CCD CLI CHA DISPATCH
VDH ALL LINKS TO
ABOUT 11 25
...The site is managed and edited by Thomas Richard, a freelance semi-retired writer who has been published in LifeZette, Breitbart, the now-defunct Examiner.com, Blasting News (before it got hijacked by the Left), and more.
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Climate Change Dispatch (CCD) is a forum for the discussion of “human-made” global warming, our ever-changing climate, plus environmental and science news.
We don’t dispute that Earth’s temperature has risen a little over 1 deg C since leaving the Little Ice Age. These are temperature variations that last hundreds of years and have been well documented.
From the Roman Warm Period to the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age to today, the Earth’s climate (defined by NASA/NOAA as the long-term weather trend observed by measurements over at least three decades) has been fluctuating, as it has throughout the existence of life on Earth.
As noted below 1, CCD does not believe in consensus science. Beliefs belong in church, and prayers, but not in the scientific method.
Global warming alarmists (those who believe man is wholly or largely responsible for any fluctuation in the planet’s overall surface temperature and accompanying bad weather) have embraced climate change as a religion and not as a scientific endeavor for answers.
Our goal is not to change your mind but to share with you all the studies and papers that consistently contradict the theory of CO2-driven global warming. And to have a little fun when we can.
We try to explain the theory of AGW (in which the principal culprit is CO2—a trace gas that makes up only 0.04% of the atmosphere) through facts, articles, multimedia, and other sources that the legacy media and other “expert” sources refuse to publicize or report.
We now have prominent journals that have editorial policies that refuse to publish contradictory man-made warming evidence, reports, studies, and/or letters. Imagine if they were in charge when tectonic plate movement theory was shown to be factual.
Another goal is to deconstruct the man-made global theory propagated by ex-VP-turned-green activist Al Gore and the highly politicized IPCC.
Ten years ago it was a multi-million dollar industry. As of today, global warming has become a cottage industry now worth trillions of dollars (IPCC funding, grants, construction, government expansion, emission taxes, failed “green” industries, renewables, carbon trading schemes, and more).
All of which are riding on the delicate backbone of “consensus science.”
1As the deceased Michael Crichton, M.D. reminds us:
“(T)he work of science has nothing whatsoever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.
“In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus… There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”...
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Climate Change Dispatch – Bias and Credibility 
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_CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE_
Sources in the Conspiracy-Pseudoscience category may publish unverifiable information that is not always supported by evidence. These sources may be untrustworthy for credible/verifiable information; therefore, fact-checking and further investigation are recommended on a per-article basis when obtaining information from these sources.See all Conspiracy-Pseudoscience sources.
Overall, we rate Climate Change Dispatch as a Conspiracy and Quackery level Pseudoscience source for the promotion of false or misleading information that is not in line with the consensus of science and several failed fact checks.
:{_Detailed Report
Bias Rating: CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE
Factual Reporting: LOWCountry: USAMBFC’s Country Freedom Rank:MOSTLY FREEMedia Type: WebsiteTraffic/Popularity: Minimal Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY
*History
Founded in 2010, Climate Change Dispatch is a human-influenced climate change denial blog managed and edited by Thomas Richard. According to their about page: “Climate Change Dispatch (CCD) is a science and environmental news site showing its visitors the facts behind the theory of global warming, which are not being told by the mainstream media and the global-warming zealots. As noted below*, we do not believe in consensus science. Beliefs belong in church, in prayers, but not in the scientific method.”
Read our profile on USA media and government.
*Funded by / Ownership
The owner and editor of Climate Change Dispatch are Thomas Richard. According to the Climate Change Dispatch about page, they are “100% owned and operated by private citizens, doing it part-time and/or for free. We do not receive any money from oil or energy companies or from ANY organization that receives money from the energy industry.” The website contains advertising and a donation link.
*Analysis / Bias
In review, Climate Change Dispatch is very honest in that they claim they do not support the consensus of science and deny the impact of human-made global warming (AWG). Articles contain loaded emotional language such as this: Election Slaughter For Climate Activism. This story is a republishing of James Taylor’s article written for the right biased and factually mixed American Thinker.
In general, most content on this website is republished articles from other right-biased sources that question climate change. There is some original content published as well that also works to minimize concern over climate change. This source also promotes conspiracies, such as Oxford University publishing fake news. Essentially, this is a website that promotes anti-climate change propaganda.
Failed Fact Checks
- “Most extreme weather phenomena have not become more extreme, more deadly, or more destructive” – False
Overall, we rate Climate Change Dispatch as a Conspiracy and Quackery level Pseudoscience source for the promotion of false or misleading information that is not in line with the consensus of science and several failed fact checks. (D. Van Zandt 11/20/2018) Updated (02/02/2024)
Source: https://climatechangedispatch.com
Last Updated on February 2, 2024 by Media Bias Fact Check
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‘Media Bias/Fact Check’ Site Served With Cease And Desist, Gets Fact-Checked
:{:{[March 13, 2020,
Editor’s note: Our site has also come under attack by this dubious, phony fact-checking website, which forced me to correct them on our About Us page.
I’m delighted that someone is finally taking action on them in the courts.
* * * * *
The discredited, self-styled ‘fact-checker’ website was served with a ‘cease-and-desist’ legal notice today for publishing unsubstantiated and defamatory claims against Principia Scientific International (PSI).
MEDIA BIAS/FACT CHECK site owner admits he is unqualified and misrepresented himself as a seasoned journalist.
According to MEDIA BIAS/FACT CHECK, Principia Scientific International CIC is:
“CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE Sources in the Conspiracy-Pseudoscience category may publish unverifiable information that is not always supported by evidence. These […]”
So, who is fact-checking the ‘fact-checkers’?
Today, PSI has issued Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) site owner, Dave Van Zandt with a pre-action legal notice to take down the defamatory and false smear.
Ironically, the self-styled ‘MEDIA BIAS/FACT CHECK‘ (MB/FC) which negatively fact-checked PSI admits it relies on subjective bias to decide how biased others are. In other words, MB/FC is a pseudoscientific fact checker!
Apart from unlawfully smearing PSI, Mr. Van Zandt has smeared other websites that publish scientific articles critical of man-made global warming claims. Among the unfairly smeared are:
- Climate Change Dispatch
- CFACT
- WUWT (Watts Up With That?)
Below we help readers to fact-check the pseudo-fact-checker. We put Dave Van Zandt the faceless fact-checker under the microscope and discovered the following:
- Van Zandt Cites No Scientific Qualifications At All
- Van Zandt Was Exposed By WND As A Fraud And A Liar
- Van Zandt’s Website (MBFC) Does Not Apply Any Objective Scientific Method
- MBFC Relies On Unverifiable Subjectivity (Own Bias) To Make Judgments
In a 2017 WND Exclusive ‘Phony baloney: The 9 fakest fake-news checkers’, Chelsea Schilling uncovered that Van Zandt was a seasoned systemic faker. She wrote:
“WND was unable to locate a single article with Van Zandt’s byline. Ironically, the “fact checker” fails to establish his own credibility by disclosing his qualifications and training in evaluating news sources.
Asked for information concerning his expertise in the field of journalism and evaluating news sources, Van Zandt told WND: “I am not a journalist and just a person who is interested in how media bias impacts politics. You will find zero claims of expertise on the website.”
Concerning his purported “25+ years” of experience writing for print and web media, he said: “I am not sure why the 25+ years is still on the website.”
With the increasing scourge of fake news reports, especially on matters of wider scientific interest, Principia Scientific International (PSI) has become a recognized source of highly qualified scientific opinion.
That scoundrels like Mr. Van Zandt get much traction with his bogus ‘fact-checking’ website is a testimony to the need for more diligence and pushback from honest scientists, other journalists, and citizens sickened by endless scientific fraud and misinformation.
Below we share with readers the take-down letter issued today to Mr. Van Zandt:
Mr Dave Van Zandt
Media Bias/Fact Check
Greensboro, NC
Dear Mr Dave Van Zandt,
Re: Notice to Cease & Desist Libelous Conduct
Please accept this communication as a Cease and Desist Notice prior to legal action under 28 U.S. Code § 4101(1).
It has been drawn to our attention that your business, MEDIA BIAS FACT CHECK is libeling our business, Principia Scientific International(PSI) by posting the following (recorded on March 13, 2020)
On your site at: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/methodology/ you state:
“*Conspiracy/Pseudoscience
The Conspiracy/Pseudoscience designation is reserved for sources that publish unverifiable information that relates to known conspiracies such as the New World Order, Illuminati, False Flags, Aliens, etc. Pseudoscience is determined by publishing unverified health and scientific claims. In order to be classified in this group the central theme of the source must revolve around conspiracies or pseudoscience.”*
*On the same webpage you add the following disclaimer:
“Disclaimer:The methodology used by Media Bias Fact Check is our own. It is not a tested scientific method. It is meant as a simple guide for people to get an idea of a source’s bias. Media Bias Fact Check will always review and change any factual errors when brought to our attention. We make every effort to be as factual as possible. Our goal is to have MBFC rated as least biased by our own criteria.”*
According to Merriam-Webster online dictionary the term ‘pseudoscience’ is defined as: “a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific.”
*You thus taint our scientific organisation as unscientific – a palpable lie provable in a court of law.
It is our belief you have made the above published statement with intention of causing damage to the reputation of our legally regulated UK non-profit scientific association which is scrupulously regulated under law as a community interest company (CiC).
By law a CIC is prohibited from political bias i.e. it cannot advocate for any political point of view. To engage in such action would render us likely to be struck off the register or be prosecuted.
Contrary to the false impression you give your readers, we are an international body of 5,500+ members, many of whom are credentialed science professionals, engineers and STEM academics, including award-winning scientists, government experts, etc.
Our published work is not pseudoscience but premised on established scientific methods. A select list of some of our distinguished member is here: A Selection Of Member Biographies. [1]
In conclusion, not only do you admit your own methodology is unscientific, but because you also fail to cite which specific PSI posts are pseudoscience, you condemn all our members, which compounds your own bias.
As per 28 U.S. Code § 4101(1) we regard the words below civilly actionable and demand removal of them within 28 days:
“CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE Sources in the Conspiracy-Pseudoscience category may publish unverifiable information that is not always supported by evidence. These […]”*
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/?s=principia+scientific+international
If you persist in maintaining this false assertion against us to jeopardize our legal standing, I hereby require you to provide substantiation of your accusation. You may do so by providing us a selection of hyperlinks from published material on our website(s) which you claim are ‘conspiracy-pseudoscience.’
Such evidence may then be considered for submission to a court of law for adjudication of the veracity of your claims.
If you are unwilling/unable to provide us the evidence you rely on to make your claims then you are hereby required to remove your false statement.
[1] https://principia-scientific.org/why-psi-is-proposed-as-a-cic/
I await your reply.
Sincerely,
John O’Sullivan CEO
Kudos to PSI!
Updated Oct 13, 2023, with updated links.
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Green Lawsuits, Red Money: China’s Influence On U.S. Climate Policy
China-based entities are fueling US climate lobbying and lawsuits, alarming lawmakers and watchdogs.
by Fred Lucas
in Energy, Extreme Weather, Lawfare, News and Opinion, Politics
China-linked entities have their fingerprints on climate lobbying and lawsuits in the U.S., causing alarm among some lawmakers and watchdog organizations. [emphasis, links added]
“I don’t know the intentions. But whatever the intentions, policy after policy demonstrably strengthens China and weakens the United States,” Scott Walter, president of the investigative think tank Capital Research Center, told The Daily Signal of the green policies pushed by environmental groups that work with or receive funding from China.
“The most obvious is forcing green energy and subsidies [for green energy]. China overwhelmingly procures the outputs,” Walter continued. “We are literally subsidizing China’s industry. Americans don’t want electric vehicles and electric stove mandates. And who makes most of the parts for these electric appliances? It’s not the U.S. It’s China.”
Though China is one of the world’s biggest polluters, it is also the largest supplier of green energy products.
China supplies 78% of the world’s solar cells, 80% of the world’s lithium-ion battery chemicals, and 73% of the world’s finished battery cells, according to Just Facts, a research organization.
But U.S.-based environmental organizations contend their partnerships with these entities make sense because global climate change problems can’t be addressed without working with organizations in China, because of the impact of its massive carbon emissions on the rest of the world.
Further, the groups stress that China-linked dollars used to fund these organizations are not used to affect U.S. policy.
“We work in China for one reason: There’s not a single global environmental problem that the world can confront unless China is part of the fix,” Natural Resources Defense Council spokesperson Josh Mogerman told The Daily Signal in a statement.
Push for Transparency
On June 25, a Senate subcommittee held a hearing titled “Enter the Dragon—China and the Left’s Lawfare Against American Energy Dominance.” Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican, was a witness at the hearing.
In an interview with The Daily Signal, Kobach noted that an organization called the Chinese-American Planning Council lobbied the state of New York to pass the Climate Change Superfund Act to impose retroactive fines on fossil fuel producers.
This led to 22 states—including Kansas—to sue New York state over the act and its fines. Plaintiffs argue the Superfund would raise energy prices nationally.
“China’s involvement was crystal clear in lobbying for the superfund law in New York,” Kobach told The Daily Signal. “We don’t have a clear picture of who is funding the county and local lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. But China has such a huge interest, it stands to reason they are probably also engaged in state and local litigation.”
A spokesperson for the New York-based Chinese-American Planning Council, which was established in 1965, did not respond to phone and email inquiries for this story this week or last week.
The group’s website shows it has advocated for the Superfund law.
Two bills in Congress would require more transparency regarding who is paying for the lawsuits. …snip…
Climate Collaboration Backed by China
A big funder of U.S. climate groups has been the Energy Foundation China, based in San Francisco.
The foundation’s president and CEO is Ji Zou, a former deputy director general of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, which is part of the Chinese government’s National Development and Reform Commission, according to the organization.
Zou was also a member of the Chinese climate negotiation team leading up to the Paris Agreement, a multilateral climate deal which the Obama administration entered with China in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions.
David Vance Wagner is the Energy Foundation China vice president for strategic development. He was previously a China counsellor in the Office of the Special Envoy for Climate Change at the State Department, and helped lead U.S.-China collaboration on climate, according to the Energy Foundation China.
“Energy Foundation China (EFC) is an independent grantmaking charitable organization that provides funding for research and capacity building related to climate change and China,” Wagner told Fox News last month amid criticism of the organization.
He added, “All grants we make support projects related to climate change and China, and are in no way related to influencing U.S. energy policy. EFC does not accept funding from any government or political party.”
Wagner went on to say: “Neither the Chinese government nor the CCP fund, direct, or control EFC or our grant-making decisions. We are compliant with all U.S. and Chinese laws and regulations and do not lobby or support electoral activities in any country.”
The Energy Foundation China did not respond to multiple email inquiries for this story last week and this week. The group’s website says over the past 25 years, it funded more than 4,000 projects, with total of more than $500 million.
“Our work is currently focused on China given the scale of its energy sector and its role in global emissions,” the website says. It adds: “Despite geopolitical tensions, meaningful engagement in China on climate change, emissions reductions, and supporting the clean energy transition is in everyone’s interests.”
The coordinated campaign of pushing so-called green policies and green litigation in the United States is the strategic alliance of “leftist billionaires, radical environmental organizations, and the Chinese Communist Party,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said at the hearing last week of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights.
“One of the primary vehicles for this alliance is Energy Foundation China, which has funneled upwards of $12 million to U.S.-based climate advocacy groups,” Cruz said.
“This money isn’t going to tree-planting campaigns or to science fairs. It’s flowing directly to aggressive litigation outfits like the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the World Resources Institute—organizations that routinely file lawsuits trying to block [oil and gas] pipelines.” …snip…
The California-China Climate Institute
Former California Gov. Jerry Brown launched the Californian China-Climate Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2019. The California-based institute partners with the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development at China’s Tsinghua University, according to the Capital Research Center.
That is the same Chinese university where hackers probed U.S. companies and government offices for espionage purposes in 2018, Reuters reported.
“The [California-China Climate Institute] was established to study and recommend actions to reverse catastrophic global warming, which can only be done if China—the world’s largest climate polluter—does its part,” an institute spokesperson told The Daily Signal in a statement.
The California institute is affiliated with both the University of California Berkeley School of Law and the Rausser College of Natural Resources.
The spokesperson for the institute dismissed testimony from the Senate hearing about Chinese money backing U.S. environmental groups, and said the California-China Climate Institute “does not lobby or litigate.”
Read full post at Daily Signal
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Michael Mann’s Social Media Rants Turn Anger Into Alienation
Angry Michael Mann isolates himself as climate exaggeration backfires.
:{[August 23, 2025,
in Energy, Extreme Weather, News and Opinion, Politics, Science
Michael “ClimateGate” Mann cannot get out of his own way.
His arrogant, condescending social tweets speak for themselves—just as the words, sentences, and paragraphs of the East Anglia emails did. [some emphasis, links added]
“And yes, there is empirical, peer-reviewed support for the conclusion that climate deniers, in general, are truly awful human beings.” (–Michael Mann, via X)
He is not the kind of person you would want in just about any endeavor, much less as a climate scientist trying to present a case.
This post traces Mann’s angst on X and then at BlueSky, his successor to X:
And how has that gone, Michael?
Here is a sampling of Mann’s anger and despair at his critics, and even the Left, which is weakening in the face of utter rejection from the political majority.
Start with this one:
And then his headlines:
“Scientists brace ‘for the worst’ as trump purges climate mentions from website…”
“The keys to the car have been given to the polluters and fossil fuel plutocrats and they intend to drive it off the climate cliff.”
“Conservative and Concerned about Climate Change? You’re Not Alone – A Conversation with Bob Inglis and Michael Mann”
“Humans brought the heat. Earth says we pay the price”
“‘They Know They’re Lying’: The Fossil Fueled War on Science, Humanity: Latest #BradCast“ ”The US is poised to become an authoritarian state ruled by plutocrats and fossil fuel interests.”
The US withdrawing from the Paris Agreement is unfortunate, but multilateral climate action has proven resilient and is stronger than any single countries politics and policies.”
“I just reported [X] as a ‘violent & hateful entity’. You can too.”
Mad at Allies
“@HuffPost has offered no explanation of why it has chosen to act as an enabler of fascism, racism, bigotry, misogyny, and authoritarianism.”
“The sad irony of an account that purports to speak for science (a) referring to the overwhelming evidence for human-caused climate change as a matter of “belief” while (b) ignoring what the science actually says here …
“To save the planet, stop reading The [Washington] Post.”
“Note to journalists: If you are writing about these wildfires and not mentioning climate change at all, you are complicit w/ an agenda-driven campaign of misinformation by the right.”
“one of the more dangerous forms of trollbot, the ‘divider’. They pose as climate activists but they are actually ‘agent provocateurs’, whose m.o. is to create conflict, discredit experts, and divide the community of climate advocates. Make sure to report and block!” (January 11, 2025 on X)
“A reminder, Bjorn Lomborg & the WSJ editorial page habitually team up to promote disinformation about climate change and extreme weather events, especially wildfire.”
“MAGA is everything that is evil in this world. And they must be viewed and dealt with as such.”
“These people constitute a threat to us and the planet: #PeterThiel#ElonMusk #VladmirPutin #MBS #RupertMurdoch #LeonardLeo#DonaldTrump #CharlesKoch“
“Actually, the greed of a small number of malicious plutocrats & autocrats we can count on the fingers of our hands: #Thiel #Musk#Putin #MBS #Murdoch #LeonardLeo #Trump.”
“The malicious lies spread by Musk, Putin, Trump & their MAGA parrots represent an existential threat to us and the planet.”
“Self-styled climate “centrists” deflecting attention from the PRIMARY underlying contributor to these disasters (fossil fuel burning and human-caused warming) are a free gift to polluters and petrostates.” January 11, 2025
‘Wildfires will get worse as the planet gets warmer.”
“Trump continues to be one of the most despicable people on the planet. He hates America and Americans (unless they bend the knee). An utter disgrace.”
“Well, @WSJ/Murdoch are a central cog in the fossil fuel disinformation machine, and Lomborg is their chosen liar-for-hire.”
“And yes, there is empirical, peer-reviewed support for the conclusion that climate deniers, in general, are truly awful human beings.” Source here
“The United States is now poised to become an authoritarian state ruled by plutocrats and fossil fuel interests. It is now, in short, a petrostate.”
More Recently (BlueSky)
“Scientists decry Trump energy chief’s plan to ‘update’ climate reports: ‘Exactly what Stalin did’ [yeah, that was me]” (12 days ago)
“Zeldin and EPA doing ‘opposite’ of protecting Americans from environmental threats with rollbacks. Lee Zeldin parrots discredited fossil fuel industry climate denier talking points.” (5 months ago)
“To be fair, the reputation and credibility of those five individuals [of the DOE science study] was already in tatters.” (17 days ago)
“There’s a reason it’s called the “enDANGERment finding”. Carbon pollution from fossil fuel burning represents a danger to both us and our planet.” (19 days ago)
“I don’t understand how any parent could so willingly serve as an enabler of the destruction of our world.” (20 days ago)
“I can’t think of anyone more qualified to present antiscientific [sic] climate denial propaganda than these five. And I can’t think of anyone more likely to seek out these fossil fuel apologists than Christopher Wright.” (22 days)
“It’s naive and unhelpful to argue this is just about some old man and his grudge against wind turbines. In fact, it’s in service of an agenda promoted by his deep-pocketed plutocrat backers. To ignore that connection is to play into their disinformation campaign. (23 days ago)
“Wondering why Trump is suddenly spending all his time bashing renewable energy? It’s to placate the petrostate actors & fossil fuel interests who installed him in the first place. He’s begging them to stand by him, knowing the very worst is yet to come….” (24 days ago)
“Sadly, it’s young American males who are buying into a really warped sense of masculinity (with plenty of help of course from a full court press by polluters, petrostates, plutocrats, and yes in many cases our press). Don’t simply blame the messenger.” (June 26, 2025)
“Trump (and more to the point, the polluters whose decades-old, focus-group-tested climate denial talking points he’s parroting) aren’t this ignorant. They’re banking on the fact that the American public is.” (2 months ago)
Final Comment
This is enough to keep a psychologist busy. Mann stepped into his own manhole, and he kept digging down.
Like Al Gore, he hurts his cause more than he helps it, as 97 percent of his colleagues (just an estimate) are more rational and quieter than he is on the same subject.
*
Read more at Master Resource
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Shanghaied: New Report Spotlights China’s Stranglehold On Green-Energy Supply Chains
by Robert Bryce
in Electric Vehicles (EVs), Energy, News and Opinion
On Sunday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared on CBS’s 
” to promote the Biden administration’s electric vehicle mandates and defend the tariffs the administration is imposing on Chinese-made EVs. [emphasis, links added]
During the interview, he said, “The most important thing is that the EV revolution will happen with or without us. And we’ve got to make sure that it’s American-led.”
Buttigieg went on to make some claims that are — I have to use the right words here — complete and utter bullshit.
According to a transcript published by CBS, Buttigieg said:
That’s what the president is focused on. We don’t want China — look under the Trump administration, they allowed China to build an advantage in the EV industry. But, under President Biden’s leadership, we’re making sure that the EV revolution will be a made-in-America EV revolution; that is critically important.
Those claims bring to mind President John Adams’ famous line: “Facts are stubborn things.” And the facts are clear: Over the past three decades, China has built such a dominant role in the production of EVs — and the supply chains needed to manufacture them — that the U.S. cannot, will not, be able to catch up, not for decades to come.
Indeed, China has shanghaied the supply chains for everything from EVs and batteries to wind turbines and solar panels.
That’s not an opinion.It’s a stubborn fact.
On May 17, just 10 days before Buttigieg appeared on Face the Nation, the International Energy Agency (IEA) published a report called “Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2024,” which shows that China has a near-monopoly on the metals, minerals, and magnets needed for the over-hyped “energy transition.”
The IEA’s 282-page report details China’s dominance of markets for nickel, graphite, copper, lithium, polysilicon, and neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets.
In a remarkable bit of timing, the report came out almost exactly one month after Biden’s EPA published a new mandate in the Federal Register called the “Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles.”
The mandate, published on April 18, is facing numerous legal challenges. If enacted, it will wreck the U.S. auto sector. As the Wall Street Journal explained last week, the EPA rule will:
Effectively require that EVs and plug-in hybrids make up roughly 70% of auto-maker sales by 2032, up from about 9% last year. Companies will have to produce one to two electric trucks for every gas-powered one in 2027, and closer to four to one by 2032…The EPA’s quotas will also result in higher prices for gas-powered cars, as automakers seek to offset EV losses.
Those losses are already gobsmacking.
As I reported here a few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. lost over $65,000 for every EV it sold during the first quarter. In 2023, Ford lost more money on EVs than it made in net profit.In addition, there’s clear evidence that the market for EVs is small.
As I explained last October, “EVs have long been a niche-market product, not a mass-market one. Further, that niche market is primarily defined by class and ideology.”
I pointed to a study published last fall by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, which concluded that “about half of all EVs went to the 10% most Democratic counties, and about one-third went to the top 5%.”
Buttigieg can hype EVs all he likes, but sales are declining. Last month, Volkswagen reported that its EV sales in Europe fell by 24% during the first quarter, and Mercedes-Benz reported an 8% drop in EV sales.
Last week, Ford told its dealers to halt EV-related investments until after the company completes a “review” sometime next month.
The new IEA report shows that U.S. automakers cannot build EVs without depending, wholly or in large part, on Chinese suppliers.
The report says demand for “energy transition minerals is set to expand significantly across all scenarios,” over the next few years, with demand for commodities like nickel, cobalt, and rare earth minerals showing “robust growth, increasing by 65 to 80% by 2040.”
It continues, noting the market for transition minerals is:
Concentrated, with China claiming nearly 50% of the market value in 2030. China also sees a rise in market value for mined materials as the country’s production of copper, lithium, and rare earth elements undergoes rapid expansion…Global mineral supply chains are not well diversified, and recent progress on diversifying supply sources has been limited…These high levels of supply concentration raise risks of potential supply disruptions due to physical accidents, geopolitical events or other developments in a key producing country, with major potential implications for the speed of energy transitions.”
The report underscores China’s dominance in EVs, which require six times more metals and minerals than internal combustion vehicles.
Read rest at Substack
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How Activist Scientists Enforce Climate Misinformation Through Bullying And Other Tactics
[August 17, 2023,
This post is inspired by the successful efforts last week of climate activists — including three widely-cited scientists — to enforce misinformation by the legacy media.
In a nutshell, ABC News wrote an accurate story about how the climate was not a major or even significant factor in the Lahaina, Maui, fire and disaster. [emphasis, links added]
After being mobbed by the enforcers, the story was changed to emphasize the role of climate.
These sorts of activist scientists who seek to enforce preferred public narratives have been called the “science police.”
Today’s post pushes back against this narrative enforcement with some actual science.
Have a look at the panel below. It shows three versions of a climate time series for annual counts of North Atlantic major hurricanes from 1995 to 2050. Two of the graphs include a large change in climate, but one of them does not.
Please take a moment to consider which of the three panels you think includes climate change, which does not, and why you came to that judgment.
Here’s the answer.
The top panel takes annual counts of major hurricanes in the North Atlantic to create a probability distribution based on actual data from 1945 to 2022. For 2023 to 2050, the annual counts are randomly selected from this distribution.
For the middle panel, I took this probability distribution based on observations and shifted it — starting instantaneously in 2023 — one count to the right (so, for example, the probability of having 3 major hurricanes becomes the probability of having 4, and so on). This large shift is much larger than changes in counts projected for 2100, but this is just an exercise.
The bottom panel shows a time series based on a shift of 2 counts to the right, representing a much larger change in probabilities.
You can see the three probability distributions in the figure below, with colors to match the panel above. This sort of figure has become common in climate discussions, and you can see an example at the top of this post.
Let me suggest two important lessons from this exercise.
First, neither of the climate change series in the top panel comes anywhere close to meeting the IPCC criteria for the detection of climate change.
But wait a second there! We know that in the time series, the climate has in fact changed —because I changed it— as shown in the shifted probabilities.
So, what gives?
It is not just possible, but often likely, that for specific climate variables, the underlying climate changes, and yet the consequences of those changes are not detectable in short (climatically speaking) time series.
I chose the period 1995 to 2050 because over that time frame my kids will enter their 50s, and be about my age today. It’s the same as me looking at a time series from the 1960s to today. In practice, a lot of climate research on detection and attribution uses much shorter time series.
It is standard today for climate advocates to link every extreme weather event and disaster to climate change.
My suspicion is that when they do so they are not actually saying anything about the detection or attribution of changes but rather, they are simply witnessing the reality of climate change and its deep importance to them.
Part of this witnessing may be to preemptively defend against concerns that if climate changes are not perceived to be large enough, people won’t have enough fear — no one wants to be accused of minimizing climate change.
Lesson: Just because the signal of climate change for particular variables cannot (yet) be detected in the context of historical variability does not mean that climate change is not real or important, and in many if not most cases a lack of signal is to be expected.
In fact, that is exactly what the IPCC concludes with respect to most extreme weather events, as shown in the table below and discussed here.
The white cells show where signal detection is not expected to be unequivocally achieved at present, by 2050, or by 2100 (respectively in the three right-most columns).
Advocates who promote every extreme event as being caused by, linked to, made worse by, or fueled by climate change are promoting misinformation in almost all cases.
It is an expression of faith, not science. This complicates public discussions of detection and attribution.
Some people are expressing a deeply held religious-like sentiment, and others are talking about data and evidence.
No wonder people talk past each other.
Second, you’ll note in the top figure in the panel above — the one with the black linear trend line — that there is a large decrease in major hurricane activity in the North Atlantic from 1965 to 2050. There were about four per year at the start of the time series and only two at the end, a drop of 50%.
That decrease is real in the sense that there are fewer major hurricanes toward the end of this record as compared to the beginning, but it has nothing to do with a change in the climate, as the annual probabilities do not change over the entire data range.
Compare the figure below, which shows the entire dataset from which the top figure in the panel above was taken. The below figure shows 1945 to 2080 and you can see an increase of 50% from the start to the end — but this trend also is not the result of a change in climate, as the annual probabilities are constant.
So, what gives?
Many climate variables exhibit large variability — since 1945 we’ve observed anywhere from 0 to 7 major hurricanes yearly in the North Atlantic, that’s a huge variation.
The three probability distributions graphed above represent annual counts of major hurricanes of 2.6 based on observations (black), and about 3.6 (red) and 4.6 (green) in the two shifted probabilities.
The shifted probabilities represent increases in major hurricane annual counts of ~40% and ~80% — much larger than almost all model projections assessed by Knutson et al. for 2100 (and many actually project a decrease).
Many projected changes in the behavior of extreme events due to climate change are in fact small in the context of historical variability.
That is just a fact — have another look at the IPCC table above.
Further, historical variability is sufficiently large that we can look at various time series and fool ourselves into thinking we see change when all we are observing is cherry-picked variability (see the two-time series above with the black linear trends).
Lesson: Natural variability is real and significant. It does not mean that climate change is not real or important, but that detecting signals is often difficult even when climate is changing and there is always a risk of erroneously detecting signals where none is present.
There is a good reason that climate change has been detected and attributed by the IPCC for temperature and precipitation at large spatial scales — this is where we have the most measurements and through aggregation, variability becomes smaller, making it easier to separate signal from noise.
Consider that there are millions of measurements of temperature and precipitation around the world, but there were only 78 major hurricanes in the North Atlantic from 1945 to 2022 — numbers matter!
But even for temperature, at local levels detection and attribution are challenging, as climate scientists Ed Hawkins explains (emphasis added):
The signal of temperature change varies spatially, as does the size and timing of the natural fluctuations of temperature. Together, these two aspects combine to produce the local experience of how the climate is changing. For the public, this is critical – it is extremely difficult to detect trends over decadal timescales for individual locations, especially in regions of high variability . . .
The challenges of detection and attribution should tell us that both adaptation and mitigation policies must be built upon a foundation that involves justifications for action that are much broader than climate change alone.
So far, climate advocates have sought to shape perceptions of science to support a climate-change-is-everything agenda. We will have a lot more success if we instead shape policy to align with what science actually says.
Roger Pielke Jr. has been a professor at the University of Colorado since 2001. Previously, he was a staff scientist in the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He has degrees in mathematics, public policy, and political science, and is theauthor of numerous books. (Amazon).*
Read the full post at The Honest Broker
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Branded A Heretic: Young Meteorologist Defies Climate Dogma, Vows To Keep Fighting
Questioning climate methods is now ‘misinformation’—turning science from a search for truth into dogma.
by Chris Martz
in Extreme Weather, Media, News and Opinion, Politics, Science
*A newly minted meteorologist shares his experience challenging the dominant climate narrative—and the fierce backlash that ensued. —CCD Editor
Over the weekend, Sam Zeff, a reporter for KCUR, Kansas City’s NPR affiliate, told me over X that “you wasted your money on your degree.” [emphasis, links added]
I am a recent college graduate with a degree in meteorology. Zeff was replying to my post on social media, pointing out that he, and other climate activists, were ignoring basic scientific facts when they blamed man-made climate change for the tragic flooding in Texas.
The truth is that the rainfall and flooding along the Guadalupe River were not historically unprecedented and had little, if anything, to do with climate change. Neither heavy rainfall nor river flooding has increased in the Texas Hill Country over the last six decades.
The devastating loss of life in Texas is a reminder of the importance of meteorology and accurate science when it comes to understanding the weather. This is no time for politics or finger-pointing from either the left or the right.
As a trained meteorologist with a passion for truth, I can authoritatively tell folks on the right that the floods were not caused by cloud seeding or “chemtrails.”
Yet, when I also try to explain the data to social media users on the left, showing them that there is no evidence climate change caused or exacerbated the Texas floods, the conversations quickly devolve into insults or even threats.
Indeed, taunts from people like the NPR reporter who mocked my education have become sadly familiar.
I found myself exposed to insults, organized efforts to have me kicked out of school, and even occasional death threats.
After one of my posts on X about climate change went viral last year, I unintentionally became an online influencer.
This was never my career plan; I’d always been the kind of guy who kept his conversations among friends and avoided the spotlight.
But when I started posting on social media about hard science—and what it tells us about climate change theory and energy policy—I found myself exposed to insults, organized efforts to have me kicked out of school, and even occasional death threats.
I first became interested in meteorology in high school and signed up for an X account so I could network with professionals in the field. When I first started posting, I was an acolyte of the movement that believed climate change was entirely man-made.
Yet as I researched more, my views began to evolve and become more nuanced. And over the years, as my X posts increasingly challenged the orthodoxy surrounding climate change, the replies I got became nastier and the attacks increasingly personal.
Throughout college, university officials were tagged in X comments from (mostly) anonymous accounts, pressuring them to kick me out of school.
What’s more, my professors received emails almost weekly from attackers saying that I was a disgrace to the meteorology program and should be punished for spreading supposed “misinformation.”
Other critics would grab personal photos from my family’s social media accounts to decorate their posts denouncing me.
The viral tweet that shot me into the stratosphere was one I posted in June last year. It attracted more than 2.5 million views and over 30,000 likes:
The post detailed my experiences trying to find the truth about climate change and encountering the reality that free speech can come under a sustained and ugly attack if it challenges certain cherished left-wing causes.
When it comes to climate, unpopular statements—even if they are based on undisputed scientific facts—are labeled by the loudest voices in the room as “false,” “misleading,” or “misinformation.”
America has a grave problem when a culture celebrates free speech “for me—but not for thee,” as the late Nat Hentoff famously put it.
True believers in free speech like Hentoff can be hard to find these days. Today, free thinkers who won’t go along with the establishment on certain, third-rail topics—more often than not concerning race, gender, or climate—run into a ferocious opposition that seeks not just to silence their voices, but to crush them.
I was taught that the scientific method is used to test hypotheses and theories against data to seek out truth.
I’ve come to understand that the vitriol directed at me is precisely because, perhaps, no one else my age with my reach is actively challenging the belief system on climate with facts and demanding answers.
I was taught that the scientific method is used to test hypotheses and theories against data to seek out truth.
But many youth have been captured by the belief that mankind is bringing about the end of the world through man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and that every weather event is the result of it, regardless of what the data and historical records actually show.
This narrative of man-made climate change causing cataclysmic destruction is taught as fact in schools. Leading news organizations invest in “climate teams” that keep filling the news hole with one-sided reports.
That’s why I’m one of the favorite targets of climate zealots. I’m young, I have a fresh new voice, and I am, as the New York Post called me, “the anti-Greta-Thunberg.”
It’s an interesting perch from which to witness—and participate in—the climate debate. On one hand, climate alarmists feel threatened by the fact that I used to be on their side, but now, based on study and research,I reject their position.
They don’t like that I’m good at chart making and data analysis, and can use humor to encourage people to take another look at the data and catastrophe-predicting models that, when run backwards across historical weather data, consistently get it wrong.
On the other hand, climate experts and respected professionals in the field privately message me routinely and tell me to keep up the good fight. These include high-profile meteorologists with decades of experience at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and at leading universities who have confessed confidentially that they cannot bring themselves to threaten their careers by speaking out.
In my final semester of college, I started thinking that all the blowback just wasn’t worth continuing this fight. But, as one veteran TV meteorologist told me, someone has to do it.
Someone has to speak up for what’s right—the belief that in America, we have to protect the ability to say what we believe and publicly debate theories, or we will lose that right.
The tragedy on the Guadalupe River shows that meteorology is serious business. Let’s not let politics, junk science, or unchallenged orthodoxies get in our way.
REF NPR
KTY GOT MORE RAIN IN 1997 THUS CURRENT FLOOD CANNOT BE AGW
MORE PPL DIE OF COLD BS
{Chris Martz is a recent graduate of Millersville University with a BSc in meteorology and is a policy analyst for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.*}:
Originally posted at the Free Beacon
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