Humor4u

Most important metric Kevin Trenberth et al. suggest in a recent  article  that Earth's energy imbalance, defined as the absorbed solar radiation minus the net outgoing longwave radiation, is arguably the most important metric related to climate change. Of the extra heat from Earth's energy imbalance, about 93% ends up in the ocean as increasing ocean heat content (see image below), 3% goes into melting ice, 4% goes into raising temperatures of land and melting permafrost, and less than 1% remains in the atmosphere.  One could also argue that the most important metric related to climate change is the monthly mean surface temperatures on land, as illustrated by the image below that was created with a July 16, 2022 screenshot from  NASA customized analysis plots  and shows that the February 2016 (land only) anomaly from 1886-1915 was 2.94°C or 5.292°F.  Land only anomalies are important. After all, most people live on land and humans will likel...

In the video below,  U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres comments on the launch of the  IPCC AR6 WGIII SPM Mitigation  report.  [ U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres ] The  report has severe shortcomings, including:  The IPCC makes it look as if the temperature rise could be restricted to 1.5°C above pre-industrial and insists there was a carbon budget left, to be divided by using monetary analysis.  This narrative results in a failure to highlight in the SPM some key drivers of change (such as heat pumps in buildings and air taxis in transport) and in inappropriately referring to such key drivers of change as 'options', while failing to mention the best policies to achieve the necessary changes, i.e. through local feebates. The agenda behind this narrative becomes further evident in phrases such as “CCS could allow fossil fuels to be used longer, reducing stranded assets” and “oil and gas assets are projected to be more at risk of being stran...

In many countries, it has been proven hard to implement policies that help electric vehicle (EVs). In France, fuel taxes have triggered huge protests . In Ecuador, huge protests followed a steep rise in fuel prices, as a result of a decision to end gasoline and diesel subsidies . An analysis conducted by Arctic-news compares eight policies on two criteria, i.e. how effective they are from a policy perspective and how popular the policies will likely be. As the image below shows, many policies are little or no better at helping EVs than continuing with business as usual (BAU). “Tightening fuel economy standards may aim to reduce fuel use,” says Sam Carana, editor of Arctic-news, “but the Jevons paradox shows that this may lead to people buying more powerful cars, drive longer distances, etc. Moreover, it does little to help EVs, in fact, it may make it cheaper for people to keep driving fossil fuel-powered cars. Sam Carana adds: “Subsidies for EVs aren't popular with pedestrians an...