Weekly clippings #39 - phanerozoic climate, corrupt climate data, ESG vs human flourishing, hydrogen, racist climate change, EV woes

This week in Science we have a few angles on temperature records, starting with the long term where it is shown that solar system changes dominate, the short term of the last eight years are spot on the 30-year mean, another example of how measurement data has been "adjusted" to change a cooling trend into a warming trend, and a de-bunking of the idea that 2023 was the hottest year ever.

In the Investment/Economics category we have a philosophical look at DEI/ESG interactions, ESG in decline, a look at hydrogen, and climate death manipulated data.

In Absurdities, we have climate change being racist, and all the safety rails on roads would need to be replaced due to the heavy weight of EVs, just another massive un-considered cost.

SCIENCE 

The Phanerozoic climate "We review the long-term climate variations during the last 540 million years (Phanerozoic Eon). We begin with a short summary of the relevant geological and geochemical datasets available for the reconstruction of long-term climate variations. We then explore the main drivers of climate that appear to explain a large fraction of these climatic oscillations.

"Armed with the above drivers, we have seen that one can build a model that explains a significant part of the temperature variations observed over the Phanerozoic." "Interestingly, however, decreases in CO2 concentration and the increase in solar luminosity mostly cancel each other out (except for the  nonsecular variations in CO2). Consequently, the dominant temperature variations observed during the Phanerozoic are those due to the periodic passages of the solar system through the galactic spiral arms." (bold font added)

Temperature.Global calculates the current global temperature of the Earth. It uses unadjusted surface temperatures. The current temperature is the 12M average mean surface temperature over the last 12 months compared against the 30 year mean. New observations are entered each minute and the site is updated accordingly. This site was created by professional meteorologists and climatologists with over 25 years experience in surface weather observations.

The Climate Data Corruption Business In 1984, NASA’s James Hansen predicted 4-5C warming for the US. Fifteen years later Hansen was upset that the US wasn’t warming as he predicted. So they started tampering with the data. In the 2005 USHCN documentation, US temperature adjustments were 0.5F. Since then the adjustments have quadrupled. The graph below shows how drastic the change has been, enough to alter a cooling period and make it look like a warming period. It seems the science was not really settled until the data could be sufficiently tortured to make it say what they want.

Hottest Days Ever? Don’t Believe It "‘Average global temperature’ is a meaningless measure, and comparisons to 125,000 years ago are preposterous. The global-warming industry has declared that July 3 and 4 were the two hottest days on Earth on record. The reported average global temperature on those days was 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit, supposedly the hottest in 125,000 years. The claimed temperature was derived from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, which relies on a mix of satellite temperature data and computer-model guesstimation to calculate estimates of temperature.

"One obvious problem with the updated narrative is that there are no satellite data from 125,000 years ago. Calculated estimates of current temperatures can’t be fairly compared with guesses of global temperature from thousands of years ago. A more likely alternative to the 62.6-degree estimate is something around 57.5 degrees. The latter is an average of actual surface temperature measurements taken around the world and processed on a minute-by-minute basis by a website called temperature.global. The numbers have been steady this year, with no spike in July."

INVESTMENT/ECONOMICS

“But I don’t want to be moral!” – What does morality have to do with business?  "They invest some resources in initiatives such as ESG (environment, social, governance) and DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) programs to signal corporate social responsibility to their companies’ stakeholders and to avoid being labeled “greedy capitalists.” Such approaches to long-term profit maximization are bound to fail. Just look at Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), former CEO of FTX, and Elizabeth Holmes, former CEO of Theranos. Both tried to maximize profits in whichever way “worked” and were convicted of defrauding their investors. Virtue signaling may not lead to jail sentences, but it does detract from profits. Observe asset managers such as BlackRock that are now quietly closing their underperforming ESG funds that they had touted as “ethical investments.” Such approaches are bound to fail because long-term profit maximization requires guidance from ethics, albeit not from altruism."

Chart: Is ESG Investing in Decline? In this brief article it is interesting to observe that over 90% of EFTs focused on UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) are climate and energy related, and I expect the energy focus is mostly driven by climate worries. None of them focus on the goals that would provide immediate and effective improvement in human life. 

World-renowned economist Bjorn Lomborg has identified the best things to do. The focus should be on tuberculosis, malaria, and chronic disease, malnutrition, improving education, increase trade, implementing e-procurement, and securing land tenure. This will improve the world amazingly. The cost is $35 billion a year. The benefits include saving 4.2 million lives each year and generating $1.1 trillion more for the world’s poor.

The investment industry is creating hundreds of products for people to buy that have no significant impact on human lives compared to doing the best things, and this is a shamefully self-promotional choice. The attention on the non-crisis of the climate is sucking up much of the attention and funding that could accomplish radically good things in the world.

Natural Hydrogen: Something or Nothing? A breakthrough would redefine hydrogen as a fuel, no longer just an energy carrier. "We find ourselves more optimistic about the potential for natural hydrogen than we were when we embarked on the research for this piece. There are huge barriers to its eventual commercial development, but they are hardly insurmountable given the size of the prize. We will be keeping close tabs on developments in the field. One sure-fire signal that humanity may be on the verge of a primary energy breakthrough is that environmentalists are already lining up to oppose it. What is the basis for their opposition? You guessed it, climate change: “There is also concern among environmental scientists that unleashing this hydrogen into the atmosphere could have unintended consequences — including indirect greenhouse warming. ‘Although it is not a pollutant in its own right,’ atmospheric chemist Richard Derwent wrote in a study for the British government, ‘hydrogen may hasten the build-up of the greenhouse gases … and hence contribute to climate change.’" It will be entertaining (and frustrating) to observe the knots such individuals will twist themselves into to transform hydrogen from climate savior to villain."

When You Crunch The Numbers, Green Hydrogen Is A Non-Starter "[G]overnments now want to create a new hydrogen fuel industry using market intervention, mandates, and massive subsidies. But physics and economics strongly oppose the development of a green hydrogen fuel industry. Get ready for a spectacular failure of these government-sponsored efforts."

From Bjorn Lomborg: "Climate alarmists are annoyed that global climate-related disaster deaths have declined dramatically. Then they discovered how to cherry-pick deaths to look like they’re increasing - just (indefensibly) remove the top 50 most deadly mega-disasters and rig the scales."

ABSURDITY

Climate Change is Racist Now "So, this new rationale will become the latest front upon which the global religion of climate alarm will work to advance its agenda."

Another Week, Another EV Tale of Woe "The Canadian Press reports that a new crash test study has found what anyone able to reason critically has known for years, which is that the country’s highway guardrails are not strong enough to withstand the force of EVs that weigh 1,000 - 4,000 lbs. more than their gas-powered counterparts."

"So, what does this mean as a practical matter for the millions of miles of freeways, highways, state roads, county roads and any other road where guardrails are required? Well, it means that, if we really do replace most ICE cars with heavier EVs, all the guardrails will need to be replaced with heavier-duty models, because the ones on the roads today would just be there for show. Think of how many billion - trillions, even - of dollars doing that will cost over time. Now, think of this: What’s going to happen when road designers finally start to really press the policymakers about the fact that the roads themselves are not designed to withstand the pressure of these much heavier EVs, and are being torn up and left in need of repair or complete re-paving years sooner than had been anticipated?"