February 2, 2024

"To block the necessary amount of solar radiation, the shade would have to be about a million square miles, roughly the size of Argentina...."

"A shade that big would weigh at least 2.5 million tons — too heavy to launch into space, he said. So, the project would have to involve a series of smaller shades. They would not completely block the sun’s light but rather cast slightly diffused shade onto Earth.... Dr. Rozen said his team was ready to design a prototype shade of 100 square feet and is seeking between $10 million and $20 million to fund the demonstration. 'We can show the world, ‘Look, there is a working solution, take it, increase it to the necessary size,' he said.... 'I’m not saying this will be the solution, but I think everybody has to work toward every possible solution,' said Dr. Szapudi, the astronomer who proposed tethering a sunshade to an asteroid."

From "Could a Giant Parasol in Outer Space Help Solve the Climate Crisis? Interest in sun shields, once a fringe idea, has grown. Now, a team of scientists says it could launch a prototype within a few years" (NYT).

174 comments:

rehajm said...

scam.

rehajm said...

Two hundred square feet of mylar through the Althouse portal is $23…

Enigma said...

Is is this mainly a way to fund kickbacks and payouts to businesses owned by the friends of those in power? Do they have a plan to mitigate parallel global warming on Mars?

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/no-escape-theres-global-warming-mars-too
https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/evidence-of-recent-climate-change-on-mars/

Solyndra, Solyndra, wherefore art thou Solyndra? I want $535M myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra

RideSpaceMountain said...

“The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air-conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable to them. The mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night."

– Jean Baudrillard

Sorry Jean. You were wrong. We're talking about blotting out the sun now. Humans have conquered their fear of the darkness. The lights in the daytime, AC cooling empty hotels and watering the desert will continue unabated however. You nailed that one. Bravo.

gilbar said...

what climate crisis? WHICH climate crisis? what are you talking about?

Leland said...

The space station solar arrays are bigger and already in orbit.

Chris said...

That's when they triggered real climate change, freezing the earth, wiping out crops, killing off 80% of the total population on earth. Fucking idiots. CO2 is plant food! We are already headed into another glaciation cycle, the interglacial is almost over.

Breezy said...

Mary Poppins, call your office.

Duke Dan said...

Sounds like a Dr Evil hold the world for ransom scheme.

Tacitus said...

Interesting, and probably practical if you really need to cool off the planet. But....don't we already have a little problem with orbital junk? Do we really want our communications sats - and Lord knows what else is up there - cruising at high speeds through a maze of mylar umbrellas? And hey, because by then there won't be any journalists left, lets write some headlines in advance. Crop Failure in __________ blamed on manipulation of sunlight by President Stefanik.

Christopher B said...

And if the predicted rise in temperatures doesn't happen and the predicted cooling does? Do more people live in the Artic/Antarctic or the Tropics?

Esteban said...

So, basically what Mr. Burns did in the Simpsons about 30 years ago?

gspencer said...

"Dr. Rozen said his team was ready to design a prototype shade of 100 square feet and is seeking between $10 million and $20 million to fund the demonstration."

What immediately came to mind. Michael Palin as Mr. Pudey, making a pitch for a government grant from John Cleese as the Minister of Silly Walks,

Mr. Pudey: Well sir, I have a silly walk and I'd like to obtain a Government grant to help me develop it.

Minister: I see. May I see your silly walk?

Mr. Pudey: Yes, certainly, yes.

(He gets up and does a few steps, lifting the bottom part of his left leg sharply at every alternate pace. He stops.)

Minister: That's it, is it?

Mr. Pudey: Yes, that's it, yes.

Minister: It's not particularly silly, is it? I mean, the right leg isn't silly at all and the left leg merely does a forward aerial half turn every alternate step.

Mr. Pudey: Yes, but I think that with Government backing I could make it very silly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCLp7zodUiI

Howard said...

I prefer expansion of the Chemtrails program of adding even more heavy metals to aviation fuel. That way we can burn carbon to create carbon offsets. Win-Win.

But don't worry, folks. Elon will figure it out. He will invent a way to economically exterminate excessive solar radiation. He will name it X-Ray

Jamie said...

Heinlein addressed the opposite climate problem in one of his juvies, Farmer In the Sky. Humans had begun colonizing Titan, a moon of Saturn. The kid who is the main character thought that when he got there it would be sort of twilight all the time because of so much less sunlight hitting Titan, but all that happened was that everyone's eyes dilated more.

And then the apparatus that kept them all from freezing to death broke down.

Heinlein's book isn't about hubris. It's about a tiny colony of settlers and what they have to do to survive, not about altering the planet where humanity originated and the only place where humanity can live without massive engineering help.

First we'd better be damn sure there's such a "climate crisis" that we - one of the most brutally distributed species on the planet - can't survive without drastic action. I know that side thinks they've done that, but there is too much knowledgeable skepticism out there for comfort on that point, as well as too little hard evidence. Climate is changing, as always, and someday will change to the point where we can't survive at all without that massive engineering help (it already does take massive engineering help for us to sustain 8bn people). But to think we're there now? That's dangerous.

I'll give them this though. At least this proposed solution falls into the category of adaptation to conditions beyond our control rather than King Canute.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Interestingly enough, the sun is good for us:

“Vitamin D, also known as the sunshine vitamin, is surrounded by mystery and confusion. This seemingly super nutrient is linked to everything from bone health to enhanced immunity.”

“Vitamin D acts more like a hormone than a vitamin. Unlike other vitamins, our bodies have the unique ability to make vitamin D from the sun. Studies suggest a link between vitamin D and a healthy immune system. It enhances our bodies' ability to absorb calcium and reduces our risk of fractures and broken bones. Vitamin D also helps regulate our mood. A deficiency could be one of the key players in seasonal affective disorder.”

If you’ve listened to the latest Tucker crackpot podcast with former professor Weinstein, you would know the last thing those who want to inject the population with “gene therapy”, is for the sun to strengthen our immunological response.

After giving us life, the sun is now an enemy?

CharlieL said...

Ah, yes. The law of unintended consequences. Keep it up, guys, you'll drive us to extinction yet.

rastajenk said...

Will 'the people' have any say in this kind of nonsense?

Chuck said...

Insanity

MartyH said...

The hubris, it burns.

Isn’t blotting out the sun something a James Bond villain would do?

BarrySanders20 said...

100 square feet is 10’x10’. Basically a yard tarp. I’ll donate mine for the shade experiment and only charge $5 million

Steve from Wyo said...

Shades of the Ringworld!

Hello, Ice Age!

Jamie said...

one of the most brutally distributed species on the planet

Oops - "broadly."

Dave Begley said...

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/24/1066041/a-startup-says-its-begun-releasing-particles-into-the-atmosphere-in-an-effort-to-tweak-the-climate/

Make Sunsets releases sulfur particles into the atmosphere to block the sun. I asked OPPD to buy the service as a joke.

Michael E. Lopez said...

$20 million for 100 square feet, and we'd need one the size of ARGENTINA? Even assuming that you were able to scale that down to say... $2M for 100 square feet, that's still what... SIXTY PENTILLION dollars? (59.98 Pentillion, but what's a couple of quadrillion between friends?)

Cut it by a factor of *1000* more and we're down to 60 QUADRILLION DOLLARS.

"Do you even math, bro?"

Temujin said...

As I read the insane ideas coming from the Science Leaders of the Climate Cult, my thought is that the fix for the 'Climate Crisis' might simply be to send the Climate Scientists and talking heads into space for a year. I'm looking at you, John Kerry.

Creola Soul said...

This is an admission that it’s the sun warming the earth, not CO2. All the carbon neutral BS is meaningless.

Gusty Winds said...

Imagine a government entity that could control the amount of sunlight and its God given energy that could reach the earth. All for the sake of a fake climate scam.

And who decides that the sunlight should be blocked? Do we have a global vote with fraudulent absentee ballots?

This is the same type of scientific craziness as gain of function research. Look what these mad scientists accomplished with that one.

This isn't just insanity. It's evil.

Bob Boyd said...

100 square feet...that's 10' by 10'...for 20 million dollars...
There's more interest because they think they may actually be able to get the money now.
 
They're tearing the wiring out of the walls.

What's the difference between late-stage capitalism and early-stage communism?
The commies are just getting started.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Let's see. Cut out CO2, block the sun. Photosynthesis?
White Punks On Dope!

tim maguire said...

It's more palatable than spreading debris into the atmosphere because we can blast the parasol out of the sky when the hysteria passes. (I'm not joking when I say we should execute anyone who takes a concrete step towards geoengineering.) But I will still vote against any politician who supports spending money on it.

Tank said...

Who decides who never gets any sun?

R C Belaire said...

For reference, see the novel Ringworld by Larry Niven. Detailed calcs not included...

mikee said...

Nuke the Moon. https://www.frankjfleming.com/p/nuke-the-moon

The original reason to Nuke the Moon (TM) was to demonstrate to enemies of the US that we were so crazy, they shouldn't mess with us. But why not use all the engineering knowledge developed since the original idea was presented in 2002, and Nuke the Moon (TM) to make a dust cloud around the earth, blocking enough solar energy to prevent catastrophic anthropogenic global climate warmening / small change for the sake of teh children? I say it is an idea so crazy, it just might work!

Dude1394 said...

This is the beauty of proclaiming a crisis. Any fool idea is actually considered.

Gusty Winds said...

Blogger Creola Soul said...
This is an admission that it’s the sun warming the earth, not CO2. All the carbon neutral BS is meaningless.

Excellent point.

Rusty said...

First of all the "settled science" hasn't proven conclusively that there is a crisis. .003 to .004 is not proof. It's a rounding error.
So no. Let's not commit any more treasure to fucking up peoples lives.
"I'm from the government and I have an idea!"

Rusty said...

Tank @ 7:53
The same people who decide if you can own a gun.

Marcus Carman said...

If NASA was serious about climate change they would dedicate the 20 million today. The Federal Government pisses amounts away at twice this rate every minute.

Bob Boyd said...

That darn inflation though...

Todd said...

"Could a Giant Parasol in Outer Space Help Solve the Climate Crisis?

Assumes facts not in evidence...

Larry J said...

They're describing their shades as large surfaces of very thin, lightweight materials. There's another phrase for what they're describing: solar sail. Energy from the sun will strike those "shades" and cause them to move. How do they plan on countering that solar force?

https://www.planetary.org/articles/what-is-solar-sailing

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Awesome! A Rube Goldberg scheme to address a "crisis" that is 100% speculative and may have, at the core issue of a "warming" planet, already begun reversing itself without our help. Unfortunately every single tentacle of our behemoth government has turned it's attention to doing stupid things that won't affect the alleged "crisis" but do cost us trillions and trillions.

Rafe said...

Just started listening to “Climate Change on Trial.” Thoroughly entertaining!

Relatedly, these “climate change” Harold Hills had better grab as much gelt as they can, while they can, because this scam they’re running is about to crash down around them.

- Rafe

tim in vermont said...

You show me a working climate model that can make predictions to the kind of engineering standard that we would require on an airliner, and I will listen to your cockamamie theories about how to fix the "problem."

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Another scam for grifters.

Jamie said...

This is an admission that it’s the sun warming the earth, not CO2. All the carbon neutral BS is meaningless.

and

I'm not joking when I say we should execute anyone who takes a concrete step towards geoengineering.

Exactly my point.

BUT - climate does change, has in times past been much less amenable to human civilization than it is now, and will be so again. So the only credit I give this scheme, which is otherwise something a Bond supervillain would envisage, is that it (a) recognizes that climate change is not something we can stop or even meaningfully affect, just something we have to adapt to, and (b) is better than the particulate proposal because it can be undone when it's found to have terrible knock-on effects.

Maybe one more piece of credit: that it's so unbelievably expensive and so obviously freight with people to the entire biosphere that it won't be adopted, but might get people thinking about climate adaptations instead of wealth redistribution. But maybe I'm dreaming.

And btw, if some private outfit is attempting to blast particulates into the atmosphere to "tweak" the climate, they need to be STOPPED, CHARGED, AND JAILED. It's terrorism.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Creola Soul said, "This is an admission that it’s the sun warming the earth, not CO2. All the carbon neutral BS is meaningless."

Nice catch.

Jamie, to me either "broadly" or "brutally" work equally well in your statement. After all we have people who live in icy conditions year-round and other inhabitants who survive in deserts that are 100 degrees plus at least half the year.

rwnutjob said...

Periodic reminder:
During the Trump Administration, due to fracking, the supply of natural gas in increased so much, the price cratered & power generation massively switched from coal to natural gas, REDUCING CO2 emissions more than any of the signatories to the Paris Accords.

GTFOH

Wince said...

Dr. Rozen said his team was ready to design a prototype shade of 100 square feet and is seeking between $10 million and $20 million to fund the demonstration.

Sounds shady.

Aggie said...

Fortunately for us, this is too hard. However, there are still some stupid people around that have access to money, so the scam can continue for another week or two.

Speaking of climate frauds, any updates on the Michael Mann trial, I wonder?

jaydub said...

What could possibly go wrong?

FunkyPhD said...

Let's try it. What could go wrong?

AlbertAnonymous said...

Rich and stupid climate crazies will believe anything. PT Barnum was correct.

I’m building my Carbon Credit dispensing website now. Hop on this Gravy Train.

Robert Marshall said...

Ten times as many people die from cold weather as die from hot weather. Thus, geo-engineering of this sort is a way to get more death along with less heat.

"It has been estimated that about 5.1 million excess deaths per year are associated with non-optimal temperatures. Of those, 4.6 million are associated with colder than optimum temperatures, and 0.5 million are associated with hotter than optimum temperatures."

https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/human-deaths-from-hot-and-cold-temperatures-and-implications-for-climate-change#:~:text=It%20has%20been%20estimated%20that,with%20hotter%20than%20optimum%20temperatures.

Mark said...

Ten to twenty million?

I can produce a 10x10 tarp for $9 million. I may even be willing to go down to $8 million.

Christopher B said...

tim in vermont said...
You show me a working climate model that can make predictions to the kind of engineering standard that we would require on an airliner,


After Boeing demonstrates they understand the engineering standards for getting all the appropriate bolts into an airplane we can work on this.

narciso said...

Didnt we learn from the simpsons and mr burns

Original Mike said...

Where are they going to put this thing; the L1 Lagrange point?

Roger Sweeny said...

All those sun shields would decrease the intensity of sunlight a little bit. What if doing that made unnecessary all the government actions that are now making life less pleasant and that threaten to do a lot more in the future? It seems to me that could be a worthwhile trade-off.

And it makes no difference whether climate change is a crisis or not. Governments everywhere are treating it like it is, at least when it comes to putting new limitations on what people can do (e.g., no new gas hook-ups, or no internal combustion engines made after 2040. If this makes all that superfluous ...

And if we are entering a new glacial, the sun shields can be de-orbited.

Jake said...

lol.

cassandra lite said...

“Scientists” who’ve decided that wet streets cause rain, so if we cover the streets and prevent them from getting wet…”

Rocco said...

Lem the artificially intelligent said...
Vitamin D, also known as the sunshine vitamin, is surrounded by mystery and confusion. This seemingly super nutrient is linked to everything from bone health to enhanced immunity ... After giving us life, the sun is now an enemy?"

Hmmm. This is really a White Supremacy(tm) project. Why did white people (inclding Asians) get light skin? To be able to get more Vitamin D from less sunlight. Who will benefit from less sunlight getting through? Whyt Ppl. It's obvious once you look for it.

Wince said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Cappy said...

Just blow up the sun. Problem solved.

Old and slow said...

If mitigation strategies become necessary (for either warming or cooling), the best way to ensure that we can afford them is to become richer and more technologically advanced. This will be best achieved by not strangling our economies with regulations promoting "green" energy.

Rocco said...

Michael E. Lopez said...
"$20 million for 100 square feet, and we'd need one the size of ARGENTINA? Even assuming that you were able to scale that down to say... $2M for 100 square feet, that's still what... SIXTY PENTILLION dollars? (59.98 Pentillion, but what's a couple of quadrillion between friends?)

Cut it by a factor of *1000* more and we're down to 60 QUADRILLION DOLLARS.
"

Normally, I'd say the politicians would just crank up the printing presses to pay for it. But at that scale even the US gubmint's presses would overheat.

Aggie said...

Maybe we should blend together two modern themes based on hot air, and make a fortune:

Cryto-currency and Climate (psuedo)science.

We'll sell Crypto-climate-carbon-capture-credits, completely virtual-virtue for the discerning eco-enthusiast, for the price of simple dollars! We'll turn your dirty greenbacks into Green!

Rocco said...

mikee said...
"... Nuke the Moon (TM) to make a dust cloud around the earth, blocking enough solar energy to prevent catastrophic anthropogenic global climate warmening / small change for the sake of teh children? I say it is an idea so crazy, it just might work!"

If we move forward with this approach, I suggest we concentrate the dust over Dr Rozen's house.

Anthony said...

The >real climate crisis was. . . .12,000 years ago when half of north America was covered by ice sheets.

Oh, wait, no, I forgot, the climate has been absolutely stable for....well, forEVER!

Leland said...

Reminder that the latest Climate Change on Trial podcast episode is released.

To recap: Mann wants $9 million for defamation because someone said he did shoddy science on a blog, someone gave him a dirty look at a grocery store, and he had to share his sorrows while hanging out with Leo Dicaprio and other celebrities. Sort of like all the defamation that E. Jean Carroll suffered after being called a liar.

Roger Sweeny said...

"This is an admission that it’s the sun warming the earth, not CO2. All the carbon neutral BS is meaningless."

Embrace the power of "and". What is warming the earth is the sun AND the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The sun sends energy to the earth in the form of light and other electromagnetic radiation. It hits the earth and warms it. The warmed earth then radiates energy away from itself. Since it is much cooler than the sun, it radiates at much lower frequencies. (All things above absolute zero put out electromagnetic radiation. That's why people show up with night vision goggles. The goggles show low frequency infrared light that our eyes cannot see.)

If there were no atmosphere, the earth would radiate enough energy to have an average temperature well below freezing. But we do have an atmosphere, with water vapor and CO2 and methane and a lot of other trace gases. That atmosphere bounces some of the infrared back to earth so the average temperature is now comfortably above freezing. Additional CO2 means more bouncing back and a higher temperature. Just how much is an unsettled and very political question.

But those last three paragraphs are not controversial. Ask Judith Curry or any of the "climate change is not a crisis' people.

RideSpaceMountain said...

One thing that no one ever factors into these pie-in-the-sky calculations is the cost of failure. I recall hearing that for heavy payload chemical rockets the chances of a catastrophic failure are 1 in 500, which to the credit of rocket scientist is actually quite good.

But it's not insurable. When you start talking about trillions of dollars, those are costs that cannot countenance failure, excepting circumstances that are life-and-death-survival-of-the-species events, and this ain't one of them. Further still, wouldn't it be hilarious to get all 2.5 million tons flawlessly into solar-synchronicity only to have a software glitch misfire a retro causing gradual decay into a death-course for the sun?

You could actually watch it with your naked eye as the sunshade drifted further and further away. A gradually degrading partial solar eclipse...Very post-modern.

Joe said...

Can this be weaponized?

Friend of the Fish Folk said...

This sounds like the plot of a Bond villain.

Third Coast said...

People opposed to this project don't care if those with gingerish complexions die of skin cancer caused by rays of the sun. Probably the same folks who refused to get the jab and intentionally killed grandma. Elimination of air conditioners would just be a side benefit.

Michael said...

There is no crisis

typingtalker said...

Pranked is an American comedy television series on MTV. The series debuted on August 27, 2009, and is hosted by CollegeHumor's Amir Blumenfeld and Streeter Seidell.

The series is a half-an-hour comedy show that provides footage and commentary for pranks that have been caught on camera and posted to the internet.


Wikipedia

gilbar said...

Let's be REALISTIC. IF there IS a problem, and it's As Bad As They SAY..
There is ONLY ONE SOLUTION.

Immediate, and MASSIVE nuke strikes targeting each and EVERY Chinese coal fired power plant.
CO2 is GOING TO KILL THE ENTIRE EARTH (that's what they say, isn't it?)
We Are ALL Going To DIE!!! (that's what they say, isn't it?)
and yet, the Chinese are STILL opening more than one coal fired power plant a week!!

The ONLY possible solution is:
Immediate, and MASSIVE nuke strikes targeting each and EVERY Chinese coal fired power plant.

Another issue is that our Minuteman III missiles are fast growing obsolete. It's Use Them or LOSE them.
Obviously! the Answer is USE THEM!! Use Them NOW!!!

Obviously, there will be downsides... But, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth, both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing.
But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless distinguishable, post-climate crisis environments: one where you got 2 billion people killed, and the other where you got 8 billion people killed!

gilbar said...

If you're SERIOUS about climate crisis... Global Thermonuclear War, is the ONLY Answer

Yancey Ward said...

The stupid, it burns....

hombre said...

The comments at NYT confirm the lunacy of its readers. I attempted to post one suggesting that "volcano intervention" is a better solution. I shouldn't have added a sarcasm tag.

Ampersand said...

We are so wealthy that we can assign tens of thousands of highly skilled people to engage in an unbelievably arrogant and absurd undertaking. There is much waste in a nation.

Narr said...

"Brutally distributed" is accurate enough. Reminds me of Mel Brooks's 2000 Year Old Man Bit--

Interviewer: So, old timer, what was the primary means of locomotion back in your day?

OM: Fear!

tim in vermont said...

"This sounds like the plot of a Bond villain."

Moonraker was about a plan to wipe out the undesirables, and reduce the population to a small number of the genetically superior, as determined by the Bond villain.

Michael said...

Clearly the basic purpose of the Climate Crisis is to generate grant money.

Darkisland said...

I've speculated before here that the end game of SpaceX and Starlink is to scale up space based solar electricity. Starlink currently transmits microwatts of power to earth. It is now mainly an engineering problem to scale it up to gigawatts. The biggest engineering problem with this has been how to get the materials for the thousands of square miles of collectors into space in the first place at any kind of reasonable cost. SpaceX seems to have this solved.

These same solar collectors would also provide shade. They will capture large amounts of diffuse solar radiation that currently strikes the earth as sunlight and turns to heat. The array's will concentrate that power and send it to earth as electricity instead.

Eliminating, to a large extent the need to burn carbon based fuels. Will will still need them for motive power. Cars, planes, trucks, ships and the like. Electricity will never be feasible for those uses. It is stupid to try to force it into them. (In general, there will be a few applications where it will work.)

John Henry

Rocco said...

gilbar said...
“If you're SERIOUS about climate crisis... Global Thermonuclear War, is the ONLY Answer.”

Agreed. Nuclear Winter NOW!

Iman said...

They’ve spent too much time in the Sun.

Howard said...

The Exxon climate predictions made in 1982 were spot on.

BACKGROUND
In 2015, investigative journalists discovered internal company memos indicating that Exxon oil company has known since the late 1970s that its fossil fuel products could lead to global warming with “dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.” Additional documents then emerged showing that the US oil and gas industry’s largest trade association had likewise known since at least the 1950s, as had the coal industry since at least the 1960s, and electric utilities, Total oil company, and GM and Ford motor companies since at least the 1970s. Scholars and journalists have analyzed the texts contained in these documents, providing qualitative accounts of fossil fuel interests’ knowledge of climate science and its implications. In 2017, for instance, we demonstrated that Exxon’s internal documents, as well as peer-reviewed studies published by Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists, overwhelmingly acknowledged that climate change is real and human-caused. By contrast, the majority of Mobil and ExxonMobil Corp’s public communications promoted doubt on the matter.
ADVANCES
Many of the uncovered fossil fuel industry documents include explicit projections of the amount of warming expected to occur over time in response to rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Yet, these numerical and graphical data have received little attention. Indeed, no one has systematically reviewed climate modeling projections by any fossil fuel interest. What exactly did oil and gas companies know, and how accurate did their knowledge prove to be? Here, we address these questions by reporting and analyzing all known global warming projections documented by—and in many cases modeled by—Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists between 1977 and 2003.
Our results show that in private and academic circles since the late 1970s and early 1980s, ExxonMobil predicted global warming correctly and skillfully. Using established statistical techniques, we find that 63 to 83% of the climate projections reported by ExxonMobil scientists were accurate in predicting subsequent global warming. ExxonMobil’s average projected warming was 0.20° ± 0.04°C per decade, which is, within uncertainty, the same as that of independent academic and government projections published between 1970 and 2007. The average “skill score” and level of uncertainty of ExxonMobil’s climate models (67 to 75% and ±21%, respectively) were also similar to those of the independent models.
Moreover, we show that ExxonMobil scientists correctly dismissed the possibility of a coming ice age in favor of a “carbon dioxide induced ‘super-interglacial’”; accurately predicted that human-caused global warming would first be detectable in the year 2000 ± 5; and reasonably estimated how much CO2 would lead to dangerous warming.

Darkisland said...

Listening to the Steyn/Simberg trial I am reminded how sketchy the temperature record of earth has been prior to 1950 or so. And how sketchy it still is. Calculating an average temperature of the earth for any point in time is a fools errand. It can't be measured, it can only be modeled. Depending on the assumptions, time periods selected, measurements selected, statistical methods one can get pretty much any result one might want. One of the witnesses reminded me of the famous Ronald Coase quote "If you torture the data enough, it will always confess."

The scientists purport to be able to tell us the earth's temperature within tenths of a degree. If you do even a superficial look into how they do this, it is fairly obvious that they can't tell us within 3-5 degrees and don't really even know whether that is plus 3-5 or minus 3-5.

Older temperature data is based on tree rings rather than thermometer measurements. I've read about the tree ring measurements. I agree that they can tell us whether a year was warm or cool, wet or dry, or some combination of both. It also does not have a high degree of precision. It can tell whether a year was warm or cool (sort of). It can't give any degree of precision. Not only can't it give a degree of precision, the precision can't even be guessed at (+/-0.5deg? +/-3 degree? Can't tell)

Even measured temperatures in the past 100 years are sketchy. Lots of uncalibrated thermometers, heat island effects, thermometers moved from place to place and a lot more issues. Ahhhhh.... but models correct for all of this. Bullshit. See my previous paragraph on models and modeling.

This geoengineering strikes me as a HORRIBLE idea with all sorts of unknown potential for catastrophe. Allegedly to solve a problem that may not even exist. And if it does exist is certainly manageable.

John Henry

Freeman Hunt said...

With these crazy sun-blocking plans, you'd think we were facing incineration.

tim in vermont said...

A "super interglacial" sounds a lot better than the normal interglacial we were in that was quickly fading back to another several hundred thousand year period of glaciation.

If you snip the blade off of the "Hockey Stick" and extend the handle, to get where we were headed, it looks a lot like the new ice age people were predicting. Not to mention, just like yeast in beer consumes all of the sugar until it kills itself, the plants on this planet were consuming and sequestering the CO2 heading for levels where the plants would starve themselves and the planet would turn to a snow ball.

The larger context is the enemy of the demagogs who have captured the minds of people like Howard.

Leland said...

Howard must have gone to Harvard, nearly a page worth of information without a citation. Further, if it what is quoted is correct, it suggests the IPCC should not have used Mann's Hockey Stick 20 years later.

Additional documents then emerged showing that the US oil and gas industry’s largest trade association had likewise known since at least the 1950s

Known? They knew what? the average “skill score” and level of uncertainty of ExxonMobil’s climate models (67 to 75% and ±21%, respectively) were also similar to those of the independent models.

Maybe there is something there, but who knows without a citation. Still ±21% is a bit of a range. Are we supposed to bet our economy on a 75% likelihood with an uncertainty of ±21%? Maybe Harvard, Howard, and Biden would do it, but they probably think a parasol in space is a great idea, even if it runs counter to their argument of human-caused global warming caused by fossil fuels.

tim in vermont said...

Incidentally, if you are wondering why the "green parties" which are notionally "liberal" are all in on these wars. "Global warming" is the reason, whatever the pretext they feed us for this war or that.

Old and slow said...

I much prefer global warming to the inevitable glaciation. It is much easier to adapt to increased temperatures and plant growth than it is to live with vast ice sheets covering the earth. This would seem to be uncontroversial to me.

Darkisland said...

I a a huge fan of some of Neal Stephenson's books. His latest, Termination Shock (2022) is all about how we are all going to die from global whatsit. The key plot point is a texas billionaire who has developed a pulsejet rocket that burns sulphur. He starts shooting hundreds of them off daily from multiple locations.

The rockets get up to 80,000 feet or so where the sulphur will do the most good at blocking sunlight.

In the spirit of Cryptonomicon and Reamde the novel takes place all over the world with diverse characters and a lot of different plot threads. A lot of good technical explication of how things work.

I rate it an excellent read, although I think the idea of putting sulphur in the atmosphere to fight a non-existent problem is batshit crazy.

John Henry

Rusty said...

Oh. NOW Exxon is a believable source.
Now that all the usual suspect news sources have jumped on this particular june bug with both feet I'll need to see the original research and who did it. I'm not at all sorry that I don't believe you, but when enough of you left winger get together to promote a particular crisis, I am compelled to find the proof myself.
Remember the Covid scare? Yeah. Like that.

PM said...

Heavy up on DuPont Teijin Films.

Yancey Ward said...

Howard, I also predicted in 1982 that the ice age wasn't coming- how, you ask? Because it had already started to warm up in the Winter from those of the late 1970s. The Exxon scientists were just extrapolating from a 5 year trend for the next 18 years. There isn't any science or particular technique to such predictions, nor is it meaningful in any way.

Darkisland said...

Just a reminder about Earth's atmosphere:

Nitrogen @78% @780,000ppm
Oxygen @21% @210,000ppm
Argon @.93% @9,000ppm
Carbon Dioxide* @0.04% @400ppm
Methane @0.0002% @2ppm

*For non-rocket scientists and/or propagandists here, Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is not the same thing as Carbon(C). The 2 have next to nothing in common. But it seems like an awful lot of people want us to think they are the same thing.

The amount of carbon in the atmosphere is pretty close to zero. Even closer to zero than methane.

John Henry

TobyTucker said...

Most of that price is what it would take to get it into orbit, not how much the material itself costs. It's not cheap sending stuff off into space!

If you were to really do this, the best way would be to figure out a way to orbit your sunshade a lot closer to the sun, so the size of it wouldn't need to be all that large to cover the whole earth. You sure wouldn't want to block ALL the sunlight, so some sort of checkerboard pattern would have to be worked out, blocking only a certain percentage. It probably wouldn't be easy, but we've got a CLIMATE CRISIS to deal with here!

FYI, google Mount Tambora & The Year Without a Summer. Volcanoes blasting huge amounts of ash and rock dust into the sky are a real good way of blocking out the sun! There are plenty of dormant volcanoes and we've got more than enough nuclear weapons just sitting around to get a bunch of then erupting at once. Problem solved!

ga6 said...

Dr Feel-Good's Medicine shows have been replaced by "scientists and experts".

Original Mike said...

"To block the necessary amount of solar radiation, the shade would have to be about a million square miles, roughly the size of Argentina...."

This is just a plot to mess with Melei.

Bruce Hayden said...

“If there were no atmosphere, the earth would radiate enough energy to have an average temperature well below freezing. But we do have an atmosphere, with water vapor and CO2 and methane and a lot of other trace gases. That atmosphere bounces some of the infrared back to earth so the average temperature is now comfortably above freezing. Additional CO2 means more bouncing back and a higher temperature. Just how much is an unsettled and very political question.”

“But those last three paragraphs are not controversial. Ask Judith Curry or any of the "climate change is not a crisis' people.”

There you have it. The Freshman Chemistry answer. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. On a micro level, raise CO2 concentration, will increase this affect. But as any junior engineering major will tell you, there is something called “feedback”. Which it turns out they can’t come close to modeling yet, in the ecosystem that includes our oceans and atmosphere. And probably won’t be able to do for a long time. They build their models every year. They predict certain warming. They always overestimate the warming. The “Climate Scientists” don’t care. Governments just give them more money, and they just do it again. Next year their new and improved models continue to run hot. No matter, NOAA just fudges their published temperature data, more and more to show warming, when, in fact the underlying temperature data is not increasing.

Their big problem is that multi factor regression shows that Greenhouse Gases are not in the top 5-6 driving factors for the planet’s temperature, which include Solar output (and the Sunspot Cycle), distance of the Earth from the sun, the Earth’s wobble and tilt, and, interestingly, the El Niño/La Niña cycle (because the oceans are massive heat reservoirs, and how that heat circulates there matters more than CO2). This, btw, is probably why astrophysicists (and regular physicists) were excluded from the study that showed that 95% of (carefully selected) Climate Scientists believed that CO2 had some effect on the global temperature. The problem is that what is left after removing these known drivers is noise, and therefore statistically irrelevant. The amount of residue is less than the uncertainty. So, Climate Scientists just pretend that these other factors, and using Cargo Cult science try to make predictions when they can’t. It’s not science anymore, but rather religion. And the big tell is that it is no longer called falsifiable Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW), but unfalsifiable Climate Change. Yet its advocates keep dwelling on the earth burning up…

And Curry, et Al are right - it isn’t a crisis. The earth would be better for humans if the CO2 concentration were higher, and the planet were a bit warmer. We are likely sliding into another cooking spell, if not small Ice Age, where CO2 will drop along with (but lagging) temperatures, ushering mass starvation, disease, and hypothermia, killing millions.

Joe Smith said...

You can get a 10 x 10 foot tarp at Home Depot for $15.

Nice try!

Also, global warming is the biggest scam in history, so there's that...

Darkisland said...

Blogger Aggie said...

Speaking of climate frauds, any updates on the Michael Mann trial, I wonder?

If you are not listening to the daily re-enactments of the high points, you should do so. This link takes you to a Webex (like Zoom) with video and audio from the courtroom live. I've had problems with the audio but don't know whether that is the feed or my PC.

Scroll down and you can find the link to the commentary/re-enactment.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/01/18/watch-the-mann-steyn-trial-live/

From Wednesday, the best thing was Mann's star and closing witness. He was not allowed to testify by the judge about some aspect. He was allowed to testify only as a fact witness about damage to Mann's reputation.

After a number of unsuccessful attempts to get hearsay in they finally got him to say that the damage to Mann's reputation was because of his association with ClimateGate and "Hide the Decline".

Definitely NOT the answer that was wanted. Mann's lawyer immediately asked him "Don't you mean the defamatory Simberg/Steyn blog posts?" Witness:"Oh, yeah, that's what I meant to say"

He will be a Steyn/Simberg witness today.

The other great line, from Tuesday, was a parting shot by Simberg's(?) lawyer. Mann had originally submitted that he had lost almost $10mm in grant money. Simberg's lawyer went through the list of lost grants on cross and it only added up to about $100,000. Mann attributed this to error.

The lawyer commented that if he could be so far off on something like this, how could his climate science be trusted?.

Mann may have committed perjury by putting the $9mm into evidence. The judge told both sides to bring him briefs about whether this was an honest error or something nefarious. This was to be discussed 1st thing yesterday I think

John Henry

SteveWe said...

A Drag Visqueen Show

https://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-10-ft-x-25-ft-Clear-6-mil-Plastic-Sheeting-RSHD610-25C/204711657

Bruce Hayden said...

“Even measured temperatures in the past 100 years are sketchy. Lots of uncalibrated thermometers, heat island effects, thermometers moved from place to place and a lot more issues. Ahhhhh.... but models correct for all of this. Bullshit. See my previous paragraph on models and modeling.”

And now we find that a significant number of NOAAs data points, used to interpolate world temperature, have been fudged. Some of it is to compensate for sites that have dropped out, or are established later. But there are instances where actual recording stations are reported as showing an increase in temperature over time, when the base readings showed no such thing.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

Assumes facts not in evidence. The climate models are crap. The primary greenhouse gas is water vapor. There's no know model for how water vapor operates. Zilch. Nada. The climate models assume (make an ass of u and me!) solar effects are constant. They ignore direct electromagnetic radiation (visible light, UV, etc.), solar winds, and magnetic fields.

We are told CO2 is the primary driver of "climate change." But, the correlation between CO2 and temperature is weak, CO2 does not act as some volume control for temperature, there are large departures from linearity in the temperature record. How do these "climate scientists" explain these excursions? Radio silence.

The climate models are tuned to remove any natural variation. So, the warm and cold periods of the last 15,000 years don't exist in the models. The Earth was much warmer after the end of the last ice age than it is now.

These "climate scientists" are todays geologists who denied the existence of continental drift and ice-age mega floods in the Columbia basin of Washington State. Continental drift turned into plate tectonics and the mega-floods are the result of Lake Missoula waters undermining the ice dam. Look at the scablands and coulees in the Columbia basin. These floods flowed down the Columbia River Gorge, passed Portland to Pacific Ocean.

Darkisland said...

Blogger TobyTucker said...

so some sort of checkerboard pattern would have to be worked out, blocking only a certain percentage.

Ooooh.... Ooooh.... I know. Solar panels!

Solar panels block most of the suns rays from striking earth. They turn a small bit into electricity and reflect the rest back into the atmosphere. Causing atmospheric warming?

They also get rid of all that pesky CO2 absorbing green shit since nothing but a few weeds and bugs can live in the panel's shadows.

John Henry

Howard said...

It's not just Exxon they've been teaching carbon dioxide as a significant greenhouse gas in basic geology courses since the late 1800s. The temperature gains from increased carbon dioxide is simple physics. It's not a theory. It's the same physics that is used to operate heat seeking missiles.

Do you think the stable genius Elon Musk is part of the grand conspiracy as well?

Believe me I understand your skepticism. We all know the warming is here and it is coming. What we don't know are the potential effects both good and bad. As the hockey stick and Inconvenient Truth era has shown that many people behind the promotion of global warming exaggerate the potential harm. In my opinion they have done a million times the damage that the Koch brothers could ever dream to achieve by their program of denial.

The Reference is from the journal Science from January 2023. It was all over the news about this time last year.

Original Mike said...

"…we demonstrated that Exxon’s internal documents, as well as peer-reviewed studies published by Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists, overwhelmingly acknowledged that climate change is real and human-caused."

I like how they hid this "knowledge" by publishing it in peer-reviewed journals. Sneaky devils.

Darkisland said...

And, FWIW, the commentary/re-enactment for Thursday's session is now up.

Downloading now. I didn't really have anything important to do this afternoon

John HEnry

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

Today's climate models are equivalent to an airplane model without wings or horizontal tail. The lack of water vapor models are the missing wings and the lack of solar inputs is the missing horizontal tail that controls the flight of the airplane.

GIGO.

tolkein said...

There's no doubt that temperatures have increased since 1950. Latest estimates COP26, I think) are for an increase of 2.7C over 1950. These estimates keep coming down. At present we're not warmer than the Roman Optimum and maybe not than the Mediaeval Warming Period, in neither of which is there any correlation with use of fossil fuels.
The recent article by Roy Spencer - linked here https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/global-warming-observations-vs-climate-models

Shows the consistent over estimate of future temperature increases. I'm not keen on burning fossil fuels as I'd rather we used them for plastics, etc, but loathe windmills (sorry, windfarms) and solar. I'd rather see nuclear and have hopes for green hydrogen. I do wonder why so many on the left are so keen on raising the costs of energy for people.

tolkein said...

re Howard. Nobody (I hope) argues that CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas. The questions are:
How much warming is natural
What about negative feedbacks - as temperature rises through CO2 some is captured in trees and increased greening. Also you get increased weathering (capturing carbon through silicates, run off into oceans)
Would more nuclear and less wind be a better policy solution?
Why is biomass (burning trees!) acceptable?

Original Mike said...

"As the hockey stick and Inconvenient Truth era has shown that many people behind the promotion of global warming exaggerate the potential harm. In my opinion they have done a million times the damage that the Koch brothers could ever dream to achieve by their program of denial."

Yeah, you want a villain look there, not to a company providing what society needs, now and for a long time into the future, to survive.

(minor point; the Koch brothers are "deniers"? IDK either way; can you provide evidence?)

Paul said...

What stupidly... ever here of UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES????

Blocking the sun will bring lots of them for the computer models we use now AIN'T WORTH A SHIT!!!

How about just do research on making gas run engines more efficient and cleaner.... duh....

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

John Kerry is so dedicated to climate change that he always flies on his zero-CO2 private jet to the climate change parties and has dedicated his life to fighting climate change until he keels over from old age.

Oh, wait! His private jet burns jet fuel and it's not battery powered! And he's quitting as climate change czar to help the chief climate change bozo get reelected.

Bruce Hayden said...

“It's not just Exxon they've been teaching carbon dioxide as a significant greenhouse gas in basic geology courses since the late 1800s. The temperature gains from increased carbon dioxide is simple physics. It's not a theory. It's the same physics that is used to operate heat seeking missiles.”

See above. Freshman chemistry (or, unfortunately, in the Atmospheric Chemistry class my daughter took for her PhD). It’s simplistic, because it ignores feedback - things like clouds and ocean currents.

“Believe me I understand your skepticism. We all know the warming is here and it is coming. What we don't know are the potential effects both good and bad. As the hockey stick and Inconvenient Truth era has shown that many people behind the promotion of global warming exaggerate the potential harm. In my opinion they have done a million times the damage that the Koch brothers could ever dream to achieve by their program of denial.”

The big problem there is that the predictions of doom and gloom are based on ridiculously overestimating the speed of change. For example, the actual increase of the ocean height is maybe 6’-1” a century, to the extent that it can be measured (which itself is problematic). Those levels of sea level rise are trivial to adjust to, given that most buildings are economically obsolescent in half or less of that time. Just rebuild a foot higher every century or so, when buildings become economically obsolescent. Higher CO2 means more plant food, which supports more humans. Etc.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

There's no such thing as natural climate change! There were no continental-wide glaciers extending all the way to Tacoma and Wisconsin! These non-existent glaciers never left debris behind and never sculptured the river valleys. Canada was never under 3,000-ft of ice.

Our house is built on glacier till site. We have rocks left behind that range in size from flour to 3-ft on a side. Every size in between. The Puget lobe blocked the rivers that drained into Puget Sound. We had glacier lakes that drained into the Chehalis River, about 30-miles south of Olympia.

Static Ping said...

It is nice to see that the solutions to all our problems would be quite familiar to any comic book supervillain.

JPS said...

Howard,

"The temperature gains from increased carbon dioxide is simple physics."

Yes, other things being equal. But as Bruce Hayden's post at 11:23 AM argues, it's a hell of a lot more complicated than that. If you go with the not-reasonably disputed physics you get a rather un-terrifying warming prediction. To get from there to catastrophe, you have to make a lot of assumptions about positive feedbacks, and these get shakier the bigger the catastrophe you're trying to predict.

But you know that, because you've lamented the damage done by alarmists' exaggeration. We agree there.

John Henry, 11:07:

I think we've gone round on this before, but when over 999,000 ppm of dry air are infrared-silent, bumping an IR-active gas from 280 to 410 ppm is not a negligible perturbation. I think the bigger grounds for skepticism is how much work "dry" is doing there: the effect of (mostly) much more abundant water vapor, and how simplistic the assumption is that more CO2 leverages water vapor for a great big feedback.

Kalli Davis said...

If there were serious, then build nuclear reactors to generate electricity and let the cooling tower, generate clouds to shade the earth. This would kill two birds with one stone.

tim in vermont said...

If this happens, future generations will call it “the boomers final fuck you.”

Ice Nine said...

When you contemplate this space parasol idea, take a quick look at my Althouse posting handle. And then think about this dangerous idea a bit longer.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

We’re going to blot out the sun but we can’t plug our southern border.

~ Gordon Pasha said...

It's not nice to fool Mother Nature still rings true.

Leland said...

carbon dioxide as a significant greenhouse gas in basic geology courses since the late 1800s.

Howard is just now learning about Svante Arrhenius? Wait until he gets to the part where Arrhenius starts teaching eugenics.

It's not a theory. It's the same physics that is used to operate heat seeking missiles.

HAHAHAHA, no. It is like saying Arrhenius equation is the same physics that allows us to see visible light.

Elon Musk is part of the grand conspiracy as well?

No. I'm certain Elon Musk does not support eugenics. However, you can try defaming him a bit more. It seems defamation is a new rule you idiots think won't apply to you.

Rick O'Vista said...

So let’s block the sun and what good is the solar power to saving energy; also reduced solar effect on wind generation. Sounds like needs some more time in the oven: half baked. Rick O’Vista

n.n said...

30 years of evolutionary progress with a variable fitness function divorced from CO2 trends, forced by the "burden" of diversity's carbon footprint.

Static Ping said...

Just to note for the amusement value, the video game Civilization VI has a global warming feature, part of which revolves around coastal regions sinking into the sea. The game also provides a flood barrier improvement which permanently protects vulnerable coastal areas from flooding. It is a perfectly valid strategy to channel your inner James Bond villain and intentionally flood the world. If you are technologically far ahead of the other players then your lands will be protected and everyone else will get flooded, and sometimes you simply have no coastal regions to protect so it's not your problem. In rare occasions, flooding out useless tiles actually makes them more valuable. Classic Lex Luthor!

There's also a quirk, probably a bug, that if you run enough carbon recapture projects to stop global warming, you can actually get the planet to become colder than baseline. This makes the game think that everyone else are massive polluters, even if they never polluted ever, and prevents them from generating diplomatic favor. This results in you getting monopoly power over the game's equivalent of the United Nations, effectively becoming the world's leader by wrecking the climate.

Oddly, they were not silly enough to have a planetary shade project.

I prefer these mechanics in video games, not real life.

BUMBLE BEE said...

TobyTucker said...

We had to nuke the earth to save it?

Let's see, where have I heard that before?

BUMBLE BEE said...

TobyTucker said...

We had to nuke the earth to save it?

Let's see, where have I heard that before?

Interested Bystander said...

Grifters are gonna grift. No one is ever going to build something like this. It would cost upwards of $30 billion just to launch that much weight into orbit at today's rate of about $25,000/kg. I suppose $30 billion isn't that much but it won't happen.

Interested Bystander said...

To quote Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds, "I'll believe there's climate crisis when the people telling me there's a crisis start to act like there's a crisis."

As long as these phony baloney grifters are flying around the planet on their private jets. telling the rest of us we need to limit ourselves to 4 plane trips in a life time, while they pay indulgences in the form of a carbon tax, I'm not buying it. Leave my goddamned planet the fuck alone. There isn't another one handy that I can escape to after you kill this one with your good intentions.

Darkisland said...

Blogger Howard said...

We all know the warming is here and it is coming.

"We" and "all" would seem to include me. I DO NOT know that "warming is here and it is coming." But I have an advantage over you. I actually have some experience and knowledge of measuring temperature and know how incredibly difficult it can be to do it properly. I personally contributed to the the global seawater temperature record in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Mediterranean. Between uncalibrated and imprecise (2 deg gradients) metal thermometers lack of motivation to take the proper care in reading and actually inventing readings (it was 75 last hour, it's probably still 75 and I don't feel like going to look) I would not guarantee any of my readings within +/-5 degrees or so. All we cared about was warm (speed up the condenser pump) or cool, (slow it down) and it seldom changed much from 1 day to the next (300 or so ocean miles, maybe).

Back when I was working I had a pharma metrology lab under my purview and learned a lot more about temperature measurement than most engineers. Want to hear about our experiences mapping and determining the "average" temperature in a 30X30X10 degassing room? It was a pretty major project and then the FDA still had a lot of questions. Want to hear how laboratory grade glass thermometers need to be recalibrated periodically because they drift?

Have you gone and looked at temperature data sets? Have you asked, when calculating the "average temperature" for a single point for a sing day what method is used? (Take the midpoint between high and low, take the average of 24 hourly readings or take an integrated continuous average) All 3 methods will give different results for the same 24 hours of readings. Yet the data sets that climate scientists use mix all three types of average.

How religious are people about taking temperatures at the same time? Now it is done automatically but until 20-25 years ago many temperatures were still taken manually. Can you compare the temperature for 8:00AM, taken at exactly 8AM on February 2 1990 to the temperture for 8AM, Feb2 1991, but taken at 8:30AM because the guy who was supposed to do it was taking a dump at 8 and didn't get it on time. Do you think the temperature will be different at 830 than 8 on any given day?

I could go on. I have LOTS AND LOTS of other complaints about the temperature record used to determine global whatsit.

If you want to believe in global warming, fine by me. Lots of people believed in "Acid Rain" (Caused by James Bay Hydro), the Freon caused "Ozone Hole" (Caused by DuPont's need to license a new, more expensive refrigerant) or the "Population Bomb" (Population has doubled since the book. Are we better or worse off?) or "Nuclear Winter" (Shown false after the 1st Iraq war) or a host of other beliefs that cultists have tried to foist on us.

Just don't attribute the belief to me.

I am agnostic. I don't think we can tell whether there is global warming or cooling within 5 degrees and I don't think we can tell how much is caused by man and how much by natural variation.

John Henry

Rusty said...

Blogger Howard said...

"We all know the warming is here and it is coming."
Despite the spanking that John Henry gave you.
There are meteorologists,(real climate scientists), that think the globe may soon enter a cooling period. Temperatures that we saw last spring and summer.

Rusty said...

"The amount of carbon in the atmosphere is pretty close to zero. Even closer to zero than methane.

John Henry"

Chemtrails!!!!

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Argentina is not a 10'x10' square. If it costs 10-20 million to put up a band aid... economies of scale are not going to ever reduce the cost of this enough to be practical. Not with chemical rockets.

Also, the solar wind. Light pressure causes acceleration. It's not much, but it's enough to push a thin shield somewhere else. The thinner you go, the bigger the problem.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Instead of trying to block light in space, it would be a lot easier to change the albedo of the Earth's surface or atmosphere. You don't have to launch the material hundreds or thousands of miles up.

Gravity is a thing.

Static Ping said...

To ignore the science or, perhaps, "science" as the case may be, what has seriously soured me on climate change is twofold.

First, proponents are very much acting like conspiracy theorists. "Global warming" became "climate change" because "climate change" is unfalsifiable. Literally any sort of weather confirms their claims. Too hot? Climate change. Too cold? Climate change. No snow? Climate change. Lots of snow? Climate change. Lots of hurricanes? Climate change. Less hurricane? Climate change. We even get absurd nonsense like blaming earthquakes and volcanoes on climate change, and articles discussing the climate change impact of the Gaza War without a sense of irony.

Second, the solution to this problem is uniformly totalitarianism. The only solution is to give unelected bureaucrats full power over every aspect of our lives, from what we eat, where we live, how we live, how many children we can have, etc. The general rule is whoever demands this of you does not have your best interests in mind. My only question is how many of them actually believe what they are preaching, and how many of them just want the power and will latch onto anything that will provide it.

There have been suicide cults that have been more subtle.

Roger Sweeny said...

@Howard 2/2/24, 10:20 AM - If you're going to quote something, you really should give a citation, at least author and title, even better adding a URL.

Roger Sweeny said...

@John Henry 2/2/24, 10:34 AM "The scientists purport to be able to tell us the earth's temperature within tenths of a degree. If you do even a superficial look into how they do this, it is fairly obvious that they can't tell us within 3-5 degrees and don't really even know whether that is plus 3-5 or minus 3-5."

If all measurements are off in the same way, they can still pick up a change. If the temperature goes from 70 degrees to 73, that's an increase of 3 degrees. If my thermometer reads 5 degrees too high and says it went from 75 of 78, that's still an increase of three degrees (wasn't that a singing group?).

JK Brown said...

I don't think I'm alone when I point out the level of violence I would be provoked to if someone took my warming sun. No mercy, no compassion, no understanding, no quarter.

Roger Sweeny said...

@ Bruce Hayden - You are absolutely right that almost all the models "run hot"--they overpredict warming--and that is almost surely political. But the fact that they overpredict doesn't mean that there hasn't been any warming at all. For one thing, the satellite record since December, 1978 shows a real and substantial increase. These are not numbers derived by removing known drivers. These are not predictions from a model. They are fairly straightforward transformations of real-time measurements of the earth's heat radiation (the hotter the earth, the more heat is radiated away, and at higher frequencies).

https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/

Michael K said...

The "Climate Crisis" really consists of the idiocy of its proponents and the amount of money being spent on useless technology. This is an example of what government funded research does. Somewhere Lysenko is laughing.

Jerry said...

I swear, it seems like every so often the Bad Idea Fairy comes along and whaps someone with the Wand of Dumbshit, and they just see what happens as The Best Idea EVARRR...

And this is one of them. It rolls around every few years, people think it's 'New, and will save us!' It isn't, and it won't - just like solar and wind haven't 'saved' us.

Al Gore saw a good grift in what Michael Mann put out - and got rich off carbon futures. (Which is no longer a thing, you notice?) Then he got out of the business while the getting was good. He knows it'll fall apart at some point - and doesn't want to be near the pieces when it happens.

We've had '5 years until doomsday' for the last 30+ years. The Sahara is greening, there's been no rise in intensity or frequency of tornados or hurricanes, and at a certain point IF YOU'VE BEEN PAYING ATTENTION you realize that none of the dire predictions have ever come close to coming true.

I second John Henry's description on how hard it is to get an accurate temperature on a large volume of gas. Or of water. And how hard it is to get an actual calibrated temperature of anything. Thermometers drift, IR systems drift, and you've automatically got error bars on any measurement you make, if you've got half a brain.

Only the CAGW cultists don't understand/believe that. They believe if you take measurements over the surface of the planet, you can somehow average it all out to a conclusion that's accurate to a hundredth of a degree. Kinda hard to do with a 2-5 degree variance on your measurements, but... they're the 'climate experts', all us others need not even think about objecting to the methodology.

One last bit of rant: The whole mess started with computer models showing warming. Those models have been shown time and time again to be badly flawed, incomplete, and just plain wrong. Models 'model' reality - they don't DEFINE it. If the model doesn't match reality, it's NOT Reality's fault, and the model is worthless no matter how much time, effort, and money you threw into it.

Just like models on magazines. That ain't reality - that's Photoshop.

n.n said...

A climate crisis forced by expanded arid regions, urbanization, and Green fields devoid of green growth. That said, CO2 emancipation may yet keep the world green and viable.

Jim at said...

An idea so stupid I'm surprised Jay Inslee hasn't signed off on it yet.

traditionalguy said...

As Bjorn Lomborg long ago pointed out, it’s all about the amount of shade from clouds formed over the Pacific Ocean. As every golfer who has been under the sun knows, that the clouds are what shade the earth from the heat coming off of the massive fusion reaction that we revolve around.

And clouds (which are free) form from the universal cosmic rays that are in turn shielded by the Sun’s solar flares ( a/k/a Sunspots). The more sunspots, the less clouds and the more heating. But the less sunspots, the more clouds over the Pacific Ocean and the less heating.

Pretend control over sunspots by looting the world while eliminating our energy industry is a war on the USA.

Hey Skipper said...

@Bruce Hayden: But as any junior engineering major will tell you, there is something called “feedback”. Which it turns out they can’t come close to modeling yet, in the ecosystem that includes our oceans and atmosphere. And probably won’t be able to do for a long time. They build their models every year.

Per Steve Koonan (Obama's principal science advisor, MIT professor and author of the foundational text on computer modeling) in Unsettled, as the resolution in the models have gotten better, their predictions have gotten worse.. (If I did it right, purchases will go through Ann's Amazon portal. It is an excellent book.)

Which brings up the dogs that are no longer barking. When is the last time you saw the Ensemble of Models spaghetti graph, or the Hockey Stick?

Why might that be?

Dave64 said...

The hubris is astonishing, the folly of man

Hey Skipper said...

From this afternoon's NYT News Digest:

Earth is at its hottest point on record, and experts say humans are not doing enough to stop its overheating.

It is beyond sleazy, and a real tell, that the NYT — and all those similarly inclined — use the "on record" formulation, instead of a precise date.

And it is followed up within the confines of the sentence by catastrophising* language.

Do the people who write this stuff twig how bad it is?

Roger Sweeny said...

@ Mike of Snoqualmie 2/2/24, 11:37 AM - Most people who think "The climate models are crap" also think it is impossible to accurately reconstruct past temperatures. So I was surprised to see you write that "The Earth was much warmer after the end of the last ice age than it is now." Where did you get that from?

A few years ago, I became fascinated by the Ice Age Floods and wanted to see the area up close. Now I'm putting together a trip for next summer. Just ordered the Ice Age Floods Institute's map.

Roger Sweeny said...

@ Static Ping 2/2/24, 3:24 PM - "Second, the solution to this problem ["climate change"] is uniformly totalitarianism. The only solution is to give unelected bureaucrats full power over every aspect of our lives, from what we eat, where we live, how we live, how many children we can have, etc."

That's why I hope the sun shield idea works. There would no longer be a reason for all that sh*t and we could fight back against it, and maybe even win.

Mason G said...

If this happens, future generations will call it “the boomers final fuck you.”Not everybody involved is a boomer- Michael Mann is Gen X.

Hey Skipper said...

@Howard: We all know the warming is here and it is coming. What we don't know are the potential effects both good and bad.

The Paris Accords seem to know: we must do what it takes to limit warming to 1.5ºC above the pre-industrial (taken to be 1850) global average. Anything more than that, and many bad things that are very, very, bad.

This begs a few questions:

What are the error bars? Here is what NOAA has to say: 2023 was the warmest year since global records began in 1850 by a wide margin. It was 2.12 °F (1.18 °C) above the 20th-century average of 57.0°F (13.9°C). It was 2.43 °F (1.35 °C) above the pre-industrial average (1850-1900).

In order to say the temperature in 2023 is 1.35ºC greater than that of 1850, that means we know both 2023's and 1850's global average to within .0025ºC.

I'm calling shenanigans.

More shenanigans: water vapor is the predominant GHG. Why did NOAA fail to mention the Tonga Eruption of last year that blasted an unprecedented amount of water into the stratosphere?. Which, btw, is otherwise extremely dry. So dry, that it has no weather.

Finally, there is the elephantine question in the room: Strike GHG changes since 1850 — that is, hold GHG at 1850 levels, ceteris paribus.

What would the the global average temperature in 2023? That is pivotally important, because the delta between that value and today's global average is what limiting GHG can affect, not the entire 1.5ºC. Only climate deniers would claim that natural variation would leave the global average temp unchanged since 1850.

Yet that ceteris paribus temperature is never mentioned, because the climate models are such shit that there is no telling that the climate would have done in the absence of GHG increases.

(And that is ignoring that the 1.5ºC was pulled out the IPCC's rectal data bank.)

I can't fathom how anybody puts credence in this transparent nonsense.




gadfly said...

Solar Shades as in: "It's the Sun, Stupid," - not the CO2.

But our shade design geniuses can never do better than God's existing chemistry otherwise known as clouds. Obviously, our climate scientists are attempting to get a brand new path for chasing more "gummint money."

Walter S. said...

They want funding from people who can't add. Or, as your first commenters suggested, from thieves looking for kickbacks. The project would be dangerous if it weren't so stupid.

Walter S. said...

@Roger Sweeney, 2/2 5:25pm. Roger, who have you been listening to? Most people know that climate models are crap. Most of us know, too, that credible reconstructions of past temperatures, to the accuracy we need to allay climate panic, are widely available. You must be tired of skeptics treating you like an idiot; I understand that. Don't treat us like idiots either.

John henry said...


Roger Sweeny said...

If all measurements are off in the same way, they can still pick up a change.

That's sort of true, sometimes.

It depends on the thermometer being calibrated and, from the calibration knowing what the offset is.

So is your hypothetical thermometer calibrated? By who and how. Is the offset constant and how do you know that?

And so on.

The problem with temperature is that we see it a dozen times a day and think we understand it. In most cases we just want to know whether to wear a long sleeve shirt or not. Being within a couple degrees is fine.

Precise and accurate measurement is much tougher. Few people, without some training (an hour or so) can even read a thermometer correctly.

I think the big problem is that reported temperature averages look precise. Calculate the average of a dozen temperatures and simple math will give a bunch of decimal places.

They will report 73.0625 and that looks precise. What it actually is is 73 plus or minus a degree or two. The decimals are only propaganda.

John Henry

Bunkypotatohead said...

Once we get those parasols up and we all switch to electric vehicles, China and India will be able to burn a lot more coal.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

There are a number of blog posts at wattsupwiththat.com that deal with post-glacial temperatures. Use "Holocene Optimum" to see them.

Two of the posts are

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/21/the-holocene-thermal-optimum/

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/02/24/holocene-co2-and-the-earlier-ipcc-reports/

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

2/2/24, 5:22 PM
Blogger Roger Sweeny said...
@ Mike of Snoqualmie 2/2/24, 11:37 AM - Most people who think "The climate models are crap" also think it is impossible to accurately reconstruct past temperatures. So I was surprised to see you write that "The Earth was much warmer after the end of the last ice age than it is now." Where did you get that from?

A few years ago, I became fascinated by the Ice Age Floods and wanted to see the area up close. Now I'm putting together a trip for next summer. Just ordered the Ice Age Floods Institute's map.

2/2/24, 5:25 PM

Nick Zetner of Central Washington University in Ellensburg is doing an A-Z youtube series about J Harlan Bretz and the Ice Age floods. You can find the videos at his youtube page or at nickzetner.com

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

I think the big problem is that reported temperature averages look precise. Calculate the average of a dozen temperatures and simple math will give a bunch of decimal places.

The reported temperatures are the average, but not reported is the standard deviation that goes along with the average. The data that goes into the average spans a band of about +/-3C about the average. The accuracy of the average value is [standard deviation]/sqrt(number of vaules). We don't know how many values went into the average and how many of those values were "dry labed." NOAA has a history of dry labing values, recording values for stations that they've closed. About a 1/3 of the weather stations have been closed over the decades, 1200 vs 800 today.

NMObjectivist said...

A act of war.

Bruce Hayden said...

“A few years ago, I became fascinated by the Ice Age Floods and wanted to see the area up close. Now I'm putting together a trip for next summer. Just ordered the Ice Age Floods Institute's map.”

We very often drive by where the plug on the ice dam to Glacial Lake Missoula would periodically form, then, the glacier would later retreat, and the dam would ultimately blow out, the lake would then flood eastern WA and OR. Rinse and repeat. It’s located just east of Sandpoint, by Clark Fork (ID) as the River comes out of the mountains. Apparently, you can see where the plugs were, if you climb the side of the mountain there. Always wanted to do it, but always wanted to climb up there, but was always in a hurry to get to Sandpoint, or back home, in MT.

boatbuilder said...

If all measurements are off in the same way, they can still pick up a change. If the temperature goes from 70 degrees to 73, that's an increase of 3 degrees. If my thermometer reads 5 degrees too high and says it went from 75 of 78, that's still an increase of three degrees (wasn't that a singing group?).

Moving those goalposts. What's 3 to 5 degrees if you're trying to SAVE THE EARTH! Trust the SCIENCE.


Roger Sweeny said...

@ Walter S 2/2/24, 6:53 PM - "Most people know that climate models are crap. Most of us know, too, that credible reconstructions of past temperatures, to the accuracy we need to allay climate panic, are widely available. You must be tired of skeptics treating you like an idiot; I understand that. Don't treat us like idiots either."

Sorry if you thought I was treating you like an idiot. I was just surprised to see two statements that usually don't go together going together. Most people who think "climate models are crap" as opposed to "climate models are imperfect and run hot" also think that we don't have an accurate enough climate record to make any models that aren't crap. Since nobody was around with a thermometer thousands of years ago, estimates of past climate always involve models, turning, say, measurements of tree rings or air bubbles trapped in glaciers into temperatures. It is certainly possible to accept some models and not others. I'm just not used to it in this area of controversy. And to be honest, I can't help suspecting that there is a certain amount of "motivated reasoning" here. "I believe the models that give me results I like and reject the models that give me results I don't like."

But I'll check out the Watts Up With That links that Mike of Snoqualmie posted 2/2/24, 9:05 PM.

Roger Sweeny said...

@ Mike of Snoqualmie 2/2/24, 9:05 PM and 2/2/24, 9:09 PM - Thanks for the links and the YouTube info.

Rusty said...

Gravity is a thing.
And Gravity is serious.

It's OK Roger. Go have babies. There is still a bright future for mankind. Unless Biden get us into WW3.

Illinois south of US30 is as flat as a dinner plate for hundreds of miles. Wiped clean when a dammed glacial lake opened up.
It is the opinion of some geologists that the Grand Canyon was made in just a few years when another glacial dam broke.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

I can see features in the Grand Canyon that are similar to the Coolees of the Columbia River basin. Vertical cliff walls.

There have been many glacier extensions over the the last 3.3 million years. Perhaps one of them extended far enough south to create glacial lakes that drained into the Colorado River.