition to these gas levels has been increasing very rapidly indeed and that’s the problem. CO2 levels are increasing about 100 times faster than coming out of the last glacial period, causing temperatures to increase about 40 times faster. This is much too quick for the natural environment to adapt, especially fauna, thus the large increase in extinctions and vulnerable species, which will upset the food chain. It’s also causing accelerating ice melt which will send sea levels way up in coming centuries and mean abandonment of coastal cities and low lying agricultural land. There are health issues and other problems. This is why the world is shifting away from fossil fuels.

Him: There is an abundance of science that shows the reason the sun doesn’t fry us is due to what you dub greenhouse gases, dispose of co2 the earth will warm up not that we would notice because we like every other organic life form require co2 to live.

Me: No one is talking about getting rid of CO2. It’s essential to life. Without greenhouse gases, the Earth’s surface would average -18°C instead of 15°C with the natural greenhouse effect. It’s a matter of getting rid of the man-made component of CO2. Right now, CO2 should be around 280 ppm but it’s shot up to 415 ppm due to our emissions, and most of the increase has been in recent decades. We are releasing about twice as much CO2 as the natural environment can absorb, thus the rapid build up of CO2 (100 times faster than coming out of the last glacial period), thus the rapid increase in temperatures (40 times faster than in that period).

Him: That is pseudo science at its height, the figures are literally plucked from the air.

Me: I’ve plucked nothing from the air. You’re simply declaring things you don’t agree with or don’t like as pseudoscience, which can be seen in endless amounts on denier sites. But we’re talking science.

Google greenhouse gases 33 degrees and you will find any number of scientific, education and government sites, and even denier sites, explaining how temperatures would be 33 degrees (the difference between –18 degrees and 15 degrees) lower without greenhouse gases.

Google CO2 glacial interglacial cycles and you will find any number of scientific, education and government sites, and even denier sites, explaining how CO2 fluctuates between about 180 ppm and 280 ppm over the cycle (see first graph). We reached the interglacial peak 5000–10,000 years ago and CO2 should now be very gradually falling. But it’s shot up to 415 ppm. Again Google something like CO2 levels 100 years and you will find all sorts of things on it. The second graph shows accelerating CO2 levels directly in line with our growing emissions (see third graph). Most deniers accept this data too although some argue that the increase in CO2 levels somehow isn’t due to us but something natural. Perhaps they think our emissions just magically disappear.

Google CO2 plants oceans atmosphere and again you’ll find a heap of studies and sites explaining where our CO2 emissions go. They have to go somewhere. This NOAA site sums up the situation well: Ocean-Atmosphere CO2 Exchange. It says: “When carbon dioxide CO2 is released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, approximately 50% remains in the atmosphere, while 25% is absorbed by land plants and trees, and the other 25% is absorbed into certain areas of the ocean.”

CO2 levels have increased about 100 ppm over the last 100 years from around 320 ppm in 1920 to around 410 ppm now. They increased by about 100 ppm over about 10,000 years coming out of the last glacial period. So that’s 100 times faster in the recent period. Current rate of increase in CO2 levels is about 2.5 ppm a year which is 250 times the rate. Again, any number of science and government sites will say CO2 in increasing 100 times faster than the last deglaciation period, for example, Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.

Temperatures are up 40 times faster. They’re up a degree since the 1970s compared with five degrees during deglaciation over 10,000 years. Studies indicate that global warming was about 5 degrees coming out of the last glacial period and about 10 degrees at the poles (see ice core graph above). So using the global figure, temperatures are increasing 40 times faster. A lot of studies use the polar temperatures and come to a figure of 20 times faster. At least one study says 50 times faster as it’s looking down the track when CO2 levels will be quite a bit higher than now. If you take the conservative end, this 2010 NASA article says temperatures are up 10 times faster: Global Warming, but that’s looking at an 0.7 degree increase over the last 100 years (although nearly all the warming has been since the 1970s and temperatures are up at least 0.3 of a degree since 2010). Scientific American sums up a lot of the research here: Today’s Climate Change Proves Much Faster Than Changes in Past 65 Million Years and concludes that temperatures will increase 10–100 times faster, depending on assumptions for temperatures over the next hundred years. But whether it’s 10, 20, 40, 50 or 100 times faster, it’s a whole lot quicker than anything that would be happening naturally.

Him: You have not done anything to substantiate your claims.

Me: You might need to actually read my posts, look at the evidence, and perhaps Google a few things and read the science sites rather than the denier stuff. I have tried to explain the science to you, but you keep coming back with more nonsense such as:

“greenhouse gases only work in enclosed spaces”

“Co2 is at ground level so if it was doing that you would notice your feet were hotter than the rest of you.”

“Great that is why it is so hot at night and not in the day then as co2 is much higher at night.”

“We eat plants as well,are you saying we shouldn’t eat at all, because it might,there is no evidence to support it, have an effect on the climate?”

“the amount of co2 that is produced by burning fossil fuels is less than 1 % of the total co2 in the atmosphere.”

“4% is a very generous overestimation on your part, Even the most ardent of war mists only claims 2%, although that is highly improbable.”

“Warmists, no 9dea where you plucked 4% from.”

“There is no scientific evidence in any of those links that supports your assertion.”

“People who get funded in universities to peddle it”

“So you accept it is in the universities benefit to keep saying there is global warming then.”

“Anthropolgical global warming is far from a given”

“dispose of co2 the earth will warm up”

“That is pseudo science at its height, the figures are literally plucked from the air.”

“You have not done anything to substantiate your claims.”

But if you disagree with the science and agree with the pseudoscience despite it being nonsense, there’s no more I can do.

Him: I have read, that’s why I don’t fall for emotional claptrap.

And that’s where we’re up to. His most recent post was yesterday. I’ll probably reply with a one liner next week wishing him good luck with his views, or something. haha

I answered this question too (Why are warming temperatures causing a vicious cycle that leads to more warming?). I wrote: Lots of reasons. There are various feedback loops accelerating the anthropogenic global warming. Droughts are worse, as are storms. There are water shortages. Fisheries are affected. Plant and animal extinctions have increased. Plant respiration increases, which will increase CO2 emissions. Melting permafrost results in more CO2 and methane.

Warmer water temperatures mean the oceans and plankton won’t absorb as much CO2. Warmer water near the surface is stifling water circulation, blocking flows of heat as well as carbon and oxygen, which is adversely affecting marine life and the food chain. The warm water means less CO2 is absorbed by the oceans, which means more CO2 stays in the atmosphere. Water within a few hundred feet of the surface is what fuels tropical storms; warmer water means storms will build up and maintain their intensity.

A warmer atmosphere means more evaporation and therefore more water vapour in the air. It’s a greenhouse gas and more of it will result in still higher temperatures. And of course CO2 stays in the atmosphere a long time, up to hundreds or even thousands of years, all the time acting as a greenhouse gas. This causes the atmosphere to keep getting warmer for a long time after the extra CO2 is emitted, exacerbated by the extra water vapour.

Donald Trump is gone. Yay!

We’ve seen an incredible amount of lies and nonsense from Donald Trump and his people over the last four years. I’m sure most people are glad it’s over. But a sizeable minority actually believe the stuff he comes out with despite lack of evidence. These people ignore facts and go with ideology.

Many people felt Trump and his policies were good for the US economy. They weren’t. Annual GDP growth was 2.3% in 2019, which isn’t particularly strong. But the only reason growth was positive at all was the federal government deficit of 4.6%. Trump’s policies of high expenditure and low tax meant that spending exceeded revenue by 4.6%. Without this, the US economy would have shrunk by 2.3%. But it sent already very high government debt even higher.

Reducing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% in 2018 did nothing for the economy. Giving more money to the companies might make shareholders wealthier but the firms are unlikely to invest or expand if consumer demand isn’t there. Spending growth stayed about the same; if anything, it fell. The UK reduced its corporate tax rate six times from 28% to 19% over seven years to 2017, but GDP growth fell.

A policy of tariffs and trying to bring back manufacturing did nothing either. The tariffs are paid by the American people. Bringing back manufacturing to the US or other advanced economies would mean paying $50 for a plain t-shirt and $50k for a basic car. It would send those economies backwards. China of course retaliated with its own tariffs, meaning American exporters have a harder time selling their goods to the huge Chinese market.

Trump doesn’t understand economics. A group of bankers met with him some years ago when he was sending one of his casinos broke. One of them said afterwards that talking to Trump was like talking to someone who had skipped economics and accounting classes at college.

Joe Biden has already started to reverse many of Trump’s inward and backward looking policies, not only on economics but also health, immigration and climate change. Trump hasn’t taken coronavirus seriously and it is now out of control. Policies are also needed to ensure a smooth transition from fossil fuels to renewables.

The US will reconnect with the world. It will rejoin the Paris Agreement, the World Health Organization, and trade agreements. Biden will set about mending relations with allies.

It’s doubtful Trump will disappear. Word is he might start a new political party. A Patriots Party has been mentioned. This would split the Republican Party down the middle. It’s quite possible he would take up to about half of Republicans with him, perhaps leaving the Democrats with a majority for a decade or more. This could be a good thing and allow a raft of decent policies on economics, health, the environment, race and guns.

He was rightly impeached a second time. The Senate will now try him but convicting him might only serve to give him and his followers oxygen. But Internal Revenue will be after him. He’s paid little or no income tax for many years due to alleged business losses. And a couple of dozen women are after him over alleged assaults.

Biden and the Democrats will have a huge job sorting out the mess made by Trump. We can be thankful Trump was only there for one term. Another four years could have led to some sort of civil war, a much worse pandemic, and an economy down the gurgler. The world doesn’t need those things from the leading free nation.

Bundamba Cup bowling tournament 1986

Recently, I was going through some files and found an old story from way back: a write-up on the 1986 Bundamba Cup tenpin bowling tournament. I had written the following article on the tournament for Australia’s now defunct Pin Action magazine. But it took a month or more to get the results from Bundamba Bowl, so by the time I wrote the article and mailed it (no email in those days) to the Pin Action people in Sydney, publication deadline had passed. So the article never saw the light of day. These days, anyone can publish anything, so I thought I may as well add the article here. I had called the article ‘Tough one for Tom’ or ‘Kury in close one’. He was the best bowler in Australia at the time and very well known in bowling circles. Note: par was 200 back in those days, so +46 was 2046 for the ten games or an average of 204.6. Here it is …

It was Tom Kury by seven pins from Chris Pearce in the Bundamba Cup on September 6th and 7th [1986]. A field of 38 bowlers travelled to Bundamba [Ipswich] just outside Brisbane [Queensland, Australia] for the tournament.

Eight bowlers chose to qualify in Squad A on Saturday, four of them finishing over the card for their 10 games. They were John Whillans with +46, David Ashby on +33, Sandy Moffat on +12 and Erik Frederiks with +11. At this stage it looked as though the cut to the final ten would be around 20 or 30 over.

Squad B at nine o’clock on Sunday morning saw another 14 bowlers take to the lanes. Only three bettered a 200 average – Pearce on +11, Paul Morland with +9 and Allan Atkins on +8.

With the last squad [of 16] probably the strongest, 11 over looked likely to cut. Morland and Atkins both wished they had scored one more strike or spare. However, they need not have worried, as only two bowlers in Squad C beat par. Kury cruised home to be +119 and David Weild had +24.

A total of nine bowlers had finished over the card. Squad B entrant, David Hardy, to his surprise and delight, scraped into tenth place on –8. Qualifying had been tough, with the likes of Jim Ferguson, Gary Bernardin and Ken Sheehan among other well known names missing out.

With pinfall carrying over to the nine games of match play, and Kury leading by 73 pins from his nearest rival after qualifying, it seemed to be a case of Kury by how far. Not so! Although Tom continued to score well, Pearce’s 222, 230, 204, 234, 220, 212 and 217 (all wins) for the first seven games pushed him into the lead by 34 pins after he downed Kury in the seventh by 217 to 179.

It now became a race in two, nobody else being within 200 pins. Kury fought back in the eighth game with a 236 to again take the lead by five pins.

The final game was a neck and neck struggle. While Pearce lost with a 199 to Atkins who clinched third place, Kury, also facing a loss, needed to spare a 5-pin in the tenth frame and then to keep his bonus ball on the lane to win the tournament. Needless to say, he achieved both and took away the $500 first prize.

1st: Tom Kury, match play win loss: 6:3, match play average 210.4, tournament average 211.2, cash $500
2nd: Chris Pearce, 8:1, 215.0, 207.7, $300
3rd: Allan Atkins, 5.5:3.5, 203.6, 202.1, $150
4th: Sandy Moffat, 5:4, 200.2, 200.7, $100
5th: David Hardy, 5:4, 201.2, 200.2, $90
6th: John Whillans, 5:4, 190.4, 197.9, $80
7th: David Weild, 4:5, 196.0, 199.4, $70
8th: Paul Morland, 2.5:6.5, 197.2, 199.2, $60
9th: Erik Frederiks, 3:6, 193.7, 197.6 $60
10th: David Ashby, 1:8, 181.3, 192.9, $60