Sunday, June 02, 2024
‘Termination shock’: cut in ship pollution sparked global heating spurt
There's no such thing as a happy Greenie
Regulations at the start of 2020 slashed the sulphur content of fuels used in shipping by more than 80%. Photograph: Shaun Cunningham/Alamy
The slashing of pollution from shipping in 2020 led to a big “termination shock” that is estimated have pushed the rate of global heating to double the long-term average, according to research.
Until 2020, global shipping used dirty, high-sulphur fuels that produced air pollution. The pollution particles blocked sunlight and helped form more clouds, thereby curbing global heating. But new regulations at the start of 2020 slashed the sulphur content of fuels by more than 80%.
The new analysis calculates that the subsequent drop in pollution particles has significantly increased the amount of heat being trapped at the Earth’s surface that drives the climate crisis. The researchers said the sharp ending of decades of shipping pollution was an inadvertent geoengineering experiment, revealing new information about its effectiveness and risks.
High ocean surface temperatures smashed records in 2023, alarming experts who have struggled to explain the huge rises. But scientists have mixed views on the role played by the cut in shipping pollution.
Those behind the new study say it could be a “pretty substantial” factor. Others say it is only a small factor, and that the reasons for the extraordinary rises in sea and global temperatures remain an alarming mystery.
Dr Tianle Yuan, at the University of Maryland, US, who led the study, said the estimated 0.2 watts per sq metre of additional heat trapped over the oceans after the pollution cut was “a big number, and it happened in one year, so it’s a big shock to the system”.
“We will experience about double the warming rate compared to the long-term average” since 1880 as a result, he said. The heating effect of the pollution cut is expected to last about seven years.
The research, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, combined satellite observations of sulphur pollution and computer modelling to calculate the impact of the cut. It found the short-term shock was equivalent to 80% of the total extra heating the planet has seen since 2020 from longer-term factors such as rising fossil-fuel emissions.
The scientists used relatively simple climate models to estimate how much this would drive up average global temperatures at the surface of the Earth, finding a rise of about 0.16C over seven years. This is a large rise and the same margin by which 2023 beat the temperature record compared with the previous hottest year.
However, other scientists think the temperature impact of the pollution cut will be significantly lower due to feedbacks in the climate system, which are included in the most sophisticated climate models. The results of this type of analysis are expected later in 2024.
“[Pollution particles] are one of the largest uncertainties in the climate system, and pretty hard to measure,” said Dr Zeke Hausfather, at analysts Carbon Brief. He said the new analysis did a good job of using satellite data to estimate the change in trapped heat after the pollution cut, but he disagreed on how that translated into a temperature rise. Hausfather’s estimate of the temperature rise due to the pollution cut was 0.05C over 30 years.
“The [pollution cut] is certainly a contributing factor to the recent warmth, but it only goes a small way toward explaining the 0.3C, 0.4C, and 0.5C margins of monthly records set in the second half of 2023,” he said.
Dr Gavin Schmidt, at Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said the new research was “definitely a positive contribution, but it’s not using a fully coupled climate model, so there is still more work to be done. We’ll see how this all gets reconciled over the coming months.”
In March, Schmidt warned: “We need answers for why 2023 turned out to be the warmest year in possibly the past 100,000 years. And we need them quickly.” He said the recent El Niño event and a rise in solar activity were not sufficient explanations.
Deliberately pumping aerosols into the air over the oceans to stimulate more cloud cover has been proposed as a way of cooling the Earth. Yuan said years of shipping pollution followed by a sharp cut was an accidental large-scale experiment: “We did inadvertent geoengineering for 50 or 100 years over the ocean.”
The new analysis indicates that this type of geoengineering would reduce temperatures, but would also bring serious risks. These include the sharp temperature rise when the pumping of aerosols stopped – the termination shock – and also potential changes to global precipitation patterns, which could disrupt the monsoon rains that billions of people depend on.
“We should definitely do research on this, because it’s a tool for situations where we really want to cool down the Earth temporarily,” like an emergency brake, he said. “But this is not going to be a long-term solution, because it doesn’t address the root cause of global warming,” which is emissions from fossil fuel burning.
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Logic leaves ‘The Science’ of climate in the dust
It is the gag order of the pseudo eco-scholar: “The Science is settled.” This is not science as we once understood it. In that discipline something could be proved false through observation and experiment. No, this is “The Science”: science as deity.
In the 20th century Karl Popper transformed the philosophy of science around the idea of falsifiability, saying: “It must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience.”
The first rule in Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery is: “The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.”
So, you can spend a lifetime counting white swans, but find one black one and the thesis that all swans are white is destroyed. The black swan event happened when Europeans first encountered the impossible animal in Australia.
Prove one assumption wrong and a whole set of conclusions collapses. The Science is not real science. It is a set of beliefs, a faith. Those who demand we agree it’s settled are no different from a Catholic bishop declaring: “Roma locuta est; causa finita est” – Rome has spoken; the cause is finished.
The zealots who invoke The Science as a gag order have never read the research or wilfully ignore its infuriating uncertainty. This uncountably large group includes battalions of politicians, academics, activists, journalists and a few dozen billionaire energy-hobbyist carpetbaggers.
Take the deeply entrenched belief that global warming is causing more extreme weather. This is so ubiquitous as to be unquestioned. It is an article of faith and there is almost no weather event nowadays that does not come with a blizzard of declarations it is proof of climate change.
Among myriad examples, let’s pick Tropical Cyclone Jasper, which hit far north Queensland in December. It dumped a massive amount of rain and none of what follows denies the fact it caused great damage and suffering. In its wake the Red Cross released an Instagram video declaring “Disasters like Ex-Tropical Cyclone Jasper in Far North Queensland are happening more often due to climate change”. Greenpeace called it a “frightening portent of what’s to come under climate change”. The Climate Council warned “climate change is making (tropical cyclones) more destructive”.
None of this is true.
If The Science of global warming has a bible then surely it must be the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. It is the latest accumulation of all the best research and it runs to a mind-numbing 2391 pages.
On page 1586 it says: “(Tropical cyclone) landfall frequency over Australia shows a decreasing trend in Eastern Australia since the 1800s, as well as in other parts of Australia since 1982. A paleoclimate proxy reconstruction shows that recent levels of (tropical cyclone) interactions along parts of the Australian coastline are the lowest in the past 550-1500 years.”
Pause on that. Not only does observation show there are fewer cyclones since the industrial revolution began belching extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, there is evidence to suggest cyclone activity in Australia is at its lowest ebb since the days of the Tang dynasty and the decline of the Western Roman Empire.
The CSIRO echoes that finding in its State of the Climate Report 2022 and adds: “The trend in cyclone intensity in the Australian region is harder to quantify than cyclone frequency, due to uncertainties in estimating the intensity of individual cyclones and the relatively small number of intense cyclones.”
What of droughts? The IPCC finds southwestern Australia has been drying out since the 1950s and there is evidence that the length of droughts in southeastern Australia has “increased significantly”. But it says “the Millennium drought in eastern Australia was not unusual in the context of natural variability reconstructed over the past millennium” and concludes “there is currently low confidence that recent droughts in eastern Australia can be clearly attributed to human influence” (p1089).
In summary, on page 1663, it says there is low confidence in observed trends, or projected changes, to droughts in central and eastern Australia as the climate warms. In northern Australia there is medium confidence of a “decrease in the frequency and intensity of meteorological droughts”. So, more rain for the Top End then.
The report notes the major drivers of drought in Australia as well-known natural climate events: “During the last millennium, the combined effect of a positive (Indian Ocean Dipole) and El Nino conditions have caused severe droughts over Australia” (p1104).
What of bushfires? “Extreme conditions, like the 2019 Australian bushfires and African flooding, have been associated with strong positive (Indian Ocean Dipole) conditions” (p1104).
And, in case you were wondering, “There is no evidence of a trend in the Indian Ocean Dipole mode and associated anthropogenic forcing” and “The amplitude of the El Nino–Southern Oscillation variability has increased since 1950 but there is no clear evidence of human influence” (p1104).
Let’s be clear. There is plenty of evidence in the IPCC report demonstrating the climate is changing, that the world and Australia are getting warmer, and that industrial activity has played a part in forcing some of it. We should take that seriously. In response Australia should do its proportionate share in cutting greenhouse gas emissions without destroying our local ecology or impoverishing the nation.
But here is the good news: we are not facing a climate Armageddon. Again, this is not just my view but one shared by British professor Jim Skea, who was appointed chairman of the IPCC last year.
“The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees,” Skea told German weekly magazine Der Spiegel last year. “It will however be a more dangerous world. Countries will struggle with many problems, there will be social tensions.
“And yet this is not an existential threat to humanity. Even with 1.5 degrees of warming, we will not die out.”
Skea worries the zealots are doing their cause a grave disservice. “If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyses people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change,” he said.
What it is also designed to do is scare people out of questioning absurd statements and bad policies.
Here there is another assault on reason by ideologues. In this game of witch burning, questioning a policy response to global warming is evidence of the crime of climate change denial. Their argument can be expressed as a syllogism.
Premise 1: Climate change is real.
Premise 2: Renewable energy combats climate change.
Conclusion: Therefore, to question renewable energy is to deny climate change.
This is the logical fallacy of a false dichotomy; it ignores the possibility of neutrality or nuance. But logic, like science, has long since departed in this debate. This is all about faith.
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Senate Democrats Who Back Biden’s Crackdown on Fossil Fuels Suddenly Worried About High Gas Prices
Numerous Democrats who have helped the Biden administration restrict fossil fuel development and production are now concerned about high gas prices as the 2024 elections loom.
A group of 23 Senate Democrats—including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, and Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania—signed a Thursday letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to have the Department of Justice investigate major energy companies for allegedly colluding to raise gas prices for Americans and fatten their bottom lines.
The suggestion that oil companies are illegally collaborating to rip off American consumers is not new to Democrats, who have revived the narrative as prices at the pump tick up ahead of the 2024 elections.
“The federal government must use every tool to prevent and prosecute collusion and price fixing that may have increased gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, and jet fuel costs in a way that has materially harmed virtually every American household and business,” the letter states. “We therefore urge the Department of Justice to investigate the oil industry, to hold accountable any liable actors, and to end any illegal activities.”
The letter references ExxonMobil’s recent acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources and amplifies the Federal Trade Commission’s allegation that Chris Sheffield, the founder and ex-CEO of Pioneer, tried to organize collusion between American and OPEC energy producers to artificially inflate profits.
Sheffield, however, has strongly contested that allegation, saying in a statement that the “FTC is wrong to imply that [he] ever engaged in, promoted or even suggested any form of anti-competitive behavior.”
Beyond Warren, Schumer, and Casey, other signatories include Democratic Sens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a nominal independent who caucuses with Democrats. Each senator who signed the letter also voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s flagship climate bill, and have also supported many other facets of the Biden administration’s efforts to move the U.S. away from fossil fuels.
Warren’s voting record has earned her a 95% lifetime approval score from the League of Conservation Voters, one of the country’s largest and most influential environmental groups that openly rejects fossil fuels, and a 100% score for 2023. Last year, Warren voted against an attempt to rein in the government’s push to regulate a wide array of consumer appliances, a bill promoting the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and to protect a Labor Department rule pushing asset managers to incorporate climate risks in their investment decisions.
Casey voted in favor of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, but joined Warren on the other two votes. He also voted against a 2022 effort to increase the number of government-issued oil lease sales and opposed another 2022 move that would have prevented federal permitting or regulatory actions from hindering fossil fuel development.
Schumer also voted to support the Mountain Valley Pipeline in 2023, but he has voted in line with what the League of Conservation Voters advised in every other instance since Biden took office in January 2021, with one exception. He has opposed four legislatives proposals that would have made it easier or less expensive to produce oil and gas throughout Biden’s term.
Murphy voted against the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and also opposed legislation that would have increased offshore and onshore oil and gas development.
Whitehouse voted against the Mountain Valley Pipeline, as well as numerous legislative efforts to enhance oil and gas leasing activity. Markey, meanwhile, has consistently voted against legislation intended to make it easier to produce oil and gas for his entire career.
Brown voted to support the Mountain Valley Pipeline, but he has opposed four initiatives meant to boost oil drilling through Biden’s term. Sanders, one of the most left-wing lawmakers in Washington, also voted against the four same legislative efforts and has consistently opposed bills designed to make drilling easier throughout his career.
Gas prices are increasing as the pivotal 2024 elections approach on the calendar. In January, the national average per-gallon price of all formulations of gasoline was approximately $3.08, a figure that has since increased to $3.60 as of May, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The administration is moving to release about 1 million barrels of gasoline from the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve to try to bring down prices this summer. The administration also released 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve ahead of the 2022 midterms, selling several million barrels to Chinese companies and leaving the reserve at its lowest levels in decades.
Numerous economists and analysts, and even the CEO of Chevron, have attributed the price increases in part to the Biden administration’s $1 trillion-plus climate agenda.
The administration has made many decisions that restrict domestic oil and gas production, pushed aggressive environmental regulations affecting energy producers, and established massive subsidy programs to favor sources of green energy, such as wind and solar. These choices have the combined effect of driving up prices that consumers pay at the pump and elsewhere over time, according to the American Energy Alliance, a right-leaning energy advocacy group.
In January 2020, just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans paid an average of $2.55 per gallon for all types of gas, according to the Energy Information Administration. Those figures have risen considerably since November 2020, the month that Biden won the presidential election. The average price sat at $3.61 per gallon in April 2024 after peaking at $4.92 in June 2022.
Democrats pushed similar messaging about major energy companies and collusion in 2022, when gas prices were causing political headaches for Biden and fellow Democrats ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. However, analysts from the Dallas branch of the Federal Reserve argued at the time that corporate collusion was not one of the factors driving up retail gasoline costs, pointing out that energy producers actually have almost zero control over the prices set by gas station operators.
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Red States Ask Supreme Court to Stop Blue States from Forcing Climate Agenda on Rest of Country
Nineteen Republican state attorneys general hit five Democrat-controlled states with a legal challenge alleging that the blue states are illegally attempting to impose aggressive climate policies on the rest of the country.
The coalition of red states filed the challenge with the Supreme Court on Wednesday, alleging that the five blue states — California, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and Minnesota — are trying to advance an anti-fossil fuel agenda for the entire country via tools like climate nuisance lawsuits against oil companies. The coalition of red states requested that the Supreme Court step in to determine whether these Democrat-controlled states can effectively interfere in other states’ energy policy.
“Plaintiff States and their citizens rely on traditional energy products every day,” the complaint says. “The assertion that Defendant States can regulate, tax, and enjoin the promotion, production, and use of such products beyond their borders—but outside the purview of federal law—threatens profound injury.”
The coalition of plaintiffs asked the Supreme Court to examine the complaint in the context of the Commerce Clause, which gives the federal government the ability to address matters of interstate commerce that are beyond the jurisdiction of one state or another. The states that filed the complaint include Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
“In essence, Defendant States want a global carbon tax on the traditional energy industry,” the complaint states. “Citing fears of a climate catastrophe, they seek massive penalties, disgorgement, and injunctive relief against energy producers based on out-of-state conduct with out-of-state effects.”
The complaint references climate nuisance lawsuits that have been pursued by Minnesota and the other defendant states as evidence that the five blue states are trying to alter the national energy landscape by seeking to extract large settlements from traditional energy companies. In many instances, the third-party law firms that are helping prosecutors bring these tort cases stand to reap large paydays if the energy companies being sued decide to settle.
“Defendant States assert the power to dictate the future of the American energy industry,” states the complaint. “They hope to do so not by influencing federal legislation or by petitioning federal agencies, but by imposing ruinous liability and coercive remedies on energy companies through state tort actions governed by state law in state court.”
Democratic New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin expressed confidence that the Supreme Court will not side against him and described the red states’ complaint as politically-motivated.
“We are proud to stand up for New Jersey residents and consumers in combating the deception the largest oil and gas companies engaged in for decades. It’s a shame that other states are trying to hamstring our efforts to protect New Jerseyans under New Jersey law,” Platkin said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “But we are confident the Supreme Court will see this for the desperate stunt that it is, and deny their motion. In any event, our important work continues.”
Democratic Connecticut Attorney General Chris Tong issued a statement on Wednesday deriding the complaint filed against his state.
“This must be a fake lawsuit filed in the Land of Make Believe. I live and work in the real world, where I am focused on actual threats — like the climate crisis — to the health and safety of the people of Connecticut,” Tong said. “This is pure partisan political theater, and it will not distract or deter us from fighting for Connecticut consumers, families and our environment.”
The offices of Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Democratic Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha and Democratic California Attorney General Rob Bonta did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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