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Dr. William M Briggs
The Pontifical Academy for Science's summary of their recent conference on sustainability, itself anticipating our Holy Father's (supposed) environmental encyclical, is suffused with scientific inaccuracies, some small, others large. But these are forgivable, considering the hearts of its authors are in the right place; and perhaps the theology of the document is sound.
The PAS said, "Unsustainable consumption coupled with a record human population and the uses of inappropriate technologies are causally linked with the destruction of the world's sustainability and resilience." What is "sustainability"?
If a resource is limited, in the sense of it being finite and non-renewable, then any use of it whatsoever diminishes its stock and makes that part of it unavailable to others. Thus any use of a truly non-renewable resource is by definition unsustainable. With one proviso, if used at any rate greater than zero, it must eventually be depleted.
Now non-renewable means that which cannot be renewed. All resources on this planet are finite, because the earth is finite, and so everything is unsustainable given sufficient time. "For the sword outwears its sheath..." But some resources are finitely renewable in the sense that the resource can be used repeatedly, like aluminum in cans. And other resources are plainly non-renewable, such as coal and crude oil. Once they are used up, they are gone forevermore.
The Effect Of People
Enter the proviso. Any use of a non-renewable is unsustainable if the number of expected future people exceeds the per-person consumption rate. Suppose on average each person uses one gallon of oil per day. There are around seven billion people alive today. Assuming a steady population, over the next year these people will use around three trillion gallons of oil. If we estimate the stock of oil at one thousand trillion gallons, and if these (mostly fictional) numbers were to hold steady, then we'd have about three centuries of oil left.
The calculation is complicated. To decide if a non-renewable resource is unsustainable depends on how much of it there is, the changing rate of its use, and the number of people expected in the future. It also hinges on whether the non-renewable will remain non-renewable, that a substitute for the non-renewable will not be discovered, and that the effect caused by use of the non-renewable will always be desired. We must know all these things, else the point at which we run out of the non-renewable will be unknown. If we do not know all these things, it is wrong to claim use of a resource is "unsustainable." Let's take each item in turn.
There are tremendous uncertainties in estimates of non-renewable stockpiles. How much crude oil is left? There are many widely varying answers, but no consensus. How much uranium? How much coal? How many rare earth minerals? How much of some other substance which is not now seen as important but which, after some technological change or cultural innovation, will become crucial? All great questions, and all with wide plus-or-minus bounds.
The rate at which a thing is used depends on the number of people using it, which itself depends on culture and politics and the state of technology. We can form reasonable but imperfect guesses of consumption for the here-and-now, but forecasting use is fraught with danger. Even supposing a fixed population, no serious student of history can be comfortable projecting shifts in culture, and only the foolish are sure of what lies ahead technologically. Technology can change so that the resource used is needed more or needed less to produce the same effects, or technology can lead to the discovery of substitutes for the resource's effects. Or the effects themselves - and this falls under culture - can be seen as less or more desirable.
We enjoy lighting in our abodes but no longer employ whale oil for this effect. This non-renewable resource would have been depleted given the population rise since 1900 and the increased demand for the effect. But - much of the increase in the demand was caused by the improving technology and the substitution of electricity. Nobody in 1900 came remotely close to predicting these changes. Who can say with any certainty what effects people a century hence will demand or how the effects demanded will be produced?
Are People Good Or Bad?
And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein. Evidently, God likes people; he likes having them about, and desires more of them. Contrariwise, environmentalists are suspicious of people; they don't like having them about; some have even called people a "cancer." God called creation Good. Environmentalists agree, but they idealize a state of Pure Nature, a place apart from Man, a state to which Nature can return if Man is removed. But Man in God's scheme is inseparable from Nature.
God's scheme has the merit of being scientifically correct. The PAS speaks of "human interference with the Earth System." But Man's presence is integral with every other species, and with the planet itself. And the same is true of other life, both with respect to Man and to Nature. Man developed in concert with other species and with the earth as a whole. Each part of Nature therefore necessarily touches each other. After Man's arrival, he was forever unified with the whole of Nature. It is thus false to say, "That over there is Nature, and this Man."
It is also false to say, "That over there is Nature, and these are aardvarks." Or radishes. Nature must affect all life, and all life must affect all of Nature. The effects each species have will be different, of course, and vary in size and range. Life creates what Nature is. The PAS is wrong. While Man exists, it is impossible to "minimize" Man's (or aardvarks' "interference" with Nature. If any man (or aardvark) exists, there is no non-interference, there are only differing effects.
How Many Of Us?
Population began its rapid rise with the increase in technological sophistication, primarily agricultural innovation. As the late philosopher David Stove labored in vain to show us, people always get Malthus wrong: It is not that more people are encroaching upon more food sources, it is that more food leads to more people. Plentiful, cheap, and nutritious food caused, or rather allowed, the increase. Think: if there is not enough food, there cannot be an increase in population! It follows there cannot be "too many" people. The PAS speaks of a "sustainable population," yet the number of people must always be equal or less than the number that can be supported. And, as we'll see below, it is increasingly less.
To within a power of ten, and including those currently alive, there have lived about 100 billion people. How many does God want? Nobody knows, but He said there'd be many as like the stars of heaven. When does God want these people to be born? Nobody knows, not even environmentalists. How many more people will be born? We might be able to guess - and we need to, if we're going to claim non-sustainability of any resource.
The number of future people cannot be infinite for two reasons, one scientific, one eschatological. The earth is finite, and the solar system is winding down, as it were. But these astronomical observations pale next to the promise God made us. Time will end. In the very last chapter of Summa Contra Gentiles, St Thomas said, "the movement of the heavens will cease when the number of men is complete." Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead. Maranatha. When? But of that day and hour no one knoweth, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone. I stress this "no one" includes environmentalists, scientists, and even theologians.
Our bounds for future population numbers are thus necessarily loose. If Jesus comes in the next moment, there will be no more children; but if he tarries, we know he won't tarry indefinitely. The best we can say are things like this: if Our Lord tarries until 2100, and given various other fallible assumptions about human behavior, there will be about X many more people.
Cultural Hubris
Let's try - we will not be entirely successful - to characterize these fallible assumptions. Who are not having babies? Strangely, it's those who are most comfortable with and in the world. People delay marriage and baby-making so that they can establish themselves, make money, and acquire things. It's the successful who say they can't make babies because they cannot "afford" them. Large families are also somewhat shameful. Nobody wants to be told they're breeding like rabbits.
Another paradox. Particularly in the so-called First World, small families use relatively more resources than large. Speaking on average, eight-person families do not have four times as many houses, cars, televisions and so forth as a childless couple. The eight eat more than the two, but perhaps not four times as well. The eight cannot afford to live as sumptuously, because they have to stretch their income.
Unless one is dedicated to God or to some other noble cause, having fewer or no children allows more time to be spent in the pursuit of wealth. Environmentalists like to point out that if the entire world lived as Americans do, resources would be depleted at a higher rate. This is true, ceteris paribus. But the environmentalist solution is to encourage people to have fewer children, and the lack of children allows people to focus more on themselves and thus use more resources! This is not the first time liberal policies would create the very problem they seek to solve.
Incompatible Weltanschauung
There are also theological difficulties created by the methods environmentalists advocate to reduce population: contraception, abortion, and the encouragement of sexual acts not directed toward procreation. Environmentalist ideology is not pro-, but is anti-creation. Profligacy and gluttony are sins, as both Catholics and Environmentalists agree. Yet though we sometimes fail to husband our resources wisely - there is much waste and improper pursuit of material wealth - having a second car is surely less morally perilous than killing a child ("aborting" both the unborn and born) or preventing its birth. Environmentalists would have us save our planet but lose our souls.
To state any non-renewable resource is unsustainable requires knowing many things which are difficult or nearly impossible to estimate. We need to know the amount of the resource now present, details of the technologies which use the resource, the effects desired, the nature of a changing culture, politics, and science, and more. Except in the simplest circumstances, certainty cannot be claimed. Yet the PAS would have us believe the end is nigh. Why?
The difference between environmentalist sustainability ideology and Catholic theology is people. People are a nuisance or a necessity, apart from or a part of Nature, created for the sake of themselves or for the sake of God. These worldviews are incompatible. This much is certain: if people stopped having babies, Mankind itself would be unsustainable. Father James Schall is right:
The root of the "sustainability mission," I suspect, is the practical denial of eternal life. "Sustainability" is an alternative to lost transcendence. It is what happens when suddenly no future but the present one exists. The only "future" of mankind is an on-going planet orbiting down the ages. It always does the exact same, boring thing. This view is actually a form of despair. Our end is the preservation of the race down the ages, not personal eternal life.
Environmentalist eschatology is not Catholic. When the earth is all there is, you rage at the dying of the light and seek perfection everywhere but where it exists.
Steve Milloy
The Energy Institute is concerned about EPA's proposed ozone regulations, which studies have found could be the most expensive regulation every implemented. EPA's new regulations will dramatically increase "nonattainment areas" throughout the country. The rules will immediately add red tape to economic development that is vital to growing new jobs. Nonattainment areas face even more severe requirements that significantly curtail business development. Companies building or expanding facilities in nonattainment areas are required to reduce ozone-forming emissions regardless of cost, and economic development cannot move forward unless such emissions are reduced from other sources. These impacts are illustrated in the Energy Institute�s ozone infographic, available as a PDF here and shown above.
We have steadily reduced ozone levels - which are now at their lowest levels in three decades - and grown our economy significantly while doing so. But EPA's latest regulatory push goes too far, too fast, and will strangle jobs and economic growth across much of the country. America's communities need to know the dramatic negative impact of these proposed regulations - share this infographic with your friends today.
See more here. More. http://www.energyxxi.org/what-does-epas-ozone-regulation-mean-your-community
Icecap Update: See Judith Curry's insightful look into government funding of scientific research "Is federal funding biasing climate research?" CATO has published a very interesting analysis by David Wojick and Pat Michaels entitled Is the Government Buying Science or Support? A Framework Analysis of Federal Funding-induced Biases".
By Steve Milloy
Remember just two months ago when the media savaged climate skeptic Willie Soon for supposedly failing to disclose industry funding? It's a pity the media doesn't.
Yesterday, the media trumpeted a new article in the journal Nature Climate Change supporting EPA's claim that its carbon dioxide rule would save thousands of lives per year. Here's the New York Times headline:
EPA study headline NYTimes 050515
The study authors,
Driscoll study authors
were simply and innocuously described by the media as:
"researchers at Syracuse and Harvard Universities" (New York Times);
"scientists from Harvard and Syracuse universities and four other institutions" (Washington Post)
"from Harvard and Syracuse University" (Associated Press).
And, of course, why would the articles authors be described in any other way since they made the following disclosure at the end of the article:
Driscoll disclosure
Article co-author Driscoll even told the Buffalo News that he had "no dog in the fight":
Driscoll no dog in fight comment
But is this really true? Do Charles Driscoll, Joel Schwarz and Jonathan Levy really have NO competing financial interests?
Anyone who follows EPA air quality "research" is no doubt convulsing at this claim.
Below are listed the article's authors and the dollar amounts of EPA grants with which they are associated as principal investigators":
Charles T. Driscoll: $3,654,608
Jonathan J. Buonocore: $9,588
Jonathan I. Levy: $9,514,391
Kathleen F. Lambert: 0
Dallas Burtraw: $1,991,346
Stephen B. Reid: 0
Habibollah Fakhaei: 0
Joel Schwartz: $31,176,575
Now how could Schwartz's $31,176,575 or Levy's $9,514,361 or Driscoll's $3,654,608 from EPA possibly be considered as a "competing financial interest" in an article they wrote in support of EPA's flagship regulatory effort?
Comically, the US News and World Report reported:
Driscoll EPA not part clip
A Harvard School of Public Health described the researchers as "independent":
Driscoll Harvard clip independent
Right… the $45 million these researchers have been paid by EPA over the years - plus the prospect of more money - had no influence over them.
Let's not overlook that Driscoll admitted to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the result of this study was predetermined:
Driscoll wanted to bring attention
It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Anyway…
Willie Soon was repeatedly raked over the coals by the media for his alleged failure to disclose industry funding of his work. Democrats in Congress (Rep. Raul Grijalva, and Sens. Boxer/Markey/Whitehouse) launched attacks on universities and businesses for funding climate skeptics.
Soon defended himself by saying:
...In submitting my academic writings I have always complied with what I understood to be disclosure practices in my field generally, consistent with the level of disclosure made by many of my Smithsonian colleagues.
"If the standards for disclosure are to change, then let them change evenly. If a journal that has peer-reviewed and published my work concludes that additional disclosures are appropriate, I am happy to comply. I would ask only that other authors-on all sides of the debate-are also required to make similar disclosures. And I call on the media outlets that have so quickly repeated my attackers' accusations to similarly look into the motivations of and disclosures that may or may not have been made by their preferred, IPCC-linked scientists…
The hypocrisy (is there a stronger word?) is breathtaking.
Oh and by the way, the claim that EPA's carbon dioxide rules is going to save lives is total nonsense.
Update: Lord Monckton has filed a research misconduct complaint with Harvard University.
I am appalled that objectivity has been so blatantly disregarded by our government and the world's environmentalists who would use erroneous climate model results to justify their faulty AGW pronouncement which are injurious to humanity.
Gray's View on AGW.
We AGW skeptics need to be able to offer two basic plausible physical explanations in order to negate the AGW hypothesis.
1. Why projected CO2 increases over the next 50-100 years will only be able to bring about very small amounts (0.2-0.4C) of global mean temperature rise.
2. Why there is natural climate change unrelated to CO2 variations? We need a believable physical explanation for the global climate changes over the last few thousand years (Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period, etc.) and in particular the apparent quite modest global warming of the last century. We also need an explanation of the shorter time-scale multi-decadal global warming periods (1910-1940, 1975-1999) and of the global cooling or neutral periods (1880-1910, 1940-1974, and 1999-2015).
Explanation #1 can be understood as a result of CO2 increases causing more global precipitation and associated increase in the globe's deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convective clouds. These CO2 induced precipitation increases bring about upper tropospheric drying which allows more infrared (IR) flux to space - a negative water-vapor feedback. This extra rainfall enhances surface evaporation cooling which acts to balance out most of the expected global warming resulting from CO2's increasing blockage of IR to space (3.7 Wm-2 for a CO2 doubling). This prevents CO2 increases from bringing about any significant global warming. Only minimal warming (0.2-0.4C) is going to occur with a doubling of CO2. The main effect of CO2 increases will be an enhancement of global average precipitation of about 3 percent. This enhanced global rainfall will occur in regions where it is already raining and should be hardly noticed.
Explanation #2 can be explained by the multi-decadal and multi-century variations in the globe's deep ocean circulations (or Meridional Overturning Circulation or MOC) which are primarily driven by space and time variations of oceanic salinity. Salinity changes occur in ocean areas where there are long period differences in surface evaporation minus precipitation. This is especially the situation of the Atlantic where ocean evaporation is 10-20 percent greater than precipitation. Salinity driven ocean changes bring about alterations in the strength of the Atlantic Ocean Thermohaline Circulation (THC), and through Pacific basin upwelling response variations to variation in the Pacific multi-decadal oscillation (PDO) as well. There is also salinity driven ocean subsidence around the Antarctic continent. All these factors influence the strength of the MOC.
Most of the globe's last century weak global warming has, in my view, been a consequence of a modest slowdown of the global oceans MOC. This last century long MOC slowdown is also detected in an associated weak increase (in milliseconds) in the earth's rate of rotation.
Lack of Ability of Other Suggested Non-ocean Climate Change Mechanisms to Rival or be Superior to Coming CO2 Influences. The many other non-ocean proposed physical ideas for climate change (where orbital parameters do not play a role) such as
1. Solar variability
2. Sun-spot changes
3. Cosmic ray variability
4. Aerosol changes
5. Human land use changes
6. Volcanic activity
may each play a minor role in some aspects of the globe's climate alteration. But the individual physical influence of each of these suggested mechanisms is too small to be used as a dominant physical argument against the CO2 change hypothesis.
None of the above proposed climate change mechanisms well match the observed past changes in global temperature. In addition, the magnitude of potential energy change from these above non-ocean physical mechanisms does not have the power to come close to producing the climate changes which the variations of the deep ocean circulations are capable of bringing about.
We AGW skeptics who have proposed non-ocean climate change mechanisms as an alternate to CO2 induced climate changes will continue to have difficulty in rebutting the CO2 advocates. These alternate physical hypothesizes do not have enough supporting observational evidence to allow any one of them or a combination of them to be judged to be more dominant than the changes which future CO2 increases will be able to bring about.
We critics of the AGW CO2 warming hypothesis need a more dominant alternate physical hypothesis which is stronger and which better conforms in time with the global observations. Changes in the ocean's deep circulation currents appears to be, by far, the best physical explanation for the observed global surface temperature changes (see Gray 2009, 2011, 2012, 2012). It seems ridiculous to me for both the AGW advocates and us skeptics to so closely monitor current weather and short-time climate change as indication of CO2's influence on our climate. This assumes that the much more dominant natural climate changes that have always occurred are no longer in operation or have relevance.
Cumulus Convection Influences.
Most cumulus convection is organized in meso-scale cloud clusters containing 10 to 20 individual Cb convective elements which are typically concentrated in areas of 200-500 km wide. The individual deep Cb convective cells within these cloud-cluster systems are often arranged in lines and new convective elements are continuously being formed and dissipated. Each new Cb convective element goes through a typical lifecycles of an hour or so. The strong downdrafts from the late stages of these dying Cb elements typically contribute to the low-level mass forcing needed for the initiating of other new adjacent Cb clouds. This is why multiple Cb clouds tend to cluster together.
Cb clouds penetrate well into the middle and upper troposphere. The excess mass within the weakening upper-level Cb elements diverge and spread out as cirrus clouds. This higher level extra mass and cirrus cloudiness then begins to undergo sinking so as to make space and satisfy mass balance for the new emerging upper tropospheric Cb penetrating elements.
Subsidence Drying.
Cumulonimbus updraft elements have very high rainfall efficiency as they weaken and die in the very cold upper troposphere. The very cold air at these upper tropospheric levels can hold (even at saturation) very little water-vapor (only about 1% of the low-level moisture content by mass and 0.1 of 1% by volume) compared to the middle and lower tropospheric moisture contents. This very low water-vapor content air from the upper Cb outflow then sinks, evaporates its cloud particles, and arrives at lower levels where the saturated water-vapor contents are much higher. The original upper-level dry air then mixes with the lower level air. This mixture of air at the lower level becomes drier than the air at this level was before any of the upper-level air mixed into it.
A saturated air parcel from a dying Cb cloud which sinks from the 200 mb (12 km height) level to the lower pressure height of 300 mb (10 km ht.) will arrive at this lower-level with a RH of only 10-12 percent of the lower level air. These unusually large upper-level subsidence drying amounts are a consequence of the very large gradient of saturated vapor pressure in the upper troposphere. Vertical gradients of saturated vapor pressure at middle and lower tropospheric levels are, percentage wise, much smaller.
An increase in global deep convective (Cb) activity as a result of CO2 increases will thus bring drying (not moistening) to the upper troposphere, just the opposite of the climate models projections. This upper tropospheric drying acts to lower the infrared (IR) radiation emission level (EL) to a lower height and a warmer temperature where larger amounts of IR energy (σT4) are able to be fluxed to space. Increases in net global Cb convective activity results in higher amounts of IR energy being fluxed to space, not lower amounts as all the climate modelers and their fellow AGW advocates believe.
Our extensive analysis of the ISCCP data well shows the degree to which the broad upper-level sinking air from the global rain areas have had their RH reduced when an enhancement of the global rainfall rate (and accompanied increase in Cb convection) occurs. Please see the attached short write-up "Crux of AGWs Flawed Science" for more detailed discussion and clarifying figures and tables.
How Global Temperature Will Change as CO2 Increases.
The rise of CO2 gas occurs very slowly. By contrast, the troposphere's hydrologic cycle and its energy dissipation cycle operate on a time-scale of only around 10 days. Any CO2 radiational induced warming will be quickly felt by the earth's surface and will immediately act to enhance surface evaporation. The more surface evaporation, the less the surface will warm.
A doubling of CO2 gas in the atmosphere will cause an alteration of our global climate but not in the same way as envisioned by the climate modelers or by the majority of scientists studying this topic. Most researchers concentrate only on the direct radiation influences which CO2 increases bring about. They tend not to consider the other related feedback mechanisms which will be simultaneously activated as CO2 amounts increase. The increased global evaporation from CO2 increase will extract energy from the earth's surface and enhance surface cooling. This will act to reduce the pure radiation assumed 1C warming through both enhanced IR energy flux to space and enhanced surface evaporation. The more evaporation from a doubling of CO2 will act to further reduce the 1C direct radiation only temperature response. As the CO2's induced speed-up of the globe's hydrologic cycle continues the cooling influences of the enhanced surface evaporation-precipitation will greatly suppress any pure radiation assumed rise of 1C. Doubling CO2 will thus be able to bring about only a quite modest global warming. The main influence of a doubling of CO2 will be to increase average global precipitation.
Basic Flaw of the AGW Hypothesis.
It is the climate models parameterization schemes for cumulus convection (particularly the deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convection) which are grossly unrealistic and which completely negates the global modeler's projections of 2-5C warming for a doubling of CO2. This does not mean that the globe won't be measurably influenced from CO2 doubling. But this CO2 influence will occur primarily as an enhancement of the global hydrologic cycle (precipitation) and only minimally from a rise in global surface temperature.
The AGW hypothesis that warming from increased CO2 will enhance global rainfall is correct. But the assumption that this added rainfall and added tropospheric condensation warming will greatly increase upper tropospheric temperature and water-vapor (through the assumption of constancy of relative humidity) is not at all valid. The opposite occurs. Increased deep Cb convection causes dryness to the upper troposphere. The climate modeler's large increase in upper tropospheric water-vapor and temperature from added CO2 does not agree with the physics of how real-world deep Cb convection functions. And the additional positive feedback doubling of the upper troposphere warming and moistening which they add to the direct CO2 radiation blockage is completely bogus. This additional feedback assumption greatly increases the divergence of their model simulations from reality.
The global climate modelers assumed that CO2 enhanced global rainfall will bring about large upper-tropospheric water-vapor and temperature increases. These upper-level water-vapor increases are then projected to bring about even larger temperature increases and additional water-vapor (positive water-vapor feedback) amounts which add twice as much additional blockage of infrared (IR) energy to space than the initial influence of the CO2 blockage alone. Such large water-vapor and temperature increases are not at all realistic. This is the Achilles-heel of the whole AGW theory.
None of the global climate modelers or other AGW advocates seem to know that the globe's deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convection processes act, not to increase upper level water-vapor, but in an opposite sense to reduce the globe's upper tropospheric water-vapor content. The global climate modelers live in a very isolated Ivory Tower world. Their positive water-vapor feedback schemes in their doubling of CO2 simulations shows that they know next to nothing about how the atmosphere's cumulus convective and moisture processes really function.
Gray Research Project. I and my Colorado State University (CSU) research project have a long background in studying cumulus convection, and particularly deep and intense cumulonimbus (Cb) convection of the tropics associated with meso-scale rain systems and tropical cyclones. We have published a lot of material on this subject over many years. These convective studies appear to provide crucial background information fundamental to establishing the invalidity of the AGW hypothesis. My CSU project's over 50 years of tropical meteorology research has, by necessity, had to make the study of cumulus cloud convection a priority item for the understanding of tropical circulations and tropical cyclones. Our information has been gained from my project's extensive involvement in many field experiments and from rawinsonde compositing activities over many years and recently through extensive analysis of ISCCP and NOAA Reanalysis data. To my knowledge, none of the AGW proponents have ever referred to any of my project's many published papers and project reports.
Any scientist having advanced and detailed knowledge and working level experience of the globe's deep cumulus convection process can completely negate the scientific validity of the AGW hypothesis. This could have been done decades ago if there had been an open and honest debate and further research on how changes in cumulus convective dynamics are related to CO2 increase. This greatly needed open and objective debate on cumulus convection process began and was taking place during the late 1960s and 1970s. But these studies were discontinued during the 1980s-1990s when the global models began to show useful results which the politicians, environmentalists, and the world government advocates could use to back up their desired AGW hypothesis. They did not want any further tampering with the models and the earlier momentum build-up for cumulus-moist process research did not go forward. The AGW advocates needed to utilize the unrealistic CO2 doubling climate model warming results as a scare mechanism to advance their agendas. And the CO2 global climate modeling community was quite happy to provide this justification and be well rewarded for their efforts.
Please see the attached paper "Crux of AGW's Flawed Science" for full background discussion with figures and tables.
See these two stories in the Patriot Post:
A Winter to Remember
Satellite Data Defies NOAA and NASA Claims
Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
Dr. Roy Spencer introduced the updated and much corrected UAH atmospheric temperature data in his blog post Version 6.0 of the UAH Temperature Dataset Released: New LT Trend = +0.11 C/decade. The new temperature anomaly data for the lower troposphere, mid troposphere and lower stratosphere are presently in beta form for comment. That is, they're not official...yet. I suspect the update will not go over well with the catastrophic-anthropogenic-global-warming crowd. Links to the version 6.0 beta data are at the bottom of Roy's post, which also contains a detailed discussion of the updates. So if you have questions, please ask them at Roy Spencer's blog through the above link. This post is a simple data presentation.
The version 6.0 beta temperature anomaly data for the lower troposphere used in this post are here.
In this post, we'll take a quick look at the new UAH version 6.0 beta lower troposphere temperature anomaly data, comparing it to: (1) the current UAH version 5.6 data and (2) the RSS lower troposphere temperature data.
But first…
For Figure 1, I've extended the new UAH version 6.0 beta and the RSS lower troposphere temperature anomaly data as far back in time as they could go while showing no warming based on their linear trends. The new UAH data show no warming for 219 months, and for the RSS data, it's 220 months.
Figure 1 Enlarged
The following is a reprint of the initial discussion of lower troposphere temperature data from the monthly updates. The most recent update is here.
Special sensors (microwave sounding units) aboard satellites have orbited the Earth since the late 1970s, allowing scientists to calculate the temperatures of the atmosphere at various heights above sea level. The level nearest to the surface of the Earth is the lower troposphere. The lower troposphere temperature data include the altitudes of zero to about 12,500 meters, but are most heavily weighted to the altitudes of less than 3000 meters.
See the left-hand cell of the illustration here. The lower troposphere temperature data are calculated from a series of satellites with overlapping operation periods, not from a single satellite. The monthly UAH lower troposphere temperature data is the product of the Earth System Science Center of the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). UAH provides the data broken down into numerous subsets. See the webpage here [version 5.6 data]. The UAH lower troposphere temperature data are supported by Christy et al. (2000) MSU Tropospheric Temperatures: Dataset Construction and Radiosonde Comparisons. Additionally, Dr. Roy Spencer of UAH presents at his blog the monthly UAH TLT data updates a few days before the release at the UAH website. UAH uses the base years of 1981-2010 for anomalies. The UAH lower troposphere temperature data are for the latitudes of 85S to 85N, which represent more than 99% of the surface of the globe.
Figure 2 compares the current version 5.6 UAH lower troposphere temperature anomaly data to the recently released version 6.0 beta. The comparisons start in the Januarys of 1979, 1998 and 2001 and run through March 2015. The first full year of the UAH lower troposphere temperature data is 1979, while 1998 and 2001 are commonly used as start years during discussions of the recent slowdown in global surface and global lower troposphere temperatures. They are the same time periods we present in the monthly surface and lower troposphere temperature anomaly updates. See the most recent update here.
Figure 2 Enlarged
Since 1979, the new version (v6.0 beta) of the UAH lower troposphere temperature data show a noticeably lower warming rate than current version 5.6 data. For the periods starting in 1998 and 2001, the new beta version data show cooling of the lower troposphere based on the linear trends, while the current 5.6 version data show warming.
The warming rate since 1979 for the new UAH data is slightly less than (basically the same as) the lower troposphere temperature anomaly data from RSS. The shorter term cooling rates since 1998 and 2001 are also comparable. See the graphs in Figure 3.
Figure 3 Enlarged
The RSS lower troposphere temperature data used to be an outlier, showing much lower trends than the surface temperature data and the UAH lower troposphere data. That will no longer be the case with the new UAH version 6.0 data.
The UAH version 6.0 beta lower troposphere temperature anomaly data are here.
The UAH version 5.6 lower troposphere temperature anomaly data are here.
The RSS lower troposphere temperature anomaly data are here.
By Joseph D'Aleo, CCM
The eastern Pacific has driven the climate bus the last two years. The warm water moved into the Gulf of Alaska in 2013 and the Alaska ridge pumped down arctic and at times Siberian air down to the Great Lakes and east. A constant stream of clipper storms brought snow almost every other day to the lakes.
In 2014 the warm water was carried south along the west coast and aided by diminished upwelling with a displaced/weakened Pacific high, helped as it did in the mid 1970s, produce the California drought. See the sea surface temperature anomalies this winter.
Though the media wants to focus on the western warmth and drought, the bigger story has been the cold and snow to the east the last two winters.
Chicago had its coldest December to March in the record back to 1872 and third snowiest winter in 2013/14, Detroit had its snowiest winter since 1880.
See the brutal 2013/14 winter that focused on the Great lakes and Upper Midwest.
This winter, the trough and the axis of coldest air was in the mean farther east, the expansion east made easier by a cooling North Atlantic. The cold shifted to the northeast and all of the cities in eastern Canada, which had their coldest February and January to March and in many places in the east, the snowiest ever on record (similar to what we saw and earlier wrote about in parts of central New England).
We wrote about the remarkable February 2015 in March.
This week, NCDC updated their Climate pages to include March 2015 and looked at the brutal eastern January to March story for the Northeast, and the cold in the Upper Midwest, Ohio Valley, South and Southeast.
In the northeast region (the 10 eastern states with all the major metros and DC) had their coldest January to March in the record back to 1895.
The trend the last 20 years has been down 1.5F/decade!
It has cooled in the last 20 years in the Ohio Valley, Great Lakes/Upper Midwest, South and Southeast.
Western, Northwest and Southwest plots, which had two decade cooling trends though 2012 have turned up with the warmer winters the last two years.
The last two winters have been throwback winters for the Great Lakes and northeast.
No one who has lived in central New England including the Boston area has experienced a 6-week and calendar month as extreme for the combination of cold and snow as we have this late winter. Here in the Nashua area, February 2015 was the coldest month ever recorded with an average temperature of 12.2F. It beat out January 1888, which had averaged 12.9F. A record 18 days had low temperatures zero or below (as cold as 14F below). 25 days remained freezing or below, also a record.
In Boston where temperature records began in 1872, this month was exceeded only by February 1934, which brought Boston their all-time record of -18F. Temperatures never rose out of the 30s this year in February in Boston though it topped 40 four times in 1934.
The cold in February 2015 was not confined to the Boston-Nashua area. It was the coldest month ever in Worcester, Hartford and Portland. It was the coldest February in Chicago and Cleveland and 3rd coldest in New York City, 5th coldest month ever in Detroit and Baltimore, both with records back into the early 1870s.
The year Nashua replaced, 1888, was the year was the year of the Blizzard of '88 in March. That storm called 'The Great White Hurricane' dumped as much as 50 inches of snow in parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts, while parts of New Jersey and New York had up to 40 inches. Drifts were reported to average 30-40 feet, over the tops of houses from New York to New England, with reports of drifts covering three-story houses. That storm spared eastern New England its worst as milder Atlantic air dominated the early stages of that storm with less than 2 feet here in the Nashua area and just 12" in Boston although 42" fell in southwest New Hampshire at Dublin.
2015 in Nashua had a record February for snowfall, though Boston had more with 64.6 inches and 100.4 inches in the 39 days following January 24th. The 110.6 inches exceeded the 107.6 inch record from 1995/96. The snow that year was spread out over 6 months with thaws, not concentrated so much in less than 6 weeks. The snow blitz and the intense cold is why the snow piles were so high this year.
Looking back through accounts of big snows in New England by the late weather historian David Ludlum, it appears for the eastern areas, this winters snowblitz may have delivered the most snow since perhaps 1717.
That year, snows had reached 5 feet in December with drifts of 25 feet in January before one great last assault in late February into early March of 40 to 60 more inches. The snow was so deep that people could only leave their houses from the second floor, implying actual snow depths of as much as 8 feet or more. The New England Historical Society's account indicated New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut were hardest hit, a lot like 2015 in what was known as the year of the great snows.
"Entire houses were covered over, identifiable only by a thin curl of smoke coming out of a hole in the snow. In Hampton, N.H., search parties went out after the storms hunting for elderly people at risk of freezing to death… Sometimes they were found burning their furniture because they couldn't get to the woodshed. People maintained tunnels and paths through the snow from house to house."
The driver for this winter was a peculiar configuration of ocean warm and cold pools, similar to the frigid winters of 1916/17, 1917/18, 1976/77 and 1977/78. We correctly forecasted the last two historic winters many months in advance based on the ocean patterns. The models suggest the ocean temperatures remain in this configuration this spring and summer resulting in a cool spring and relatively cool and wet summer.
You may hear or read the increased snow is consistent with global warming because warmer air holds more moisture. In actual fact, only 1 of the 14 years with more than 60 inches of snow in Boston was warmer than normal.
During the 40 days of snowy weather this winter, we averaged over 11F below normal. Cooling increases snowfall not warming. Indeed winter temperatures have cooled over the last two decades in the United States which fits with the fact that 10 year running mean of Boston area snowfall has increased to the highest level since snow records were first kept in 1890.
The cold continued in March here in New England. The month averaged 5.8F below normal here in Nashua and 5.1F below in Boston. There were only four 50F days after no 40F days in February in Boston. This compares with seventeen 50F days, eleven 60F days, seven 70F days and one 80F day in March 2012.
The January to March average temperatures were the coldest in the entire record in Nashua, Worcester, Providence, Hartford and third coldest in Boston behind only 1885 and 1895.
Ironically 2012 was the warmest first quarter in the record. Despite that spike then, temperatures in the winter (and cold season) in the US (including the northeast states) have declined for over 20 years, which fits with the fact that 10 year running mean of Boston and eastern New England area snowfall has increased to the highest level since snow records were first kept in 1890. This season, most areas of central New England had the snowiest mid to late winter and many spots the snowiest season on record.
The combination of cold and snow here to northern areas and back to the Great Lakes the last two winters, harkens back to the Little Ice Age that ended in the early 20th century.
In 2013/14, Chicago had their coldest December to March back to 1872 and third snowiest while Detroit had their snowiest back to 1880.
The Adirondacks in these years usually gets the worst of the arctic cold. Saranac Lake in February 2015 was 13.6F below normal with 23 sub-zero days, no day reaching freezing and 4 record lows. March had 15 days zero or below with 10 record lows. Last March (2014), Saranac Lake was 11.4F below normal with 10 sub-zero days and 7 record lows. These were two amazing late winters.
I learned early in my career from the some of the giants in the field like Jerome Namias how ocean temperature pools that change locations with changes in the global ocean current circulation patterns in conjunction with strong El Nino and La Nina events are important to where the jet stream sets up and how strong and persistent it is. This determines how extreme winters and summer are for both temperature and precipitation.
A super La Nina in 2010/11 (2nd strongest in 120 years by some measures), set up warm water in the central Pacific and cold water near the west coast of North America, which lead to that record warm and droughty 2011/12 central and eastern winter, spring and summer. That warm water came east first to off of Alaska last year leading to the historic winter near the western Lakes and North Central and then the warm water was carried by the currents southeast to the entire west coast forcing the cold to take aim more on the eastern Lakes and Northeast.
Similar changes occurred in the Atlantic. Starting in 2007, warm North Atlantic helped build high pressure in the Polar Regions and drive Siberian air west to Europe where in December 2010, the UK had their second coldest December since 1659 in the Little Ice Age.
Though scientists had warned them snow was a thing of the past, the UK and much of northern Europe had all-time record snows and cold in 5 of 6 years. The North Atlantic turned cold last year and more so this year and Europe turned milder. But a cold North Atlantic means colder and snowier winters in eastern Canada, the Great Lakes and northeast. The Atlantic thus helped exaggerate the Pacific driven cold last two winters.
At Weatherbell.com, where we use the oceans and sun in our statistical models for long-range prediction, we successfully predicted many months in advance these historic winters.
Obama Pushes 'Serious Threat' of Global Warming Days After Fall of Ramadi; Networks Yawn
The "big three" of ABC, CBS, and NBC showed no interest in covering on Wednesday night the optics of President Obama touting global warming as a "serious threat," in a speech to graduates of the Coast Guard Academy, days after the Iraqi city of Ramadi fell to ISIS. While the networks avoided this story, the Fox News Channel (FNC) program Special Report offered a full segment on the President's remarks and their timing in relation to the continued rise of ISIS.
Also the Washington Times writes Crying wolf to the Coast Guard.
By Lord Christopher Monckton on WUWT.
Mr. Obama's remarks at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy's Commencement May 20 demonstrate the extent to which his advisors are keeping him divorced from the facts.
During his comments, Obama discussed the impact of climate change on national security.
The bulk of his speech was devoted to what is now becoming more and more obviously a non-problem: "the challenge....that, perhaps more than any other, will shape your entire careers and that's the urgent need to combat and adapt to climate change."
Some facts. In the 11 years 2004-2014, the rate of global warming taken as the mean of the three terrestrial datasets was one-twentieth of a degree. The ARGO ocean dataset shows warming of one-fortieth of a degree. The mean of the two satellite datasets shows no warming at all. Subject to formidable uncertainties, the ARGO database gives perhaps the best guide to the underlying warming rate. None of these real-world measurements is the stuff of what Mr Obama called "a peril that can affect generations".
Next: "Our scientists at NASA just reported that some of the sea ice around Antarctica is breaking up even faster than expected." Not exactly surprising, given that at present it has reached the greatest extent for the time of year observed in the 35-year satellite era. Why did Mr Obama not mention that (or any) fact, by way of balance?
See much more here and here.
Craig Rucker at CFACT writes:
When you think of national security threats, words like ISIS, North Korea, and Al Qaeda probably come to mind.
For President Obama, however, you can add another sinister term: "Climate denier."
"Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country," Obama told new Coast Guard officers at the Academy's New London, Connecticut, campus yesterday.
"Denying it, or refusing to deal with it, endangers our national security and undermines the readiness of our forces," he added.
Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that this President, whose lackluster foreign policy has come under much criticism, would seek to deflect that criticism by casting the public's eye on a new villain - even one of his own creation. But choosing to go after climate scientists and others who simply disagree with Al Gore's alarmism seems to be just a bit of a stretch...even for him.
Leave alone the fact that there's been no increase in hurricanes, tornados, wildfires or other extreme weather events (not to mention no increase in global temperatures in over 18 years), the evidence that a warmer world leads to more conflict is not supported by either factual or historical evidence.
As CFACT's Marc Morano has chronicled regarding this issue at ClimateDepot.com:
War-related casualties have fallen over the last half-century, even as temperatures have slightly risen.
Since the dawn of civilization, warmer eras have meant fewer wars.
Peer-reviewed studies show the primary causes of civil war are political, not environmental.
A chapter of the Fifth Assessment Report of the UN's own IPCC published last year notes that "collectively the research does not conclude that there is a strong positive relationship between warming and armed conflicts."
To be sure, the world is still awaiting its first climate refugee resulting from a conflict generated by alleged man-made global warming. This despite shrill warnings of impending doom going back years, one issued by the UN itself which said there would be 50 million such refugees by 2010. Of course, we saw none.
So it appears the President is not looking at the facts, but simply shilling for his friends in the Green movement.
Demonizing your political opponents does not make America stronger. It may be shrewd politically, but it's doubtful to do much in the way of improving national security.
Let's hope this effort to put climate skeptics in the camp of national security threats backfires.
It doesn't deserve to be given any serious attention.
Never to be caught understating anything, Obama declares:
"I am here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security."
Oh really Mr. President, what could that possibly be?
Is the lack of warming, perhaps even a little global cooling since 1998, despite a slow steady increase in CO2, frying your plans for a carbon tax?
Are you concerned about the lack of big hurricanes for many years, because that sort of climate change might disrupt your climate plans?
Are you worried that another winter like this last one could completely freeze out your support along the East Coast? Has the snow finally melted in Boston?
Isn't the greatest threat to our national security a President who will not listen to the thousands of scientists who have objected to the climate nonsense? Instead, you continue to listen a tiny vocal minority that is telling you what you want to hear.
Who is guilty of Dereliction of Duty, Mr President??
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA
Obama At U.S. Coast Guard Academy Commencement: Denying Climate Change "Dereliction Of Duty".
Report: Foreign Countries Altering Weather Data to Show Warming
By Jason Devaney, May 19, 2015
Three foreign countries may be changing their historical weather data to show warming trends, according to a scientist in the field.
Dr. H. Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute claims in a story that Australia, Paraguay, and Switzerland have altered their data in an effort to prove global warming is real.
"Switzerland joins a growing list of countries whose temperature measurements have been adjusted to show greater warming than actually measured by its temperature instruments," Burnett writes. "In previous editions of Climate Change Weekly, I reported weather bureaus in Australia and Paraguay were caught adjusting datasets from their temperature gauges. After the adjustment, the temperatures reported were consistently higher than those actually recorded."
Citing a report from Swiss Science journalist Markus Schar, Burnett writes that Switzerland altered its weather data and now it shows a "doubling of the temperature trend."
"For example, in Sion and Zurich, [the Swiss Meteorological Service] adjustments resulted in a doubling of the temperature trend," Burnett writes. "Schar notes there has been an 18-year-pause in rising temperatures, even with data-tampering. As a result, Schar calls the adjustments a 'propaganda trick, and not a valid trend.'"
In March, it was reported that U.S. government scientists often change weather data - a practice that is neither new nor a secret. Scientists say the data is changed to correct for inaccuracies in testing. Critics say it is a way to show a warming trend, which it has done.
"(The National Climatic Data Center, or NCDC) pulls every trick in the book to turn the U.S. cooling trend into warming. The raw data shows cooling since the 1920s," a science blogger said.
"NCDC does a hockey stick of adjustments to reverse the trend. This includes cooling the past for 'time of observation bias' in filling missing rural data with urban temperatures, and doing almost nothing to compensate for urban heat island effects."
Global warming skeptics say it is a man-made scam, but defenders of the phenomenon point to evidence in weather data - which is apparently being changed in countries across the world.
Bill Nye, who hosted a popular children's show in the 1990s, told Rutgers University graduates over the weekend global warming is real. "So, hey deniers - cut it out, and let's get to work," Nye said.
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com
UPDATE: @ForecastFacts: FYI: You Just Lived Through The Earth's Hottest January-April Since We Started Keeping Records via @climateprogress
Once again as shown in the raw data that goes into the models (6 warmer in the last 11 years) and satellites (8 warmer in just the last 20 years), Forecast the Facts, Thinkprogress and NASA caught in another lie.
By John Hindraker in Powerline Blog
We have written a number of times about how government agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration here in the U.S., have systematically adjusted temperature history to make the past look colder. They apparently do this, usually surreptitiously and without explanation, in order to stoke global warming hysteria. See, for example, He Who Controls the Present Controls the Past and Inside the Global Warming Scandal.
Now Mike Brakey, an engineering physicist and heat transfer specialist, has caught NOAA revising historic temperature data for Maine as always, to make the past look cooler and the present warmer by comparison:
Over the last months I have discovered that between 2013 and 2015 some government bureaucrats have rewritten Maine climate history… (and New England's and of the U.S.). This statement is not based on my opinion, but on facts drawn from NOAA 2013 climate data vs. NOAA 2015 climate data after they re-wrote it.
We need only compare the data. They cooked their own books (see numbers below).
Click to enlarge: Brakey_1
This graph presents the data visually. The black line shows average annual temperatures for Maine from 1895 to the present as they were recorded at the time, and as NOAA published them in 2013. Thermometers have recorded no net warming since 1895. The blue line represents NOAA rewritten history as it appears in 2015. Note how NOAA reduces earlier temperatures more than recent ones to give the graph a plausibly warming trend. The green line shows average annual temperatures for a single location, Lewiston-Auburn, showing a steep decline since 2000.
Click to enlarge: Brakey_2
NOAA has made similar adjustments to past temperatures around the United States. Brakey writes:
It appears NOAA panicked and did a massive rewrite of Maine temperature history (they used the same algorithm for U.S. in general). The new official temperatures from Maine between 1895 and present were LOWERED by an accumulated 151.2F between 1895 and 2012.
In my opinion, this is out-and-out fraud. Why did they corrupt national climate data? Global warming is a $27 billion business on an annual basis in the U.S alone.
Now NOAA data revised in 2015 indicate that 1904, 1919 and 1925 in Maine were much colder than anything we experience today. (See the scorecard above comparing the NOAA data that are 18 months apart). Note how for 1913 the NOAA lowered the annual temperature a whole 4F!
For the balance of the years, as they get closer to the present, the NOAA tweaks less and less. They have corrupted Maine climate data between 1895 and present by a whopping accumulated 151.2F.
David Archibald writes:
Their cooling of the past to keep the global warming meme alive reminds me of the old Soviet joke - the future is known, it is the past that keeps changing.
Would someone please try to explain why this isn't the biggest scandal in the history of science?
Dr. Gordon Fulks presents yet another example of temperature record cheating by NOAA
Posted on May 8, 2015
Here's a fascinating item, provided to Gordon by a U of Washington climate scientists.
The way this works is you screw with the old temps to make them lower, then you get a Michael Mann temp record that shows warming.
Date: Thu, 7 May 2015
Subject: [GWR] Fwd: Washington State mean temperature in 1897: 45.3 or 49.5?
These figures for Washington State mean temperature come from NCDC's "climate at a glance" web page:
Washington, Average Temperature, January-December
Units: Degrees Fahrenheit
Base Period: 1895-2015
1895, 45.2, -1.0
1896, 45.4, -0.8
1897, 45.3, -0.9
1898, 45.7, -0.5
1899, 45.1, -1.1
1900, 47.0, 0.8
But when I go to the Washington climate summary published at the end of 1897 the Washington State mean temperature is given as 49.5 F, which is +4.2 F warmer than the 45.3 degrees found at NCDC's Climate at a Glance web site for Washington State in 1897.
Here is the quote from the 1897 annual summary for Washington State:
The mean temperature of the state for 1897, obtained from 20 stations in the western section and 17 stations in the eastern section from which complete records were received, was 49.5 degrees, which is slightly in excess of the eight-year normal, the amount being about half a degree. The mean for the western Section, meaning that portion of the State between the Pacific Ocean and the Cascade Mountains, was 50.1 degrees; while the mean of the eastern section, meaning all that portion of the State east of the Cascade Range, was 48.9 degrees.
The 1897 annual climate summary for Washington can be found here.
Of the 37 stations reporting in 1897 only 3 sites (less than 10%) reported an annual mean temperature lower than the 2015 version of the 1897 Washington State mean temperature of 45.3 degrees.
Does anyone have an idea why there is a large discrepancy of +4.2 degrees between the 1897 version (49.5) and the 2015 version (45.3) of our state's annual mean temperature?
I suspect that we know the answer. The Obama Administration is now blatantly cheating with the historical climate records.
Does that surprise anyone?
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA
See this story entitled "Catholic Churchmen Dance to Enviro-Pagan Puppet Masters" in Catholic Family News.
Columbia University professor and former World Bank official Jeffrey Sachs spread his global warming alarmism and pro-population control message at the "summit" on global warming and sustainable development hosted in Rome last week. This week he lashed out at global warming "deniers" on Project Syndicate (ironically appropriate for the global climate mafia) and Heartland in particular, so Heartland's Joseph Bast replies.
The Heartland and the Cornwall Alliance and Climate Depot were in rome to bring some truth to the papal party. See Dr. Calvin Beisner's address
See more on the Open Letter to Pope Francis and all the presentations here.
Congressional Democrats and Vatican join White House and Leftist assaults on basic rights
Paul Driessen
Our scientific method and traditions of free speech and open debate are under assault as never before, by intolerant inquisitors in our media, universities, government agencies, and even Congress and the Vatican.
They threaten our most basic rights and freedoms, our political and scientific processes and ultimately our continued innovation and invention, energy reliability and affordability, job creation and economic growth, and modern living standards, health and welfare.
Congressman Grijalva and Senators Markey, Boxer and Whitehouse sent letters to universities, think tanks and companies, demanding detailed information on skeptics' funding and activities in an attempt to destroy their funding, reputations and careers, while advancing "crony climate alarm science." Equally intolerable, Democrats and the White House are blocking efforts to ensure that environmental regulations are based on honest, unbiased, transparent, replicable science that accurately reflects real-world evidence.
The Secret Science Reform Act (S. 544) and its House counterpart would require that the Environmental Protection Agency develop its regulations and the science behind them in the open, and allow experts and other interested parties to examine data, evidence and studies that supposedly support EPA standards and mandates that could cost billions of dollars and millions of jobs. This should not be controversial.
But Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee wanted Chairman James Inhofe to drop the bill from a planned markup. He refused, the bill passed on a party-line vote, and a Senate vote will be set soon. President Obama says he will veto the legislation. Why this opposition?
Obama said his would be the most transparent administration in history. But transparency quickly took a back seat to his radical climate change, renewable energy and other plans to "fundamentally transform" the United States. EPA practices epitomize what goes on throughout his Executive Branch, why our economy is growing at 0.2% and what congressional Democrats are apparently determined to perpetuate.
The problem is not only EPA's private email accounts and deleted emails, a la Hillary Clinton. It's illegal experiments on humans with test results ignored when they don't support EPA's agenda of removing the last vestige of soot from coal-fired power plants. It's rules for 0.5% of the mercury in U.S. air, justified with claims that they would bring a 0.00209 point improvement in IQ scores; economy and job-killing climate regulations that would reduce warming by 0.03 degrees by 2100, assuming carbon dioxide actually does drive climate change; and equally bogus health and environmental benefits of every description that ignore adverse human health and welfare impacts of the EPA regulations themselves.
The President and Democrats claim the "secret science" bill would "unduly burden" regulators. Baloney. The rules would simply require that promulgators of government edicts live according to the same rules they impose on us: Be honest and transparent. Show us your data, calculations and analyses. Demonstrate that you have examined all relevant studies, not just what supports your agenda, while you ignore everything else. Back up your analyses and decisions with actual evidence. Answer our questions. Recognize that collusion, deceit and fraud have no place in public policy, and will no longer be tolerated.
What can possibly be wrong with those guidelines - unless the regulators have a lot to hide?
And now the Vatican is adopting the same secretive, agenda-driven, inquisition tactics.
Its Pontifical Academy of Sciences recently held a workshop on climate change and sustainability. But only religious leaders, scientists, bureaucrats and regulators who support alarmist perspectives on these issues were invited. Those with contrary views were neither invited, welcomed nor tolerated.
However, a dozen climate, health and theological experts skeptical of "dangerous manmade climate change" allegations hosted a press event the day before the workshop. Three of them managed to get into the Vatican event. But when Climate Depot director Marc Morano tried to ask the UN Secretary General to advise Pope Francis that many Catholics and other Christians believe the papal position on global warming is ill-advised, a security guard took Morano's microphone away and told him, "control yourself, or you will be escorted out of here." Apostates have no rights at climate confabs, Vatican or otherwise.
Apparently, in the Vatican's view, there is nothing to discuss - only anti-fossil fuel laws and treaties to implement. Computer model predictions and other assertions of looming disaster are all the Pope and workshop attendees seem to need to support this agenda - even though they are consistently and completely contradicted by real-world observations. Instead of protecting Earth's poorest people from energy deprivation, disease, poverty and death imposed in the name of preventing global warming, Pope Francis seems more devoted to newly green Liberation Theology concepts of "fairness" and "justice."
As IPCC leaders have explained, the climate change agenda is no longer about the environment. It is now about "intentionally transforming" the global economy and negotiating the redistribution of the world's wealth and natural resources, in the name of "social justice" and equal distribution of misery.
These developments are far too typical. Left-Liberal thought police refuse to debate their failed ideas and policies, because they have no answers to inconvenient questions and cannot stomach dissenting views.
On campuses, free expression is limited to boxing-ring-sized "free speech zones." Conservative speakers are banned from university events, or shouted down if they do appear. The Universities of Michigan and Maryland tried to ban "American Sniper" because a couple hundred students out of 27,000 objected. Oberlin and Georgetown students railed that Christina Hoff Sommers' mere presence required "trigger warnings," caused them "distress" and "discomfort," and "constituted violence" against women.
Brandeis disinvited Ayan Hirsi Ali, because her views on women's rights might offend some Muslim men. Scripps revoked its invitation to conservative political analyst George Will, who later observed:
"Free speech has never been… more comprehensively, aggressively and dangerously threatened than it is now. Today's attack is ... an attack on the theory of freedom of speech ... on the desirability of free speech and indeed ... on the very possibility of free speech.
The Democratic Party's leading and prohibitively favored frontrunner candidate for the presidential nomination… said she wants to change the First Amendment in order to further empower the political class to regulate the quantity, content and timing of political speech about the political class - and so far as I can tell there's not a ripple of commentary about this on the stagnant waters of the American journalistic community."
Meanwhile, NYU happily hosted delegates from Iran, which hangs people for the crime of being gay. President Obama's Internal Revenue Service harasses conservative donors and organizations, keeps groups out of the political process, stonewalls investigators and lies with impunity. His Federal Communications Commission plans to micromanage internet access, content and operations. At the behest of hyper-partisan Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm, police swat teams burst into homes belonging to Governor Scott Walker supporters, ransacked them, took computers, and told families "Don't call a lawyer - or else."
The abuses and intolerance are becoming broader, deeper, more frightening by the day: from Christendom to Islam and Climate Orthodoxy; from universities to the Congress, Vatican, EU and United Nations.
Good people everywhere need to rise up, speak out and fight back, if they still believe in individual rights, freedom of thought and expression, and honest, transparent, trustworthy, accountable government and religious institutions. Otherwise, these fundamental values will disappear and with them will go modern society and living standards, and efforts to improve the lives of billions of people who still lack the lifesaving energy and technologies so many of us take for granted.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death, and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: Saving the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.
Anthony Watts
David Cameron wins majority for Conservatives in Election 2015 victory
Britain's Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey has lost his seat to the Conservative party, in an election night that has seen the Liberal Democrats presence in the House of Commons decimated. -The Mirror, 8 May 2015
David Cameron has won the general election with an outright majority after Labour was virtually wiped out in Scotland and the Liberal Democrat vote collapsed. Mr Cameron hailed the "sweetest victory" as his party secured the 323 seats needed to form a government without needing to go into coalition. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has resigned. Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor was the biggest scalp of the night, losing his Leeds seat to the Tories. - The Daily Telegraph, 8 May 2015
The Prime Minister has pledged to stop future government funding to windfarm projects including the delayed inquiry and to give local people the final say - if he is re-elected today. Mr Cameron pledged to stop the windfarm project and any other on-shore windfarms within Montgomeryshire if he was elected to take a second term in Government. He said: "I want to make it clear that if there is a Conservative Government in place we will remove all subsidy for on-shore wind and local people should have a greater say." Ben Goddard, County Times, 7 May 2015
Speculation is growing that energy and climate change department's days of independence could be numbered. A government source said that if David Cameron is re-elected, he is likely to fold it into the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, where the government has more staff with commercial experience. - John Collingridge and Danny Fortson, The Sunday Times, 5 April 2015
New government will have to address capacity shortfalls to avoid blackouts. Avoiding a power blackout will be one of the first priorities for whoever forms the next government, a leading consultant has suggested. Critics argue that a focus on renewables has left Britain's power network now dangerously short of spare capacity. - Andrew Critchlow, The Daily Telegraph, 8 May 2015
Thanks to Dr. Benny Peiser of The GWPF
Here are someof the reasons we need to do the same here.
By Paul Homewood
Even at this early stage of the year, there is a concerted effort to make it the "warmest evah".
Joe Romm has this graph of the GISS numbers for the first three months of the year, and Gavin has clearly been busy!
Predictably, Seth Borenstein has gleefully reported that NOAA has also shown the warmest first quarter of the year ahead of 2002.
Unfortunately, the more comprehensive and accurate satellites show no such thing.
Data source
For January to March, UAH rank this as only 4th warmest behind 2010, 1998 and even 2007.
Data source
According to RSS, this year so far is even lower down the rankings in 8th place. See in this WAPO story how the nonsense from Seth and Romm and the warmists and enviro extremists in the capitol, have cost DC gardeners and horticulturalists dearly the last two years.
Given the weak El Nino conditions in place since last April, there is nothing out of the ordinary about the satellite rankings.
We have been repeatedly assured for the past year that satellite temperatures would catch up with the surface datasets. They have not, and instead the latter continue to diverge more and more.
The alarmist tactic now is to tell us to simply ignore the satellite data, as it is "not measuring the same thing", and is therefore somehow irrelevant. This is all highly amusing, as the UK Met Office, back in 2013, was reassuring us that the surface datasets were reliable as:
"Changes in temperature observed in surface data records are corroborated by records of temperatures in the troposphere recorded by satellites"
This divergence is now becoming the elephant in the room, which the likes of NASA and their media allies are desperately trying to ignore.
It is time that the matter was fully investigated by a properly independent inquiry.
Icecap Note: The theory remember has the warmth trapped in the atmosphere by CO2 and H2Ov and other gases and some of the heat rerdiated back. The modles have the warming greater aloft than at the ground. The greater warming at the surface is the signature of the UHI effect.
Also NOAA and NASA have not cooperated on the corruption of the surface data but on a prodigious work of science fiction, the GCRP, which the demagogue party, the radical enviros and their allies in the MSM will use to eliminate our most reliable workhorse energy sources and drive up prices, hurting the poor and middle class.
Also see this on how elitists are "Oppressing the Poor in the Name fo Global Warming."
Ron Arnold
Democrats' attempts to paralyze climate skeptics in academia, think tanks, and companies, using intimidating letters threatening a federal investigation into their funding connections, backfired. They opened a Pandora's Box of questions concerning where climate alarmists get their money. Now Democrat Senators Barbara Boxer (CA), Ed Markey (MA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) and Democrat Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva have egg on their faces.
Public-choice economics explains politicians and bureaucrats are as self-interested as anyone. They seek expanded authority and bigger budgets. Because the federal government and left-wing foundations provide the vast bulk of climate research funding, funding from these two sources certainly should undergo at least as much scrutiny as funding from private industry.
Nearly all university-based climate scientists are funded mainly by federal grants, and the ideological and political goals of those authorizing the grants could reasonably be expected to affect the kind of research universities and researchers undertake. The conflict between gaining research money and scientific integrity puts sound but nonconformist science at a crushing disadvantage.
Michael Mann, Pennsylvania State University's notorious ClimateGate email scandal figure, has garnered close to $6 million promoting scary scientific conclusions serving government's goal of control over energy sources, $3.6 million of it from the National Science Foundation. Both PSU and the NSF conducted investigations absolving Mann of any wrongdoing in ClimateGate, but with the offending institutions effectively investigating one of their own, would anyone expect a different outcome?
Influence, Conflicts of Interest
Princeton professor Michael Oppenheimer has written more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and testified before Congress on multiple occasions. He was the Environmental Defense Fund's senior scientist (1981-2002) and remains as science advisor to the multimillion-dollar lobbying group (2013 assets: $208.7 million). EDF has received $2.8 million in federal grants since 2008, spent $11.3 million on lobbying, and has 55 people on 32 federal advisory committees.
Since 2008, EDF has received 3,332 grants from 600 foundations, totaling $544,487,562. EDF is deeply rooted in left-wing foundation agendas. Oppenheimer's professorship is supported in part by private equity tycoon Carl Ferenbach's High Meadows Foundation, which has given Princeton $6.5 million and the Environmental Defense Fund $6 million. Ferenbach is both EDF's Chairman of the Board and a trustee of Princeton, suggesting a strong conflict of interest.
The proudly progressive Center for American Progress (CAP) has five people on federal advisory committees, spent $3.6 million on lobbying, and gave $312,400 to Democrat candidates in 2014. CAP Senior Fellow and Chief Science Advisor Joe Romm has testified before Congress on global warming and coauthored numerous peer-reviewed studies. Yet Romm failed to file conflict-of-interest disclosures for an article in Environmental Research Letters although the journal explicitly requires it.
Since 2004, CAP has been supported by left-wing foundations including Marilsa (Getty Oil fortune, $7 million), Rockefeller (Standard Oil fortune, $5 million), Sea Change (ties to Russian oil money laundering, $4.8 million), and 200 other left-wing foundations.
Government and foundation monies go only toward research advancing a pro-regulatory climate agenda. That is the greatest threat to the integrity of scientific research.
Ron Arnold (firstname.lastname@example.com) is a free-enterprise activist, author, and commentator.
Michael Bastasch
This past winter broke tons of low temperature records across the eastern seaboard, but would you have guessed the Northeast just had the snowiest winter since the "Little Ice Age"?
"Looking back through accounts of big snows in New England by the late weather historian David Ludlum, it appears for the eastern areas, this winters snowblitz may have delivered the most snow since perhaps 1717," wrote seasoned meteorologist Joe D'Aleo with Weatherbell Analytics.
"That year, snows had reached five feet in December with drifts of 25 feet in January before one great last assault in late February into early March of 40 to 60 more inches," D'Aleo wrote. "The snow was so deep that people could only leave their houses from the second floor, implying actual snow depths of as much as 8 feet or more."
The New England Historical Society wrote that the so-called "Great Snow" of 1717 was so intense that "Puritans in Boston held no church services for two successive weeks" - and if you know anything about Puritans, you know they don't take missing church lightly.
"Entire houses were covered over, identifiable only by a thin curl of smoke coming out of a hole in the snow," the Historical Society noted. "In Hampton, N.H., search parties went out after the storms hunting for widows and elderly people at risk of freezing to death." Sometimes snow would pile so high people would burn "their furniture because they couldn't get to the woodshed."
"It wasn't uncommon for them to lose their bearings and not be able to find the houses," the society wrote in its account of winter 1717. "People maintained tunnels and paths through the snow from house to house."
Luckily, in the modern world snow storms are more manageable thanks to plows, de-icing agents and so forth, but even so, some East Coast cities were caught off guard by the extraordinary amount of snow and record cold.
In late January, New York City shut down transit services in the face of about two feet of snow. Similar moves were made in New Jersey, even though the blizzard was not nearly as bad in these two states compared to states in New England.
During that same blizzard, about 30,000 homes in the Boston-Cape Cod area lost power, and near-80 mile per hour winds were reported on Martha's Vineyard. By March, the city of Boston had gotten more than 110 inches of snow- an all-time record.
Federal agencies in Washington, D.C. shut down in mid-February when the National Weather Service predicted there would be six to eight inches of snow on the ground. The U.S. government was shut down again in early March when forecasters predicted six to seven inches of snow.
The D.C. area's public schools were also shut down, with students in Fauquier County, Virginia getting 11 snow days and Howard County, Maryland getting seven snow days.
Meteorologists and climate scientists have hotly debated what has caused fierce winters in the last two years. Some climate scientists say it's global warming, saying warmer temperatures in the Arctic have made the jet stream more wobbly or that warmer temperatures caused more precipitation to build up leading to bigger snowstorms.
Others have argued natural climate cycles are driving the heavy snowfall. Two recent studies from the University of Washington argue that activity in the Pacific Ocean drove warm, dry air into the western U.S. while forcing cold, wet air east.
D'Aleo says a "super La Nina in 2010/11 (2nd strongest in 120 years, by some measures), set up warm water in the central Pacific and cold water near the west coast of North America" and caused drought in the west and frigid weather in the east.
"That warm water came east first to off of Alaska last year leading to the historic winter near the western Lakes and North Central and then the warm water was carried by the currents southeast to the entire west coast forcing the cold to take aim more on the eastern Lakes and Northeast," D'Aleo wrote.
"The combination of cold and snow here to northern areas and back to the Great Lakes the last two winters, harkens back to the Little Ice Age that ended in the early 20th century," D'Aleo wrote.
Ross McKitrick
Its ideas would send the West back 100 years and keep poor nations impoverished and wretched
A few years ago, a journalist asked me for my thoughts on the importance of "Earth Hour" which was reprised this past weekend. What I told him applies today, perhaps even more so.
I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity.
Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labour and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as on the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading.
Development and provision of modern health care without electricity is absolutely impossible. The expansion of our food supply, and the promotion of hygiene and nutrition, depended on being able to irrigate fields, cook and refrigerate foods, and have a steady indoor supply of safe hot water.
Many of the world's poor suffer brutal environmental conditions in their own homes because of the necessity of cooking over indoor fires that burn twigs and dung. This causes local deforestation and the proliferation of smoke-and parasite-related lung diseases.
Anyone who wants to see local conditions improve in the Third World should realize the importance of access to cheap electricity from fossil-fuel based power generating stations. After all, that's how the West developed.
The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that. Instead, I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity. Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness.
By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation, it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called "the Earth," all the while hypocritically retaining and enjoying the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity.
People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there, too.
I don't want to go back to nature. Travel to a zone hit by earthquakes, floods and hurricanes to see what it's like to go back to nature. For humans, living in "nature" meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work for the end of poverty and relief from disease are fighting against nature. I hope they leave their lights on.
Here in Ontario, through the use of pollution control technology and advanced engineering, our air quality has dramatically improved since the 1960s, despite the expansion of industry and the power supply. If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and that we ought to be shamed into sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children who have been caught doing something bad, then we are setting up unspoiled nature as an absolute, transcendent ideal that obliterates all other ethical and humane obligations. No thanks.
I like visiting nature, but I don't want to live there, and I refuse to accept the idea that civilization with all its tradeoffs is something to be ashamed of.
Ross McKitrick is Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph, a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute.
By Ron Arnold
Harvard historian of science Naomi Oreskes is best known to climate realists for her 2010 screed Merchants of Doubt, but a short, obscure, error-riddled essay she wrote as a chapter in the book How Well Do Facts Travel? The Dissemination of Reliable Knowledge is more significant. In it she examines the 1991 origin of the "skeptics are paid industry shills" narrative found in a legendary set of "leaked Western Fuels memos."
Oreskes' chapter is important because she interprets the memos as industry's plan for a vast national campaign using paid climate scientists to create lasting public doubt about global warming. That's the same interpretation repeated ad nauseam by climate alarmists such as Al Gore, Ross Gelbspan (1997's The Heat Is On), and Canadian attack website DeSmogBlog.
Appallingly, nobody in this parade of critics ever fact-checked the memos, not even historian Oreskes. Critics misinterpreted what they were looking at in the hundred-or-so pages of "Western Fuels memos." They cherry-picked pieces that made skeptics look worst and patched them together into an assumption- laden fairy-tale.
Memos Misnamed, Misunderstood
According to Russell Cook's excellent Heartland Institute Report Merchants of Smear, and numerous interviews with the "memo" sources, all the critics had was a hodgepodge of e-mail exchanges from a loose coalition of 24 large and small electric utilities worried about a carbon tax bill in Congress.
The fairy tale spinners focused only on emails from the utilities' coal suppliers. The coalition explored lobbying to raise public concern about the impact of the tax, along with pointing out the weaknesses in the claims humans were causing climate change, using well-established skeptical scientists as spokesmen to balance the deluge of alarmist publicity.
The "memos" were the everyday work products of coalition members- including the Edison Electric Institute, a large trade group of investor-owned utilities-filed away in no particular order. EEI coordinated the most misinterpreted document, a campaign proposal by opinion survey firm Cambridge Reports of Massachusetts. The other "memos" included letters, meeting notices, reports from a hired Washington public relations firm, sample ads from a North Dakota direct mail firm, and similar items.
Innocuous Trade Association Demonized
Less than one-third of the jumbled "memos" involved Western Fuels Association. It's ironic that they became known as the "Western Fuels memos," because WFA is just the opposite of what the alarmist critics thought. It wasn't a lobbying group but rather a nonprofit, member-owned co-op serving consumer-owned rural electric cooperatives and other public power systems. WFA manages mining and transportation of coal from member-owned mines and buys additional coal in the open market, facts printed on the inside cover of WFA's annual reports.
The coalition's climate skeptics picked the semi-humorous acronym "ICE," and Cambridge Reports suggested several names to fit, including "Informed Citizens for the Environment" and "Information Council for the Environment." Western Fuels used the latter.
The single most misinterpreted page, "Strategy," listed nine goals, topped by "Reposition global warming as theory (not fact)." Critics mischaracterized that as "orders from headquarters" to reposition the public into believing global warming is not a fact. Al Gore even featured it in ominous red letters spread across a frame of his movie An Inconvenient Truth. Actually, it was merely a suggestion offered by Cambridge Reports.
Coalition Dissolves
Even more importantly, Western Fuels Association officials did not even read the Cambridge Reports proposal, because they had already hired Simmons Advertising of Grand Forks, North Dakota. They never saw the "Reposition global warming as theory (not fact)" goal, and they say they wouldn't have used it if they had, because it was too abstract.
The national campaign never happened, a three-city test run flopped, and the coalition dissolved amid disagreements between skeptics and pragmatists. In July 1991, coalition members went their separate ways. Smaller ones, generally skeptics, chose to fight for sound science and against new regulations, whereas big, investor-owned utilities abandoned the science debate and chose to lobby to favorably influence legislation.
Slanted Focus, Coverage
Of the original "Western Fuels memos," only fifty poorly scanned, frustratingly incomplete images on a Greenpeace Investigations site are publicly available today. So, where did Oreskes get the entire set?
She claims she found them "in the archives of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in Washington, D.C." and advises, "scholars wishing to consult these materials should contact the AMS."
AMS is actually headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts It maintains a small Washington, DC office for government affairs, but it has no archives. The AMS archivist in Boston verified no such documents ever existed in the society's archives.
Oreskes said an "Anthony Socci" brought the documents to her attention. The AMS archivist said Socci-a Senate Commerce Committee staffer from 1991 to 1993 who managed hearings for Sen. Al Gore - had been an AMS employee for a time, and likely had a personal copy he made available to Oreskes.
How did Socci get the documents? The most likely answer comes from a letter on EEI letterhead dated May 6, 1991, showing the group's global warming task force strongly disparaged the skeptic campaign. Within a month, the memos were circulating among environmentalists in Washington. The Sierra Club forwarded a copy to the New York Times, mentioned in a July 8, 1991 article headlined, "Pro Coal Ad Campaign Disputes Warming Idea."
A noted historian, when asked for the simplest definition of history, said, "History is what really happened." That's not what Oreskes wrote.
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."
Daniel J. Boorstin
In Oreskes name, these signs are being posted on lakes across the country.
Penn and Teller get hundreds of knucklehead enviros like Oreskes to sign a DHMO (water) ban petition.
CEI: Vatican Cardinal Attacks Capitalist Stooges for Opposing Global Warming Alarmism
The cardinal in the Vatican thought to be Pope Francis's closest adviser this week criticized American critics of the Pope's forthcoming encyclical on climate change as environment-destroying capitalist stooges.
According to a story by Ines San Martin in the Boston Globe, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga said at a press conference on 12 May:"The ideology surrounding environmental issues is too tied to a capitalism that doesn't want to stop ruining the environment because they don't want to give up their profits."
However, Thomas D. Williams reported in a 15th May story published on Breitbart that: "A Vatican insider asserts that Pope Francis has scrapped the draft of his encyclical letter on the environment and sent it back for major revision. The letter was slated for publication in early summer, but now may not be ready until much later, he suggests. Citing sources within the Santa Marta residence where the Pope lives, veteran Vatican journalist Sandro Magister has written that 'Francis has scrubbed the draft' of the text presented to him by Argentinian Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez, perhaps foreseeing that Cardinal Gerhard Muller of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith 'would have demolished it' once it was presented to him for approval." This is speculation, of course, but perhaps some of the remaining clear-thinking officials in the Vatican who have not been persuaded by Liberation Theology have realized that the energy-rationing policies demanded by global warming alarmists will consign poor people in poor countries to perpetual energy poverty.
This Wednesday we mark Earth Day. A week from now, the Vatican will add its own contribution to what Pope Francis calls "human ecology" in the form of a summit called "Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity." The summit will in turn be followed by an encyclical some time later this year.
Many find the whole idea unsettling. They fear it means a papal imprimatur for the political and economic orthodoxies of the green movement, confusing the faithful and leading to another series of press conferences that will begin with a Vatican spokesman saying, "What the pope meant to say . . ."
The fears are not without cause. There are many signs that do not augur well, from the muddled section on economics in the pope's first encyclical to his posing for a photo while holding up an anti-fracking T-shirt, to press coverage anticipating he will be to the fight against greenhouse gases what Pope John Paul II was to the fight against Soviet communism.
Even so, the topic is ripe for precisely the kind of corrective a pope has to offer: a reminder that God's creation is meant to serve man -not man the environment. And its corollary: It is the have-nots who pay the highest price for the statist interventions so beloved of the Church of St. Green.
The Judeo-Christian view takes its lead from Genesis 2:15: "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." Plainly this imposes on mankind an obligation of stewardship. And yes, we can all think of people and regions that have suffered because someone exploited an area for private gain while dumping all the costs on the public.
Still, the first part of that Genesis passage means something too: that the earth is to be worked, and that this work and the fruit it bears are also blessed.
After all, what is work but the application of human ingenuity and labor to God's creation to increase God's bounty? For Genesis also tells us we are fashioned in the image and likeness of our Creator. In a sense this means we are at our most human when we use our God-given talents to participate in acts of co-creation.
How different this is from the narrative that dominates the conversation on the environment, and especially the conversation on climate change. All too often the vision of man here is as the despoiler, speeding the planet along the path to doom and destruction.
In this reading, modern technology is almost always an enemy, progress is illusory and more babies mean more carbon footprints melting the ice caps where polar bears live. Indeed, the number of environmentalists who end up embracing population control is astounding. Likewise their language, which tends to the apocalyptic - from Paul Ehrlich calling his book "The Population Bomb" to the conservationist Paul Watson characterizing humans as "the AIDS of the earth."
When this thinking is taken to its logical conclusion, it's not Swedish or American women or their babies who find themselves targeted. It is African women and African babies, Chinese women and Chinese babies, Indian women and Indian babies, Latino women and Latino babies, and so on. Something, perhaps, for the pope to ponder next time he's in the mood to preach against noxious Western exports.
Meanwhile, encouraging a sturdier appreciation in the green movement for man's ability to use his mind to find solutions for the earth's problems would help. Take, for example, two popular targets of the environmental movement: chemicals and fossil fuels.
Those of us who get our fruit and vegetables at Whole Foods may have a hard time appreciating the scourge that insects, parasites and disease are to those in poorer parts of the world. Or the high price these people pay when they are denied these man-made tools in the name of some environmental fad.
How many African children died, for example, when the use of DDT on the continent - arguably the most effective anti-mosquito insecticide - declined after the U.S. banned it in 1972 on the basis of pop science? Along the same lines, when we measure the costs of fossil fuels, shouldn't we include the human costs that result when restrictions on fossil fuels would mean denying hundreds of millions of people in the developing world the life-enhancing improvements that come from cheaper energy?
In its unwillingness to consider such trade-offs, modern environmentalism at times takes on the aspects of an authoritarian religion for the wealthy, with its own Eden (earth before man ruined it); its heretics (skeptics about man's contributions to global warming are "deniers"); and its indulgences (make up for your corporate jet by driving a Prius).
All well worth not only mentioning but highlighting, especially in a papal effort that aims at putting the human back in human ecology.
Read here about Pope Francis's conference on the environment April 28th, in advance of addresses at a joint session of Congress in September, the U.N. General Assembly in New York, and his December speech at the U.N. Climate Conference in Paris.
Read this insightful Letter from Rome: What will Pope Francis say about the environment? by Kishore Jayabalan of acton.org.
CBS Market Watch reports that the Pope is expected to address humanity's "lost moral compass" on the environment, the "exploitation of natural resources," "rapid environmental collapse," a "failure to respect nature" and the greed behind it all, saying "money trumps morality" and "capitalism is killing planet Earth."
The Great Climate Change Bamboozle Industry
by Dr. E. Calvin Beisner and Douglas Fox
In the "The Great Climate Change Denial Industry," University of Connecticut geology professor Robert Thorson sought to discredit all dissent about climate change by tying it (falsely in most cases) to funding from the fossil fuel industry - niftily adopting the logical fallacy of ad hominem circumstantial while ignoring the fact that advocates of global warming alarmism get hundreds of times as much funding from governments (with their own biases) and alternative-energy corporations, making them subject to the same critique (still fallacious, but sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander).
After sniping at religion (as if only fundamentalists are "climate skeptics"), bemoaning the decline in public fears of global warming but lacking the curiosity to ask whether there might be good reasons, and repeating the myth that polar bears are endangered, Thorson progressed to errors of fact and, well, more fallacious reasoning.
He summed up with five two-word sentences: "It's real. It's us. It's bad. Scientists agree. There's hope." Oh?'
One: It's real. Yes, as throughout earth's history. But Thorson equivocates (fallacy). What he means by "climate change" is historically unprecedented and dangerous global warming driven primarily by human emission of carbon dioxide. Substitute that and "It's real" becomes highly debatable and is highly debated, even among climate scientists,
like former NASA and now Columbia University astrophysicist James Hansen, who affirms it,
like professor and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech climatologist Judith Curry, who went from affirming it to strongly questioning it after interacting with climate scientists who reject it,
like University of Alabama climatologists John Christy and Roy Spencer, who manage NASA's satellite remote sensing program and together won NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites.
The Medieval Warm Period was warmer than now, and at least two periods since 1850 but before CO2 rose enough to contribute significantly had as rapid and as long upward trends in global average temperature as the warming trend from about 1977 to 2000 that some attribute to higher CO2. So "modern warming" is not unprecedented.
Read more at Townhall here.
The 97% "consensus" study, Cook et al. (2013) has been thoroughly refuted in scholarly peer-reviewed journals, by major news media, public policy organizations and think tanks, highly credentialed scientists and extensively in the climate blogosphere. The shoddy methodology of Cook's study has been shown to be so fatally flawed that well known climate scientists have publicly spoken out against it,
"The '97% consensus' article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country [UK] that the energy minister should cite it."
Mike Hulme, Ph.D. Professor of Climate Change, University of East Anglia (UEA)
Only 65 Scientists of 12,000 Make up Alleged 97% on Climate Change and Global Warming Consensus According to Breakdown of Cook et al study, say Friends of Science
In response to multiple inquiries from media and global warming advocates, Friends of Science issue this release to expose the statistical manipulation evident from the break down of the Cook et al paper. Friends of Science decry the linking of this flawed study with alleged danger from man-made carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) as there has been no global warming in 16 years despite a rise in CO2 levels; Friends of Science say the sun and oceanic oscillations are the main drivers of climate change, not CO2.
See faulty methodology of Cook study.
The following is a list of 97 articles that refute Cook's (poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed) 97% "consensus" study. The fact that anyone continues to bring up such soundly debunked nonsense like Cook's study is an embarrassment to science. See the list here.
See the Galileo Movement here. Visit Then click on the blue text: "9.2.12 Evidence of Political Fraud - Malcolm Roberts"
See Dr. Doug Hoyt's Greenhouse Scorecard on Warwick Hughes site here.
From Jack Black's Climate Change Dictionary
PEER REVIEW: The act of banding together a group of like-minded academics with a funding conflict of interest, for the purpose of squeezing out any research voices that threaten the multi-million dollar government grant gravy train.
SETTLED SCIENCE: Betrayal of the scientific method for politics or money or both.
DENIER: Anyone who suspects the truth.
CLIMATE CHANGE: What has been happening for billions of years, but should now be flogged to produce 'panic for profit.'
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE: Leftist Nutcase Prize, unrelated to "Peace" in any meaningful way.
DATA, EVIDENCE: Unnecessary details. If anyone asks for this, see "DENIER," above.
CLIMATE SCIENTIST: A person skilled in spouting obscure, scientific-sounding jargon that has the effect of deflecting requests for "DATA" by "DENIERS.' Also skilled at affecting an aura of "Smartest Person in the Room" to buffalo gullible legislators and journalists.
JUNK SCIENCE: The use of invalid scientific evidence resulting in findings of causation which simply cannot be justified or understood from the standpoint of the current state of credible scientific or medical knowledge
Speaking of junk science, see Lubos Motl's excellent point by point counter to the John Cook 104 talking points document attacking the skeptical science here.
See all the talks at the latest ICCC9 Conference in Las Vegas in 2014 here.
Heartland has the presentations and powerpoints posted for the Heartland ICCC IV. If you could not go, there is plenty to see there. Please remember the goldmine of videos and PPTs at the Heartland ICCC proceeding sites for 2008 NYC here, 2009 NYC here and 2009 DC here. Here is a PPT I gave at the Heartland Instutute ICCC Meeting in 2008 and here is the follow up in 2009. Here is an abbreviated PPT in two parts I presented at a UK conference last month: Part 1, Part 2.
See C3 Headlines excellent collection of graphs and charts that show AGW is nonsense here.
See Climate Theater with a collection of the best climate skeptic films and documentaries here. See additional scientific youtubes here.
1350+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of "Man-Made" Global Warming Alarm and here a list of 1000 stories suggesting global cooling has begun.
"The above papers support skepticism of "man-made" global warming or the environmental or economic effects of. Addendums, comments, corrections, erratum, replies, responses and submitted papers are not included in the peer-reviewed paper count. These are included as references in defense of various papers. There are many more listings than just the 900-1000 papers. Ordering of the papers is alphabetical by title except for the Hockey Stick, Cosmic Rays and Solar sections which are chronological. This list will be updated and corrected as necessary."
The less intelligent alarmists have written a paper allegedly connecting the scientists to Exxon Mobil. Here is the detailed response from some of the featured scientists. Note that though this continues to be a knee jerk reaction by some of the followers, there is no funding of skeptic causes by big oil BUT Exxon has funded Stanford warmists to the tune of $100 million and BP UC Berkeley to $500,000,000. Climategate emails showed CRU/Hadley soliciting oil dollars and receiving $23,000,000 in funding.
See still more annotated here.
Many more papers are catalogued at Pete's Place here.
The science and economics of global warming are not too complicated for the average person to consider and make up his or her own mind. We urge you to do that. Go here and view some of the articles linked under "What's New" or "A Primer on Global Warming." Or go here and read about the new report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), which comprehensively rebuts the claims of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Go here for the sources for the factual statements in the ads.
See the ICECAP Amazon Book store. Icecap benefits with small commission for your purchases via this link.
Go to and become a member of WeatherBell Analytics here.
Website of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) here. It's latest report (2013) details information from almost 4,000 papers.
Science and Public Policy Institute here.
Intellicast Dr. Dewpoint Library here.
RedNeck Engineer Energy and Innovation here.
The Weather Wiz here. See how they have added THE WIZ SCHOOL (UPPER LEFT) to their website. An excellent educational tool for teachers at all class levels. "Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel" - Socrates (470--399 BC)