How reliable are satellite temperature measurements?


Phil Plait

"Bad astronomer" Phil Plait is on another of his deceptive rants below.  He thinks the heavily manipulated and unevenly located thermometer data is accurate and the satellite readings are not.  So just a few observations:

He says that accounts of the "pause" show a flat trend line only because the starting point of the graphs concerned is in the El Nino year of  1998.  But that is not so.  I trot out my favorite graph below.



The graph in fact starts from 1997.  And think what would have happened if there had been no El Nino.  Without that big spike, the trend would be down, showing cooling.  Only that big 1998 upward spike cancels out the very low figures recorded in some subsequent years.  So Warmists should be thankful of the 1998 El Nino spike rather than pooh-poohing it.

But the issue of a starting date is important.  With many trend lines you can prove anything by cherrypicking particular starting and end points.  It's classic chartmanship.

And when the egregious Michael Mann says at the beginning of the video that 2015 will show up as the warmest year as far back as we have data, it might seem that he is on the side of the angels in the matter.  In assessing a trend, you should go back to the beginning.

But Mann does not in fact do that.  He goes back only a little more than 100 years.  If he had gone back a couple of thousand years -- to encapsulate both the Roman and the Medieval Warm periods, he would have to say that 2015 was among the cooler years in Earth's history.  But "hockeystick" Mann has of course had a lot of issues with history.

So again, it is clear that the starting point for any trend is crucial to the result you see.

So is the 18 year pause just cherrypicking?  No.  If we want to know if the present is like the past we have to assess the present.  And the "hiatus" or plateau IS just simply there in the recent past.

Skeptics will have no problem with assertions below to the effect that there was warming over the 20th century.  There WAS a slight warming, as far as we can tell.  But by the same token Warmists need to accept that there has been no warming in the 21st century.  Whatever produced the 20th century warming is no longer there in the 21st.  Warmists postulate that there is a single systematic process going on that causes temperatures to rise.  But that may not be so.  We may simply be seeing random fluctuations.  And no cherrypicking of your starting points will disprove that.

Amusing that Phil Plait too stresses below the importance of not cherrypicking your starting points, even though he and his friends themselves do exactly that.  It's just another one of Phil's deceptions. James Taylor dissects another one of Phil's deceptions here.  And Matt Ridley has a go at Phil here

I could go on but most of the rest is just old boilerplate Warmist assertions that conflict with the facts so I will leave any further debunking of the piece to others.

UPDATE:  I do have a social life in addition to putting up six blogs daily so I sometimes have too little time to say all that I would like about a piece of Greenie nonsense.  So after I have fired one bullet into its brain, I sometimes leave it for dead. And so it was with what I put up above.  I have now however found a little more time to take on phony Phil so will make one additional point:

The satellite record is in fact validated by the terrestrial record.  Even after all the manipulations that take place in the great temples of Warmism, the terrestrial temperature record of the 21st century has shown no statistically significant change from year to year. And to a scientist, no statistically significant difference means no difference.  It means that the differences observed are so small that they have to be accepted as random and not the product of some systematic process.  So from a scientific point of view the terrestrial and satellite records say the same thing.  The terrestrial record confirms the accuracy of the satellite record.  Both show no change. That Phil and Co. ignore statistical significance shows that their "science" is just a lot of phlogiston.

Warmists normally just keep shtumm about statistical significance though Rahmstorff did once endeavour to discredit it.  I commented on that here.  Even a layman can however see that the regular Warmist claims that some year is the warmest, 3rd warmest etc. are a lot of hokum if you look at the actual figures behind those assertions. The warming is not statistically significant because it is TRIVIAL.  When you can show years differing only by hundredths and thousandths of one degree in temperature, you are showing warming that is for all practical purposes non-existent.  The statistical significance is, in other words, telling us something important.  We do well to heed it.

So it is not only phony Phil that is full of phlogiston. The people at NOAA and elsewhere who make these annual "warmest" announcements are also ignoring the science of the matter

In December, GOP senator, presidential hopeful, and outrageous science denier Ted Cruz held a Senate panel about climate change that could charitably be called a farce. He empaneled a series of people who ranged from lukewarmers (believing the Earth is warming, but it’s not dangerous, or not rapid enough to worry about now) to out-and-out head-in-the-sand deniers.

During the hearing, Cruz said a lot of completely false things, but two things he hammered over and again were the reliability of satellite data, and how those data don’t show any warming over the past 18 years* — the so-called pause.

As I’ve written many times, that "pause" doesn’t exist; we’re still getting warmer and have been for decades. He cherry-picked the data, looking only as far back as 1998, when a huge spike in temperature due to an El Niño event made it look like temperatures are flat since then (when you start high, it makes the rest of the graph look flatter). That’s hugely misleading, of course.

But it did make me wonder just how reliable the data are; I know that satellite measurements can be difficult to calibrate. Worse, satellites don’t actually measure temperature directly; they measure how much energy the Earth radiates, and that’s converted into a temperature. The conversion is dependent on a lot of theoretical models. How accurate are the models?

It turns out this is a good thing to wonder. Satellite measurements are not the most reliable method to get temperature. The folks at Yale Climate Connections have made a short video explaining this, and it’s very good. Watch!

The key thing to take away from this is that satellites measure radiance: energy radiated by the atmosphere as microwaves. They come from the air, but also from the surface, clouds, and more. Scientists then use models of what’s emitting these microwaves to disentangle all that and convert it to a temperature. But those models are sometimes not terribly accurate.

The best measurements have been and still are from thermometers in situ, at various stations across the globe, on land, over sea, and in the air. These data need adjusting sometimes too, but not nearly as much as satellite data. Thermometers more reliable.

I was also happy to see climatologist Andrew Dessler make a fantastic comment starting at the 4:00 minute mark, talking about the deniers who misrepresent or misinterpret the data:

The bottom line: You can’t cherry-pick when you start the temperature measurements, and you can’t cherry-pick the data sets themselves, even — especially — if they show what you want.

And remember, the satellite data are one small part of a vast amount of data that overwhelmingly show our planet is warming up: retreating glaciers, huge amounts of ice melting at both poles, the "death spiral" of Arctic ice every year at the summer minimum over time, earlier annual starts of warm weather and later starts of cold weather, warming oceans, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, more extreme weather, changing weather patterns overall, earlier snow melts, and lower snow cover in the spring …

Despite the claims of people like Cruz, Roy Spencer (yes, this Roy Spencer), Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), we know the Earth is warming up, and we know humans are the reason why.

SOURCE  





Opening up Australia's empty North to settlement and farming

Another revival of an old and unrealistic dream. It fits in with the frequent Greenie cries that the world is overpopulated and about to run out of food. The latest such cry here.  It is true that vast tracts of Northern Australia are mostly unpopulated and used for very little.  And Chinese farmers in the gold-rush days of the 19th century proved that productive farms could be set up there even using very low-tech.  So turning an area about the size of Western Europe into farms seems an obvious thing to do.

And from Adolf Hitler on, Greenies have been shrieking that we are about to run out of food.  So if that had any realism to it, opening up Northern Australia to arable farming  would indeed be an obvious thing to do.

The fact that everyone overlooks is that the international supply of most farm products is in GLUT.  We have too much food available for international trade, not too little.  So if you do convert more of our mostly empty North into farms, how are you going to sell the product?

The Ord river scheme in North-West Australia was a warning for those who are capable of learning.  There's this huge river and lots of uncultivated fertile land nearby so governments of all sorts have thought to turn it into a resource.   Since the 1940s, it has absorbed many millions of taxpayer dollars. And it's only recently that they have found something worth growing there:  Sandalwood, used to make incense sticks for Chinese religious ceremonies!  No food!

And now that China has become a major food exporter, almost any farm investment would be blind optimism.  China now makes not only most of our electrical goods but also most of those low-priced "Own brand" cans of food in your local supermarket. The abundance that worldwide capitalism produces is in the end what will keep Australias's vast North mostly empty.  Greenie shrieks about overpopulation are a laugh to anyone who knows anything about the subject

A record-breaking drought in the state of Queensland has reignited calls to unlock the economic potential of Australia's under-developed and sparsely populated north.

As those on the land struggle, business leaders are promoting the idea that the region could be transformed into a giant food bowl for Asia.

What's needed, according to Troy Popham, the head of the Townsville Chamber of Commerce, is the vision to create a large network of new reservoirs and pipelines to help a thirsty country cope with prolonged dry spells.

"The rain across northern Australia can be captured and can be channelled to relevant places so that the downstream effects of the water can still be utilised," he says.

"It is going to cost some money, but the rewards that it will deliver to the country are enormous."

Bold irrigation schemes, a 600m Australian dollar ($418m; £290m) upgrade to outback roads, extra money to revamp airstrips, and funds to explore rail freight links are part of a federal government discussion paper released last June.

"No longer will Northern Australia be seen as the last frontier: it is in fact, the next frontier," proclaimed a statement from the governing Liberal Party.

Development challenge

The region, to the north of the Tropic of Capricorn, covers more ground than many countries, and spans Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

It is flush with potential; from agriculture and renewable energy, to tourism, education and tropical medicine.

Crucially, for policy makers it is on the doorstep of emerging markets in Asia.

But the dreams of exploiting the untapped riches of the north that go back almost as far as European settlement in the late 18th Century have remained unfulfilled.

Colonial explorers dragged boats into the mysterious interior hoping to find an inland sea, but discovered only desert and disappointment. Over the years, other lofty ambitions have also turned to dust.

While Canberra's ambition to eventually light up the north is praised by industry groups and farmers, there is - because of the area's sheer scale - caution.

"It is a great principle, but it can end up being useless rhetoric if the government is not willing to drive this investment," says Queensland state MP Robbie Katter, from his offices in the mining city of Mount Isa in the rugged Gulf Country region.

"What many people have in mind is that it would be corporate-style farming with foreign owners or institutional investors that do a big irrigation scheme.

"That benefits a few and really doesn't help solve any of the problems for the established farmers out here."

The cost of upgrading key freight routes would be huge, and take years, but would be worth the time and money, argues Andrew Gray, chairman of Northern Territory Livestock Exporters Association.

"The pastoral industry has been crippled by poor roads," he says.   "We have heavy rain during our wet season. Roads become impassable for passenger vehicles, let alone for the transport of livestock."

SOURCE





How falling oil prices exposed the great green lie: Saudi Arabia's battle with the US to drive down prices show we're far from reaching 'peak oil'

Even though I have been reading about plunging oil prices for the past year, it still came as a pleasant surprise this week when I ordered 900 litres of heating oil.  It came to £264. Three years ago, it cost £609 to buy the same quantity.

I have already been saving money on road fuel. Over the past 18 months, the cost of filling my tank has fallen from around £70 to £53.

But for people with oil-fired central heating systems — which is most of us who live in the countryside, beyond the reach of a gas supply — the savings have been even more dramatic.

This is partly because tax makes up a smaller percentage of the retail cost of a litre of heating oil than it does of petrol and diesel.

For me, the cost of heating my home has more than halved, putting an extra £700 a year in my pocket to be spent on other things. Multiply those kind of savings across the economy and consumers, especially those in rural areas, are enjoying a huge bonus from low oil prices.

We have American oil companies and the Saudis to thank for that. For the past 15 months they have been engaged in a fight to the economic death.

Until recently, Saudi Arabia wielded enormous power in the oil markets.  Not only was it responsible for 13 per cent of global oil production, but it headed OPEC, the Organisation of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (Opec), which accounted for 40 per cent of world oil production.

Opec is a cartel that exists for one reason alone: to try to fix world oil prices in order to maximise profits for its members, which are made up mostly of Middle Eastern countries.

If the oil price fell, Opec would meet and agree to cut production in order to push the price back up.

If prices rose, Opec members would agree that it was safe to open the oil taps a little so that they could have more oil to sell.

In most developed economies, cartels are illegal because they work against the interests of the consumer.  But for decades Opec has been allowed to operate with impunity, keeping the price of oil higher than it would otherwise be.

Two years ago, however, something remarkable happened. Thanks to fracking — the controversial technique that involves fracturing oil-bearing rocks by pumping in water and sand at high pressure — the U.S. overtook Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer.

Saudi Arabia felt threatened, so when the price of crude oil began to fall on world markets, Opec changed tack. Instead of cutting production, it increased it, hoping to drive down the price of oil and force U.S. producers out of business.

Opec certainly succeeded in lowering crude oil prices. The price of a barrel of crude oil has collapsed from a peak of $115 in the summer of 2014 to just $31 this week.

But still neither U.S. nor Opec producers have cut oil production. They have locked horns in a price war they hope will damage the other more than themselves.

Moreover, on Friday export sanctions that have been imposed on Iran by the West since 2007 are due to be lifted.

The result could be yet more oil flooding onto world markets. That is why crude oil prices have fallen by another 20 per cent since January 1.

While the oil price war has put hundreds of pounds a year in my pocket, it could have been a very different story.

Three years ago, with the price of heating oil still surging, I nearly fell for the propaganda of the green lobby, thinking hard about taking out my oil-fired boiler to replace it with something called an air-source heat pump.

This is, in effect, a refrigerator or air-conditioning system in reverse. It would pump water through a circuit that included my radiators as well as a series of fan units in the garden.

By pressurising the water before it is pumped through the radiators, and depressurising it before the water gets outside, it is possible to pump heat from outdoors to indoors, even though the temperature is higher inside than out.

The heating system would have cost me £10,000 and sent my electricity bills soaring, but the company trying to sell it to me assured me that it would pay for itself in the longer run because oil prices were bound to rise much faster than electricity prices.

The world had reached ‘peak oil’, according to the theory, with the result that prices would soar ever higher as supplies dwindled.

I got as far as speaking to a couple of friends who had installed a heat pump in their own property, which was a little larger, but was brand new and much better insulated than my home.

While they had eliminated their gas bill, they were spending £2,000 a year on electricity (compared with my bill of about £500). My friends will be paying even more than that now. While the price of heating oil has more than halved since 2013, the price of electricity has risen by 13 per cent, according to the Office of National Statistics.

One of the reasons behind this rise is that electricity companies are being forced to buy a certain proportion of their energy from expensive renewable sources.

These so-called ‘environmental and social costs’ account for 8.4 per cent of domestic bills, according to Ofgem. In my 18th century house, which has solid walls, I hate to think how much I would be paying to keep it warm with a heat pump.

Three years on, the prediction that we had reached ‘peak oil’ and that prices could only rise as oil ran out now looks silly. It was a case of seeing a trend line on a graph and assuming the trend would continue.

The concept of ‘peak oil’ was just wishful thinking on the part of the green lobby, which wanted us to be forced to stop burning fossil fuels. While I didn’t quite fall for the myth, the Government did. As a result, we’ve been left with a national energy policy that assumes fossil fuel prices can only rise.

Huge subsidies — running at £3.4 billion a year — have been paid to subsidise solar, wind and other renewable energy.

All along, we have been told that showering renewable energy firms with public money — paid for through taxes and levies on consumers’ bills — was a wise investment that would save us money in the long run because it would make us less dependent on ever more expensive fossil fuels.

For example, the Coalition’s climate change secretary, Chris Huhne — remember him? — said in 2011: ‘Sticking with yesterday’s fuels could be tomorrow’s headache. With rising energy prices and finite supplies of fossil fuels, not many want to bet against low carbon.’

I wouldn’t mind betting against it now. Falling oil and gas prices mean that subsidies for green energy would have to rise to keep them competitive.

Last month, world leaders met in Paris to thrash out a deal to reduce carbon emissions. At the end of their marathon ten-day talks they all agreed that they were going to slash emissions.

With the exception of Britain, however, hardly any countries have legally committed themselves to reducing emissions.

When it comes to the crunch, does anyone really think they will do as we have done: force their industries to drop fossil fuels and buy much more expensive green energy, thus losing competitive advantage?

The world certainly isn’t showing any signs of reducing its reliance on oil so far. Global consumption — as well as production — has never been higher than it was in the final quarter of last year.

Ironically, the one large industrial nation that has succeeded in reducing carbon emissions — by 9 per cent over the past decade — is the U.S.

This isn’t down to green energy, however, so much as to fracking.  Cheap gas has consigned to closure much dirtier coal-fired power stations — which emit around twice as much carbon for every kilowatt-hour of electricity.

We, and the rest of the world, could be slashing carbon emissions, too, if we switched from coal to gas rather than trying to rely on expensive and intermittent wind and solar energy.

I doubt whether we have reached ‘peak oil’ or ‘peak gas’ just yet. But hopefully we might just be past the point of peak hubris from the green lobby.

SOURCE  





The Unscientific American sure is unscientific

They have long ago deserted science in order to get the respectability of being Warmist.  They reproduce naively below some claims by the do-gooder body, The World Economic Forum.  They claim that global warming will cause food and water to run out.

As I often point out, however, warming would cause the oceans to evaporate off more -- giving MORE rainfall, not less.  And my article above about Northern Australia torpedoes the food shortage threat.  So the assertions below are complete codswallop.  And extreme weather events are in fact at a statistical low.  What crooked times we live in!

Climate change is the most severe global economic risk of 2016, the World Economic Forum said yesterday.

The nonprofit economic analysis institution, set to convene next week in Davos, Switzerland, for its yearly meeting, has labeled climate change or related environmental phenomena—extreme weather, major natural catastrophes, mounting greenhouse gas levels, water scarcity, flooding, storms and cyclones—among the top five most likely and significant economic threats the world faced in each of its annual reports since 2011.

The 2016 report, the latest installment of a report the WEF has published since 2007, marks the first time an environmental risk tops the rankings.

"Climate change is exacerbating more risks than ever before in terms of water crises, food shortages, constrained economic growth, weaker societal cohesion and increased security risks," Cecilia Reyes, the chief risk officer of Zurich Insurance Group Ltd., one of the organizations that worked on the report, said in a statement.

The WEF document does not paint a sanguine picture.

North America’s eastern seaboard, East Asia, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific are particularly exposed to extreme weather patterns and natural catastrophes, according to the report—a survey conducted in the fall of 750 experts, who answered questions about 29 types of global risk, like cyberattacks, government instability and weapons of mass destruction.

Global climate change threatens top producers of wheat, corn, rice and other agricultural commodities, the report notes. Recent years illustrated the "climate vulnerability of G-20 [Group of 20] countries such as India, Russia and the United States—the breadbasket of the world."

Climate change is compounding and amplifying other social, economic and humanitarian stresses globally. It is linked to mass and often forced migration; violent conflict between nations and regions; water crises; and, as the world population rises and simultaneously gets hotter, food shortages, the report reads.

"Forced displacement is already at an unprecedented level," the authors continue, referring to emigration.

About 70 percent of fresh water humans withdraw globally is for agricultural purposes, according to the WEF, and that figure rises to 90 percent in the world’s poorest countries. Meanwhile, climbing demand for meat, as emerging-market nations become wealthier, squeezes dry already-stressed water supplies across the planet.

Based on current trends and needs, the demand for water will be 40 percent more than what can be sustained in 2030, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

In this hotter, water-scarce future, tensions will likely grow between nations.

SOURCE  





Why Big Oil's crony bid to tax carbon will hurt your family

As world leaders gathered in Paris last month for the United Nations climate summit, many seemed surprised that several large oil companies, including BP and Shell, endorsed a carbon tax as a "key element" of any international climate deal.

Less surprising was the preference of those in the renewable energy sector to see a tax on carbon. The implication was of course that if major companies — oil companies in particular — want to tax themselves, who are we to stand in the way? It must be an indication that the climate crisis is so acute that even they have seen the light.

While most of the oil companies endorsing a carbon tax are international, even here at home, ExxonMobil published a blog post explaining the company's "long-standing" and "well known" support for taxing carbon. These oil companies join a short but distinguished group of companies pushing for a carbon tax. But is support for a carbon tax among oil companies a sign that even they have seen the light on climate, or might there be something else happening?  Bank on the latter.

For renewable energy companies, it's self-evident what they desire: A tax on their competitors — namely, fossil fuels. Renewable energy executives like Elon Musk want a tax on carbon so that oil, gas and coal become artificially more expensive and in turn make wind and solar alternatives more financially attractive in comparison. And they want the money raised from this tax to be steered to investments in their products.

This sort of crony capitalism leads to dramatic market distortions that generate higher costs across all sectors, because energy is literally the fuel for the economy.

But what about these oil companies — have they finally had a climate epiphany?

Hardly. Their motivations are no different from those of renewable energy companies. Today, big oil companies are not just big oil companies anymore — they are big oil and natural gas companies. For them, a carbon tax gives them an edge over their primary competitor —coal.

For a century now, coal has been America's fuel of choice for electricity generation, thanks to its low and stable prices. Natural gas, on the other hand, has historically had higher and unreliable prices.

If these companies are ashamed of their naked rent seeking, they don't seem to show it. In their May letter, the six companies (BG Group, BP, Eni, Shell, Statoil and Total) admit a carbon tax would "help stimulate investments in the right low carbon technologies and the right resources at the right pace." Not surprisingly, they suggest their products are the "right" ones.

The simple fact is that a carbon tax would hit coal harder than natural gas. Coal is abundant, affordable and reliable, but since it also emits a lot of CO2 when burned, climate activists hate it. (The pro-carbon tax oil companies are apparently oblivious to the fact that climate activists also hate natural gas.)

The industry isn't especially concerned about the higher prices a carbon tax would impose because they won't be paying it. Once a carbon tax is levied, it will be baked into every company's production cost and passed along to consumers. That's to say it's you — the single working mother, the senior hovering on the margins or the family of four — who will shoulder this burden.

So how much pain would a carbon tax cause? A study by the National Association of Manufacturers found a carbon tax would reduce household consumption by as much as $860 per year by 2033.

This tax would be regressive, harming low-income families the most. It would also slow broad economic growth and destroy tens of thousands of jobs, especially in the energy-intensive manufacturing sector. But no mind to big oil companies.

In reality, taxing carbon dioxide would enrich Big Oil at the expense of hardworking American families. Time and again we've seen congressional Republicans rail against entitlements only to sell out to corporate interests. These big oil companies are pushing for a carbon tax in exchange for a reduction in their corporate income tax, but it's important to remember that the carbon tax gets passed on to everyday consumers.

If Republicans want any credibility to reform entitlement spending, they must first reject this type of corporate welfare. Killing any attempts to tax carbon would be a great place to start.

SOURCE  





Stanford Prof. Deletes Data From Study Showing Green Energy Will Kill Jobs

More Warmist crookedness

A Stanford professor is deflecting criticism after allegedly deleting data from research associated with a year-old study in order to avoid inadvertently showing how green energy will kill millions of long-term jobs.

Prof. Mark Jacobson rebuked criticisms brought by Steve Everley of Energy In Depth, an oil industry-backed education project, that supplementary data actually showed using 100 percent green energy would result in 1.2 million jobs being eliminated from the economy.

Jacobson said Everley’s claim was a "flat out lie" and relied on "faked data."

Everley’s claim was based on data taken from Jacobson’s own research, but when Everley went back to show the Stanford professor that the proof was in his own online files, he found the data was gone — Jacobson had deleted it just hours after Everley exposed the job loss numbers.

"On his website, Dr. Jacobson houses a number of supporting documents for his research on a 100 percent renewables transition, including a Microsoft Excel file that shows everything from assumptions about levelized costs of electricity to jobs estimates and energy demand projections," Everley wrote Wednesday of Jacobson’s data showing green energy would kill jobs.

"But now the spreadsheet on Dr. Jacobson’s website no longer shows a loss of ‘Net Long Term Jobs,’" Everley wrote. "In fact, the highlighted column has been deleted from the document entirely."

Jacobson deleted the data from his study’s supplementary material about 11 hours after Everley published his criticism Jan 5. Jacobson then took to Twitter to lambast Everley for allegedly faking the data.

"Whereas I have experienced cases where people didn’t like our results because they affected their energy of choice, this is the first time I’ve come across someone (Everley) actually falsifying data from our study then refusing to correct it when informed of the error," Jacobson told Media Matters.

Jacobson insists to The Daily Caller News Foundation that no "real" data was deleted from his study’s online supplementary material. He claims the data Everley used was "test" data.

Jacobson also said the reason he deleted the data after Everley’s article was because the spreadsheet it was on was "humongous" and filled with "dead" test numbers.

Jacobson’s study claims that phasing out fossil use in the U.S. and powering the country with 100 percent would create more than 2 million jobs on net after accounting for jobs lost in coal mining, oil extraction and other industries.

Most of the jobs created by green energy, however, are in construction and not long-term operations jobs. It was based on this data that Jacobson concluded 1.2 million long-term jobs would be lost — the  same data that Everley cited.

"Jacobson’s data show a net job gain because ‘Construction’ jobs created from a transition to 100 percent renewables would exceed the number of ‘Long Term Jobs’ lost," Everley wrote. "Many environmental activists who have promoted Jacobson’s plan have spent years denigrating construction work as being inferior to what they called ‘real jobs.’"

Author’s clarification: Everley’s claims are based on data taken from supplementary documents posted online associated with a study Jacobson published in 2015. The data Everley found was not from the study itself, but from the materials posted online that supplement the study claiming the U.S. can run off 100 percent green energy. Those materials contain "the derivation of all numbers" from Jacobson’s 2015 study. So, Everley is not arguing Jacobson deleted numbers from his actual study, but from supplementary materials posted online that are associated with his research. The article has been corrected to provide further clarification.

SOURCE  

***************************************

For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************