wattsupwiththat--2020-11-25--Cultural motivations for wind and solar renewables deployment

“ For me the question now is , now that we know that renewables can ’ t save the planet , are we going to keep letting them destroy it ?
” .
– Michael Schellenberger There have been many technical analyses of Wind and Solar energy , covering a raft of issues from energy density and efficiency , through subsidies and land usage , to maintenance , grid impacts , intermittency and more .
The angle examined here is in no way intended to replace such necessary views , whether they lean to the pessimistic or the optimistic or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ view is provided regarding an aspect that such technical analyses can not address , albeit it often features in the conclusions and questions these analyses raise at the end .
Right here at Climate Etc , the first of the excellent analyses by ‘ Planning Engineer ’ ( on his retirement revealed to be Russ Schussler , ex-VP of Transmission Planning at Georgia Transmission Corporations ) , laudably highlighted the limitation of technical analyses with his very first line : “ Power System Planners do not have the expertise or knowledge to say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ carbon emissions are worth the costs .
However they should be respected as experts for obtaining a better understanding of what the implications and costs of such programs are.
” So , who does have this critical knowledge and expertise regarding ultimate cost / benefit ?
The answer is highly likely to be no one at all , because not only is this issue deeply disputed , it is culturally ( as well as technically ) disputed .
Indeed , to the extent that the overwhelming public and authority narrative about climate change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ science , which also means that , especially in some nations such as the US , there are cultural counter-narratives too .
Hence debates about policy , including renewables deployment , aren ’ t legitimately resolved , because the potent cultural angle corrupts or polarizes or simply overrides any such debate .
Schussler acknowledges this cultural dispute , saying in the line following the above quote : “ Unfortunately many non-experts , driven by fear of AGW , have done much to cloud , distort and ignore critical issues around the cost and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relating to the provision of electrical power.
” He also returns to this theme at the very end of his post : “ …I believe most planners and utilities recognize that the overall impacts to society ( unless needed to aver environmental disaster ) would be extremely harmful in the net analysis .
I hope that the voices of concerned utility experts are not drowned out by the noise of ‘ true believers ’ or disbelieved because of false accusations of self-interest.
” For sure ‘ true belief ’ is a cultural feature @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ .
Plus that caveat of ‘ unless needed ’ , or more subtly ‘ how much needed ’ , is a major issue within the dispute above .
An apparent need , could be partly or wholly the result of emotive belief , of which ‘ fear of [ C ] AGW ’ is a major component .
Schussler ’ s title , ‘ Myths and realities of renewable energy ’ , emphasis mine , is inclusive of the element that technical analysis can not ultimately probe regarding character and impact , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cite myth as Renewables motivation , and David Archibald goes further in directly framing this element as ‘ religious ’ in nature ( religions being just one brand of cultural entities ) .
In a recent article on renewables ( and focusing on hydrogen ) at Jo Nova ’ s , he employs religiously orientated terms such as ‘ believers ’ and ‘ government encyclicals ’ : “ Briefly , the only reason solar and wind get a look-in is because solar panels and wind turbines are made using energy from coal at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ power at $ 0.20 per kWh… …You can ’ t use solar and wind power to make solar and wind power equipment ; as such they are neither renewable nor sustainable .
And they certainly won ’ t be replacing fossil fuels when the fossil fuels run out .
Even some lefties are figuring this out and thus the documentary Planet of the Humans .
So the global warming clerisy , headed by Alan Finkel in this country [ Australia ] , needs to keep coming up with new content to satisfy their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spent on hydrogen .
The language of the Government encyclicals suggests that hydrogen is a new source of energy that just has to be tapped to guarantee a wonderful future.
” Needless to say , Archibald views this ‘ religious ’ influence as overwhelmingly negative , adding as part of his conclusion : “ Global warming doesn ’ t build orphanages or hospitals .
As a religion it doesn ’ t do any good at all.
” And others claim a cultish / ‘ religious ’ motivation too .
Yet whether viewing culture @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or as an overwhelmingly negative force , technical analyses critical of renewables inevitably falter or get speculative when it comes demonstrating cultural sway ( for example , across nations invested in renewables ) .
An alternate approach is needed to progress this .
There are less critical / more optimistic analyses of Solar or Wind ‘ renewables ’ , which nevertheless tend to justify some amount of pain in achieving rosier end-scenarios , upon the premise that this is needed to avoid an otherwise inevitable and imminent global catastrophe ( apart from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all changes are apparently painless ) .
Yet mainstream science says such a justification is unfounded ( notwithstanding the cultural dispute above ) .
Meanwhile the implementation of Solar and Wind is surging ahead , and has done so for decades in some countries .
So , is this global implementation largely due to pragmatic considerations that are consistent with mainstream science ?
After all , these things do actually produce power .
Or instead , largely due to cultural motivation that spreads solar-panels and wind-turbines as merely icons for the ‘ secular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ change ?
And no matter the costs , fiscal or environmental .
This question is resolvable , as hard social data on the cultural attitudes of many nations to climate-change , allows national motivations to be mapped to Renewables deployment .
Prior posts here , show that supportive attitudes to climate-change ( CC ) across national publics , have a dual and systemic strong relationship with religiosity .
CC supportive public responses to unconstrained climate survey questions correlate with national religiosity , while oppositely , CC supportive responses to reality-constrained questions anti-correlate with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ survey participants to consider and compare other reality issues in relation to climate change , typically by asking them to nominate the X ‘ most important ’ from a larger list of Y issues , of which one represents a climate-change issue , or literally just ‘ climate-change ’ .
Unconstrained questions don ’ t force such a comparative choice ] .
Using some data-series from the prior posts , Chart 1 below summarizes this dual relationship .
For many nations and plotted against national religiosity , it shows the CC supportive public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lines , intuited ) for different strengths of both unconstrained and reality-constrained survey questions .
Strength for the unconstrained questions ( blue lines ) reflects how aligned these are to the emotive and existential values of catastrophic climate change culture ( CCCC ) , plus how much this is targeted at the personal .
Another way of thinking about this strength , is how biased the questions are towards CCCC , emotive content being a feature of bias and not of rationality .
Strength for reality-constrained questions ( orange lines ) reflects the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ most important ’ single issue of 12 , for example , is a stronger reality-constraint , a stronger clash with the other issues , than say picking the top 3 of 12 , which is stronger in turn than the top 5 of 12 .
Table 1 at the end of this post , shows which actual climate-change survey questions generated the data-series each line represents ( each is depicted as just the stand-alone trendline ) , along with the related r/r2/p values .
The most important conclusion to draw from these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their strong relationships with religiosity ( an entirely cultural phenomenon ) , attitudes to climate-change across nations are likewise cultural .
In fact , they ’ re the net result of interaction between 2 cultures , i.e .
CCCC and religion .
So , this means they are not due to rationality ( cultural attitudes are emotively driven ) , or anything physical such as the characteristics of the climate-system , or indeed the particular climates or climate exposures of nations , or likewise any views on same as expressed by mainstream ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the exception of one historical coincidence ( annual sunshine duration – see later ) no matters encompassed by these categories would exhibit a systemic relationship with religiosity .
And for sure none can exhibit both correlation and anti-correlation simultaneously , depending only upon the type of question asked ; yet such is certainly possible for cultural responses .
This duality raises apparent contradictions .
For instance , maximum climate concerns ( RH ends of blue trends in Chart 1 ) occur in the same nations as minimum support for climate action / priority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But such apparent contradictions aren ’ t unusual for cultural causation .
From the prior series here at Climate Etc , see : Apparent Paradoxes in the relationship of Climate ‘ Concerns , Skepticism , Activism , and Priority ’ explained by Religiosity .
In fact , the full situation is more complex than depicted by Chart 1 .
See the Summary File linked below ( and especially Chart 2 in there , not in the main post ) for more explanation , visualized via more series plus features added to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conclusion remains that climate-change attitudes across nations are mainly cultural , so not from either rationality or physical factors .
[ Note : the attached summary is more distilled and easier going than the 3 prior posts linked above .
Regarding the US , see the note at the very end of this post ] .
If a particular domain is dominated by cultural attitudes , spending and policy support within the domain should ultimately be rooted in those attitudes .
Hence , armed with the above cultural attitudes to climate-change , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nations , between these and actual Renewables deployment .
It isn ’ t that mass publics rush out and purchase Wind Turbines with their credit cards , in proportion to their national attitudes .
The actual commitment works via elites who enact policy .
Yet the limits on such policy should still be in proportion to the national public attitudes ( which doesn ’ t mean alignment in an absolute sense ) .
Culture works to this end whether or not a nation is a democracy , or in the latter case whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( e.g .
in the UK , ‘ net-zero by 2050 ’ was nodded through without a parliamentary vote , and with essentially no costing or scrutiny or meaningful opposition ) .
As per the Introduction above , the primary justification for Renewables is indeed climate-change .
So , if culture does rule the roost for this particular policy area , Renewables deployment per nation should be governed by its ( cultural ) attitudes to climate-change .
In which case , we must see a very strong correlation between these two aspects .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ climate-change are relevant , when comparing on a national basis with renewables commitment ?
As there is at least some reality-constraint on deploying renewables ( because all nations have budgets and competition for same ) , if indeed the expression of renewables policy is mainly cultural , this ought to align with a reality-constrained ( orange ) trend , not an unconstrained ( blue ) trend .
Plus , because public and also elite / authority knowledge about renewables is likely very poor on average , this makes the constraint weak at best @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better understood , then the constraint would be stronger ) .
So , we should be looking at a comparison with the attitude data from the ‘ WC ’ series in Chart 1 .
This comes from an enormous UN survey on policy priorities in many nations , the vote share for ‘ action on climate-change ’ forming the series Y-values .
Nations can be matched from this series to those with major Solar deployment ( 40 nations ) , Wind turbine deployment ( also 40 , with 5 nations different to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ set ( of 35 ) deploying both .
Looking at the combined commitment for Wind and Solar should produce a more reliable result , as each may have technology / policy idiosyncrasies that could buck the trend in some way , but which are more likely to average out over the combination of both ( though we can start by examining each type in turn ) .
In practice , there ’ s highly unlikely to be zero or full correlation .
Policy decisions are very rarely 100 % free of cultural factors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wholly cultural either .
So , we can set reasonable thresholds for the test .
If ‘ r ’ for the correlation of renewables commitment with weakly-constrained climate attitudes is say ~0.33 or less , then we can say culture ( per above inherent in those attitudes ) doesn ’ t dominate .
But if r~0.66 or above , then we can say that cultural motivation does dominate renewables commitment .
If the value lands in-between , I guess we ’ d have to see where and think more about dual modes .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ impacts on very long-term social development , it is well-known that with some exceptions ( which aren ’ t an issue here ) GDP-per-capita across nations strongly negatively correlates with religiosity ( see Chart F1 in Xcel datafile ) .
2 ] Hence if above this , deploying Wind Turbine capacity is indeed motivated by a ‘ WC ’ type climate-attitude , which itself negatively correlates with religiosity ( see Chart 1 ) , then national religiosity plotted against each nation ’ s Wind Turbine capacity per-capita , should yield a power type @ @ @ @ @ @ @ F2 in Xcel datafile ) .
3 ] Power functions are more difficult to deal with or apply our test thresholds for ‘ r ’ to ( based on linear ) .
So , normalizing the Wind Turbine capacity per-capita wrt to GDP per-capita ( I used Spain ’ s GDP as the arbitrary standard ) , will remove the long-term effect of religiosity upon societies and any unequal fulfillment of motivation ( the same motivation , so ~fraction of GDP , will purchase more Wind Turbines if the GDP is bigger ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back to a linear function… The plot : Across the 40 nations , UN vote share for ‘ action on climate change ’ ( from ‘ WC ’ data ) , versus GDP-per-Capita-normalised Wind Turbine Capacity / Population ( to 2018 ) , shows a +ve correlation .
This suggests that Wind Turbines are significantly motivated by a ‘ WC ’ type cultural climate-change attitude : An ‘ r ’ of 0.64 just misses our test threshold for dominance ; but this is only half the story so far .
And it looks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policies for Wind deployment .
E.g .
the Czech Republic has very little despite a high vote for ‘ action on climate-change ’ .
And with a vote share that is a little lower , Portugal nevertheless seems to have a huge Wind capacity .
In summary it seems that as motivation rises towards the right , especially beyond the green line , the range of expression in Wind Turbines , grows .
This likely reflects larger and more targeted Renewable Energy policies , which hence spread from gung-ho for Wind Turbines right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Renewables are or aren ’ t more prioritized instead ( e.g .
Solar , Biomass , etc ) .
So , to better insulate against the effects of targeted policies , we can add into the mix the identical analysis for Solar deployment .
Preamble : 1 ] The equivalent charts for F1 and F2 in the Wind Turbine case , are F3 and F4 ( see the Excel datafile ) .
2 ] However , there ’ s an extra issue for Solar Power , which is that we need to adjust @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , according to its annual sunshine hours .
Otherwise the same spend ( where spend corresponds to motivation ) , hence the label MW , will produce different actual power per year in different nations .
So in Chart 4 , Solar Capacity deployed is normalized ( to Spain ) for Annual-Sunshine-DurationP1 .
The plot : Across the 40 nations ( 5 different to the Wind Turbine set ) UN vote share for ‘ action on climate change ’ ( from ‘ WC ’ data ) , versus GDP-per-Capita-normalised Annual-Sunshine-Adjusted Solar Capacity / @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a +ve correlation .
See Chart F7 in the Excel datafile .
This chart is very similar to Chart 2 above , with a greater range of expression in Solar Power to the right of the green line .
However , different nations than for Chart 2 are either high and low within this expression , because the idiosyncrasies associated with Solar Power are different to those for Wind Turbines .
An ‘ r ’ of 0.48 is somewhat lower than the case for Wind Turbines alone ; much of the reduction appears @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Solar despite only middling climate concerns , while Sweden has very modest Solar despite very high climate concerns .
But this is only half the story too .
Combining the results for both the technologies , will give us a more robust picture for Renewables motivation overall .
Across 35 nations , Chart 3 below shows UN vote share for ‘ action on climate change ’ ( from ‘ WC ’ data ) , versus GDP-per-Capita-normalised Combined Renewables Commitment / Population ( to 2018 ) .
The +ve correlation has improved .
Surpassing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spare , ‘ r ’ is now at 0.73 .
The greater range of spread of nations at the RHS has considerably reduced ( excepting for Germany ) , this being consistent with expected total renewables motivation , which nevertheless may express much more in Wind Turbines than Solar for any particular single nation , or vice versa .
The lens we used to see in the first place that attitudes to climate-change are cultural , i.e .
the religiosity of nations , is color-coded onto Chart 3 .
This falls from left @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from some random noise , there ’ s a minor secondary variable at play which impacts religiosity as seen in this view ( see Postscript 2 ) .
Notwithstanding some utility , the main motivation for Wind and Solar Renewables is cultural .
Thus , their installations are more akin to churches than to power-stations .
This also means that , just like the cultural attitude it is rooted in , Renewables deployment per nation directly anti-correlates with religiosity ; see Postscript 2 .
While it seems highly intuitive that national attitudes for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ corresponding renewables deployments , going straight for the jugular might not result in understanding exactly how to compare ( or at least , there ’ d be more chance of making a mistake in so doing ) , or indeed what the result actually means .
For instance , without the benefit of the big picture in Chart 1 and what this is about in cultural terms , we wouldn ’ t have known that those attitudes are not due to rationality .
Plus , we may have ended up comparing the attitudes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and still be wondering why more Renewables correlates with dramatically less concern about climate-change .
And the steps in the above preambles , usefully confirm the roles of GDP-per-capita and sunshine duration .
Note : widespread public knowledge of Renewables issues would increase constraints on policy , likely collapsing motivation from the ‘ WC ’ line in Chart1 , to the ‘ FC ’ line .
Note : This post says nothing about actual physical climate change , nor about the mainstream science of same ( which the CCCC narratives contradict ) .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and their expression in Renewables policy .
Michael Shellenberger , the environmentalist who tirelessly advocates for Nuclear Power as a solution to our energy needs , says this of Renewables ( and he ’ s talking largely about Solar and Wind deployments ) : “ For me the question now is , now that we know that renewables can ’ t save the planet , are we going to keep letting them destroy it ?
” An insight consistent with the fact that the ‘ purpose ’ of cultural narratives is to gain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hold the cultural group together ; it ’ s irrelevant to this actual purpose that the resulting actions may undermine or even reverse their stated purpose ; this happens .
In the blurb for his book ‘ Apocalypse Never ’ Shellenberger also speaks about the character of modern environmentalism , the motivation beneath it , which along with much else drives Renewables deployment ( and also a net resistance to Nuclear Power as a ‘ solution ’ ) : “ What ’ s really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism ?
There are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for status and power .
But most of all there is a desire among supposedly secular people for transcendence .
This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy .
But in preaching fear without love , and guilt without redemption , the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.
” Emphasis mine .
Shellenberger rightly identifies the overall motivation as cultural .
He uses the term ‘ religion ’ , as indeed do many others , simply because this is the most familiar example of a bounded cultural @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Regarding a ‘ climate catastrophe ’ generally , the social data completely agrees with him , as shown in Chart 1 ( and more fully elsewhere , see the Summary File below ) .
And as demonstrated above , this is exactly the case too for the specific motivation behind Renewables deployment .
However , I believe Shellenberger has one thing wrong .
Catastrophic climate culture is so pervasive exactly because it does satisfy deep psychological needs , which needs stem from signaling in-group identification via emotive , and preferentially existential , narratives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mechanisms which bypass our rationality , be that the advice of Planning Engineer or any other mere reason , via whatever expertise , experience or analysis .
Anyone or any group that contradicts or even questions in-group narratives , is automatically out-group , and so passionately resisted .
Via the historical accident of atheism spreading outwards from NW Europe , and hence from mostly very cloudy ( annually averaged ) countries towards typically sunnier climes , the annual sunshine duration of countries has a pretty decent linear correlation with national religiosity , albeit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ F5 in the datafile , ‘ r ’ is 0.56 .
Note : annual sunshine duration per country is derived from the average measurements for between 2 cities ( smaller countries ) and 5 cities ( larger countries , excepting 10 for Russia ) ; see the Excel datafile for tables of same , plus original sources .
So , if national sunshine hours are substituted as a proxy for national religiosity in Chart F4 , this still shows a power type function , see Chart F6 in the datafile .
Similarly to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrt GDP-per-capita , thereby removing the simple effect of spending power ( and too its long-term relationship to religiosity ) .
This reveals the relative priority of Solar deployment ( and so relative motivation ) for each of the nations .
The result of this operation , shown in Chart 4 below , demonstrates a significant irony that stems from the cultural motivation behind Renewables .
Which is that , as the annual sunshine hours experienced by nations reduces , then more nations choose to deploy more Solar MW per capita – i.e @ @ @ @ @ @ @ least useful .
The increasing spread of nations right to left in the green triangle , represents the same increasing range of expression in Solar that is also seen in F7 ( see datafile ) , and likewise for Wind Turbines in Chart 2 above , which in both cases is more obvious to the right of the green lines .
That increasing range is due to an increasing cultural motivation for Renewables , coupled with targeted policies which for particular nations may preference other Renewables options over Solar , to some degree @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lens ’ in Chart 1 , which allows us to ‘ see ’ that national climate-change attitudes are indeed cultural .
The two strong cultures interact to produce the various trends , and in particular the correlation with religiosity of climate-change supportive answers to unconstrained questions , yet also anti-correlation with religiosity of climate-change supportive answers to reality-constrained questions , for sure is extremely hard to explain any other way .
One wouldn ’ t expect this lens or proxy itself to have quite such a robust correlation with national Renewables Commitment as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but it ’ s a useful ‘ parity check ’ to graph this and demonstrate that it should still be pretty strong .
Chart F9 in the Excel datafile shows this .
‘ r ’ is ~0.65 against ranked Renewables Commitment ( compresses some of the outliers a bit , especially Germany ) , and ~0.6 against actual values .
In practice , there is more than just extra randomity via looking through this proxy .
The series of ‘ weaker strengths ’ in Chart 1 ( so ‘ WC ’ and ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about trend , due to the GDP-per-Capita of each nation relative to its religio-regional group .
This variability is faithfully reflected in Chart F9 , and is color-coded onto the chart .
See also Chart F10 and F11 , which show the consistency of the religio-regional-GDP-per-Capita group averages between the ‘ WC ’ and Renewables Commitment series .
See the Summary File for a full explanation , plus some ‘ weaker strength ’ climate attitude series as full-data visualizations , to better see the raw effect .
For a version of ‘ WC @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Chart 3 , with hi / lo Renewables commitment and hi / lo GDP-per-religio-regional-group both encoded , see Chart F8 in the Datafile .
Note : Norway is excluded from above charts as policy bias to immense amounts of natural hydro-power available , denudes Solar and Wind Turbine motivations .
This could be accommodated by the inclusion of a third renewables string across all nations for hydro-power , but there ’ d be little value for this extra effort .
• Climate Survey Data-source : The huge 2015 UN ‘ My World @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many nations .
• Climate Survey Data-source : Climate questions in the Reuters / University of Oxford ‘ Digital News Report 2020 ’ survey .
• Original Excel chart : ‘ 1yx ’ here ( 22 nations , debiased X scale ) , ‘ 2xy ’ here ( 24 nations , x/y reversed , raw X scale , delete US & Vietnam rows ) .
• Original Excel chart : ‘ F1yx ’ here ( 22 nations , debiased X scale ) , ‘ 4xy ’ here ( 24 nations , x/y reversed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ & Vietnam rows ) .
• Original Excel chart : See ‘ 3yx ’ here ( red crosses , and just left of chart , column G and J for data ) .
• Original Excel chart : See ‘ F6 ’ here ( and superimposed on other series , chart 3yx just to the left ) .
• Original Excel chart : See ‘ 4yx ’ and ‘ 5yx ’ here ( 4yx faith color-coded , 5yx religio-regional color-coded ) .
• Original Excel chart : Not on the Internet yet , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ File below .
Link to Summary File regarding the generic relationship between national religiosities and attitudes to climate change : [ SUMMARY Religiosity Predicts CC Beliefs 2 ] Note : the above file includes a short separate section on the situation in the US , where there is a 4-way cultural dance ( the extra dancers being Rep / Con and Dem / Lib cultures ) .
See Footnote 14 in the file .
In the other 59 nations covered , there is a simpler 2-way cultural dance ( i.e .
religious faith @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same basic principles apply , however , which allows the framework derived from the 59 nations to produce some insight on the US situation .
I may expand on this in a future post .
Outside of the US , religiosity as a predictor of national climate-change attitudes dwarfs any net political considerations .
( And incidentally within nations on this issue , polarization due to political affiliation is much less than in the US ; various literature cites the US situation as exceptional ) .

Posted on November 19, 2020 by curryja
Reposted from Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.
by Andy West
“For me the question now is, now that we know that renewables can’t save the planet, are we going to keep letting them destroy it?”. – Michael Schellenberger
Introduction
There have been many technical analyses of Wind and Solar energy, covering a raft of issues from energy density and efficiency, through subsidies and land usage, to maintenance, grid impacts, intermittency and more. The angle examined here is in no way intended to replace such necessary views, whether they lean to the pessimistic or the optimistic or anywhere in-between. Rather, a complementary view is provided regarding an aspect that such technical analyses cannot address, albeit it often features in the conclusions and questions these analyses raise at the end. Right here at Climate Etc, the first of the excellent analyses by ‘Planning Engineer’ (on his retirement revealed to be Russ Schussler, ex-VP of Transmission Planning at Georgia Transmission Corporations), laudably highlighted the limitation of technical analyses with his very first line: “Power System Planners do not have the expertise or knowledge to say whether or not the benefits of reducing carbon emissions are worth the costs. However they should be respected as experts for obtaining a better understanding of what the implications and costs of such programs are.”
So, who does have this critical knowledge and expertise regarding ultimate cost / benefit? The answer is highly likely to be no one at all, because not only is this issue deeply disputed, it is culturally (as well as technically) disputed. Indeed, to the extent that the overwhelming public and authority narrative about climate change contradicts mainstream science let alone any skeptical science, which also means that, especially in some nations such as the US, there are cultural counter-narratives too. Hence debates about policy, including renewables deployment, aren’t legitimately resolved, because the potent cultural angle corrupts or polarizes or simply overrides any such debate.
Schussler acknowledges this cultural dispute, saying in the line following the above quote: “Unfortunately many non-experts, driven by fear of AGW, have done much to cloud, distort and ignore critical issues around the cost and capabilities of renewable energy and the realities relating to the provision of electrical power.” He also returns to this theme at the very end of his post: “…I believe most planners and utilities recognize that the overall impacts to society (unless needed to aver environmental disaster) would be extremely harmful in the net analysis. I hope that the voices of concerned utility experts are not drowned out by the noise of ‘true believers’ or disbelieved because of false accusations of self-interest.” For sure ‘true belief’ is a cultural feature and may often prompt ‘false accusations’. Plus that caveat of ‘unless needed’, or more subtly ‘how much needed’, is a major issue within the dispute above. An apparent need, could be partly or wholly the result of emotive belief, of which ‘fear of [C]AGW’ is a major component.
Schussler’s title, ‘Myths and realities of renewable energy’, emphasis mine, is inclusive of the element that technical analysis cannot ultimately probe regarding character and impact, because myths are cultural phenomena. Others cite myth as Renewables motivation, and David Archibald goes further in directly framing this element as ‘religious’ in nature (religions being just one brand of cultural entities). In a recent article on renewables (and focusing on hydrogen) at Jo Nova’s, he employs religiously orientated terms such as ‘believers’ and ‘government encyclicals’:
“Briefly, the only reason solar and wind get a look-in is because solar panels and wind turbines are made using energy from coal at $0.04 per kWh and turn out power at $0.20 per kWh… …You can’t use solar and wind power to make solar and wind power equipment; as such they are neither renewable nor sustainable. And they certainly won’t be replacing fossil fuels when the fossil fuels run out.
Even some lefties are figuring this out and thus the documentary Planet of the Humans. So the global warming clerisy, headed by Alan Finkel in this country [Australia], needs to keep coming up with new content to satisfy their simple-minded believers… …Vast sums are to be spent on hydrogen. The language of the Government encyclicals suggests that hydrogen is a new source of energy that just has to be tapped to guarantee a wonderful future.”
Needless to say, Archibald views this ‘religious’ influence as overwhelmingly negative, adding as part of his conclusion: “Global warming doesn’t build orphanages or hospitals. As a religion it doesn’t do any good at all.” And others claim a cultish / ‘religious’ motivation too. Yet whether viewing culture as only a clouding / distorting influence, or as an overwhelmingly negative force, technical analyses critical of renewables inevitably falter or get speculative when it comes demonstrating cultural sway (for example, across nations invested in renewables). An alternate approach is needed to progress this.
There are less critical / more optimistic analyses of Solar or Wind ‘renewables’, which nevertheless tend to justify some amount of pain in achieving rosier end-scenarios, upon the premise that this is needed to avoid an otherwise inevitable and imminent global catastrophe (apart from the most wildly optimistic, in which all changes are apparently painless). Yet mainstream science says such a justification is unfounded (notwithstanding the cultural dispute above).
Meanwhile the implementation of Solar and Wind is surging ahead, and has done so for decades in some countries. So, is this global implementation largely due to pragmatic considerations that are consistent with mainstream science? After all, these things do actually produce power. Or instead, largely due to cultural motivation that spreads solar-panels and wind-turbines as merely icons for the ‘secular religion’ of certain and catastrophic climate change? And no matter the costs, fiscal or environmental. This question is resolvable, as hard social data on the cultural attitudes of many nations to climate-change, allows national motivations to be mapped to Renewables deployment.
Cultural attitudes to climate-change across national publics
Prior posts here, show that supportive attitudes to climate-change (CC) across national publics, have a dual and systemic strong relationship with religiosity. CC supportive public responses to unconstrained climate survey questions correlate with national religiosity, while oppositely, CC supportive responses to reality-constrained questions anti-correlate with national religiosity. [Reality-constrained questions force survey participants to consider and compare other reality issues in relation to climate change, typically by asking them to nominate the X ‘most important’ from a larger list of Y issues, of which one represents a climate-change issue, or literally just ‘climate-change’. Unconstrained questions don’t force such a comparative choice]. Using some data-series from the prior posts, Chart 1 below summarizes this dual relationship. For many nations and plotted against national religiosity, it shows the CC supportive public responses measured (and for the dashed lines, intuited) for different strengths of both unconstrained and reality-constrained survey questions.
Strength for the unconstrained questions (blue lines) reflects how aligned these are to the emotive and existential values of catastrophic climate change culture (CCCC), plus how much this is targeted at the personal. Another way of thinking about this strength, is how biased the questions are towards CCCC, emotive content being a feature of bias and not of rationality. Strength for reality-constrained questions (orange lines) reflects the tightness of the constraint. Picking the ‘most important’ single issue of 12, for example, is a stronger reality-constraint, a stronger clash with the other issues, than say picking the top 3 of 12, which is stronger in turn than the top 5 of 12. Table 1 at the end of this post, shows which actual climate-change survey questions generated the data-series each line represents (each is depicted as just the stand-alone trendline), along with the related r/r2/p values.
The most important conclusion to draw from these trends is that, as revealed by their strong relationships with religiosity (an entirely cultural phenomenon), attitudes to climate-change across nations are likewise cultural. In fact, they’re the net result of interaction between 2 cultures, i.e. CCCC and religion. So, this means they are not due to rationality (cultural attitudes are emotively driven), or anything physical such as the characteristics of the climate-system, or indeed the particular climates or climate exposures of nations, or likewise any views on same as expressed by mainstream (or any) climate science.
With the exception of one historical coincidence (annual sunshine duration – see later) no matters encompassed by these categories would exhibit a systemic relationship with religiosity. And for sure none can exhibit both correlation and anti-correlation simultaneously, depending only upon the type of question asked; yet such is certainly possible for cultural responses. This duality raises apparent contradictions. For instance, maximum climate concerns (RH ends of blue trends in Chart 1) occur in the same nations as minimum support for climate action / priority (RH ends of orange trends). But such apparent contradictions aren’t unusual for cultural causation. From the prior series here at Climate Etc, see : Apparent Paradoxes in the relationship of Climate ‘Concerns, Skepticism, Activism, and Priority’ explained by Religiosity.
In fact, the full situation is more complex than depicted by Chart 1. See the Summary File linked below (and especially Chart 2 in there, not in the main post) for more explanation, visualized via more series plus features added to the above Chart 1. However, the conclusion remains that climate-change attitudes across nations are mainly cultural, so not from either rationality or physical factors. [Note: the attached summary is more distilled and easier going than the 3 prior posts linked above. Regarding the US, see the note at the very end of this post].
Probing motivations for Renewables Commitment
If a particular domain is dominated by cultural attitudes, spending and policy support within the domain should ultimately be rooted in those attitudes. Hence, armed with the above cultural attitudes to climate-change, we now need to explore the relationship across nations, between these and actual Renewables deployment. It isn’t that mass publics rush out and purchase Wind Turbines with their credit cards, in proportion to their national attitudes. The actual commitment works via elites who enact policy. Yet the limits on such policy should still be in proportion to the national public attitudes (which doesn’t mean alignment in an absolute sense).
Culture works to this end whether or not a nation is a democracy, or in the latter case whether or not democratic processes are actually involved (e.g. in the UK, ‘net-zero by 2050’ was nodded through without a parliamentary vote, and with essentially no costing or scrutiny or meaningful opposition). As per the Introduction above, the primary justification for Renewables is indeed climate-change. So, if culture does rule the roost for this particular policy area, Renewables deployment per nation should be governed by its (cultural) attitudes to climate-change. In which case, we must see a very strong correlation between these two aspects.
But which of the above attitudes to climate-change are relevant, when comparing on a national basis with renewables commitment? As there is at least some reality-constraint on deploying renewables (because all nations have budgets and competition for same), if indeed the expression of renewables policy is mainly cultural, this ought to align with a reality-constrained (orange) trend, not an unconstrained (blue) trend. Plus, because public and also elite / authority knowledge about renewables is likely very poor on average, this makes the constraint weak at best (if the downsides of deployment were better understood, then the constraint would be stronger).
So, we should be looking at a comparison with the attitude data from the ‘WC’ series in Chart 1. This comes from an enormous UN survey on policy priorities in many nations, the vote share for ‘action on climate-change’ forming the series Y-values. Nations can be matched from this series to those with major Solar deployment (40 nations), Wind turbine deployment (also 40, with 5 nations different to the Solar list), plus a common set (of 35) deploying both.
Looking at the combined commitment for Wind and Solar should produce a more reliable result, as each may have technology / policy idiosyncrasies that could buck the trend in some way, but which are more likely to average out over the combination of both (though we can start by examining each type in turn). In practice, there’s highly unlikely to be zero or full correlation. Policy decisions are very rarely 100% free of cultural factors, yet they’d rarely be wholly cultural either. So, we can set reasonable thresholds for the test. If ‘r’ for the correlation of renewables commitment with weakly-constrained climate attitudes is say ~0.33 or less, then we can say culture (per above inherent in those attitudes) doesn’t dominate. But if r~0.66 or above, then we can say that cultural motivation does dominate renewables commitment. If the value lands in-between, I guess we’d have to see where and think more about dual modes.
Commitment for Wind Turbines across 40 nations
Preamble: 1] Due to various impacts on very long-term social development, it is well-known that with some exceptions (which aren’t an issue here) GDP-per-capita across nations strongly negatively correlates with religiosity (see Chart F1 in Xcel datafile). 2] Hence if above this, deploying Wind Turbine capacity is indeed motivated by a ‘WC’ type climate-attitude, which itself negatively correlates with religiosity (see Chart 1), then national religiosity plotted against each nation’s Wind Turbine capacity per-capita, should yield a power type function. It does (see Chart F2 in Xcel datafile). 3] Power functions are more difficult to deal with or apply our test thresholds for ‘r’ to (based on linear).
So, normalizing the Wind Turbine capacity per-capita wrt to GDP per-capita (I used Spain’s GDP as the arbitrary standard), will remove the long-term effect of religiosity upon societies and any unequal fulfillment of motivation (the same motivation, so ~fraction of GDP, will purchase more Wind Turbines if the GDP is bigger). So, this resets our expectation back to a linear function…
The plot: Across the 40 nations, UN vote share for ‘action on climate change’ (from ‘WC’ data), versus GDP-per-Capita-normalised Wind Turbine Capacity / Population (to 2018), shows a +ve correlation. This suggests that Wind Turbines are significantly motivated by a ‘WC’ type cultural climate-change attitude:
An ‘r’ of 0.64 just misses our test threshold for dominance; but this is only half the story so far. And it looks like there are idiosyncrasies regarding individual national policies for Wind deployment. E.g. the Czech Republic has very little despite a high vote for ‘action on climate-change’. And with a vote share that is a little lower, Portugal nevertheless seems to have a huge Wind capacity. In summary it seems that as motivation rises towards the right, especially beyond the green line, the range of expression in Wind Turbines, grows. This likely reflects larger and more targeted Renewable Energy policies, which hence spread from gung-ho for Wind Turbines right down to minimal deployment, because other Renewables are or aren’t more prioritized instead (e.g. Solar, Biomass, etc). So, to better insulate against the effects of targeted policies, we can add into the mix the identical analysis for Solar deployment.
Commitment for Solar Power across 40 nations
Preamble: 1] The equivalent charts for F1 and F2 in the Wind Turbine case, are F3 and F4 (see the Excel datafile). 2] However, there’s an extra issue for Solar Power, which is that we need to adjust the MW that each nation has deployed, according to its annual sunshine hours. Otherwise the same spend (where spend corresponds to motivation), hence the label MW, will produce different actual power per year in different nations. So in Chart 4, Solar Capacity deployed is normalized (to Spain) for Annual-Sunshine-DurationP1.
The plot: Across the 40 nations (5 different to the Wind Turbine set) UN vote share for ‘action on climate change’ (from ‘WC’ data), versus GDP-per-Capita-normalised Annual-Sunshine-Adjusted Solar Capacity / Population (to 2018), shows a +ve correlation. See Chart F7 in the Excel datafile. This chart is very similar to Chart 2 above, with a greater range of expression in Solar Power to the right of the green line. However, different nations than for Chart 2 are either high and low within this expression, because the idiosyncrasies associated with Solar Power are different to those for Wind Turbines.
An ‘r’ of 0.48 is somewhat lower than the case for Wind Turbines alone; much of the reduction appears to stem from Japan going nuts on Solar despite only middling climate concerns, while Sweden has very modest Solar despite very high climate concerns. But this is only half the story too. Combining the results for both the technologies, will give us a more robust picture for Renewables motivation overall.
Commitment for combined Wind / Solar Renewables across 35 (common) nations
Across 35 nations, Chart 3 below shows UN vote share for ‘action on climate change’ (from ‘WC’ data), versus GDP-per-Capita-normalised Combined Renewables Commitment / Population (to 2018). The +ve correlation has improved. Surpassing the upper test threshold with some to spare, ‘r’ is now at 0.73.
The greater range of spread of nations at the RHS has considerably reduced (excepting for Germany), this being consistent with expected total renewables motivation, which nevertheless may express much more in Wind Turbines than Solar for any particular single nation, or vice versa. The lens we used to see in the first place that attitudes to climate-change are cultural, i.e. the religiosity of nations, is color-coded onto Chart 3. This falls from left to right, albeit fuzzily because aside from some random noise, there’s a minor secondary variable at play which impacts religiosity as seen in this view (see Postscript 2).
Discussion
Notwithstanding some utility, the main motivation for Wind and Solar Renewables is cultural. Thus, their installations are more akin to churches than to power-stations. This also means that, just like the cultural attitude it is rooted in, Renewables deployment per nation directly anti-correlates with religiosity; see Postscript 2.
While it seems highly intuitive that national attitudes for action on climate-change would align with the corresponding renewables deployments, going straight for the jugular might not result in understanding exactly how to compare (or at least, there’d be more chance of making a mistake in so doing), or indeed what the result actually means. For instance, without the benefit of the big picture in Chart 1 and what this is about in cultural terms, we wouldn’t have known that those attitudes are not due to rationality. Plus, we may have ended up comparing the attitudes from an unconstrained climate survey question, and still be wondering why more Renewables correlates with dramatically less concern about climate-change. And the steps in the above preambles, usefully confirm the roles of GDP-per-capita and sunshine duration.
Note: widespread public knowledge of Renewables issues would increase constraints on policy, likely collapsing motivation from the ‘WC’ line in Chart1, to the ‘FC’ line. Note: This post says nothing about actual physical climate change, nor about the mainstream science of same (which the CCCC narratives contradict). It’s only about public attitudes and their expression in Renewables policy.
Michael Shellenberger, the environmentalist who tirelessly advocates for Nuclear Power as a solution to our energy needs, says this of Renewables (and he’s talking largely about Solar and Wind deployments): “For me the question now is, now that we know that renewables can’t save the planet, are we going to keep letting them destroy it?” An insight consistent with the fact that the ‘purpose’ of cultural narratives is to gain emotive commitment, in turn only to hold the cultural group together; it’s irrelevant to this actual purpose that the resulting actions may undermine or even reverse their stated purpose; this happens.
In the blurb for his book ‘Apocalypse Never’ Shellenberger also speaks about the character of modern environmentalism, the motivation beneath it, which along with much else drives Renewables deployment (and also a net resistance to Nuclear Power as a ‘solution’): “What’s really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? There are powerful financial interests. There are desires for status and power. But most of all there is a desire among supposedly secular people for transcendence. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy. But in preaching fear without love, and guilt without redemption, the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.” Emphasis mine.
Shellenberger rightly identifies the overall motivation as cultural. He uses the term ‘religion’, as indeed do many others, simply because this is the most familiar example of a bounded cultural entity that people tend to have. Regarding a ‘climate catastrophe’ generally, the social data completely agrees with him, as shown in Chart 1 (and more fully elsewhere, see the Summary File below). And as demonstrated above, this is exactly the case too for the specific motivation behind Renewables deployment.
However, I believe Shellenberger has one thing wrong. Catastrophic climate culture is so pervasive exactly because it does satisfy deep psychological needs, which needs stem from signaling in-group identification via emotive, and preferentially existential, narratives. These in turn activate deep mental mechanisms which bypass our rationality, be that the advice of Planning Engineer or any other mere reason, via whatever expertise, experience or analysis. Anyone or any group that contradicts or even questions in-group narratives, is automatically out-group, and so passionately resisted.
Postscript 1: Historical accident and irony regarding Solar Deployment
Via the historical accident of atheism spreading outwards from NW Europe, and hence from mostly very cloudy (annually averaged) countries towards typically sunnier climes, the annual sunshine duration of countries has a pretty decent linear correlation with national religiosity, albeit some major individual exceptions. See Chart F5 in the datafile, ‘r’ is 0.56. Note: annual sunshine duration per country is derived from the average measurements for between 2 cities (smaller countries) and 5 cities (larger countries, excepting 10 for Russia); see the Excel datafile for tables of same, plus original sources. So, if national sunshine hours are substituted as a proxy for national religiosity in Chart F4, this still shows a power type function, see Chart F6 in the datafile. Similarly to above, we can then normalize this wrt GDP-per-capita, thereby removing the simple effect of spending power (and too its long-term relationship to religiosity). This reveals the relative priority of Solar deployment (and so relative motivation) for each of the nations.
The result of this operation, shown in Chart 4 below, demonstrates a significant irony that stems from the cultural motivation behind Renewables. Which is that, as the annual sunshine hours experienced by nations reduces, then more nations choose to deploy more Solar MW per capita – i.e. within exactly those geographies it is least useful.
The increasing spread of nations right to left in the green triangle, represents the same increasing range of expression in Solar that is also seen in F7 (see datafile), and likewise for Wind Turbines in Chart 2 above, which in both cases is more obvious to the right of the green lines. That increasing range is due to an increasing cultural motivation for Renewables, coupled with targeted policies which for particular nations may preference other Renewables options over Solar, to some degree.
Postscript 2: Renewables Commitment versus Religiosity
Religiosity is used as a ‘lens’ in Chart 1, which allows us to ‘see’ that national climate-change attitudes are indeed cultural. The two strong cultures interact to produce the various trends, and in particular the correlation with religiosity of climate-change supportive answers to unconstrained questions, yet also anti-correlation with religiosity of climate-change supportive answers to reality-constrained questions, for sure is extremely hard to explain any other way. One wouldn’t expect this lens or proxy itself to have quite such a robust correlation with national Renewables Commitment as the ‘WC’ climate attitude, but it’s a useful ‘parity check’ to graph this and demonstrate that it should still be pretty strong. Chart F9 in the Excel datafile shows this. ‘r’ is ~0.65 against ranked Renewables Commitment (compresses some of the outliers a bit, especially Germany), and ~0.6 against actual values. In practice, there is more than just extra randomity via looking through this proxy.
The series of ‘weaker strengths’ in Chart 1 (so ‘WC’ and ‘WA’) have some systemic variability about trend, due to the GDP-per-Capita of each nation relative to its religio-regional group. This variability is faithfully reflected in Chart F9, and is color-coded onto the chart. See also Chart F10 and F11, which show the consistency of the religio-regional-GDP-per-Capita group averages between the ‘WC’ and Renewables Commitment series. See the Summary File for a full explanation, plus some ‘weaker strength’ climate attitude series as full-data visualizations, to better see the raw effect. For a version of ‘WC’ using the same 35 nations as in Chart 3, with hi / lo Renewables commitment and hi / lo GDP-per-religio-regional-group both encoded, see Chart F8 in the Datafile.
Note: Norway is excluded from above charts as policy bias to immense amounts of natural hydro-power available, denudes Solar and Wind Turbine motivations. This could be accommodated by the inclusion of a third renewables string across all nations for hydro-power, but there’d be little value for this extra effort.
Link to Summary File regarding the generic relationship between national religiosities and attitudes to climate change: [SUMMARY Religiosity Predicts CC Beliefs 2]
Note: the above file includes a short separate section on the situation in the US, where there is a 4-way cultural dance (the extra dancers being Rep / Con and Dem / Lib cultures). See Footnote 14 in the file. In the other 59 nations covered, there is a simpler 2-way cultural dance (i.e. religious faith and catastrophic climate-change culture). The same basic principles apply, however, which allows the framework derived from the 59 nations to produce some insight on the US situation. I may expand on this in a future post. Outside of the US, religiosity as a predictor of national climate-change attitudes dwarfs any net political considerations. (And incidentally within nations on this issue, polarization due to political affiliation is much less than in the US; various literature cites the US situation as exceptional).
Link to Excel Datafile: [Wind and Solar motivations Data]
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wattsupwiththat--2020-11-25--The Great American Outdoors Act

The Great American Outdoors Act

This crown jewel of the Trump Administration ’ s environmental record will bring many benefits To the surprise of most Americans , and the consternation of many in the “ mainstream ” media , Vice President Mike Pence highlighted the Trump Administration ’ s environmental record during the recent VP debate .
Citing the President ’ s signing of the historic bill , Mr. Pence lauded the Great American Outdoors Act ( GAOA ) as “ the largest investment in our public lands and public parks in 100 years.
” The Associated Press said the GAOA is the “ most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a century.
” The National Parks Conservation Association called it “ a conservationist ’ s dream.
” Harvard Business School professor Linda Bilmes agreed , calling the GAOA “ the biggest land conservation legislation in a generation.
” Bilmes , who served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton Administration , marveled that the Trump Administration won broad bipartisan support in a polarized Congress , after the President reevaluated his own stance on this groundbreaking environmental and conservationist initiative .
Bilmes explained that the new law has two major effects .
First @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lands Legacy Restoration Fund will provide up to $ 9 billion over the next five years to address deferred maintenance issues in national parks , wildlife refuges , forests and other federal areas , with $ 6.5 billion earmarked specifically to the 419 National Park units .
Second , the GAOA guarantees the statutory maximum of $ 900 million per year in perpetuity for the Land and Water Conservation Fund ( LWCF ) .
Bilmes explained that Congress has been stingy with parks funding , despite a doubling of annual park visitors since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) .
Thanks to the GAOA , the $ 12 billion backlog of maintenance to repair roads , trails , campgrounds , monuments , fire safety , utilities and visitor center infrastructure will finally be addressed .
Similarly , the LWCF , established in 1964 with an annual maximum authorization level of $ 900 million , has typically received less than half of that amount .
The flagship LWCF conservation program is paid for with royalty payments from offshore oil and gas production in federal waters .
It helps fund the National Park @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Wildlife Service , and Bureau of Land Management .
It also provides grants to state and local governments to acquire land for recreation and conservation .
Yet many self-described environmental advocates want to shut down offshore oil activities .
An early beneficiary of the GAOA is the state of California , which will benefit from GAOA funding that provides the 50 % federal share of a new program aimed at reducing wildfire risks .
Both California and the U.S. Forest Service will treat at least half a million acres of forest land @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forest health and vegetation – by reducing the fuel buildups that lead to monstrous conflagrations .
The Agreement for Shared Stewardship of California ’ s Forest and Rangelands , lauded by President Trump and California Governor Gavin Newsom , is a joint state-federal initiative to reduce wildfire risks , restore watersheds , and protect habitat and biological diversity .
Sadly , Congressional bickering delayed its passage such that it came too late to help mitigate this summer ’ s wildfires , which caused major damage to endangered and threatened species and their habitat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The California-federal agreement requires prioritizing public safety , using real science to guide forest management , coordinating land management across jurisdictions , increasing the scale and pace of forest management projects , removing barriers that slow project approvals , and working closely with all stakeholders : local and tribal communities , environmental groups , academics , timber companies and others .
Additional activities under the agreement include recycling forest byproducts to avoid burning slash piles , improving sustainable recreation opportunities , and stabilizing rural economies .
Bilmes credited the strong bipartisan support ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Congress ) to the political and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic .
She noted that in normal years park visitor spending contributes about $ 40 billion to the U.S. economy and supports nearly 350,000 jobs .
The GAOA will give a huge shot in the arm to communities struggling due to the loss of tourism-related jobs and income , by creating over 108,000 new jobs for repairing park infrastructure , including lodges , trails , access roads and bridges in the adjacent communities .
Bilmes estimates that the American people value @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at $ 92 billion per year – at least 30 times the annual budget they receive from Congress .
Yet , like many critics of other Trump land management decisions , she fails to appreciate that reopening small sections of public lands with lower aesthetic value to income producing activities will provide the revenue needed to pay for the increased budgets for these national treasures .
Similarly , cutbacks in offshore oil and gas activities would drastically shrink the very federal revenues needed to pay $ 900 million per year to the LWCF @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Critics of Trump policies also ignore the fact that the United States is reducing carbon dioxide emissions at an annual rate of more than 2 % and has lowered emissions of criteria pollutants by 7 % since the beginning of 2017 , primarily because fracking is producing low-cost natural gas to replace coal in generating electricity , Mr. Pence pointed out during his debate .
Reducing wildfire infernos is another excellent way to reduce CO2 emissions , as well as real pollution like smoke and fine particulates ( soot ) .
Emissions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can travel hundreds or even thousands of miles from the fires .
Pence also cited a record number of completed Superfund cleanups during the four years he and President Trump have been in office , along with a record number of recovered endangered species .
Reflecting the President ’ s view that parks are for the people , the Vice President also lauded the Interior Department ’ s opening of over 4 million acres of Fish and Wildlife Service lands for hunting and fishing , and relocating the Bureau of Land Management headquarters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ closer to the vast majority of the vast federal lands it administers , nearly all in the western states .
Lastly , Pence cited the Modern Fish Act , signed in January 2019 , which for the first time in federal law recognizes the differences between recreational and commercial saltwater fishing .
The act also adds more appropriate management tools for policymakers to use in managing diverse federal recreational fisheries .
The popular legislation “ provides an opportunity for significant , positive change on behalf of millions of recreational anglers who enjoy fishing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sportsmen ’ s Foundation president Jeff Crane .
Despite the bipartisan nature of these major accomplishments , and their importance to America and its magnificent natural heritage , media coverage of the GAOA signing made it quite clear that mainstream reporters were loath to give any credit to President Trump .
That ’ s sad but not unexpected .
Whether acquiring more and more federal land is a good thing , in view of the often less than stellar way existing landholdings have been managed in recent years , only time will tell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ federal-state-local-tribal land management initiatives are a solid step in the right direction .
Duggan Flanakin is Director of Policy Research at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow ( www.CFACT.org )

This crown jewel of the Trump Administration’s environmental record will bring many benefits
Duggan Flanakin
To the surprise of most Americans, and the consternation of many in the “mainstream” media, Vice President Mike Pence highlighted the Trump Administration’s environmental record during the recent VP debate. Citing the President’s signing of the historic bill, Mr. Pence lauded the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) as “the largest investment in our public lands and public parks in 100 years.”
The Associated Press said the GAOA is the “most significant conservation legislation enacted in nearly half a century.” The National Parks Conservation Association called it “a conservationist’s dream.”
Harvard Business School professor Linda Bilmes agreed, calling the GAOA “the biggest land conservation legislation in a generation.” Bilmes, who served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton Administration, marveled that the Trump Administration won broad bipartisan support in a polarized Congress, after the President reevaluated his own stance on this groundbreaking environmental and conservationist initiative.
Bilmes explained that the new law has two major effects. First, the new National Park and Public Lands Legacy Restoration Fund will provide up to $9 billion over the next five years to address deferred maintenance issues in national parks, wildlife refuges, forests and other federal areas, with $6.5 billion earmarked specifically to the 419 National Park units. Second, the GAOA guarantees the statutory maximum of $900 million per year in perpetuity for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF).
Bilmes explained that Congress has been stingy with parks funding, despite a doubling of annual park visitors since 1980 (excluding the COVID-marred 2020 season). Thanks to the GAOA, the $12 billion backlog of maintenance to repair roads, trails, campgrounds, monuments, fire safety, utilities and visitor center infrastructure will finally be addressed. Similarly, the LWCF, established in 1964 with an annual maximum authorization level of $900 million, has typically received less than half of that amount.
The flagship LWCF conservation program is paid for with royalty payments from offshore oil and gas production in federal waters. It helps fund the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Land Management. It also provides grants to state and local governments to acquire land for recreation and conservation. Yet many self-described environmental advocates want to shut down offshore oil activities.
An early beneficiary of the GAOA is the state of California, which will benefit from GAOA funding that provides the 50% federal share of a new program aimed at reducing wildfire risks. Both California and the U.S. Forest Service will treat at least half a million acres of forest land per year under a 20-year plan for forest health and vegetation – by reducing the fuel buildups that lead to monstrous conflagrations.
The Agreement for Shared Stewardship of California’s Forest and Rangelands, lauded by President Trump and California Governor Gavin Newsom, is a joint state-federal initiative to reduce wildfire risks, restore watersheds, and protect habitat and biological diversity. Sadly, Congressional bickering delayed its passage such that it came too late to help mitigate this summer’s wildfires, which caused major damage to endangered and threatened species and their habitat in California and other Western states.
The California-federal agreement requires prioritizing public safety, using real science to guide forest management, coordinating land management across jurisdictions, increasing the scale and pace of forest management projects, removing barriers that slow project approvals, and working closely with all stakeholders: local and tribal communities, environmental groups, academics, timber companies and others. Additional activities under the agreement include recycling forest byproducts to avoid burning slash piles, improving sustainable recreation opportunities, and stabilizing rural economies.
Bilmes credited the strong bipartisan support (3 to 1 margins in both houses of Congress) to the political and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. She noted that in normal years park visitor spending contributes about $40 billion to the U.S. economy and supports nearly 350,000 jobs. The GAOA will give a huge shot in the arm to communities struggling due to the loss of tourism-related jobs and income, by creating over 108,000 new jobs for repairing park infrastructure, including lodges, trails, access roads and bridges in the adjacent communities.
Bilmes estimates that the American people value national park land, waters and programs at $92 billion per year – at least 30 times the annual budget they receive from Congress. Yet, like many critics of other Trump land management decisions, she fails to appreciate that reopening small sections of public lands with lower aesthetic value to income producing activities will provide the revenue needed to pay for the increased budgets for these national treasures.
Similarly, cutbacks in offshore oil and gas activities would drastically shrink the very federal revenues needed to pay $900 million per year to the LWCF, to support federal land management programs.
Critics of Trump policies also ignore the fact that the United States is reducing carbon dioxide emissions at an annual rate of more than 2% and has lowered emissions of criteria pollutants by 7% since the beginning of 2017, primarily because fracking is producing low-cost natural gas to replace coal in generating electricity, Mr. Pence pointed out during his debate.
Reducing wildfire infernos is another excellent way to reduce CO2 emissions, as well as real pollution like smoke and fine particulates (soot). Emissions from these forest fires are astronomical and can travel hundreds or even thousands of miles from the fires.
Pence also cited a record number of completed Superfund cleanups during the four years he and President Trump have been in office, along with a record number of recovered endangered species.
Reflecting the President’s view that parks are for the people, the Vice President also lauded the Interior Department’s opening of over 4 million acres of Fish and Wildlife Service lands for hunting and fishing, and relocating the Bureau of Land Management headquarters to Grand Junction, CO, much closer to the vast majority of the vast federal lands it administers, nearly all in the western states.
Lastly, Pence cited the Modern Fish Act, signed in January 2019, which for the first time in federal law recognizes the differences between recreational and commercial saltwater fishing. The act also adds more appropriate management tools for policymakers to use in managing diverse federal recreational fisheries.
The popular legislation “provides an opportunity for significant, positive change on behalf of millions of recreational anglers who enjoy fishing in federal waters,” noted Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation president Jeff Crane.
Despite the bipartisan nature of these major accomplishments, and their importance to America and its magnificent natural heritage, media coverage of the GAOA signing made it quite clear that mainstream reporters were loath to give any credit to President Trump. That’s sad but not unexpected.
Whether acquiring more and more federal land is a good thing, in view of the often less than stellar way existing landholdings have been managed in recent years, only time will tell. But these new laws and joint federal-state-local-tribal land management initiatives are a solid step in the right direction.
Duggan Flanakin is Director of Policy Research at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org)
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wattsupwiththat--2020-11-25--Strengthening the climate change scenario framework

Over the past decade , the climate change research community developed a scenario framework that combines alternative futures of climate and society to facilitate integrated research and consistent assessment to inform policy .
An international team of researchers assessed how well this framework is working and what challenges it faces .
The scenario framework contains a set of scenarios about how society may evolve in the future – so-called Shared Socioeconomic Pathways ( SSPs ) – and defines different levels of climate change known as Representative Concentration Pathways ( RCPs ) .
Combining both aspects of the framework allows researchers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ societies can avoid climate change and cope with its impacts .
“ The SSPs started with brief global narratives combined with projections of a few key variables like GDP , population , and urbanization .
In the past few years , researchers extended the SSPs to individual countries , cities , and sectors .
They ’ ve also added new indicators , such as governance , income distribution , access to basic services , and air pollution .
The framework has been widely and successfully applied , and has shaped climate change research @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute ( JGCRI ) and main author of the assessment published in Nature Climate Change .
“ The scenarios framework allows scientists to use similar scenarios across many different studies .
Individual research projects don ’ t need to develop their own scenario storylines and quantifications but can build on the work of others .
Once many studies use comparable scenarios , it becomes more straightforward to assess the literature for insights that emerge across these studies .
This means that large scientific assessments like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ IPCC ) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services ( IPBES ) can use the framework to structure their analyses and reports , ” adds IIASA researcher Bas van Ruijven , one of the authors of the study and co-chair of the International Committee on New Integrated Climate Change Assessment Scenarios ( ICONICS ) .
In their paper , the authors synthesize the insights from the first ever Scenarios Forum organized by the University of Denver and ICONICS in Denver , CO in March 2019 , and present the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ framework .
They specifically looked into how useful the framework has been for researchers , which topics the SSPs have been used for , and what can be done to improve the framework and make it more useful for future studies .
The results show that the framework has been used in almost 1,400 studies over the past five years , of which about half are related to climate impacts , one-third to avoiding climate change , and the remainder to extensions or methodological improvements .
Encouragingly , the findings indicate that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been possible before , such as estimating the combined impacts of socioeconomic and climate changes on exposure to climate risks .
The insights from this new study will help researchers to improve the framework and make it even more useful over the next five years .
The study also revealed that some studies use unlikely combinations of socioeconomic assumptions with the highest climate change outcomes ( the so-called RCP8.5 pathway ) .
They caution that researchers should be more careful using this high climate change scenario for their studies in combination with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as well as in communication about their findings .
The authors identified seven recommendations for future work : • Improving the integration of societal and climate conditions • Producing a broader range of reference scenarios that include impacts and policy • Keeping scenarios up to date , and • Improving the relevance of climate change scenario applications for users .
“ While the scenarios framework is mostly used by researchers , it has also been translated into accessible non-technical language for the public .
It has had a significant impact on how we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
By identifying the weaknesses of the existing framework , we improve the utility of the framework for future studies .
Also , by combining socioeconomic and climate change scenarios with other societal objectives ( e.g.
, biodiversity ) , we can paint a more concrete picture of what future societies might look like and systematically explore how to avoid climate change and how to cope with its impacts , ” notes IIASA Energy Program Director Keywan Riahi , who was also a study author .
Going forward , ICONICS and IIASA will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the scenarios framework .
To facilitate these developments , the two organizations will organize an online seminar and discussion series starting in January 2021 .
To foster and track progress , and revise goals as experience accumulates , the Scenarios Forum is intended to become a regular biennial event .
To this end , IIASA and the ICONICS Steering Committee plan to host the second Scenarios Forum in Laxenburg , Austria in 2022 .
O ’ Neill B , Carter T , Ebi K , Harrison P , Kemp-Benedict E , Kok K @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Riahi K , et al .
( 2020 ) .
Achievements and needs for the climate change scenario framework .
[ Charles Note , the paper ’ s ID appears to be incorrect .
I can ’ t find it .
Here is the link to the press release at the originating organization ]

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED SYSTEMS ANALYSIS
Research News
Over the past decade, the climate change research community developed a scenario framework that combines alternative futures of climate and society to facilitate integrated research and consistent assessment to inform policy. An international team of researchers assessed how well this framework is working and what challenges it faces.
The scenario framework contains a set of scenarios about how society may evolve in the future – so-called Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) – and defines different levels of climate change known as Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). Combining both aspects of the framework allows researchers to develop integrated analyses of how future societies can avoid climate change and cope with its impacts.
“The SSPs started with brief global narratives combined with projections of a few key variables like GDP, population, and urbanization. In the past few years, researchers extended the SSPs to individual countries, cities, and sectors. They’ve also added new indicators, such as governance, income distribution, access to basic services, and air pollution. The framework has been widely and successfully applied, and has shaped climate change research,” explains Brian O’Neill, director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI) and main author of the assessment published in Nature Climate Change.
“The scenarios framework allows scientists to use similar scenarios across many different studies. Individual research projects don’t need to develop their own scenario storylines and quantifications but can build on the work of others. Once many studies use comparable scenarios, it becomes more straightforward to assess the literature for insights that emerge across these studies. This means that large scientific assessments like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) can use the framework to structure their analyses and reports,” adds IIASA researcher Bas van Ruijven, one of the authors of the study and co-chair of the International Committee on New Integrated Climate Change Assessment Scenarios (ICONICS).
In their paper, the authors synthesize the insights from the first ever Scenarios Forum organized by the University of Denver and ICONICS in Denver, CO in March 2019, and present the first in-depth literature analysis of the SSP-RCP scenarios framework. They specifically looked into how useful the framework has been for researchers, which topics the SSPs have been used for, and what can be done to improve the framework and make it more useful for future studies.
The results show that the framework has been used in almost 1,400 studies over the past five years, of which about half are related to climate impacts, one-third to avoiding climate change, and the remainder to extensions or methodological improvements. Encouragingly, the findings indicate that the scenarios framework enables research that had not been possible before, such as estimating the combined impacts of socioeconomic and climate changes on exposure to climate risks. The insights from this new study will help researchers to improve the framework and make it even more useful over the next five years. The study also revealed that some studies use unlikely combinations of socioeconomic assumptions with the highest climate change outcomes (the so-called RCP8.5 pathway). They caution that researchers should be more careful using this high climate change scenario for their studies in combination with a development pathway aiming to sustainable development, as well as in communication about their findings.
The authors identified seven recommendations for future work:
Improving the integration of societal and climate conditions
Improving applicability to regional and local scales
Improving relevance beyond the climate research community
Producing a broader range of reference scenarios that include impacts and policy
Capturing relevant perspectives and uncertainties
Keeping scenarios up to date, and
Improving the relevance of climate change scenario applications for users.
“While the scenarios framework is mostly used by researchers, it has also been translated into accessible non-technical language for the public. It has had a significant impact on how we study and think about future climate change. By identifying the weaknesses of the existing framework, we improve the utility of the framework for future studies. Also, by combining socioeconomic and climate change scenarios with other societal objectives (e.g., biodiversity), we can paint a more concrete picture of what future societies might look like and systematically explore how to avoid climate change and how to cope with its impacts,” notes IIASA Energy Program Director Keywan Riahi, who was also a study author.
Going forward, ICONICS and IIASA will support the research community in further improving the scenarios framework. To facilitate these developments, the two organizations will organize an online seminar and discussion series starting in January 2021. To foster and track progress, and revise goals as experience accumulates, the Scenarios Forum is intended to become a regular biennial event. To this end, IIASA and the ICONICS Steering Committee plan to host the second Scenarios Forum in Laxenburg, Austria in 2022.
###
Reference
O’Neill B, Carter T, Ebi K, Harrison P, Kemp-Benedict E, Kok K, Kriegler E, Preston B, Riahi K, et al. (2020). Achievements and needs for the climate change scenario framework.
Nature Climate Change DOI: 10.1038/s41558-020-00952-0
From EurekAlert!
[Charles Note, the paper’s ID appears to be incorrect. I can’t find it. Here is the link to the press release at the originating organization]
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wattsupwiththat--2020-11-25--German Think Tank: Climate Deniers are Holding Back Climate Action

According to a German think tank , most people are not aware of the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change , with a majority of people even in European countries believing that the modern warming is at least partially a natural phenomenon .
But the survey notes even believers are reluctant to embrace expensive climate interventions .
New research in Europe and the United States shows that less than half of the public across the countries surveyed are aware of the scientific consensus on climate change .
The , commissioned by dpart , a Berlin-based think tank , and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , was published yesterday .
The data collection for the survey took place in August .
In total , the survey is based on the responses of 10,233 people , ages 18 to 74 , in Germany , France , Italy , Spain , Sweden , Poland , Czech Republic , the UK and the US .
“ Many citizens across Europe and US still don ’ t realise that scientific consensus on human responsibility for climate change is overwhelming , ” said Heather Grabbe , director of OSEPI .
“ Though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a widespread false belief , promoted by vested interests opposed to emissions reductions , that scientists are split on whether humans are causing climate change.
” “ Our polling shows that the more convinced people are that climate change is the result of human activity , the more accurately they estimate its impact and the more they want action , ” she added .
Large minorities – ranging from 17 per cent in Spain to 44 per cent in France -– still believe that climate change is caused equally by humans and natural @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do accept that climate change is the result of human action are twice as likely to believe it will cause negative consequences in their own lives .
When added to the “ hard ” sceptics , who do not believe human activity is a contributing factor to climate change , these sceptics together make up the majority in France , Poland , the Czech Republic and the USA .
The survey ( in English ) is available here .
The survey also attempted to gauge support for climate action , and noticed that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climate skepticism .
Cost matters – the survey also noticed people are reluctant to support expensive climate interventions .
“ … Overall , people in all countries see action on climate change largely through a rather personal lens .
They are more likely to consider changing their personal consumption than engage in collective action .
In terms of policy , they are in favour of a government response , but seem reluctant to support policies that directly affect them in a costly way .
… ” Why do people care about the cost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hangs in the balance ?
I suspect the inconsistencies in the climate narrative are a much bigger obstacle to acceptance of costly climate interventions than anything climate skeptics do or say .
For example , renewable energy advocates frequently claim renewables are cheaper than fossil fuel , but for some reason politicians still need to provide trillions of dollars in the form of green new deals or other costly interventions to drive the low carbon revolution .
Renewable advocates have never provided a satisfactory explanation for why the most profitable , lowest cost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Previous cost driven energy revolutions , like the switch from whale oil to lower cost kerosene , did not require any government intervention whatsoever .
From 1858 to 1860 the number of US whaling ships collapsed from 199 ships in 1858 to 167 ships in 1860 .
Only 39 whaling ships were still in operation by 1876 .
An abrupt collapse like this is the kind of pattern you would expect to see from a genuine cost driven energy revolution .
People are not stupid .
Having no satisfactory answer for obvious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enthusiasm for a proposed investment , even if a lot of people are onboard with the idea that the investment is necessary .

Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to a German think tank, most people are not aware of the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, with a majority of people even in European countries believing that the modern warming is at least partially a natural phenomenon. But the survey notes even believers are reluctant to embrace expensive climate interventions.
Denial of climate change leads to inaction Tuesday, 24 November 2020 New research in Europe and the United States shows that less than half of the public across the countries surveyed are aware of the scientific consensus on climate change. The survey , commissioned by dpart, a Berlin-based think tank, and the Open Society European Policy Institute (OSEPI), was published yesterday. The data collection for the survey took place in August. In total, the survey is based on the responses of 10,233 people, ages 18 to 74, in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Poland, Czech Republic, the UK and the US. “Many citizens across Europe and US still don’t realise that scientific consensus on human responsibility for climate change is overwhelming,” said Heather Grabbe, director of OSEPI. “Though outright denialism is rare, there is a widespread false belief, promoted by vested interests opposed to emissions reductions, that scientists are split on whether humans are causing climate change.” “Our polling shows that the more convinced people are that climate change is the result of human activity, the more accurately they estimate its impact and the more they want action,” she added. … Large minorities – ranging from 17 per cent in Spain to 44 per cent in France -– still believe that climate change is caused equally by humans and natural processes. This matters because those who do accept that climate change is the result of human action are twice as likely to believe it will cause negative consequences in their own lives. When added to the “hard” sceptics, who do not believe human activity is a contributing factor to climate change, these sceptics together make up the majority in France, Poland, the Czech Republic and the USA. … Read more: https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/142255/denial-of-climate-change-leads-to-inaction/
The survey (in English) is available here.
The survey also attempted to gauge support for climate action, and noticed that climate action skepticism was strongly correlated with climate skepticism.
Cost matters – the survey also noticed people are reluctant to support expensive climate interventions. “… Overall, people in all countries see action on climate change largely through a rather personal lens. They are more likely to consider changing their personal consumption than engage in collective action. In terms of policy, they are in favour of a government response, but seem reluctant to support policies that directly affect them in a costly way. …”
Why do people care about the cost, if the future of the planet hangs in the balance?
I suspect the inconsistencies in the climate narrative are a much bigger obstacle to acceptance of costly climate interventions than anything climate skeptics do or say.
For example, renewable energy advocates frequently claim renewables are cheaper than fossil fuel, but for some reason politicians still need to provide trillions of dollars in the form of green new deals or other costly interventions to drive the low carbon revolution.
Renewable advocates have never provided a satisfactory explanation for why the most profitable, lowest cost energy option needs so much government assistance.
Previous cost driven energy revolutions, like the switch from whale oil to lower cost kerosene, did not require any government intervention whatsoever. From 1858 to 1860 the number of US whaling ships collapsed from 199 ships in 1858 to 167 ships in 1860. Only 39 whaling ships were still in operation by 1876. An abrupt collapse like this is the kind of pattern you would expect to see from a genuine cost driven energy revolution.
People are not stupid. Having no satisfactory answer for obvious questions is the easiest way to kill enthusiasm for a proposed investment, even if a lot of people are onboard with the idea that the investment is necessary.
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