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Have you ever noticed that when it comes to inconvenient hard facts, climate alarmists either revert to calling you a shill for big oil, or block you because they don’t have the skills or the knowledge to refute your factual challenge?
Well, we’ve got a list of 10 very inconvenient questions that they refuse to answer.
Chris Martz, a meteorology student who has been successfully pushing back climate alarm on Twitter, so much so that he’s been blocked by Michael Mann, will join us with ten questions climate alarmists will never answer.
Well, we’ve got a list of 10 very inconvenient questions that they refuse to answer.
Chris Martz, a meteorology student who has been successfully pushing back climate alarm on Twitter, so much so that he’s been blocked by Michael Mann, will join us with ten questions climate alarmists will never answer.
Creators & Guests
Host
Host
H. Sterling Burnett
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., hosts The Heartland Institute’s Environment and Climate News podcast. Burnett also is the director of Heartland’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, is the editor of Heartland's Climate Change Weekly email, and oversees the production of the monthly newspaper Environment & Climate News. Prior to joining The Heartland Institute in 2014, Burnett worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis for 18 years, ending his tenure there as senior fellow in charge of environmental policy. He has held various positions in professional and public policy organizations within the field. Burnett is a member of the Environment and Natural Resources Task Force in the Texas Comptroller’s e-Texas commission, served as chairman of the board for the Dallas Woods and Water Conservation Club, is a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, works as an academic advisor for Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow, is an advisory board member to the Cornwall Alliance, and is an advisor for the Energy, Natural Resources and Agricultural Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council.
What is Environment and Climate News Podcast ?
The Heartland Institute podcast featuring scientists, authors, and policy experts who take the non-alarmist, climate-realist position on environment and energy policy.
The price of oil has been artificially elevated to the point of insanity.
H. Sterling Burnett:That's not how you power a modern industrial system.
H. Sterling Burnett:You know who's tried that? Germany. 7 straight days of no wind for Germany. Their factories are shutting down.
Linnea Lueken:They really do act like weather didn't happen prior to, like, 1910. Today is Friday.
Anthony Watts:That's right, Greta, you irrelevant pint sized protester. It is Friday, and this is our own personal Friday protest, the Climate Realism Show, episode 117, 10 questions climate doomers can't or won't answer. Have you ever noticed that when it comes to inconvenient hard facts, climate alarmists either revert to calling you a shell for big oil or just simply block you because they don't have the skills or knowledge to refute your factual challenge? Well, we've got a list of 10 very inconvenient questions that they've refused or can't answer. And Chris Martz, a meteorologist student who has been successfully pushing back climate alarm on Twitter so much so that he's been blocked by Michael Mann is gonna be joining us.
Anthony Watts:He's the author of those questions. And we'll look at some of the claims and inconvenient facts related to the West Coast heat wave this week. I'm your host, Anthony Watts, senior fellow for environment and climate at the Heartland Institute. Joining me today is doctor h Sterling Burnett, director of the Robinson Center on Climate at the, Heartland Institute, and Linnea Lukin, research fellow at Heartland, and, of course, Chris March. Welcome, guys.
Anthony Watts:Happy Friday.
H. Sterling Burnett:Happy day. Happy day after Independence Day. Yes.
Anthony Watts:Yeah.
Linnea Lueken:I was about to say we have so many British people in the chat today. The British are coming and are we're being invaded.
H. Sterling Burnett:Well, they what what's happened yeah. What's happened is they're they they think this political situation might be better here in the aftermath of the, labor government's ascension.
Anthony Watts:I'm not
H. Sterling Burnett:III I'm I'm fairly sure at this stage they'd be disappointed. Right. Right. We we we still have the stumbler, bumbler, hair sniffer in chief in in office.
Anthony Watts:Yep. So, 1 of the crazy climate news, features this week that we usually we usually do this every week. This one's kind of interesting because Google reveals a 48% increase in greenhouse gas emissions largely driven by data center energy demands. Translation, AI. The expansion of AI is causing more greenhouse gases.
Anthony Watts:So what are they gonna do about that, especially since Google makes, you know, all these climate pledges and so forth? You know? It's, it's most 1 of the most interesting things to me and, Chris, I don't know if you've ever been there or not, but the, the NCAR supercomputing center is actually located in Wyoming. And the reason it's in Wyoming rather than in Boulder, Colorado, where NCAR is is because they can power that big monster up there on low cost coal driven electricity. It's really hypocritical.
Anthony Watts:But, you know, what are they gonna do? Guys, what do you think?
H. Sterling Burnett:They're gonna keep growing their emissions, and they're gonna demand more renewable, reliable power as they say. Public relations, oh, we gotta fight climate change reality. We gotta have as much reliable energy as possible, and if we have to keep coal, nuclear, and natural gas open to do it, then so be it.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. But
Linnea Lueken:probably just for them, though.
H. Sterling Burnett:Oh, yeah. That's right. That's right. Energy for for we, not for the they they're more than happy to shutter, you know, have blackouts for the average folks so long as their data centers don't shut down. Because there, you know, everyone knows that life didn't go forward before we had artificial intelligence server farms.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. So server farms, unlike regular farms, produce C02 rather than re ingest it a while. Okay. So this is interesting. The world's largest floating solar power plant located on India's Narmada River is in ruins because bad weather happened.
Anthony Watts:You know, wasn't it supposed to be that if we use solar panels and clean energy, the bad weather would not happen? Isn't that the deal?
Chris Martz:I thought so.
Anthony Watts:Who thinks this stuff up? I mean, where is the engineer in the middle of all this?
H. Sterling Burnett:That's that's that's what I'm I'm wondering is is hold it. In India, they have something called the monsoon season every year. Every year. And so that's where you're gonna build a floating solar farm. Just someone was asleep at the no.
H. Sterling Burnett:Someone wasn't asleep at the wheels. What they said is, we can get subsidies, lots and lots of big green subsidies from the Indian government if we build a floating solar farm. And if it's damaged, we can go back to the Indian government to fix the problem.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. It's something else. You know, that that every 1 of these it seems like every 1 of these teams for clean energy has some kind of a crazy component to it, and this is it. I mean, floating solar panels on the river, what could go wrong? Yeah.
H. Sterling Burnett:Chris, you were gonna say something?
Chris Martz:50 megawatt solar farm in Texas that was, destroyed by a hailstorm back in March.
H. Sterling Burnett:Yep. Yep. That's that's in well, relative to you, it's in my region. I'm I'm in Texas, but, still Texas is a big state. It's pretty far away.
H. Sterling Burnett:But yeah. No. It's just, solar panels damaged everywhere. It happens every year, you know, we get we get hail on the rooftops here in my region where people have rooftop solar or we get tornadoes, even worse, by the way. It it it it gives it gives the winds 1 more lever to pull your roof off when they get up under the solar panels.
H. Sterling Burnett:It's, it's it's stupidity, and and it's and it's venal. It's venal stupidity. It's all about the money that governments are willing to throw into these boondoggles.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. It's, you know, any any power, any power plant can get damaged by severe weather. But but the difference with the with solar in particular, but also wind too, is that these resources are distributed out over the landscape wider. You know? So you have more possibilities of hitting something critical when it's, you know, spread out all over the, you know, in this case, the big bay here instead of having, you know, 1 concentrated power plant where if it gets a unlucky hit, well, you know, that's unfortunate.
Linnea Lueken:But out here, it's they're everywhere. So anytime any weather happens, something is gonna be destroyed.
H. Sterling Burnett:I mean, this is this is a wreck. And, you know, my second question is, unfortunately, India's rivers aren't known for being the cleanest already. I'm wondering what kind of pollution this caused and how you clean up shattered, solar panels sunk to the bottom into this sand. You know? What will be the long term impact on, human health and wildlife?
H. Sterling Burnett:I I just can't believe it's good when you know what what kind of chemicals and and minerals materials are in these solar panels.
Anthony Watts:You don't need much intelligence to see what could go wrong. That's for sure.
H. Sterling Burnett:Well, you'd think.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. Alright. Let's move on to the cartoons for this week. Now this is not a cartoon, but it probably should be. This is from the ever reliable Babylon b.
Anthony Watts:Liberal and private jet is upset as he looks down and sees all the cows causing climate change. Yeah. Methane. Methane. And it's true too.
Anthony Watts:I mean, you know, a lot of these liberals are just looking at flyover country as something that needs to be managed. You know? They don't realize the importance of things like agriculture and ranching. Those are just things to be managed according to
H. Sterling Burnett:Well, you know, they know that their milk comes from the grocery store in little cartons and and their meat as well if they're not eating bugs. Right? I suspect even if they're eating bugs, they're not after harvesting them themselves, picking up cockroach on the ground outside or the doodle bug or whatever they're eating. So, they just think these things come prepackaged like manna from heaven.
Anthony Watts:Yep. So our next cartoon is kind of a it's actually an oldie but goodie. This is from 2012, but it's still relevant today because of all of the nonsense associated with the heat waves. It's not the heat. It's the stupidity.
Anthony Watts:It really is. I mean, Chris, you have you have debunked a lot of these heat wave myths, you know, and claims, and and these folks just don't wanna look at this data. They just don't wanna look at it because it just totally blows their mindset. Well, how could it be hotter in the past? You know?
Anthony Watts:Global warming is the thing of the president. Couldn't have been hotter in the past. Right?
Chris Martz:It's really it's really insane listening to these people, and they're they're completely you can tell them that it's the extreme number of, you know, the number of hot days in the United States that are over 95 degrees was about 80 over 18% lower in the 60 year period 1961 to 2020 than it was in 1901 to 1960. And that's from the Global Historical Climatology Network data. I performed those calculations myself and did a percent decrease based on the 60 year intervals. And that's and and while it's a little bit if you remember the 19 they always like to claim that the 19 thirties are an outlier. They they say that, oh, that was just a dust bowl, and that was caused by some some farmer in Kansas driving his John Deere Waterloo boy.
Chris Martz:But let me tell you something. The the the the the dust bowl was enhanced by agricultural practices. I don't deny that, especially in the Great Plains. But New York City recorded their highest temperature, in July of 1936. That was not caused by some farmer in Iowa, plowing his fields or destroying prairie grasses.
Chris Martz:The Greenland surf ice sheet surface mass balance was similarly low during the 19 twenties thirties as it is today. Arctic ice was also anomalously low for the time. It's lower now in terms of extent and volume than it was then, but it was still anomalously low during that time. And a lot of this is modulated by oceanic, multi decadal oscillations like the PDO or AMO. But even if you remove the 19 thirties, which were the dust the ball itself was probably forced by sea surface temperatures, warm North Pacific and perpetual La Ninas.
Chris Martz:There's peer reviewed literature on this. There are several studies that investigate this. We just enhanced it slightly locally, but it was warm across all of North America and even into Europe, in the Arctic at that time from what we the data that we have. But other point is is that even if we're moving 19 thirties, you still had some of the worst heat waves in the 19 twenties, the 19 tens, and 19 fifties. So what's their explanation for that?
Anthony Watts:Yeah. Good point, Chris. Good point. And, you know, the fact that you keep making these points, which are sensible, backed up by data, backed up by science, is irritating a lot of people. In particular, the irritator irritated in chief, Michael Mann, who said in a in a tweet last week that Chris Martz is the Matt Wolicki of Joe Bustanese.
Anthony Watts:What a compliment. I mean, you know, it doesn't
Chris Martz:take time
Anthony Watts:to get off the bat. But, when you're starting to do facts, well, he can't have that. And and why did Mann get upset? Well, it's because Chris put up this graph or this chart, Chung, the United States, and he made some waves. And he said, you know, this is awesome in the b.
Anthony Watts:Not the b, actually. They published this, but this thing went viral last week because he was saying very correctly that, oh my god. The heat wave up towards New York, it's climate change. But that stuff over in flyover country in Montana, that's just weather. Right?
Anthony Watts:That's how they view this stuff.
Linnea Lueken:And Well, unless it's cool.
Chris Martz:Saying they, they they they completely ignore. What were you saying?
Linnea Lueken:Unless it's winter. I was saying, unless it's winter and they can pretend like it's climate change causing the polar vortex or whatever, then it's climate change causing the
Chris Martz:It's always it's always the polar the polar vortex during the wintertime. They claim that the jet stream is getting wavier, due to the polar vortex, melting sea ice, the reduced latitude and the thermal gradient. They claim that that then then cold weather is caused by climate change. But that violates the second law of thermodynamics. It it it and there's no observations in our actual thermometer that it even indicate that we're seeing more frequent cold waves?
Chris Martz:It's just they did they blame everything on climate change. You can look for you can look up climate change and insert your favorite topic, and you'll you'll come up with an I saw an article on Fox News, a couple of years ago. They said red causes a global warming.
H. Sterling Burnett:No. And we we covered an article last week, 1 of the stupidest research papers I've ever heard of. I mean, and and mind you, I've seen a lot of really, really stupid research papers. But, this was like, how climate change affects language in parliament or something like that. They they looked at all these speeches given evidently at nighttime or or daytime in parliament, I forget, but thousands of speeches and and climate change is, like, changing how people speak.
H. Sterling Burnett:You know, the the conclusion outraged me less than the fact that I suspect there's a lot of government dollars that went into that research, In any case, it got published.
Anthony Watts:Okay. Just
Chris Martz:standing in line with their hands held out, waiting for a grant.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so here's some of the stories that have been circulating this week about the California heat wave. You know? Instead of now being in New York, the heat wave's over on the Pacific Coast, and now that's driven by climate change, whereas last week, it was cool.
Anthony Watts:Right? You know? And it was just weather. Climate change is the driving force behind the Bay Area's extended heat wave, experts say. And then the next headline says, extreme heat waves aren't just summer.
Anthony Watts:How climate change is heating up the weather and what we can do about it? Alright. Yeah. Let's go get a tax or something. That'll fix it.
Anthony Watts:And then, of course, the California heat wave climate change is full fueling hotter nights. Well, I take exception with this because due to my surface station project, I've proven quite conclusively that the, localized UHI microsite effects are bringing up the temperature at night, not climate change, not C02C02 has a small impact. No doubt. But, I mean, in places like Las Vegas, for example, you can see a massive increase in the overnight temperatures. The high temperatures are flat, and, of course, the low temperatures are being driven by the fact that there's so much extra infrastructure.
Anthony Watts:I mean, if you visited Las Vegas 30 or 40 years ago, there was half of the stuff there that there is now. You know? And now they've added all these new hotels, parking lots, trams, I mean, everything. And so they're still measuring the temperature in McCarran Airport just off the strip, but everything's building up around McCarran Airport. And, so we get all of this, solar radiation absorption materials, asphalt, concrete, all the solar radiation goes into that during the day.
Anthony Watts:It releases it at night, and that brings the overnight low temperature up. And so, you know, it just
H. Sterling Burnett:course, what's true of Vegas and parts of California like Los Angeles and, well, every major city there is true of Phoenix and Delhi, India and and all those locations that have grown dramatically as shown by, by, Roy Spencer and John Christy at UAH with their paper on the urban heat island effect Right. And and urban density. As it grows, so does the heat.
Anthony Watts:Alright. So, you know, the interesting thing about this
Chris Martz:heat wave
Anthony Watts:is the
H. Sterling Burnett:the the truck
Anthony Watts:The the interesting thing about this heat wave is in California that they're talking about the extended high temperature, the number of days of high temperature, and that's being, you know, caused by the heat wave. Well, Chris put together this wonderful little graph a few minutes before we went on air, and it shows California's average number of days per year with a maximum temperature greater than a 105 degrees between 18 95 to 2023. Of course, we don't have all the 2024 data in yet. But interesting thing here, as you can see, a clear wave pattern going on here. And what's the biggest influence on California's temperature?
Anthony Watts:The ocean. My friend Jim Goodridge, former state climatologist of California, said he could determine what kind of temperatures are gonna be happening over the next year just by simply looking at 1 buoy out in the ocean determining its temperature because he could see a strong correlation. Well, here we go. We've got a number of days back around, though, around 1915, and 1934, where temperatures were at or above a 105 degrees for 16 or more days. Now we've got some in the present as well.
Anthony Watts:But so what's unusual about it? How can how can these kinds of heat wave last for 16 days or more in the past without carbon dioxide? How could that happen, Chris?
Chris Martz:Yeah. I it it it's it's interesting to and I and I didn't I thought there would actually be a more of a the larger increase in hot days in Calif because 1 thing you always hear about from the climate alarmists is that the desert southwest is is warming. You know, they say that, well, it is cooling in the east. They'll they'll admit that if you if you press them hard enough. But they'll say, well, the desert southwest is warming.
Chris Martz:But when I I actually did an analysis of the entire GHC and the, station network in the United States a couple of years ago. I need I need to update the charts, and I'm trying to figure out how to do it by coding to make it easier because I did it by hand. I don't have the Python skills I have now. But long story short, what I found is that most of the stations in the Southwest, if you're trying to find good long term coherent station data where there's, like, less than 30 missing days per year, it's very, very difficult to do that because most of the city most of the stations there that have that data are very much urbanized. There's very few stations in Arizona or New Mexico or Utah or, even parts of, South, parts of California that are that are hard to find.
Chris Martz:California is much better. But even then, you also have the problem with a lot of these stations closing. Because when I did this analysis a couple years ago, I did it at somewhere in Tampa, California. It looks pretty much the same, but I used 48 stations, and several of them aren't reporting data anymore. But the trend's fairly the same with this data.
Chris Martz:But right now, we're not seeing any more extreme the extreme heat has increased, you know, in terms of daily highs since the, 19 eighties. That's true. But it's not it's not any higher now than it was in the 19 twenties and 19 thirties. And this particular heat wave we're seeing in California this week is, no is actually less it was hotter in the same the same around the same weeks in, 1905, 19 13, 19 1921, I think, and certainly 1960, 1991, and even even as recently as 2021. It was hotter.
Chris Martz:So that was that's that's interesting to note, and they're claiming this heat's unprecedented. But they, nothing that's really interesting is that they always want to reject the 134 degree reading in Death Valley because that's been big news. But I did an analysis on that in last summer, and I redid it this year. I posted it again. I looked at taking their claim that the, 134 degree reading in Death Valley is not valid.
Chris Martz:Is that the nearest station, which was in Independence, California at the time, only registered, I think, a 103 degrees that day. But if you take the, elevation difference between the 2 sites and you do the dry adiabatic lapse rate, you get to a temperature of about, I think, a 125 degrees. So it's 9 degrees off the 1 34 degree reading. So that that might raise questions about it. However, in 2021 or 2020, I think it happened both times.
Chris Martz:They got it they had it got to a 130 degrees, and that is the what climate alarmists claim is the most reliable temperature record. It was a 130 degrees from August 2020 and I think in 2021. And now while there's more stations in Death Valley now to corroborate that reading, if you just kinda do for quality control, ignore those stations in that part of California. You look at this nearest station. You look at Independence, California again.
Chris Martz:Now that station closed in 2018, but there's another station nearby. And it's just a little bit higher in elevation, and they had data for that day. It was only 99 degrees that day that Death Valley was a 100 and 30. So if you take the dry adiabatic lapse rate and apply it to that, you come up to, like, a 100 and a 100 and, like, 12 degrees or something. So it's even more off.
Chris Martz:There's even a larger difference between that stationary independence and Death Valley. So if you're trying to use that argument, it's not very valid. Death Valley is a there's a big microclimate there. It's much hotter than the surrounding areas by several degrees all the time. And anybody that lives in California can tell you that.
Chris Martz:I think that they want to discredit that record even though it's SANDS by the World Meteorological Organization and NOAA. They wanna discredit it because it kinda goes against their their alarmist narrative.
Anthony Watts:You know, 1 of the most interesting things, about high temperature records and and temperature records in general is where you put the thermometer. And, of course, we've discovered that a lot of thermometers are next to artificial heat sources and so forth. I just learned that last month in Los Angeles, they are moving the official thermometers, the station of record, from its location near UCLA further inland, and they actually issued, a a notice from the National Weather Service. It's a public notice. They're moving in inland to be more representative of city temperatures because there was too much cooling breeze coming from the ocean.
Anthony Watts:Right? So what are we gonna see now out of Los Angeles? We're gonna see hotter temperatures. No 2 ways about it because they've moved the station. And, of course, the dumb people out there, you know, the people that just don't pay attention to such facts are gonna say, well, it's climate change.
Anthony Watts:Los Angeles is getting hotter. Look at that. It's much hotter than it was 2 years ago. Malarkey. Anyway, Chris also Los Angeles
Chris Martz:is actually being spared from the worst of this heat wave.
Anthony Watts:Yep. So, Chris, you put together another really cool graph. This shows the average annual excess deaths due to nonoptimal temperatures by region. 2000 to 2019. Last 20 years is approximately.
Anthony Watts:But an interesting thing about this is that they're screaming in the media a lot about, you know, climate related deaths due to heat waves. But, see, here's the deal. If you look at North America and compare it to Asia, interesting. It's very, very low for heat deaths, and that's usually with people that don't have the means to keep themselves cool, such as the elderly or the, people that are indigent, that are living on the streets and so forth. But most of the deaths in North America are due to cold, And the same pattern holds true in every region of the world, especially in Asia.
Anthony Watts:Cold deaths outnumber warm deaths by almost an order of magnitude. And so what's up with that?
Chris Martz:Yeah. Cold you know, people that the cold kills about 9 point over 9.4 time over over the 20 year period 2000 and 2019, cold moderate to extreme cold weather related deaths, like hypothermia or whatever, that killed over 9.4 times as many people globally on average per year than did moderate to extreme heat. There's no doubt that extreme heat's deadly. I mean, when you have a heat wave, of course, you wanna stay inside and as much as you can. Even when even in areas like the Central Valley of California where it gets up to a 110 every summer, it's still hot.
Chris Martz:And, I'm not gonna deny that it's that it's, it heats deadly. You know, you wanna stay you wanna stay hydrated. You don't wanna leave your pets outside. But the fact of the matter is, now some guy tried to quote, tried fact checking 1 of my my my post on that previous temperature graph because he said I was downplaying the extreme heat. He said that he's denying this, and he's denying the heat's deadly.
Chris Martz:And I'm like, dude, I posted yesterday in a separate post that, yes, stay inside. I didn't I didn't advocate to go running outside, frolicking around in the heat. I didn't say that. I'm just talking about from a climate standpoint that this is not unprecedented and that we're seeing the heat that we're seeing now is no different than it was really a century ago. But either way, yes, heat kills people, but cold kills far more people than than than does, extreme heat or moderate heat.
Chris Martz:That's just the fact. That's just what the data shows from this, 2021 study, which I pulled this data from and then I graphed it, by region. And Let's be clear. The thing is is people the elderly and, the people that are homeless as well die from being that's that's a large part of why this is Because they don't have the addict they don't have the need the technology to stay warm. They don't have heating.
H. Sterling Burnett:Let's let's be clear, though. It's not just that heat kills per se or cold kills per se. A lot, pertains to, natural background conditions for the people, what they're used to. So we know that this year, this past year in the Hajj, during the Hajj, a lot of people died from heat. The heat wasn't unusual for the Hajj, but most of those people that died weren't from the the region, so they weren't used to the heat.
H. Sterling Burnett:I I would I would wager that there are a few, native, Alaskans, Athabaskans, Aleut, Eskimos that die from cold every year despite it being extremely cold because their bodies, their, communities are acclimated to those conditions. So it is, in part, people who aren't acclimated to the I mean, let's face it. Saudi Arabia is gonna have a spike in heat related deaths this year. Well, gosh. It it it counts against Saudi Arabia.
H. Sterling Burnett:It counts against that region, but when 70% of them are from outside that region on the Hajj, it's sort of well, that's like saying, in South Dakota, there's a the place the Sturgis, South Dakota, where they have a big motorcycle rally every year. And and during the motorcycle rally, deaths go up. And so Sturgis, per 100000 people, has a high rate of murder. Well, it's not that Sturgis is particularly dangerous. Is that is that it's like for 2 weeks, you got a lot
Chris Martz:of people there who are
H. Sterling Burnett:prone to violence, are more more prone to violence than average, and they result in deaths. And that counts against Sturgis, but it doesn't mean Sturgis is the most violent place in the United States.
Anthony Watts:Wow. Yeah. So I wanna bring up this next graph. This is from the Environmental Protection Agency. This is on their web page that talks about, you know, climate impacts of heat waves and so forth.
Anthony Watts:Now this is interesting because this is a heat wave index graph, and we also have this over atclimate@aglance.com. But this heatwave index shows clearly for the United States, the 19 thirties were the hottest. They were the longest stretch of extended heat waves ever. And in the present, nah, not so much. But here's the interesting thing.
Anthony Watts:Here's an official government cherry pick to hide inconvenient data. When you look at the next graph, they have also on the same page that shows a heat wave frequency. Look at this. The 19 sixties through the 20 twenties is displayed, but what happened to the 19 thirties? It's gone.
Anthony Watts:Why? Well, because if they put the 19 thirties there, it would dominate all of these graphs, and they don't want that. So they just cherry picked it. And and this is how you lie with graphs.
Chris Martz:Yeah. I put actually pointed out, to people. Somebody replied to me with that 4 panel chart from the EPA. And a lot of these charts, these kind of 2 more cherry picked charts have come in under the Biden administration. I have noticed that, which is interesting.
Chris Martz:And that heat wave index chart is kind of hidden now. It's not on the front like it used to be, if I recall correctly from visiting the site the other day. It's interesting. Now somebody replied to me with this. They said, I gotcha.
Chris Martz:Heat waves are increasing. I said, why? Well, dude, we we have, we have extreme we have temperature data going back to 1895 at least, and in many cases, back to the 18 seventies. And if you really wanna press me, I can pull up fort data, going back to 18/21 because I have access to that from the climatic data center. They've been emailing me files because I was able to find temperature data from June 18 53 when Detroit got to a 106 degrees.
Chris Martz:DC was a 102 degrees that day. And then, up in Fort Brady, which is on the northern peninsula of, Michigan, got to a 106 degrees as well. I'm that's what you call unprecedented heat. But I these people telling me, well, this heats the heat waves are increasing. I said, well, why are you looking at that data?
Chris Martz:And I pulled up the data from the climate science special, climate science special report from the national climate assessment, the 4th national climate assessment, NCA 4, chapter 6, where the climate, where the scientists, they go in this report, they look at the extreme heat. They look at the heat wave frequency, which is the top left, and they look at the heat wave magnitude, which is previous chart we showed, and it's also in the bottom right panel, but it's cherry picked. The only difference between what the EPA shows in this 4 panel chart and the, NCA report is that, the top the the the this is grouped by decade, and it's, versus by year, which is what's in the report. But the report goes back to 1901, and you see a much different picture if you look at the full dataset. And what's interesting is climate alarmists always like to claim always like to say that climate skeptics are cherry picking data.
Chris Martz:And I always I got accused of this a couple weeks ago when we had the heat wave in the Northeastern United States. Everybody's going boo about it being 90 degrees in New York state and in Vermont, up in the upper nineties in Maine. And I I don't understand, because they'll they'll I said they'll they'll make the claim. This heat's unprecedented. Heat extremes are becoming more common.
Chris Martz:So then you show them these charts, like the ones that we've been presenting that show that that's not the case or that you say, hey. It was hotter in 1925 or hotter in 18 or 1933 or 1954, 1988. That was a really bad heat wave. 1980 2012, as recently as 2012, we had a worse heat wave than what we saw a couple weeks ago. But they claim, well, you're just cherry picking or that's just weather.
Chris Martz:And they and my favorite 1 is the United States is less than 2% of global land area or global surface area. Okay.
H. Sterling Burnett:But
Anthony Watts:We heard that argument a lot.
Chris Martz:Aren't you the fool that is, blaming the heat wave in New York, which is less than 2% of global surface area on climate. And you point this out to people. And this this really grinds, Mike, and it really frustrates me. You can see it when I post it because and I I get a little out of hand sometimes. I have to rein it in.
Chris Martz:But it frustrates me with these people because you cannot you can talk till you're blue in the face, and they will not understand that they are that that that they don't see the hypocrisy in their argument. They I think some of them know that they are, but they don't care. It's just frustrating.
H. Sterling Burnett:I'm a bit concerned, Chris. The the data you just talked about earlier, from Detroit and Washington DC from the 18 fifties. I'm afraid now I'm gonna see research published saying climate change caused the civil war.
Chris Martz:That's funny. What's actually interesting about that though, that this I'm not dreaming of the civil war. Is that in DC, I believe I have a book called Civil War Weather in Virginia. I had there was a, I think, a reverend who catch temperature data for DC through the 18 sixties from 18/60 to 18 65 during the civil war. And,
Anthony Watts:The army signal corps, I believe, was measuring temperatures during that period. Right?
Chris Martz:Yes. Correct. And, there was another guy that was taking measurements, and it were there was nothing there was actually there were actually no big snowstorms during the time during the civil war. The only there actually was 1, but it happened in April when it dropped a foot of snow. I think it was 18/63.
Chris Martz:Don't quote me on that. I have to put the books upstairs in my room, but I'd have to I'd have to find it. But I think it was April 18/63. There was a foot of snow in April. Other than that, though, there was no, like, big storms.
Chris Martz:I mean, there was no other storms that dropped more than, like, a foot of snow, which is kind of unusual. And considering that everybody used to say, well, DC always got the snow back in the day. And the winters, there were a couple of winters that it was in the seventies that rivaled 2015 and 1889. And there was 1 summer that it got to a 100 and, like, 4 degrees 3 days in a row or something like that. I had to find the data.
Chris Martz:I had to look at the book, but don't quote me on those exact numbers, but that's roughly correct from what I remember. So we used we've had extreme heat. It's been around us for the entire our entire time, that we've been recording measurements. But you look at the overnight low temperatures, that's what they always deflect to. A lot of that's due to, as Anthony mentioned earlier, the urban heat island effect.
Chris Martz:Not only do you have, like, buildings that absorb heat during the day and they re radiate, they emit it out at night. And you can actually feel this on our weather center at my university. I was standing outside talking to a couple people 1 evening after the sun had gone and gone below the horizon, and I could feel the heat coming off the brick building. I mean, it was that intense. And if you put a thermometer there, it's gonna register that.
Chris Martz:I mean, Anthony has done an incredible work on this and, uncovering a lot I mean, the the biases and the surface temperature record. I mean, it's it's incredible. 96% of stations are not, adequate, which is which is actually, startling because that's what we're supposed to be pulling our climate data from. And the we also have the facts that in the rural areas, a lot of times, the the atmosphere can, is supposed to decouple at night. You get this, the surface cools off really rapidly and the air above it cools, but you get a little bit warmer air aloft to set up a temperature inversion.
Chris Martz:This is very frequent frequent especially in the fall and winter months. And, then you during the daytime, you get the convection and you start getting the mixing and it starts to make a more uniform temperature profile. Eventually, they actually decreases with height. But if you have buildings up at and this has and these are conditions, by the way, have to occur with clear skies and light winds for optimal radiation cooling at the surface. But if you start putting buildings up by big high rises and skyscrapers, that also not only do you have the emission of the retention of heat at night from the urban heat island effect, but you also have these buildings that disrupts the wind flow, and it starts creating this turbulent adiabatic mixing, and it mixes warm air down.
Chris Martz:And it creates and it doesn't allow that inversion to set up. It doesn't allow the surface to cool off as much. Doctor John Christy was talking about this in a presentation he gave a couple years ago. And in some areas in the rural in the rural settings, we have temper overnight temperatures going up, and that's because of the fact that there's increased corn sweat. We have record high crop yields and has increased evapotranspiration, which, if it raises the dew points, it prevents the temperature from cooling from falling as much overnight.
Chris Martz:Anybody who's ever played manhunt in a cornfield at night knows how hot and humid cornfields are. And we have a lot of temperature data from those areas. Those yes. Wild carbon dioxide and greenhouse forcing on the climate system should have some effect. It is by and large overwhelming, with, overwhelmed by the urban heat on heat on effect and increased corn sweat.
H. Sterling Burnett:So, Chris, you've you said something. I I we it's not just you. We hear this all the time, extreme heat or extreme cold. Now I have the advantage that our our audience, didn't I got to see your questions in advance, but it leads me to, you know, your opening questions. I think extreme biases are thinking just off the top every time you put extremes in front of something because extreme is, compare has has to be compared to a norm, and and I would say a localized norm.
H. Sterling Burnett:There is no global temperature. There are temperatures at locations, and, what is extreme in Texas, or or or what is extreme in, say, DC or, Minnesota wouldn't be extreme in Texas during some, you know, summer temperatures in Texas. You expect them to be certain things. If they were like that in Minnesota, well, oh, that's extreme. Well, okay.
H. Sterling Burnett:Extreme is relative to something. Yep. And concerns about temperature are relative to something. As if we know we have a god's eye point of view, this is the temperature that should be or would be. This is the optimum temperature, but we don't have that God's eye point of view.
Chris Martz:Yes. And I think it's so that's an important point because local climate, local weather is far more important than we don't nobody fuels global average temp. And, yeah, you can compute a global average temperature, but you can also compute the average phone number in a phone book. It doesn't really mean anything. It's it's, I guess, it's kind of important for radiation fluxes and stuff and energy balance stuff because that's a point Roy Spencer makes, and I'd be inclined to agree with him on that.
Chris Martz:But as far as it's become to the there's the concept of a climate emergency does not exist in any relevant data metric that we can they'll say, well, the Arctic sea ice is declining. Okay. Well, that doesn't tell you why tell me why it's bad, and and it doesn't explain why it was ice freeze in the summertime 10000 to 6000 years ago during the early Holocene climate optimum. But the point is is that there's no relevant data metric. You know, the climate crisis is a political distinction that's made to center around, how climate change is supposedly affecting the overall human condition, human well-being, whether it's like life expectancy, because they say climate change is killing people.
Chris Martz:Or so the number of disaster deaths or the stare of the population that that's that's malnourished or, the number of, the the the crop yields. They always talk about how climate change is is causing devastation on crops, but, yeah, crop yields are at record highs. The share of the population that's undernourished undernourished is at a record low. The share of the, the number of disaster related deaths has decreased by more than, 90% since 1920. There is no indication that the human condition is worsening.
Chris Martz:And, so they create this construct of a global average temperature, and they think that well, that that determines the the the temperature departure from 1850 somehow as the control knob of extreme weather. And not only that, but our vulnerability to it and, and how much is it how how bad it's gonna affect human civilization. There's absolutely no indication that the global temperature really has that much effect on any of that. I mean, historically, warm periods have been more optimal for life, but the global temperature, they they they exist in obscure metrics like that because they can't find and they they gaslight people and they and they manipulate them into thinking that global temperature is the control knob of all of these things. But they they and they do that, and they're successful at it because people don't fact check.
Chris Martz:They're they're gullible. But the reality is is that no data actually indicates that the human condition is is is getting worse, where the human human human welfare is better than it ever has been in history. And and bring it back to my other point. It's back to your point that global temperature, sure, but it but it doesn't people don't feel global temperature. People don't feel temperate the global temperature.
Chris Martz:They feel what's local to them. So local climates are far more important, to everyday people. The the global picture on everything is not really, in my opinion, that relevant.
Anthony Watts:Alright. So we've got those questions. I think Sterling went to lead into these questions that you prepared, and these were pretty powerful. I I looked at this and I thought, wow. Those these are really good.
Anthony Watts:Go ahead, Sterling.
H. Sterling Burnett:Well, that was my lead in. I mean, the lead in, III don't see the first question up, but I think I recalled from it. It being what is the natural temperature of the earth or something like that? Andy, could you put up the question?
Anthony Watts:They're on the they're scrolling along the bottom.
Linnea Lueken:Scrolling on the bottom.
H. Sterling Burnett:Oh, I see. To the nearest tenth of a degree Celsius, what is the correct global? Yeah. It means surface. That's what I'm saying is I've I've I've I've never understood, people thinking that we know what the temperature should or ought to be.
H. Sterling Burnett:So there's your first question. What's the, 10th degree? What's the global mean average temperature should be?
Linnea Lueken:Right. And question number
Chris Martz:2 I always tell
H. Sterling Burnett:yeah. Question number 2 follows up on that.
Chris Martz:Yeah. I always ask people that question. It's like, what's what's the correct and then a lot of lot of people ask this question. It's not something that I came up with. Some of these questions I came up with.
Chris Martz:Some of them are just ones that people always ask. The first 1 is 1 of the ones that a lot of climate, you know, people on team reality ask. And, they say, you know, what is the you know, they they the alarmist can never answer. What's the correct global temperature? Well, they say a temperature that's stable or or and and but that's not that doesn't tell you what the temperature is.
Chris Martz:What's the temperature? What's the nearest tenth of degree Celsius? And they never wanna answer that. Usually, they like to indicate, that the climate because they only talk about departure from 1850 climate conditions. They think that the pre industrial climate of 1850 is more ideal.
Chris Martz:And, so then you ask them, well, why is the climate of 1850 more ideal than than this climate? I think that's the second question. I don't remember off the top of my head. But why would the climate during the end of the little life stage be better for life on earth and the warmer climate we have today? And they never answer that question either.
Chris Martz:And I don't think there's a correct global average temperature. I mean, there's probably a range that's optimal for life, but there's no indication that 1.5 degrees Celsius cooling would be better for humanity than 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming relative to that baseline.
H. Sterling Burnett:Yeah. The the the yeah. There's no reason to think that the 18 fifties were the magic, the the the golden mean for human, creativity and survival and
Chris Martz:Yep. And things like that. And I always ask them. I always say, listen. It it it they'll they'll say, well, that's that 18 50 climate is ideal.
Chris Martz:Okay. Then you ask them why. And 1 of their answers will be the either they there's 3 things that they'll they'll reply with. 1 is either they don't know and they just block you, which that happens most often. I can't tell you.
Chris Martz:I'm probably blocked by as many people that follow me as, there's probably people that have me blocked as as follow me. And then, the second thing that they'll reply with is they'll say, well, 1850 was when humans were influencing the climate. So we should we shouldn't meddle with the climate. We should be we should be where where wherever the climate is supposed to be in actual ways where we're supposed to be at. It doesn't matter how it affects humans.
Chris Martz:Okay. Well, whatever. And then the third thing that they'll say is that, what was the third thing that they'll say? Trying I lost my train of thought. Kind of my train of thought derailed.
Chris Martz:Kinda trying to
H. Sterling Burnett:Well, I mean, the answer 1 1 response to what you just said is, no. Humans have been affecting the environment for as long as humans have been around. Ask the mammoths or, all the large megafauna that disappeared. Ask, ask regional climates where, the breadbasket of humanity arose, the Sumerians, Babylonians, or they're in the Tigris, Euphrates valleys where agriculture became mass, that affected the environment, that radically changed what was going on there. And, to pretend that we weren't affecting it before the 18 fifties is is idiotic.
H. Sterling Burnett:I mean, in England, the industrial revolution started even earlier than the 18 fifties.
Anthony Watts:Yep.
Chris Martz:Yep. Very good points.
H. Sterling Burnett:And then they
Anthony Watts:I wanna I wanna address a comment that came up here. 1 1 of our commenters put up a a comment about addressing a Gerald Cutney. Yeah. This guy, he's he's like the mega troll on climate, on Twitter. And he accused me of sea lioning, and I've never heard this term before.
H. Sterling Burnett:Yeah. I don't know what sea
Chris Martz:lion What does that mean?
Anthony Watts:So I looked it up, and here it is. Sea lioning is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless request for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity and feigning ignorance of the subject matter.
Linnea Lueken:How dare you?
H. Sterling Burnett:I I guess they they they call it sea lining based on sea lions chasing salmon or something because they're pretty relentless. But But I have a feeling that sea lions know exactly what they're doing when they're chasing salmon. They're not feigning ignorance at all.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. Alright. Let's go on to question number 2 if we haven't already addressed that. I was looking at some other thing. There wasn't Yeah.
H. Sterling Burnett:No. We did. Number 2 has been addressed. Why don't we go to number 3?
Anthony Watts:Okay. So what's the correct amount of severe weather? How many tropical cyclones, tornadoes, thunderstorms, hailstorms, droughts, floods, heat waves, cold waves, and fires should there be per year globally. Please provide exact numbers and then explain why.
Chris Martz:This one's fun because they, and I always love this. This is this is 1 thing that I I it really amuses me. And that's had the it's it's been unending, the comments I get from these people that especially with hurricane barrel, the California heat wave, the heat wave we had here in the eastern US a couple weeks ago, they always go boo. Anytime the weather does something unusual or it's actually usual. There's nothing really unusual about that heat wave on the grand scheme of things.
Chris Martz:But anytime the weather does something out of the ordinary, it's automatically climate change. They automatically say that extreme weather is getting worse. It's the worst it's ever been. And, they each they say extremes aren't increasing. And then you show them that it's not increasing.
Chris Martz:These extremes are not getting more frequent. And in fact, in some cases, the extremes are going down. Then you prove it. You show them that data, then they start to try they try and gaslight you by claiming that, the the you're not talking about averages. It's an averages or what matter, but they were just talking about extremes.
Chris Martz:I as a as a scientist in training, my job the job of a scientist in general is to test claims or hypotheses against observational data. Because in science, you have to measure things. A computer model, you can get to say whatever you want. A model is not evidence or anything, but what is evidence is actual data measurements. And you record those observations and time, you see what's going on.
Chris Martz:And so when somebody makes a claim about extreme weather, well, as a scientist, your job is to test that claim against data. And so I directly look at claims and I refute them. And then climate activists get upset when they're showing that they're wrong, so they start changing the topic to to averages. But they can never tell me, we have too many heat wave they say, well, I have all these heat waves, or we have all these hurricanes for 1 year or we have all these wildfires. But what's the what's the right amount supposed to be?
Chris Martz:Is it supposed to be the average? Because if you take the average the average high temperature in on July 5th in Washington DC is 90 degrees. That's the average, the 30 year average. You take all the July 5th since 19, you look at the 1990 to 2020 1991 to 2020 meaning. You look at those July 5th maximum temperatures from 1991 to 2020.
Chris Martz:You average those 30 years together, or you sum them up and then you divide them by 30. That's gonna be your average. It's be 90 degrees. But on any given day, it's not gonna be 90 degrees. It might it might be occasionally, but it's not gonna be it might be 95, it might be a 102, might be 77 or 84 degrees.
Chris Martz:It's and it averages out to 90 over that 30 year period. So it's very rarely ever gonna be average. So when they claim it's supposed to be normal or supposed to be or supposed to be a certain amount, well, it's not ever normal. It's always gonna be 1 extreme or another. Extremes make averages.
Chris Martz:Averages are mathematical constructs. They Nature kind of tries to seek an equilibrium, but it's always gonna be on the extreme 1 way or the other. So when they say that we have we have all these heat waves, we are we are seeing an increasing number of these events, which we're really not. But you they say that, but what's the correct number supposed to be? What what are we supposed to have?
Chris Martz:And then everyone answer that question.
H. Sterling Burnett:I'm gonna disagree with you, Chris. I don't think nature seeks anything. That's anthropomorphizing. I'm sorry. Nature doesn't seek balance.
H. Sterling Burnett:There's no such thing as balance in nature. There are events. And, if it if it gets too hot for a while, nature doesn't try and say, oh, well, now I'm gonna balance it out and give us some cool. No. It's just weather is what weather is.
H. Sterling Burnett:It it it works from the physics, but the physics has no conscious. There's no conscious thing trying to drive it to some kind of balance or anything. That's just we always say that. We say, oh, well, ecosystems are in balance. No.
H. Sterling Burnett:They're not in balance. They change all the time. And then they reach what's called a climax state, and then they burn down and they start over again. But it's it wasn't because nature mother nature said, well, we gotta reset this thing.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. Before we go on to our next question, I wanna show you this comic that came up about sea lioning because it's hilarious. Andy's got it up there. Bring this bring the sea lion comic up, Because I didn't understand the whole sea lioning thing, but this is this is exactly what they're talking about. Andy, can you bring that up, please?
Anthony Watts:Anyway, I guess not. Alright. Well, never mind. We'll move on. So let's go on to question number 4.
Anthony Watts:Why do you think temperature departures from the 1850 climatic baseline mean is the sole metric which determines human welfare? Why would the climate of the little ice age be preferable compared to today's climate? What was better about the climate in 1850 than that of 2024? Is today's climate too dangerous? If so, why provide data and evidence to support your reasoning?
Chris Martz:Yeah. We've kinda touched this 1 already. But, when you when I you point out to them, they ask them why why is the climate of 1850 better? They never really give you a good reason other than they say, well, it was when humans weren't changing the climate, which as as Sterling pointed out, it's not actually true. I mean, humans have always impacted the environment in some capacity, since ever since we've been around.
Chris Martz:But there's no indication that the climate in 1850 was any less extreme than it is today. We certainly had heat waves back then. And, actually, back in 18/60, we had a heat wave in the looking at some of the fort data, we had a heat wave in the Great Plains of the United States. It's actually this actually occurred during the civil war drought. There was a civil war drought from about 18, it was called the civil war drought about 1855 to about 18 64.
Chris Martz:So it was like a 9 year drought. It was very similar in terms of the spatial extent and magnitude of the Dust Bowl. And it was not caused by farming practices as they claim the Dust Bowl was. And temperatures in Kansas got to a 115 degrees. And I think it was present a it was Manhattan, Kansas.
Chris Martz:They had it got to a 115 degrees, I think, on so it was like July 11, 18 60, but some of there in that week, that 1 week period. And that was if it was included in their official period of record, which I think began in the 18 eights, that would be the the highest temperature recorded there second to, July 1936 when they got to a 116 degrees. So we've had these extreme events. It would this idea that the climate was perfect before humans came along or before industrialization came along is simply just nonsense. We had the number look at the snowstorms that impacted the New England in the 17, 1700.
Chris Martz:7 the great blizzard of 17 17. In the back in the, 17 eighties, I think it was the winter of 17 80, the Mississippi River froze all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. That doesn't happen at all anymore. In February 18 95, Houston, Texas got 20 inches of snow. It snowed in, parts of Mexico.
Chris Martz:We don't get that anymore. So it's been the climate's been more extreme than the past. This the idea it's more extreme now or that the climate back then was better, and this climate today is not is not ideal. It's just simply they don't know what they're talking about.
Anthony Watts:Alrighty. Yeah. Good points. Good points. Now here's 1.
Anthony Watts:The the question 5. What is the correct atmospheric carbon dioxide level? Well, I can tell you it's anything over 250 parts per million because at that level, you can't get any any, you know, plants basically shut down. Photosynthesis stops. And we got very close to that, I believe, back during the last ice age.
Anthony Watts:So
H. Sterling Burnett:150 parts per million, Anthony. 150. Sorry. Not
Anthony Watts:Yeah. 50.
H. Sterling Burnett:Yeah. We we got down to 1 80 parts per million in in the in the ice age.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. Right.
Chris Martz:And there's a yes.
Anthony Watts:We need we need carbon dioxide to make plants grow.
Chris Martz:Sterling Sterling's right. Yeah. About that, 1 1. We got down to 180 at the end of the last glacial maximum about 20, 000 years ago. And when you get down to a 150 parts per million as, Anthony stated, it, it photosynthetic processes and plants become so inefficient that most plant life begins to start dying off.
Chris Martz:And eventually, because there's a chain reaction, everything else kind of starts to follow afterward. I'm sure there's some exceptions, but, there's by and large there is actual evidence because climate alarmists always appeal to peer review literature. And I found several studies that have, indicated based on different plant types that plants there was a widespread plant starvation at the end of the last glacial maximum because, carbon dioxide levels got down to 100, 80 parts per million. Had they dropped another 30 parts per million, we probably wouldn't be here talking today, because that would have set off a chain reaction. So we have we're now up to about 4 24 parts per million or so right now.
Chris Martz:And, historically, we're even in the in the geological time frame of things, we're historically low. It's been upwards of 7, 000 parts per million, like 540, 000, 000 years ago. And that's when the greatest expansion of life occurred on earth. So, ideally, plants, thrive. I've read some studies somewhere around 800 parts per million.
Chris Martz:800 to 1200 parts per million is ideal for plant growth. So we're far off from that. We still have more than, you know, to to to double what we have now to get there, and that's gonna take a long time.
Anthony Watts:So question 6, the inflation reduction act was popularized as the biggest piece of climate legislation in history. But since it was signed into law, climate activists say climate change has only gotten worse. Why is that? If we're throwing all this money at the problem, why isn't it getting better?
Chris Martz:We we've spent, I don't know, 1, 000, 000, 000, 000 of dollars. I don't know what the exact number is on on fighting climate change for the last 30, 40 years, probably more than that. And, climate I always saw saw a tweet the other day or Joe Biden or somebody stated I think it was him at the debate the other night. He stated that he signed the biggest piece of climate legislation in the law. But climate activists, based on what we see now, if everybody talks is freaking about hurricane barrel and the heat wave in California.
Chris Martz:Apparently, climate change has only gotten worse since it was signed into law. The climate's only gotten worse under Joe Biden's watch. But I but Michael Mann, I think, stayed together today that it's game over for the climate if Trump wins. But, apparently, it's game over now that Biden's in office. And and people I always tell individuals I I told them the other day, so it doesn't matter who's gonna who wins the 2024 election.
Chris Martz:And I told him in 2020, it didn't matter who won that election. That it's gonna have no discernible impact on the climate. But your energy bills are are gonna change a little bit. And, you know, some of your some of your freedoms, if it is the agreed people on the on the green agenda get their way, they're gonna be able to you're gonna get less reliable energy, but it's gonna be more expensive. You're gonna get a less efficient car, but it's gonna be more expensive.
Chris Martz:So Right. You're not net 0. This this aim to achieve net 0 emissions does nothing but reduce the quality of life.
H. Sterling Burnett:Well, we we actually know the answer to that question. Why despite all the spending have we not said and it's our fault. It's it's the the Heartland Institute's fault because we have, kept yeah. We have kept, climate skepticism going. It's Trump's fault for running.
H. Sterling Burnett:If he weren't running,
Chris Martz:the
H. Sterling Burnett:climate would be, would be magically great. We we have the answer to that. I feel I feel I feel, you know, dutifully chastised and and, guilty.
Chris Martz:Do you wanna send you a cards and prayers card?
H. Sterling Burnett:Yeah. Please do.
Chris Martz:Yeah. 1 thing that's funny 1 thing I wanted to touch on that is that they that's and that's you're right. That's their that's their answer to it. And that they'll blame they'll blame, you know, they'll blame me and they'll blame when they, Anthony Watts, evil Anthony Watts here. And they'll they'll blame Heartland Institute and CFACT and all these other people.
Chris Martz:But if your argument you see, it's not our fault. It's just that their arguments aren't compelling. If if that's the problem is that if if the public is not buying what you're saying, then your arguments just suck. That's all it boils down to. Your science is not convincing enough.
Linnea Lueken:I've got a question for you, Chris. How does it how does it feel to to actually make, supposed professionals with all of their accolades in their bios and stuff go absolutely apoplectic with just, like, 1 tweet.
Chris Martz:I I don't know. I think people I I had the same effect on people. I think Trump and Rhonda Sanchez have. It's I live rent free in their head. I should start charging them, like, $500 a month rent because, I I mean, I'd make bank.
Chris Martz:Thing is a lot of meteorologists, the people in my field agree with what I say. I mean, tip your local TV meteorologist. I know a lot of them. Some really big names and really big TV markets that follow me. It's probably Matt.
Chris Martz:We have to share our private a little bit of a group chat. But, but we all love it. I mean, I'm going up to see a couple tomorrow to have lunch to discuss some things. But we, a lot of them agree with me. And there's some people that are like PhDs that love what I do.
Chris Martz:There's a lot of people in my that follow me on Twitter, our meteorologists that NASA and NOAA. They have anonymous accounts and they verified their identities to me. They just they have, like, the most obscure looking account and they're actual legit scientists. Some people in pretty high positions. That's all I'm really allowed to say on that.
Chris Martz:But a lot I know a lot of people that support what I do. But and but what's interesting is that a lot of the big climate experts out there, like, doctor Robert Rodey or Zikoff's father. Now I like the 2 of them. They they both have always been cordial to me and respectful and have engaged in good faith debate. And I think that I respect them because on the other side, and they present decent arguments, and they've always been cordial to me.
Chris Martz:Especially Robert, he's always been phenomenal with me. Paul Williams, I know he's gone after. I know he and Curry have gone at it, but Paul has always been nice to me. He actually follows me. So I don't have problems with them, and they don't really come on my page and argue with me.
Chris Martz:And there's 1 climate scientist who does follow me. He debates with me about some of my stuff, but he never questions my claims on extreme weather because he privately admitted to me that he agrees with me on the extreme weather stuff that I talk about. But when it comes to some of the other stuff, he's like, okay. You're wrong. But a lot of these experts don't come onto my page.
Chris Martz:But there's other people in other fields that are not meteorology related, not geology or geos or physics related. They're like biologists or whatever or chemists who think that they're they know more than me about the weather, and they want argue with me, and I make their heads explode, and they think that their PhD makes them smarter than everybody. But it's fun. I I enjoy just watching their heads explode. You know, my professors at Miller's at my my my my university are, all PhDs.
Chris Martz:They're all very smart. They don't flex their credentials. They don't, like, show their biceps and say I'm smarter than you. They talk with you. They have lubate with you.
Chris Martz:They are the good kinds of PhDs, but there's a lot of people out there who think that their education equates to, intelligence, and that's simply not the case. You can still have a PhD and be dumber than a box of rocks.
Anthony Watts:Alrighty. So I'm gonna we're getting a little pressed for time here, so I'm gonna combine question 7 and 8. So question 7 says, 1, 000, 000, 000, 000 of dollars of, trillions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the so called climate action over the past 35 years. When will that give us the perfect climate? And when it does, how will we know?
Anthony Watts:What will be the measure of having a perfect climate? And then question 8 is kinda related. If the US spends 100 of 1, 000, 000, 000, 000 of dollars to decarbonize our economy to achieve net 0 by the year 2050, then how much will it reduce global mean surface temperature by the year 21100, assuming the climate models are accurate? Please round your answer to the nearest tenth of a degree and show your math. They can't do that either.
Chris Martz:Nope. Nope. And, it I don't I think those kind of questions are kind of self explanatory. I'm curious if Sterling has any comment on those.
H. Sterling Burnett:Well, you know, in testimony, what they say what they say is, oh, that's not how we measure success. Okay. Then tell me how you measure. Well, we measure success by the number of other countries that sort of follow our lead or, by the dollar spent. It's like no.
H. Sterling Burnett:This is about climate change. Tell me, how many hurricanes will you be preventing? How much sea level rise will we avoid? That is if climate is the standard, that is the measures of success, not whether people agree with you. Not rather, oh, the consensus has gone up from 97 to 99%.
H. Sterling Burnett:That's that's not success on climate. The climate doesn't care how many people agree with you.
Chris Martz:Correct.
H. Sterling Burnett:And so and so it's it's always offensive when they say you ask them point point blank. How much temperature rise will it prevent? How much sea level rise will it prevent? How many hurricanes will it prevent? What what what would be the averages after all this is done?
H. Sterling Burnett:And they say, oh, that's not how we measure success.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. Yep. Very good question. Question 9. Question 9 says, if you can't provide me with an answer to question 8 about, you know, what is the nearest tenth of a degree by 21100 gonna be if you do all of this net 0 stuff?
Anthony Watts:So then here's my follow-up. If you don't know how much net 0 emissions in the US would reduce the global mean surface temperature by 21100, are we supposed to just spend all that money and see what happens? Well, apparently, that's what we're doing now, isn't it?
Chris Martz:Yeah. No. I actually had a good I I got that question actually I was inspired by by hearing that senator John Kennedy was at. There was this, skier who's about my age who went to testify, and Kennedy asked him. He said, what is CO 2?
Chris Martz:And it was it was a hilarious exchange, and the and the kids I mean, Grant, you the Josh Schumacher, I think, was his name. He he he's not a climate expert. He was just there to testify because he was pressured into I've asked to, I think, on behalf of the, senate Democrats. I think senator White House, I believe. And, to testify about the lack of snow in Alaska or something and that how that's affecting his skin.
Chris Martz:But if you're gonna come in as an expert witness, you should be prepared to answer some pretty basic scientific questions. And he just said, oh, it's a gas. And then, said the, Kennedy asked him, he said, well, what's the, how much of it is in the atmosphere? Is it a small part of the atmosphere, or is it a large part of the atmosphere? And and the kid said, oh, it's a large part of our atmosphere.
Chris Martz:And Kennedy said, no. It's a very small part of our atmosphere. And then he asked him, you know, are we so if we go to net 0 emissions by 2050, how much will that reduce global average temperatures by 21100? And, if you don't know that, then, we're just supposed to he he said he didn't know. And he said, well, if you don't know, then are we just supposed to spend our money, you know, to spend taxpayer dollars on this and just see what happens?
Chris Martz:And that so that's 1 of my favorite questions to ask people, and then they they claim, well, it's a better investment. They say, we we should be looking out for the climate. We should we should be we should do something anyway. But that's not that's not a wise use of money if, there's not gonna be the catastrophe happening. And in fact, they've been promised of a catastrophe happening for the last 30 years, and we're still waiting.
Chris Martz:I'm still waiting for the United Nations 1989 prediction that sea level rise is gonna wipe us out by 21 or by 22, 000 if we don't stop global warming. And that's that's been almost a quarter of a century since that's supposed to come to pass. The Arctic ice must have best be ice free in 2008 according to a guy who worked at the who works at the National Semonite's data center, and and that didn't happen. So these predictions, 1 after another, keep failing. And I don't know, what it's gonna take for these people to understand or to look to question what they're being told.
Anthony Watts:Yep. Yep. Alright. So let's go on to our final question, number 10. Why do efforts to mitigate, climate change exclusively center on reducing carbon emissions and ignore the more effective strategies, such as building weather resilient infrastructure and, of course, and enforcing stricter zoning and building codes.
Anthony Watts:Seems sensible to me, and I would think that money that we're throwing at net 0 could be far better used in these areas. They
Chris Martz:don't Yeah. I mean yeah. Regardless of what the direction of change of various climatic variables are going, we are now while while we are not as as humans as far as, like, death risk goes from the disasters, we have far we've been able to mitigate that. I mean, the natural disaster deaths related to meteorological events have decreased by, 90 over 90 percent since 1920. But while we're able to save lives because of our warning coordination and weather forecasting abilities, due to the technological advancements we've made in the last 50, 60 years, we are, as a society, increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather events, particularly hurricanes, hailstorms in the case of our renewable energy infrastructure, and we are increasingly vulnerable to tornado damage and wildfires if you're out especially if you're out west in California and or in Australia where they got the the bushfires.
Chris Martz:That is true regardless of whether the climate is changing or not because we simply have more stuff to destroy. There's more infrastructure. We built our a vast amount of wealth that's placed in the destructive path of mother nature. And as Linnea mentioned earlier, talking about the, renewable energy projects like wind and solar, while everything is vulnerable, we have these things spread out over a larger area. So it's we have a tornado come through or a hurricane, it's because it's more likely to be targeted, to be, destroyed.
Chris Martz:And it's gonna cost people 1, 000, 000, 000 of 1, 000, 000, 000 of dollars. And insurance companies don't wanna ensure that. They blame climate change for this, but they, to help as a justification or raise premiums and also to remain profitable because any business wants to remain profitable. But if we're gonna be, regardless of what climate's doing, trying to reduce the impacts of this, we should be focusing on okay. We're not gonna develop houses along the coastline or in the flood plains.
Chris Martz:Or if we do, we'll put them on the stilts or have better infrastructure that can withstand storm surge or hurricane winds, and have better, in the case of wildfires, maybe putting power lines underground. That's gonna have a whole lot or a better forest management. That's gonna have a lot better a lot more significant impact on the our the effects that that has on our society than spending 1, 000, 000, 000, 000 of 100 of 1, 000, 000, 000, 000 of dollars into decarbonizing our economy and sabotaging, you know, not only our energy independence, but also national security.
H. Sterling Burnett:Yeah. You know, genetic engineering of mosquitoes to wipe out the mosquitoes, that carry diseases will have far more far greater impact on reducing malaria and dengue fever and things than spending 100 of 1, 000, 000, 000, 000 of dollars reducing c02. Malaria was endemic to the United States and most of Europe until recently when we got, when we, came up with, responses. You know, resilience and adaptation are have always been and remain the best, response to climate change, whatever the cause and whatever the direction it takes.
Chris Martz:Absolutely agree.
Anthony Watts:Alright. Linea, time for question and answer. Take it away.
Linnea Lueken:Great. Okay. And I will add a little bit to what we were just talking about that, I think probably the reason why, they don't focus on things that would actually work is because the the goal isn't really to stop emissions. The goal is to institute worldwide communism or something like it. So I would I would say until that goal is achieved, they're not gonna stop.
Linnea Lueken:Let's see. First question that we have here is, how does a young scientist like Chris survive if not claiming we're all gonna die?
Anthony Watts:It's gonna
Chris Martz:This is a good question. So I'm trying to my, I'm having somebody plug in my laptop core because my laptop's gonna die if I don't plug it in. So sorry for any background noise. People always ask me this question all the time. How how do I survive or how am I how am I so fearless?
Chris Martz:And the reason is is because I, despite all the hate that I get and all the all the threats and stuff people, you know, send into me or whatever, I'm not deterred. I don't I I'm not phased by it. I'm not intimidated by online anonymous trolls. And thankfully, the people at my university have my professors, while they may not agree with what I say, they defend my right to freedom of speech. They understand that I back my claims up with facts, and, they will defend me in that, which is nice because not every university would probably be not every every, professor would be be like that.
Chris Martz:So I'm I'm very grateful and thankful and more appreciative than I, I should probably be even more appreciative than I already am of that. But, I'm able to get away with it a little bit more than other people probably because of not only of that, but also because, again, I pay the university to go to school. They don't pay me. If I was on their salary, this would be a whole different story. And, so and it also helps keeping me going because I have a lot of followers on on Twitter and Facebook now, and, they they support me.
Chris Martz:So people that are critics a lot of support from within the industry privately, some publicly, that don't have jobs to risk, or I've heard the private sector and they can do whatever they want. And, I have people that, my social media followers just really inspire me to keep me going because they love what I do. And it's like the music industry. My favorite 1 of my favorite country music singers. Because I'm a country music, like, fan.
Chris Martz:I don't know about anybody else. But I know some people hate country, and that's fine. But, Travis Tritt was talking about Waylon Jennings and how the industry the critics in the industry hated him, and they said you're never gonna make it. He ended up being 1 of the biggest, people in the genre and having some of the biggest awards, some of the biggest hits. He's in the country as a call of fame.
Chris Martz:And he said he wanted to do things 1 way and 1 way only. And that's his way, and that's the way I do things. It's my way. And I probably won't have a traditional meteorology job out of college. That's not the direction I necessarily wanna go.
Chris Martz:I wanna do things with people that like what I do, and there's been plenty of job offers out there. So I'm not really worried about that. Have I have I probably burned some bridges doing what I do? Absolutely. But I it's also open up a lot of doors and connections to some really awesome people that I never would have gotten.
Chris Martz:None of my peers, have the opportunity to. So it's it's worth it to do what I do. And it it's a in closing a few doors in the industry is a small price to pay for keeping my soul and integrity intact.
Linnea Lueken:Very well said. Thank you. And, also, before, we go on with the questions here, I wanted to point out, something really great that happened this week, and that is we received $20 in the mail in the physical snail mail from our friend, Andrew Godrich. So thank you very much, Andrew. If you're still watching, sorry we didn't get to you at beginning of the show, but I just wanted to say thank you very much.
Linnea Lueken:And for context for people who have not been watching the show the last couple weeks, YouTube demonetized us so we can no longer get Snapchats or not Snapchats. What am I saying? Super chats. Getting all my social medias mixed up here. We can no longer get super chats.
Linnea Lueken:And so 1 of our great supporters, Andrew, physically mailed us a $20 bill instead. And, we and a nice letter and everything. So that was really great. We really appreciate it. Very funny.
Linnea Lueken:Thank you. All right. Next, we have this question from, Leah who says, is the polar vortex caused partly by the geographical or magnetic north North Pole doing walkabout polar shift? I I don't think
Chris Martz:so. I don't think so either. IIA lot of people always ask me about this magnetic field stuff, and, it's not my area of expertise. And as far as I know, there's not really been much research on any of that stuff. I'm I'm not really 1 to really speak for that.
Chris Martz:Some That might be something more for an astrophysicist to say. My area is just specifically meter. I mean, it's a great question. It's a it's an honest question. A lot of people ask about it.
Chris Martz:I'm not gonna say that they're wrong, but I don't really from my knowledge and what I what I learned, what I'm taught, and what I read, I I don't really think it has that much of an effect, at least on the time scales that we're concerned
Anthony Watts:with. To sum it up simply, air is not magnetic. So I don't think that much effect.
Linnea Lueken:Not not too much. What are your estimates on the level of influence of contrail induced clouds, so like serious clouds, on the temperature of the earth? Because they block heat coming from the sun during the day and block it escaping at night just like normal clouds.
Chris Martz:There's been some research on this, but, I don't really I haven't read it too much in details. I don't have a definitive answer on what the amount is. 1 thing I can say, though, is that the that clouds have a very profound impact on the on the climate system that's through feedbacks and stuff. And kinda unrelated, but the decrease in the sulfur dioxide concentrations we've had, I think, is a large reason why the Atlantic ocean the oceans are so warm right now is that we've been warming since the end of the lysage, but we've increased the amount of the there's a lot of, sulfur content in shipping fuel when it when it burns, when it's coming through the combustion process, that sulfur reacts with oxygen and form sulfur dioxide that's emitted into the atmosphere. Sulfur dioxide is a very powerful aerosol, much more powerful than the influences of greenhouse gases like C02, and it, reflects solar radiation out.
Chris Martz:So we had all these emissions of sulfur, and it's probably in it probably reduced the rate at which the ocean has warmed over the last several decades. And then in 2020, there was a new standard that was adopted by the International Maritime Organization, and that, reduced the that dropped sulfur content and shipping fuel by, like, 80%. And this is especially true over the shipping lanes in the tropics because that's where and that's also where most of our solar radiation comes in. So we reduced that and all of a sudden the temperatures in the ocean start just rising dramatically. And they blame us on C02.
Chris Martz:This is this is this is climate change. But the thing is is that the infrared incident, infrared radiation is not powerful enough to warm much more than the top few millimeters, so top few micrometers of ocean surf of ocean surface. So this warming has had to be due to increased absorb solar radiation and oceans have 1, 000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere. And then these, sulfur dioxide aerosols, also act as cloud condensation nuclei to form highly reflective clouds. You know, and contrails do include clouds, or types of clouds.
Chris Martz:So, there's been a reduction in cloud cover and that's a lot more solar radiation. And so so so clouds have a very profound impact on the climate. And contrails, I don't know how much they affect it specifically, but they they there has been some research on it. I'll have to, look into that a little bit more.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. I think our friend, Chris here has a good point, which is, you know, the the volume of the atmosphere is so large. How much really do even all the flights in the world really, change or, you know, are able to influence that, even if they were all running contrails the entire time in flight, which they don't. They contrails go on and off. Okay.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah.
Chris Martz:It depends on saturation and all that. Yeah.
Linnea Lueken:Wasn't North America once subtropical and in another epoch, a third covered in glaciers?
Anthony Watts:I would say yes to that based on the fossil record that we've seen throughout the United States.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. So I think the point there was mostly just, climate changes and quite a bit. Okay. Let's
Anthony Watts:Climate is not static.
Chris Martz:Right.
Anthony Watts:It's like weather. There's the weather is
Chris Martz:not We live in a planet. Dynamic planet. Planet where the only thing constant is the state of change. So the thing is if the planet was not changing, then I'd be a little bit more concerned.
H. Sterling Burnett:Heraclitus Heraclitus rules.
Linnea Lueken:Okay. Chris asks, what is the difference between proxy data and proxy data? Answer, 1 is disease ridden check with man. That was a little bit of a joke for us. Thank you, Chris.
Linnea Lueken:Alright.
Anthony Watts:Oxy data is what you get during pandemics.
Linnea Lueken:K. Wheelman asks if we can get Willie Soon on. I would like to have Willie soon on. He's he's a cool guy. I like him.
Linnea Lueken:He's a friend of Heartland.
Chris Martz:He's a big fan of mine too. I've been and, Craig was telling me because I guess everybody knows he was there in the Vienna conference, and I was like, dang. Mark's like, Craig, you should have Chris come. I know there was, like, budget issues and stuff, but, Willie Sin is somebody I was I've been really wanting to meet. I really wanna sit down and talk to him about some of the solar stuff because that's not my area of expertise.
Chris Martz:Again, I'm meteorology. I'm not solar. That's not that's beyond my pay grade. And, so, yeah, that'd be cool to have him on here.
H. Sterling Burnett:Well, we'll get you to our next climate conference, and you'll get to meet him.
Linnea Lueken:Okay. I've got 1
Chris Martz:more getting to meet William Happe in August. Yeah. So he actually he's gonna give me a tour of Princeton.
Linnea Lueken:Got we have 1 more question in this 1. I think we kind of just answered a little bit ago. This person asks, Ali's dad asks, how much does stratospheric aerosol injection play into the heat dome effect?
Chris Martz:Well, I think that it would, if you had a stratospheric aerosol injection, it actually reduce the intensity of heat because it has a net cooling effect on the planet. So I think we've kinda answered that 1 already. But, yeah, it's a good question.
Linnea Lueken:Alright. That's what we
Anthony Watts:got. Volcanic activity is 1 of the biggest injectors of, stratospheric aerosol out there.
H. Sterling Burnett:Well, and then
Anthony Watts:There you go. S o 2.
H. Sterling Burnett:Hunga Tonga was 1 of the largest injections of water vapor into the atmosphere in, centuries. 1 1 fell swoop, 10% addition of water vapor to the upper stratosphere. And, gosh, you think that might have had a warming effect?
Chris Martz:Yeah. I think it probably has. But I have it's interesting because I've there's been a lot of papers that have come out about this, and each paper seems to have a different conclusion on how much it's affected the climate. I mean, some papers is even though I I don't necessarily agree with him. Andrew Dessler was talking about some papers that came out.
Chris Martz:I said, it doesn't have that much of effect. I read them. They made a compelling case, but then Judith Curry and other people are talking about how it's had a big effect, and they've cited some other papers. So it's it it it depends on the study. So I wanna see more research come out before I really, come to my own conclusion on how much it affected it, but I think it definitely did.
Chris Martz:If it did, it was probably a warming effect just because of the sheer amount of water that was injected into the atmosphere.
H. Sterling Burnett:Before I think we're about to close. Before we do, Chris, why don't you tell us a little bit about, you know, how people can get a hold of you and, you know, your different sides of things.
Chris Martz:So, yeah, so my Snapchat I'm just kidding. My, my Twitter is at, Chris Martz w x, which I think is displayed on the screen there. You could find me at the same username on Facebook, but you might just search for Chris Martz weather. You'll find me there. Those are the only 2 social media platforms I use, for this kind of stuff.
Chris Martz:And, you can also find my blog at chrismartzweather.com. I post there occasionally. I do a really in-depth analysis on extreme weather events. So when the media comes in saying, oh, this is the worst hurricane ever, I look at this extra specific extreme of that weather event. I explain the meteorology behind it, what's going on, the impacts, and why or, why climate change is probably not the reason for or not impacting it, as they claim.
Chris Martz:So that's what I do on my blog, but it takes a lot of time to write those articles and, because they're very long. And I'm 1 person, so I don't do them that often. But go check them out for some good reading if you're interested.
Anthony Watts:Alright. Very good. Chris, thank you for being on with us today. Thank you for what you're doing on Twitter. You've you've come up with some fantastic, and in many cases, irrefutable and irritating arguments that have, embarrassed the status quo.
Anthony Watts:So we appreciate what you're doing there. Be sure to visit Go ahead. Visit our different websites. Of course, chrismarksweather.com, climate at a glance.com, where we've got factual rebuttals. Climaterealism.com, where we slice and dice the media on a daily basis, energy ataglance.com, Linnea's website, talking about all different kinds of energy, how it's created, and so forth and so on.
Anthony Watts:And, of course, my website, wattsoffwiththat.com, the biggest climate website in the world. Thank you all for joining us today. I hope you have a great Friday and a fantastic weekend. Bye bye.
Chris Martz:Thanks for having me.
H. Sterling Burnett:He's a lion dog faced pony soldier.