Weekly clippings #38 - CO2's minor greenhouse effect, low cyclone activity, expensive alarmism, ESG exodus, plastic bag fail, ESG bait & switch, soaring energy costs, green fantasy

This week we have a batch of science, including a dive into the greenhouse effect and how CO2 change has not affected it, a low CO2 climate sensitivity, CO2 fertilizing and greening the Earth, and recent low cyclone activity. 

In the investment/economics category we have the high cost of climate alarmism, ESG manager exodus, the failure of plastic bags, ESG bait-and-switch, the woke investing disaster, net-zero modelling errors, stealing with solar, and DEI captures scientists. 

And finally, in the theatre of the absurd, $4M cost per green job, the giant footprint of urban agriculture, and the fantasy of battery locomotives.

SCIENCE

Revisiting the greenhouse effect – a hydrological perspective and commentary at New Study Finds The Post-1900 CO2 Rise Has Not Discernibly Altered The Greenhouse Effect "Variations in the greenhouse effect are predominantly modulated by water vapor and cloud cover. CO2’s role in the greenhouse effect is so minor it cannot be discerned."

The abstract of the study: "Quantification of the greenhouse effect is a routine procedure in the framework of hydrological calculations of evaporation. According to the standard practice, this is made considering the water vapour in the atmosphere, without any reference to the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), which, however, in the last century has increased from 300 to about 420 ppm. As the formulae used for the greenhouse effect quantification were introduced 50–90 years ago, we examine whether these are still representative or not, based on eight sets of observations, distributed across a century. We conclude that the observed increase of the atmospheric CO2 concentration has not altered, in a discernible manner, the greenhouse effect, which remains dominated by the quantity of water vapour in the atmosphere, and that the original formulae used in hydrological practice remain valid. Hence, there is no need for adaptation of the original formulae due to increased CO2 concentration."

“Carbon dioxide…increasing downwelling LW radiation by ~1.5 W/m². It is about 0.5% of the 327 W/m² of overall downwelling radiation that warms the Earth’s surface. The vast majority of that warming is contributed by water vapor. Together with cloud, it accounts for 98% of the greenhouse effect.”  – Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate (textbook).

While there are thousands of studies that prove the hypothesis for dangerous, man-made global warming is false, one subset of these focuses on the equilibrium climate sensitivity to doubling the concentration of CO2. One source has been collecting such studies, and the number has now reached 160, which one would think is enough to create some very serious doubt, if not to demolish the idea that rising CO2 represents any kind of existential threat. Take a look at 160 Papers Find Extremely Low CO2 Climate Sensitivity where you can read key findings and find links to all the original research papers.

Greening of the Earth and its drivers "Here we use three long-term satellite leaf area index (LAI) records and ten global ecosystem models to investigate four key drivers of LAI trends during 1982–2009. We show a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated LAI (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing LAI (browning). Factorial simulations with multiple global ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening [emphasis added] trend, followed by nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (LCC) (4%)." ""The greening over the past 33 years reported in this study is equivalent to adding a green continent about two-times the size of mainland USA (18 million km2)..."

Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity: Geophys. Res. Lett. (2011), Abstract: Tropical cyclone accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) has exhibited strikingly large global interannual variability during the past 40-years. In the pentad since 2006, Northern Hemisphere and global tropical cyclone ACE has decreased dramatically to the lowest levels since the late 1970s. Additionally, the frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historical low. Here evidence is presented demonstrating that considerable variability in tropical cyclone ACE is associated with the evolution of the character of observed large-scale climate mechanisms including the El Nino Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. In contrast to record quiet North Pacific tropical cyclone activity in 2010, the North Atlantic basin remained very active by contributing almost one-third of the overall calendar year global ACE.

INVESTMENT/ECONOMICS

Bjorn Lomborg-- The Cost of Climate Alarmism How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor and Fails to Fix the Planet.

An ESG Asset Manager Exodus "JPMorgan Asset Management, BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors on Thursday retreated from the Climate Action 100+ investor compact because they don’t want the political and legal liability." "Asset managers have been walking a fine legal line. GOP Attorneys General in 2022 warned that they might be violating their fiduciary obligations and antitrust laws." "The climate alliance’s new rules would compound the legal and political jeopardy." "Perhaps their customers have also begun to realize that ESG and net-zero mandates are political crusades that accomplish little except politicizing investment." "What does it say when the climate left believes it can achieve its goals only by intimidation and coercion?"

Plastic bag bans have failed in every way except one "You need to use a reusable plastic bag 52 times before its environmental impact drops below that of a disposable one, according to a 2018 study by the Danish government, rising to 20,000 times for organic cotton. (The numbers are lower if you look only at carbon pollution — paper sacks need to be reused three times, climbing to 11 times for non-woven polypropylene and 131 times for cotton, a UK government study found.)

"Our rising consumption of plastics for shopping bags suggests we’re not reusing at anything like that rate. More plastic was being consumed just for polypropylene bags after New Jersey’s ban than for all types of carrier beforehand. The same thing was observed after a 2016 California bag ban and a 2011 rule in the Australian capital Canberra. UK supermarkets sold 1.58 billion reusable plastic bags in 2019, according to Greenpeace— equivalent to more than one per household per week, with the same environmental footprint in each home as hundreds or even thousands of traditional single-use carriers."

Calling Out The ESG Bait And Switch "Activist investors claim they submit ESG proposals at annual meetings to improve corporate profitability. All too often, these proposals are attempts to hijack the corporate governance process to implement policies that Congress refuses to pass. A proposal that ESG activist investors Arjuna Capital and Follow This are trying to resubmit on Exxon’s 2024 proxy statement exemplifies the scheme."

What investors can learn from the woke investing disaster According to the International Energy Agency, about US$1.7-trillion was invested in clean energy in 2023, substantially more than the US$1.1-trillion devoted to fossil-fuel energy. Yet, just as with plant-based food, the returns to investors in clean energy have been dismal. Consider the unlucky soul who put her money into the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF, an exchange-traded fund that invests in companies that generate power from wind and sun. She would have lost half her money over the past three years. To add insult to injury, her friend who invested in the iShares Global Energy ETF, which holds mostly big oil and gas producers, would have nearly doubled her money over the same period.

Energy Bills Set to Soar as Report Finds Almost All Major Studies on Net Zero Grossly Underestimate Cost  "The Royal Society, for example, assumes that the cost of almost everything will halve, and the efficiency of almost everything will soar. It’s not impossible, but it is imprudent to assume that it will happen. If you correct the modelling errors, and use known costs and efficiencies rather than speculation about what might be available in 2050, you get a very different picture of the future."

Updates On The March To The Great Green Energy Future "The cries of climate alarm get ever louder and more urgent.  (E.g., New York Times, January 9, “It’s confirmed: 2023 was the planet’s warmest year on record and perhaps in the last 100,000 years. By far.”).  We’re all about to boil!  Something must be done! OK, but then there is the proposed solution:  Order up by government fiat that our current fully working and inexpensive energy system must be replaced with a never-demonstrated pipe dream conjured up by political science and gender studies majors who know nothing about how an energy system works.  We’re far enough into this by now that some of the pieces are starting to blow up in dramatic fashion.  Are we allowed to notice?

Stealing with Solar: The Great Net-Metering Heist How Solar Panels Helped Wealthy Californians Pick The Pockets of Low-Income Families. "Have you ever wanted to steal from the less fortunate without going to jail? Have we got a deal for you! Affluent households in California siphoned nearly $3.4 billion in 2021 from the pockets of low-income families through a government program called net metering. This program allows people with solar panels to get free electricity while forcing people who can’t afford them to pay all of the costs associated with maintaining the electric grid. What a steal!"

Leigh Revers: Even U of T's scientists are captive to the irrational ideology of DEI  Professors subjected to diversity-based performance evaluation, lab agreements encoding 'power' hierarchies as identity politics takes over. "My appeals for rationality — “Aren’t we all scientists here? Do we not all believe in Enlightenment values? And argue for our beliefs with evidence?” — had been met with glares of disapproval. What is going wrong? These are scientists, my people. How have we become so unmoored from reality? There will of course be another meeting. There is always another meeting in academia. We will return to the question of including Indigenous science in the curriculum. And one day quite soon, we will ask ourselves: why did we start down this path of unreason? Canada needs to wake up before it gets that far."

ABSURDITIES

Canada's EV Strategy Has Cost $4 million per Job Created  "The extravagant EV battery subsidies for the auto industry are a perfect example of what can go wrong. "

Food from urban agriculture has carbon footprint six times larger than conventional produce, study shows  I'd say that when you think the carbon footprint of urban gardening is potentially harmful, you know you've lost contact with reality.

Unelected CA Regulators Carry Green Fantasy Thinking to the Next Level  "None of that pesky reality has served to deter the low-IQ individuals who inhabit CARB from moving on to bigger and worser (is that a word?) things, though. Recently, they decided that mandating not-ready-for-primetime electric tech for cars and heavy trucks on insanely unrealistic deadlines is not going far enough into fantasyland, and decided to approve a resolution to do the same in the realm of heavy freight locomotives.

"So, at a time when the big rail operators are trying to allocate as much of their funds as possible to improvements in rail infrastructure and safety in the wake of a rash of major rail disasters during 2022 and 2023, CARB plans to enact a new, impossible to achieve regulatory action that is going to take billions out of their earnings in the coming years to salve the fantasies of the climate alarm lobby.

"It turns out that only one company even manufactures “electric” heavy locomotive engines these days, and its engines rely on - wait for it - tag-along diesel generators to keep the damn things going when they run out of juice, which will invariably be long before the estimated range certified by the manufacturers and cooperating federal government regulators."