I have been waiting for this for a long time. When I was in college finishing my latest degree here at IUSB I was making many of these very same claims about global warming alarmist nonsense as the IAC report below. Leftist students and faculty pretty much told me that I was nuts, and I wasn’t a climate scientist so how would I know? Well it looks like I knew. It was easy. First of all it doesn’t take a genius to see when the scientific method is being ignored and second of all, what I am an expert on is politics and I know a political movement when I see one.
At the bottom of the article I posted a list of links that I wrote starting in 2007 saying many of the same things the IAC has pointed out below. I have reactivated IUSB Vision just for the purpose of posting this story. All of you PhD. laden academics who doubted me and called me all of those names behind my back should ask yourselves; why was a mere undergrad like me spot on and all of you who are supposed to be teachers wrong? And this isn’t this first time that happened is it? – Chuck Norton
On June 27, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a statement saying it had “complete[d] the process of implementation of a set of recommendations issued in August 2010 by the Inter Academy Council (IAC), the group created by the world’s science academies to provide advice to international bodies.”
Hidden behind this seemingly routine update on bureaucratic processes is an astonishing and entirely unreported story. The IPCC is the world’s most prominent source of alarmist predictions and claims about man-made global warming. Its four reports (a fifth report is scheduled for release in various parts in 2013 and 2014) are cited by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. and by national academies of science around the world as “proof” that the global warming of the past five or so decades was both man-made and evidence of a mounting crisis.
If the IPCC’s reports were flawed, as a many global warming “skeptics” have long claimed, then the scientific footing of the man-made global warming movement — the environmental movement’s “mother of all environmental scares” — is undermined. The Obama administration’s war on coal may be unnecessary. Billions of dollars in subsidies to solar and wind may have been wasted. Trillions of dollars of personal income may have been squandered worldwide in campaigns to “fix” a problem that didn’t really exist.
The “recommendations” issued by the IAC were not minor adjustments to a fundamentally sound scientific procedure. Here are some of the findings of the IAC’s 2010 report.
Alternative views not considered, claims not properly peer reviewed
The IAC reported that IPCC lead authors fail to give “due consideration … to properly documented alternative views” (p. 20), fail to “provide detailed written responses to the most significant review issues identified by the Review Editors” (p. 21), and are not “consider[ing] review comments carefully and document[ing] their responses” (p. 22). In plain English: the IPCC reports are not peer-reviewed.
No formal criteria for selecting IPCC authors
The IAC found that “the IPCC has no formal process or criteria for selecting authors” and “the selection criteria seemed arbitrary to many respondents” (p. 18). Government officials appoint scientists from their countries and “do not always nominate the best scientists from among those who volunteer, either because they do not know who these scientists are or because political considerations are given more weight than scientific qualifications” (p. 18). In other words: authors are selected from a “club” of scientists and nonscientists who agree with the alarmist perspective favored by politicians.
Too political…
The rewriting of the Summary for Policy Makers by politicians and environmental activists — a problem called out by global warming realists for many years, but with little apparent notice by the media or policymakers — was plainly admitted, perhaps for the first time by an organization in the “mainstream” of alarmist climate change thinking. “[M]any were concerned that reinterpretations of the assessment’s findings, suggested in the final Plenary, might be politically motivated,” the IAC auditors wrote. The scientists they interviewed commonly found the Synthesis Report “too political” (p. 25).
Really? Too political? We were told by everyone — environmentalists, reporters, politicians, even celebrities — that the IPCC reports were science, not politics. Now we are told that even the scientists involved in writing the reports — remember, they are all true believers in man-made global warming themselves — felt the summaries were “too political.”
Here is how the IAC described how the IPCC arrives at the “consensus of scientists”:
Plenary sessions to approve a Summary for Policy Makers last for several days and commonly end with an all-night meeting. Thus, the individuals with the most endurance or the countries that have large delegations can end up having the most influence on the report (p. 25).
How can such a process possibly be said to capture or represent the “true consensus of scientists”?
Phony estimates of certainty
Another problem documented by the IAC is the use of phony “confidence intervals” and estimates of “certainty” in the Summary for Policy Makers (pp. 27-34). Those of us who study the IPCC reports knew this was make-believe when we first saw it in 2007. Work by J. Scott Armstrong on the science of forecasting makes it clear that scientists cannot simply gather around a table and vote on how confident they are about some prediction, and then affix a number to it such as “80% confident.” Yet that is how the IPCC proceeds.
The IAC authors say it is “not an appropriate way to characterize uncertainty” (p. 34), a huge understatement. Unfortunately, the IAC authors recommend an equally fraudulent substitute, called “level of understanding scale,” which is more mush-mouth for “consensus.”
The IAC authors warn, also on page 34, that “conclusions will likely be stated so vaguely as to make them impossible to refute, and therefore statements of ‘very high confidence’ will have little substantive value.” Yes, but that doesn’t keep the media and environmental activists from citing them over and over again as “proof” that global warming is man-made and a crisis…even if that’s not really what the reports’ authors are saying.
IPCC participants had conflicts of interest
Finally, the IAC noted, “the lack of a conflict of interest and disclosure policy for IPCC leaders and Lead Authors was a concern raised by a number of individuals who were interviewed by the Committee or provided written input” as well as “the practice of scientists responsible for writing IPCC assessments reviewing their own work. The Committee did not investigate the basis of these claims, which is beyond the mandate of this review” (p. 46).
Too bad, because these are both big issues in light of recent revelations that a majority of the authors and contributors to some chapters of the IPCC reports are environmental activists, not scientists at all. That’s a structural problem with the IPCC that could dwarf the big problems already reported.
IPCC critics vindicated
So on June 27, nearly two years after these bombshells fell (without so much as a raised eyebrow by the mainstream media in the U.S. — go ahead and try Googling it), the IPCC admits that it was all true and promises to do better for its next report. Nothing to see here…keep on moving.
Well I say, hold on, there! The news release means that the IAC report was right. That, in turn, means that the first four IPCC reports were, in fact, unreliable. Not just “possibly flawed” or “could have been improved,” but likely to be wrong and even fraudulent.
It means that all of the “endorsements” of the climate consensus made by the world’s national academies of science — which invariably refer to the reports of the IPCC as their scientific basis — were based on false or unreliable data and therefore should be disregarded or revised. It means that the EPA’s “endangerment finding” — its claim that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and threat to human health — was wrong and should be overturned.
And what of the next IPCC report, due out in 2013 and 2014? The near-final drafts of that report have been circulating for months already. They were written by scientists chosen by politicians rather than on the basis of merit; many of them were reviewing their own work and were free to ignore the questions and comments of people with whom they disagree. Instead of “confidence,” we will get “level of understanding scales” that are just as meaningless.
And on this basis we should transform the world’s economy to run on breezes and sunbeams?
In 2010, we learned that much of what we thought we knew about global warming was compromised and probably false. On June 27, the culprits confessed and promised to do better. But where do we go to get our money back?
Related from this old college blog:
Inconvenient Questions Global Warming Alarmists Don’t Want You to Ask – February 18, 2007 – LINK
Top Scientists Say: You Are Not the Cause of Global Warming – October 22, 2007 – LINK
Global Cooling Continues; Global Warming Alarmists Still Issuing Death Threats – December 28, 2008 – LINK
UK Telegraph: 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved – December 28, 2008 – LINK
National Climatic Data Center: Cooling in Last 10 Years – January 10, 2009 – LINK
The Debate is Over. Global Warming Alarmism is About Achieving Central Control of the Economy and Now They Admit It Openly – March 27, 2009 – LINK
Al Gore: Climate change issue can lead to world government – July 11, 2009 – LINK
EPA Tried to Suppress Global Warming Report Admitting Skeptics Correct – October 23, 2009 – LINK
New AP Article on “Global Cooling Myth” Spins a Bad Study – UPDATED: Look where they put THIS ground station… – October 27, 2009 – LINK
Professors Paid to Plagiarize – UPDATE: Global warming scientists hacked emails show manipulation of data, hiding of other data and conspiring to attack/smear global warming skeptics! – November 19, 2009 – LINK
National Association of Scholars on the “ClimateGate” Scandal – November 28, 2009 – LINK
Examples of the “Climategate” Documents – UPDATE: BBC Had the emails and files for 6 weeks, sat on story. UPDATE II – They carried out their conspiracy threat; much of the raw data from CRU destroyed! – November 28, 2009 – LINK
Scientific American thinks you are stupid: The dissection of a blatant propaganda piece for global warming alarmism. – December 6, 2009 – LINK
The Roundup: IPCC Authors Now Admitting Fault – No Warming Since 1995 – Sea Levels Not Rising. Senator Inhofe: Possible criminal misuse of taxpayer research funds. – February 23, 2010 – LINK
OOPS AGAIN: IPCC scientists screeching about the cataclysmic effects of sea-level rises forgot to consider sedimentary deposits… – April 23, 2010 – LINK
UN IPCC Co-chair: climate policy is redistributing the world’s wealth – November 18, 2010 – LINK
More Hadley Center Global Warming Horror Claims Debunked by Real Science – December 6, 2010 – LINK
ClimateGate One Year Later. Elite Media Still Lying – December 6, 2010 – LINK
More ClimateGate One Year Later – December 7, 2010 – LINK
IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT: Most global warming models are exaggerated, many scientists in it for the grant money or treat it like a religion – December 7, 2010 – LINK
How Global Warming Propaganda Works – December 8, 2010 – LINK
NASA’s global warming evidence page filled with lies, half truths and suspect data – December 10, 2010 – LINK
Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research: Halt economic growth, start government rationing. Global Warming Alarmists Party Fat in Cancun – December 21, 2010 – LINK
Global Warming Conference Delegates Sign Petitions to Ban Water and “Destabilize U.S. Economy” – February 15, 2011 – LINK
Global Warming Alarmist Quote of the Day – Former Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart: No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits…climate change provides the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.
AAUP Seeks to Limit Transparency Over Climate Science – September 19, 2011 – LINK
I have to ask. Is anyone shocked or even surprised by AAUP’s action? AAUP (American Association of University Professors) has demonstrated itself to be just slightly less ideologically corrupt than MSNBC. Politics trumps science, academic freedom, and transparency as a matter of course at AAUP. Such behavior is anti-education and anti-science.
In a letter to University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan, the AAUP requested that the administration scale back an open-records agreement with a conservative organization seeking documents from UVa climate researchers. They were joined by 3 other climate science advocacy organizations: theAmerican Geophysical Union, Climate Science Watch, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The university reached an agreement with the American Tradition Institute (ATI) on May 24, 2011 to hand over documents pertaining to former UVa professor Michael Mann and other climate scientists.
Mann, a current professor at Pennsylvania State University, was widely criticized in 2009 when his global warming research was debunked in the heavily publicized“ClimateGate” scandal.
The AAUP cites academic freedom and the necessity of protecting professors from public scrutiny as reasons for scaling back the agreement. “The university should seek to improve the agreement to better protect scientists from harassment and intimidation,” the letter says.
David Schnare, Director of ATI’s Environmental Law Center, refuted the AAUP’s claim. “There is no adequate means to inspect the ethical standards and behaviors of the faculty of the university without public access to these records,” he said.
Schnare also points out the ATI is under a gag order regarding documents that are exempt from public disclosure according to Virginia open records law. He asserts that ATI and UVa are, “cooperating in a professional manner to insure that the faculty and the scientists are properly protected while meeting the needs of the public.”
This is not the first time that the AAUP has sought to limit transparency in the name of “academic freedom.” In 2009, the organizationopposedthe public posting of course syllabi and faculty curriculum vita in public universities in Texas.
University professors across the country are given free license to espouse their left-wing ideology while under the guise of academic freedom. Are faculty at your university using the classroom to promote a liberal worldview?
Former Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart:
No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits…climate change provides the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.
The agent “touched my vagina four times”. The TSA representative told me “its better than being blown up”. So you don’t like your vagina being touched…here is a complaint card to fill out…
Your tax dollars at work…
The EPA is now paying the American Lung Association to attack Republicans:
[Editor’s Note – This is a billboard just a few miles north of where I live attacking Fred Upton. In a crazy ruling by the court, they handed the EPA the power to regulate CO2 as if it were a pollutant. The Constitution says that all lawmaking power rests with the Congress. It is with this “authority” under color of law (fake law) that Obama has instructed the EPA to create a Cap & Trade scheme against the will of Congress and the American people. This is profoundly and expressly unconstitutional and a complete violation of Separation of Powers.
So the Republicans are moving to take this power away. This billboard is Obama’s response. The dishonest narrative is “Republicans want to poison the air and kill this child “. CO2 is what we breath out and what trees and plants breath in, without it we would all starve. Almost any economic activity creates some CO2 so this is an “excuse” to regulate anything and everything by using unelected bureaucrats and ignoring Congress altogether.
This is abuse of power on its face, Democrats know this but just don’t care, and some Republicans are afraid of being accused of wanting to poison the girl on the billboard. The only way to put an end to this is to vote for bold conservative candidates overwhelmingly.]
The ALA put up four billboards like this one near Rep. Fred Upton’s office in Michigan. Upton is the House Energy and Commerce Chairman. (PlowShareGroup)
The Environmental Protection Agency is paying the American Lung Association to run attack ads against Republican members of Congress.
“The American Lung Association has targeted House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton for his efforts to stop U.S. EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions by placing billboards within sight of his district offices linking climate change with increased childhood asthma,” reports E&E News PM.
But as we reported last week in “EPA owns the American Lung Association,” the EPA has paid the American Lung Association over $20 million in the last ten years, and has paid the ALA many more millions in a symbiotic relationship going back to at least 1990.
The EPA-ALA relationship works something like this: EPA pays the ALA and, in return, the ALA agitates for more stringent EPA air quality regulation, including by lawsuit. Now it’s billboards.
In addition to defunding National Public Radio, the House GOP should look at the EPA’s funding of American Lung Association.
It doesn’t matter that the EPA policies will cause your
Ann says that kids are fed anti-capitalist, anti-freedom propaganda almost daily. I would say that my experience in college almost mirrors that description.
Ann says that kids are shown Al Gore’s debunked movie several times before they graduate with no balance. I know this is true as I just went through this with Riley High School and my child.
Ann says no one, and I mean no one will stand up in public schools and tell kids how capitalism lifts people up. How it brings wealth and gives people more of a chance for upward mobility. Well in my case in college that was not completely true. I did have one professor who spoke very well about capitalism. The administration fired him for it.
Ann mentions “The Story of Stuff” Marxist indoctrination video – you can see it and a complete refutation HERE.
Ann McElhinney, director/producer of Not Evil Just Wrong and Mine Your Own Business, speaking at Tea Party American Policy Summit in Phoenix (AZ) on February 26th 2011. For more, please see http://www.noteviljustwrong.com and follow Ann on Twitter @annmcelhinney.
Lou Dobbs on this indoctrination video called “The Story of Stuff”
Mark Hertsgaard (MH): Why does your party continue to deny what the National Academy of Sciences and virtually every scientific organization…
Sen. James Inhofe (JI): You know you ask the same question over and over again. Did you happen six days ago to be at the hearing at the House where I testified?
MH: I was not, sir.
JI: See I answered all those questions in detail. The science is mixed. We all know the science is mixed. The economy is not mixed because the economics are pretty well established.
MH: How is the science mixed when the National Academy of Sciences and every…
JI: We have reports all you have to do is go back and look, I have given numerous talks on the floor…We started off with a list, I believe, of maybe 40 scientists who had different views, then it went up to 2- or 300, then it went to 900 or so. So there are a lot of scientists who don’t agree. I don’t take as gospel everything that comes from any particular scientific group.
MH: When every scientific organization in the world says this, sir.
JI: That is not true.
A Woman from ACP, identified by Solve Climate News as Allie Carter, a recent Michigan State University graduate (AC): I don’t understand why my generation has to suffer because it sounds like you’re not liking what you are hearing from these scientists you’re cherry picking.
JI: So your generation — Now who are you with?
AC: I’m with the Alliance for Climate Protection and I am here speaking on behalf young people.
JI: …No you’re not!
AC: I absolutely am.
JI: I have twenty kids and grand kids. You want to see a picture of them? [pulls out pictures]. Okay that’s good.
Inhofe then proceeded to calmly explain that the United States cannot sink its economy to satisfy the unproven hypotheses of a mixed group of scientists and activists.
JI: When you ask that question “what if you’re wrong?” Stop and think about it. What if you are wrong and we pass the largest tax increase in the history of America to do something that is not justified. I remember, and I use this in testimony. In 1993, you weren’t around in 1993… the Clinton/Gore tax increase was the largest tax increase at that point in history. All marginal rates, gasoline, everything went up. That was a total of a $30 billion tax increase. This would be ten times that great. This would be somewhere between $300 and $400 billion tax increase. That admittedly, now listen to this very carefully, according to the director at the EPA would not have any effect on emissions because that would only be in the United States. As jobs went to places like India and China and Mexico and maybe places that they don’t have any emissions requirements and actually increase emissions. So should we do that when we know and you know and everyone out here knows that it would not reduce worldwide emissions? Period. We all know this.
The ambush ended with Hertsgaard asking Inhofe if he would apologize to his children, to which Inhofe asked Hertsgaard if he would apologize to his 20 children and grandchildren.
Of course as we have reported IPCC scientists are backing away from that IPCC report fast as its claims are discovered to be unsourced, fraudulent, or well intentioned but just plain wrong. As far as literal conspiracies among academics and administrators to shut people up, force conformity, drive professors and students out, suppress research etc. please see our Academic Misconduct category as it has many of literally thousands of examples of just that. We start that category with this post right HERE. Of course the most famous proven conspiracy among academics was ClimateGate as the climate hoax scientists were busted by their own internal emails. So not only do literal conspiracies happen, we learn of new proven examples of them on a regular basis. If anyone is foolish enough to attempt to argue the point with me below, please have it it. Good luck because you are going to need it.
NOAA Refutes Gore’s Claim Recent Snowstorms Caused By Global Warming
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration somewhat under the radar a few weeks ago rebutted Nobel Laureate Al Gore’s claim that January’s heavy snowstorms across the country were caused by global warming.
As readers might remember, the man that has been made rich advancing the myth that carbon dioxide is destroying the planet weighed in on the inclement weather at his blog on February 1:
Last week on his show Bill O’Reilly asked, “Why has southern New York turned into the tundra?” and then said he had a call into me. I appreciate the question.
As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now and they say that increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming:
“In fact, scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe. Snow has two simple ingredients: cold and moisture. Warmer air collects moisture like a sponge until it hits a patch of cold air. When temperatures dip below freezing, a lot of moisture creates a lot of snow.”
“A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species.”
A week later, NOAA posted the following article at its Climate Watch magazine (h/t Yid With Lid):
This is the second consecutive very wintry winter in the eastern United States. Last year, NOAA climate scientists concluded the record-breaking snowstorms most likely resulted from the combination of two natural climate patterns: El Niño and the Arctic Oscillation.
So what about this year? Last winter’s El Niño has flipped to La Niña, as temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific have been cooler than normal. But the Arctic Oscillation seems to be in a repeat pattern, with conditions this December and January very similar to last winter, according to Deke Arndt, Chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.
.…..Hence, and not at all surprisingly, the man that just this past Friday accused Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal of being part of a conspiracy to mislead people about the dangers of manmade global warming was once again guilty of it himself.
George Soros — whom we’re always told is not serving his own economic interests at all by promoting liberal politicians and big-government policies — is launching a new investment fund that plans to profit off of the “green energy” boom, which is entirely dependent on government subsidies supported by the groups Soros funds.
As the press release puts it, this fund will “leverage technology and business model innovation to improve energy efficiency, reduce waste and emissions, harness renewable energy, and more efficiently use natural resources, among other applications.” As Soros puts it in the same release: “Developing alternative sources of energy and achieving greater energy efficiency is both a significant global investment opportunity and an environmental imperative.” Cadie Thompson at CNBC’s NetNet flagged this.
So, yeah. The big-government policies advanced by the liberal outfits he funds — like Center for American Progress — will enrich the companies in which Soros is investing.
But this story gets better.
The press release casually mentions whom Soros is hiring to run this new fund: Cathy Zoi. As Cadie Thompson at CNBC’s NetNet (edited by my brother John Carney), puts it,
Zoi was Barack Obama’s “Acting Under Secretary for Energy and Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.” An Al Gore acolyte, Zoi was Obama’s point-woman on subsidizing green tech. Now she’s going to work for George Soros to profit off of subsidized green tech.
If you remember Zoi’s name, it’s because of another green-tech conflict of interest: Zoi’s husband is an executive at a window company, Serious Windows, which the White House regularly held up as a “poster child of green industry.”
The Freedom Foundation of Minnesota put it this way:
“Ms. Zoi is married to Robin Roy, a top executive at Serious Materials, a privately held manufacturer of ‘sustainable green building materials’ located in California. On the Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure submitted by Ms. Zoi to the White House Ethics office as part of her confirmation, Ms. Zoi disclosed ownership with her spouse of 120,000 vested and unvested stock options in Serious Materials, a company her office regulates and that she may profit from.”
Oh yeah, Serious Materials pocketed federal stimulus money, too.
But we can put all that behind us, because now Zoi has left the Obama Administration and will go back to work making an honest living in the private sector, where she can put all the knowledge she gained from working for the Department of Energy to work for the private equity firms. Thata girl Zoi!
EPA making rules as they go, picking winners and losers
Congress isn’t the only entity that knows how to pick winners and losers for energy sources and technologies. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is doing its best to follow suit by imposing new rules on the natural gas industry and providing exemptions to the biomass industry.
For natural gas, the EPA evasively posted a new rule on hydraulic fracturing, requiring a company to obtain permits if the company uses diesel when fracking. Hydraulic fracturing, a long-proven process by which pressurized water and other substances are injected into wells to extract natural gas, has been the subject of much debate between environmentalists and industry because of those “other substances.”
An exemption in the 2005 Safe Drinking Water Act protects natural gas companies from disclosing proprietary information regarding the chemicals they use to when fracking. Environmentalists are pushing for full disclosure because of the concern that hydraulic fracturing is a threat to America’s drinking water. But in this instance, with the EPA’s new rule on diesel disclosure, perhaps more unsettling than the new rule is the way in which the EPA issued the rule. Mike Soraghan of Greenwire reports:
Federal agencies usually change policies with a multistep process that begins with the Federal Register and does not end for a year or more. But the fracturing permit change happened without so much as a press release. It was quietly posted amid an increasingly noisy debate about fracturing, a process in which chemical-laced water is injected underground at high pressure to crack rock formations and release oil or gas.
EPA has launched a multiyear study of the safety of fracturing. Hundreds of people showed up last summer at EPA hearings about the practice in New York and Pennsylvania. It has been the subject of a piece on “60 Minutes,” an HBO documentary called “Gasland” and even an episode of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”
The casual nature of the posting, and the lack of any date, left oil and gas industry attorneys puzzling over what the change applied to and whether it applied only for the future, or retroactively. Of particular concern was that companies had been ordered to give documentation to Congress about their fracturing practices, and EPA was ordering disclosure, as well.
If they had disclosed that they had used diesel—legally—but did not get a specific permit, could they be penalized? Was there any way to get such a permit? What should states, who administer the program, do about regulating fracturing?
The story gets more complicated from there, mostly because of a series of loopholes with regards to the EPA regulating the use of diesel for fracking. Having the EPA close the loophole and create a clear definition with regards to diesel use isn’t necessarily bad, but it sets a dangerous precedent for the EPA quickly changing the rules of the game for industry with no consideration for debate and public comment.
Reining in the EPA’s regulatory overreach and unilateral decision making should be a priority for the 112th Congress. Congress should thoroughly evaluate and question the EPA’s newly implemented rules and have EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson justify her agency’s decision not just when it comes to hydraulic fracturing but other rules as well, most notably the regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
Speaking of which, Congress should ask Jackson why the EPA exempted biofuel refineries from obtaining permit requirements for CO2 emissions. This year the EPA will start regulating emissions from new power plants and major expansions of large greenhouse-gas-emitting plants (more than 25,000 tons of CO2 per year) and will finalize regulations for existing refineries and fossil fuel electric utilities by November 2012. But not biofuel plants. The reason given is that the science clearly shows that biofuel production is net neutral when it comes to CO2 emissions.
Right. Just like the science clearly shows increased CO2 emissions will result in sea level rises, stressed water resources, increased size and quantity of wildfires, insect outbreaks, threats to ecosystems and national security, and other catastrophic events.
New studies, however, are showing that biofuel production is not carbon-neutral. A report from Rice Universitynotes that when you account for land use conversion, the use of fertilizers, insecticides, and pesticides (which emit much more potent methane and nitrous oxide), as well as the fossil fuels used for production and distribution, biofuel production becomes quite carbon-intensive. For an industry that built its business model around subsidies, tariffs, and federal protection, it’s no surprise that the EPA threw the biofuel industry another bone. Now it’s time for Congress to put the EPA on the stand and ask why.
We have been a bit behind on blogging this month. Catching up by using a couple of mega-posts to catch up on the important stuff. There are lots of great updates here so be sure to scan through this carefully and be sure to catch our February News Roundup Part II.
>> Obama’s Cousin Dr. Milton Wolf says that Palin is right about ObamaCare. – LINK.
>> Watts – New Evidence that mother nature deals with CO2 just fine. Also if all industrial activity stopped climate would still change – LINK:
>>Steve McIntyre presentation at the Heartland Climate Change and Economics Institute. This is a no miss video. – LINK.
>> Daily Caller – The new budget from the White House gives the GOP new opportunities.
The budget from the President contains levels of spending, debt and new taxes that are just reckless. The numbers are also fraudulent because the proposed budget assumes levels of economic growth that are not even close to realistic. You can see the official proposed and rather rosy rigged White House deficit numbers here – http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2012/assets/tables.pdf
Do these numbers look like the government living within its mean as President Obama said to you?
>> Daily Caller – First Drilling Company Files Bankruptcy as Result of Obama Illegal Offshore Drilling Ban.
Keep in mind that we reported that the Obama Administration has been found in contempt of course for continuing to enforce the illegal offshore drilling ban. By the way the Daily Caller has been on a roll of great coverage lately and has become a must see daily along with the Washington Examiner.
>>Dale Petersen is running for President. I had a nice chat with one of his fund raisers at CPAC. I will discuss more of that later. This guy is a long shot to be sure, but there is certainly more depth to him than a few great TV ads.
>>Gallup: More Americans Now Pro-Life than Pro-Abortion for the First Time.
>>Daily Caller – Obama signs into law new Food Regulation Bill passed during the lame duck session at Christmas while you weren’t looking.
This bill is a gargantuan power grab that drives up food prices and sticks it to smaller companies and farms. This bill is Norton’s First Law in action: Big business loves big government because big government taxes and regulates the small and medium sized competition out of the competition.
You “liberals” who claim to oppose corporatism, I am waiting for you to speak up because this is yet another in a long list of examples of Democrats being in big corporations back pocket.
>> Accuracy in Media interviews Donald Rumsfeld on his book and media bias.
Rumsfeld talks about the WMD issue. The weapons inspectors found active and static WMD programs some of which could be producing mass weapons in six months and some programs would be producing within five years. Saddam was suppose dto give all of this up. We invaded in 2003 well five years later was 2008. So what would terrorists now be armed with if Saddam was not removed?:
>> Bill O’Reilly Budget Plan for America – “It is embarrassing that the President’s own debt commission says he is not doing nearly enough to solve the financial crisis…” :
>> WOW – Laurie Dhue was a functioning alcoholic for 10 years! Tells all to Geraldo! Sober for 4 years! May come back to Fox News!!
>> GOOD NEWS – The House passed 61 Billion in real spending cuts today and repealed excessive and poorly designed regulations from several industries including coal. The regulatory power is granted by Congress for the purpose of making the laws Congress passes easy to understand and follow, it was never designed for social engineering nor was it intended to be used to allow the executive to legislate on its own and buck the will of Congress.
>> File this under awesome: The House has voted 244-179 to kill $13 million in U.S. funding for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The House no longer wishes to have the IPCC prepare its climate assessment. GOP lawmakers said IPCC scientists were guilty of manipulating data and destroying evidence to promote their global warming views. (H/T Gregory Hilton)
>> By a 235 to 189 margin, the House of Representatives has just voted to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio and PBS. They have been receiving $420 million from the government. They are all responsible for blatant bias against conservatives. (H/T Gregory Hilton).
>> Liz Trotta Rips Anderson Cooper’s Egypt Coverage!
>> State Rep. Robert Hagen (D-OH) has just called a black tea party member “Buckwheat,” but says it is not a racial slur. Tom Spaulding wants to test his claim: “Let’s have Hagan take a midnight stroll in poor urban areas and call the black people he meets ‘Buckwheat’. Let him explain that he’s been using the phrase ‘since he was a kid’ and it ‘has no racial connotation’”. State Sen. Jake Knotts (R-SC) referred to Gov. Nikki Haley as a “towelhead” on a comedy show. (Via Gregory Hilton)
>> Tucker Carlson: Politically Correct (read not accurate) pro-Islamic bias being introduced to public school text books.
I have high school aged relatives and it amazes me how much leftist secular/anti-western culture attitude change propaganda gets into these text books, much of it can be debunked with common academic and public records resources. In many of these texts Ronald Reagan’s name is not even mentioned in the sections covering the end of the Cold War; I just graduated with a new degree in 2010 and that particular bias was in my class material. Fortunately the young PhD. candidate teaching the class allowed me to give a lecture on the Cold War as I was the only one in the room old enough to remember it.
>> Geert Wilders on the expatriating of Jihadists from Europe.
Most people here in the USA havce no idea how the situation in Europe has evolved. Many European countries including Sweden, England, Germany, France, and Holland have “state within a state” jihadist enclaves where militant Islamists have such control that not even the police are not safe to enter. The violence has reached incredible levels. Such violence includes Islamic rape gangs that act with near impunity, honor killings, and female genital mutilation. The militants have masterfully used their lawyers to manipulate the Euro left and the hate speech laws to make it virtually illegal to even criticize what is going on. Polls in England show that 28% of Muslims were willing to tell a pollster that they supported and/or were sympathetic to the cause of the 9/11 hijackers and the subway bombers. Many also are willing to tell a pollster that they want to do away with democracy, and force sharia law and the caliphate upon Europe.
>> Congress in bipartisan push to reverse Obama’s ban on re-importation of M-1 Garand antique rifles.
Ahh yes I remember the campaign. I remember when Obama said that he supported the Second Amendment and how he promised not to get in the way of hunters, collectors and those who wanted to have a gun for legitimate self defense. I remember how he hired that actor to get in target shooting garb to praise him. I remember how he lectured us all on how he supported gun rights and firearm enthusiasts. I also remember how he opposed a law in Illinois that would allow you to defend yourself in your own home. I also remember how he answered several firearms policy questionnaires and I remember how he was against Heller before he was for it. I also remember how right after he was elected he started hiring hard core anti-gun (BATF Chief) and anti-hunting (OIRA Director) activists. But what can I say, but WE TOLD YOU SO.
The excuse was that these rifles are too dangerous…. but no one in the Administration would go on the record stating so. “Asked why the M1’s pose a threat, the State Department spokesman referred questions to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ATF representatives said they would look into the question Monday afternoon, but on Wednesday they referred questions to the Justice Department. DOJ spokesman Dean Boyd referred questions back to the State Department” – LINK.
These rifles are NOT the choice of criminals by a long shot. The M1 Garand rifle is very long, heavy, fires ammo that is very expensive, it has an antique loading mechanism that only holds eight bullets, it is not a rapid fire weapon and if the proper training is not obeyed EVERY time the weapon is loaded/unloaded its feeding mechanism can easily leave you with a broken thumb or finger.
Let me show you what I mean:
Here is the good news from the NRA:
>> Video release of the loon that tried to firebomb Governor Rick Perry’s (R-TX) home.
>> Todd Palin at Iron Dog Race in Alaska. He is a four time champion.
>> Attention Journalism Majors – See why veteran unemployment is higher than the national average:
>> Daily Caller – China moves to stamp out “Jasmine Revolution” – LINK.
>> Food Prices going up at 150% inflation rate. And some elite media reporters said that Sarah Palin was nuts when she predicted this. – LINK.
>> Six Reasons why USA is Only the Ninth Most Free Economy in the World – LINK.
>> Obama Was Against Health Care Mandate in Campaign:
>> Democrats having a fit over House investigations into Obama Administration lack of transparency. This is a subject we have covered many times. He promised the most transparent administration and has the least transparent since Nixon. – LINK.
>> Book Glamorizing Suicide Bombers Found in Arizona Desert Near Border – LINK.
>> Radicalized Muslim Cleric Arrested Sneaking into USA – LINK.
>> Disaster: Obama to raise ethanol in gas to 15%. Ethanol gives you lower gas mileage, eats automotive seals, breaks down into water and varnish in a few weeks if your car sits, is environmentally backwards, this will drive up food prices, it is expensive, the taxpayers subsidize it and most cars made before 2006 aren’t designed to handle it. HotAir.com has more details.
>> Newt all over the place on ethanol and global warming. His positions change depending on who he is in front of and I witnessed that at CPAC. Newt is brilliant, but like Mit Romney it seems he just wants it too badly. LINK. Gov. Daniels is pro-ethanol and has been consistent in that view. Of course he is from Indiana so what do you expect? Of course Mitch is wrong about the issue on the merits and he almost certainly knows it. Economically and logistically ethanol is a nightmare, but opposing it politically in this state may be as well and the same goes for Iowa. Mitch is truly an economic genius so I cannot believe he does not understand this.
>> Judge Vinson – ObamaCare is unconstitutional. Judge uses Obama’s own words in the ruling – LINK.
>> Media Bias – Washington Post has no coverage for March for Life but gives 48 paragraphs to leftist Ingrate Ron Reagan Jr. who attack his dead father Presidnet Reagan. LINK. ABC gives 24 minutes of network news coverage of his nook in five days. What nooks gets that much network face time? – LINK. You have heard us use the term “attitude change propaganda” before well I have just given you two examples of it. Loyal son Michael Reagan responds with a simple statement, “My brother was an embarrassment to my father when he was alive, now he is an embarrassment to my mother”.
>> Jeff Sessions: Economic policy that is stuck in reverse – LINK.
>> Mark Levin: Obama is NOT moderating. Has Obama called off his lawyers when it comes to ObamaCare, Texas EPA regs, illegal offshore drilling ban, suing Arizona etc. NOPE. Must see video – LINK.
>> OK this was sort of obvious but it is always good to have the evidence – Obama Justice Department Colluded with ACLU to Attack Arizona’s SB 1070 According to Documents Uncovered by Judicial Watch – LINK.
>> New York Democrats indicted on voter fraud charges. Elite media yawns. – LINK.
>> Reagan on the dictator of Libya:
>> Dramatic Video: Mom Lashes Out At “Scumbag” Judge That Was Found Guilty Of Sending Kids To Jail For Payola
>> O’Reilly and Bernard Goldberg on CNN’s softball interview with George Soros:
>> Texas will soon pass a new law allowing concealed carry on campus:
Many students are too young to remember, but I remember very well when only a few states in the union allowed concealed carry. Every time a new state changed the law to get more constitutionally correct the left warned that there would be shootouts right and left and that average people would be snapping at the drop of a hat. Well it hasn’t happened. In fact states who have passed such laws saw almost all crime including gun crime drop. While England and Australia passed gun bans their crime and gun crime rates when up sharply. A gun is a great equalizer and if citizens do not have them the law of the land starts to look more like the law of the jungle.
Here in Indiana as many as 1 in 12 carries a concealed handgun. How often do you hear of issues involving people with legal guns? Most citizens who are unaware of the gun culture such as the young lady who made those rather uninformed comments in the video have no idea that they are surrounded by armed people much of the time. Of course now some courts are enforcing the bill of rights on public property more and more. With Heller and the other recent rulings involving the Second Amendment expect courts to be more sympathetic to the issue of self defense. Utah has already passed a similar law for schools and it has been a success.
As I have stated before, I believe that some far left professors lack the judgment and temperament to have access to a firearm. Fortunately most of the left will not take advantage of such laws anyways.
>> Rumsfeld: “I think [Obama] has made a practice of trying to apologize for America” – LINK
>> UK – Four Islamist men slashed teacher’s face and left him with fractured skull ‘for teaching other religions to Muslim girls’ – LINK
>> Hillary: “Israel’s settlements illegitimate“. We pointed out that Obama hired some hard core antisemites to serve on his campaign and as advisors. This is exactly the type of thing that Joe Biden promised would not happen.
>> Ann Coulter says that Sarah Palin should not run for President because it would be a step down for her. It would be like Rush Limbaugh running for President.
This may seem silly to the politically unsavvy, but think about it. Palin has a bully pulpit that is bigger than Obama’s. She can get legislation changed with a Tweet or a Facebook note. She is the fund raiser and king maker in chief. And she can mobilize the base after an election to keep members of Congress and even a President honest.
>> Barry Rubin: NPR is not journalism it is a political warfare operation – LINK.
>> Pamela Geller: “honor killings” on the increase in the West –
>> MSNBC: Oil Companies Make Sure Our Air is Polluted
Where do they find these whack jobs. Oh wait I know, radicalized college campus’
I’ve got to hand it to the folks at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. They‘ve come up with a creative new way to expose the scientific ignorance of many of today’s climate change fanatics.
In a Penn & Teller-style prank, CFACT asked attendees of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico, to sign two different petitions. The first asked participants to support the purposeful destabilization of the United States economy:
The first project, entitled “Petition to Set a Global Standard” sought to isolate and punish the United States of America for defying the international community, by refusing to bite, hook, line and sinker on the bait that is the Kyoto Protocol. The petition went so far as to encourage the United Nations to impose tariffs and trade restrictions on the U.S. in a scheme to destabilize the nation’s economy. Specifically, the scheme seeks to lower the U.S. GDP by 6% over a ten year period, unless the U.S. signs a U.N. treaty on global warming.
This would be an extremely radical move by the United Nations. Even so, radical left-wing environmentalists from around the world scrambled eagerly to sign.
And to prove that some people will sign anything that has the right buzz words — think “global effort,“ ”international community,“ and ”planetary” — COP 16 participants were asked to sign in support of a ban on a dangerous chemical compound: water.
The second project was as successful as the first. It was euphemistically entitled “Petition to Ban the Use of Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO)” (translation water). It was designed to show that if official U.N. delegates could be duped by college students into banning water, that they could essentially fall for anything, including pseudo-scientific studies which claim to show that global warming is man-caused.
Despite the apparently not-so-obvious reference to H2O, almost every delegate that collegian students approached signed their petition to ban that all too dangerous substance, which contributes to the greenhouse effect, is the major substance in acid rain, and is fatal if inhaled.
The video experiment helps us draw one of two conclusions: a) these people are absolutely clueless, or b) they really do hate water. Either way, who really thinks these people should be considered “experts” when it comes to science?
ONEONTA, N.Y. — A producer of a documentary alleging conspiracy theories behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has been arrested on drug charges in upstate New York.
Oneonta police tell the Daily Star of Oneonta that 27-year-old Korey Rowe and a 19-year-old Bronx man were arrested after selling packets of heroin to an undercover officer.
Rowe was arraigned last Friday on a felony count of criminal sale of a controlled substance.
Authorities say the Oneonta resident was released from Otsego County Jail after posting $10,000 cash bail.
It couldn’t be determined if he had a lawyer. Rowe’s phone number was unlisted.
An Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, Rowe was a producer of “Loose Change,” a 2006 film that challenged the official explanation of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Even the most sensible “sounding” gun laws often result in the deaths of innocents.
Nikki Goeser appears with famed economist and scholar Dr. John Lott.
Dr. John Lott: I don’t think that the government should fund research. They cannot separate politics with who gets the money and what they know certain academics are going to say. Democrats will appoint academics who agree with them, who will produce garbage studies to promote their views.
Our take, we pretty much agree, although if a method to make the grant process blind some exceptions may be OK.
Gas prices are “soaring” again, crossing the $3-a-gallon threshold on Dec. 23 for the first time since Oct. 17, 2008. Back then the benchmark was a relief as prices plunged from the highest price ever of $4.11.
Pump prices have been climbing all month, yet network reports downplayed the pain and suffering of consumers. Jim Axelrod of CBS called it “bad news” after reporting some positive economic news on Dec. 28, but concluded “The economy’s not great, says economist Dan Greenhaus, but not terrible either.”
Compare that to past media exaggeration of gas prices. NBC’s Anne Thompson said that “no matter what kind of gas is sold, today it’s now unbelievably expensive” on Aug. 31, 2005. That day the national average for gasoline was $2.62 – but the gas price signs shown in Thompson’s report were much higher at $3.49.
That same night, ABC’s Charles Gibson claimed that gas was approaching $4-a-gallon.
Conversely, as prices fell throughout the summer of 2007, the network news media ignored gas price declines emphasizing “skyrocketing,” “soaring,” and “painfully high” prices over the drop.
What’s the difference between then and now? The president has changed from Bush to Obama, and with it the media’s attitude toward gas prices has shifted.
The Heritage Foundation noted on Dec. 29 that the press pestered Bush about gas costs and the political consequences of high pump prices, but have yet to ask Obama the question. CBS suggested on April 26, 2006, that President Bush needed to “do something” about gas prices.
A few months later, on Aug. 21, 2006, Bush was asked at a press conference: “What do you say to people who are losing patience with gas prices at $3 a gallon? And how much of a political price do you think you’re paying for that, right now?”
Heritage cited further examples of Democrats pressing the White House to “ease” prices (when prices were below $2-a-gallon), and Speaker Nancy Pelosi attacking the president for rising gas prices.
Under Obama, the networks haven’t breathlessly exaggerated gasoline prices as they did under Bush or demanded to know what the president will do to “ease” prices.
More Bad News:
Yet according to Heritage Obama’s policies will continue to make gasoline more expensive.
Heritage wrote: “Now this week, analysts including former president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister, say Americans could be paying $5/gallon of gasoline by 2012. Investment banks are predicting a return to $100/barrel oil, andOPEC is refusing to raise production. All of this news would be less frightening if the White House were focusing on potential ways to lower energy prices. Instead, President Obama is admittedly fixated with raising them.”
How does Obama plan to raise prices? With further EPA regulations of power plants and oil refineries, and more rules for natural resources on government properties and the ‘de facto moratorium’ on oil drilling.
There are two predominant philosophies of journalism taught in this country. The “Walter Lippmann (so called) ‘objective’ model” and what one of my J-School profs called the “Looking out for the folks” model. The former is usually presented as the preferred model at most universities (especially the Ivy’s)
The Lippmann Objective Model is anything but objective. The Lippmann model says that journalists should associate themselves with an elite technical class of people so that these experts via/with the journalists can give the “proper” information to the public so that they can “vote the right way”.
At first, the Orwellian nature of the Lippmann Model is not so pointedly explained, but as time goes on reporters get it and the coverage of the elite media shows it. [If you doubt me I challenge you to follow this LINK and scroll down to the quote from Dr. Rahe and the excerpt from Lippmann’s book – Editor]
For example, the reporter and/or editor has a point of view he wishes to present. So he opens his rolodex and contacts an “expert” he knows will give him the sound-bite he wants and presents him as just an objective expert who they found at random. Or said reporter will have a man on the street section, but the reporter will call a few people he knows to be on that street, complete with the narrative that the reporter knows will present.
Oh? You think I’m kidding? OK just a few examples:
The “looking out for the folks” model is often quoted by Bill O’Reilly, but Bill, as he will tell you, is more of a commentator than a straight news man. The spirit of the kind of journalism O’Reilly did when he was a straight news man is closer to this model. The “looking out for the folks” model certainly resembles more of the ethical ideal in what people expect from journalism and is what “Lippmann Objective Model” media outlets claim to be on their face.
Enough with the preliminary goodies and on to the meat.
Oh the horror! Fox bureau chief told reporters to be ‘skeptical’
By Mark Tapscott
You think the most essential purpose of journalism and the reason the Founders included freedom of the press in the First Amendment was to insure independent reporting about government, politicians, and public policy issues, right?
Well, you must be wrong because Fox News Washington Bureau Chief Bill Sammon is getting a raft of garbage from liberal activists masquerading as journalists at Media Matters, some liberal bloggers and a scattering of real journalists who ought to know better.
A journalist being skeptical? Who would ever have thought such a thing could be. I don’t know, maybe anybody who has heard this (attributed long ago to a crusty desk editor at the illustrious City News Bureau in Chicago): “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”
In other words, we journalists are paid to BE SKEPTICAL.
For the record, here’s what Sammon said in a Dec. 8, 2009, memo to his reporting staff shortly after the Climategate global warming email scandal erupted:
“Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data, we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.”
Now I am from out of town and all, but Sammon’s injuction sounds to me exactly like what editors are supposed to tell their charges – report what A claims and what B says about what A claims, but keep your personal views about both A and B out of it.
Note that Sammon includes both those who say the planet has warmed – i.e. global warming advocates – and those who claim the opposite, that the planet has cooled – global warming critics. How much more even-handed – dare I say it, fair and balanced? – can the guy be?
There is also the factual nature of Sammon’s statement that critics question data. Critics DO question the data for a warming planet. He doesn’t demand that his reporters agree with the critics about the data or tell viewers that the critics are right and the global warming advocates are wrong.
Yet, Salon’s headline claims the Fox news executive was “again caught demanding conservative spin.” And the lead that follows makes another false statement, claiming Sammon directed his “anchors and reporters to adopt right-wing spin when discussing the news.”
Are these people so arrogant as to think the rest of us are too stupid to see that Salon totally and completely misrepresented Sammon’s comment?
The back story here, of course, is that Media Matters is doing exactly what billionaire radical liberal financier George Soros paid it $1 million to do, which is to trash Fox News at every opportunity no matter what the facts might be in any given situation.
Watching this campaign unfold, it becomes clear that Fox News drives today’s extremist liberals into the same sort of eye-bulging, irrational, spittle-flying, blind rage that we saw back in the 1950s from the far right whack-jobs in the John Birch Society who claimed Ike was either a fool or a card-carrying commie.
Now, just so everybody reading this knows: Sammon is a former White House reporter for The Examiner. I count him as a friend, a respected colleague and a solid journalist. And Fox News puts me in front of a camera as a talking head once in a while.
So how long you think it will be before Sammon’s critics claim my comments here aren’t credible as a result? The reality is that the left-leaning MSNBC folks sit me down in front of their cameras to bloviate far more frequently than Fox does. Go figure.
So here’s something to ponder when the paid Fox detractors at Media Matters tell you Sammon and I are both former Washington Timesmen and are thus Republican mouthpieces:
I was inducted into the First Amendment Center’s Freedom of Information Hall of Fame a few years ago. I mention this not to boast, but because I was among a bunch of very smart people for whom I have great respect – even though they came predominantly from the liberal side of things.
But I don’t recall seeing anybody from Media Matters among the inductees.
But wait, I thought global warming was about open dialogue, tolerance for scientific skepticism, and all those cosey academic principles that are taught in science classes? Save the world, kumbaya …or not. It seems that the government is using outrageous pressure tactics to gain consensus, just like far left climate scientists do.
Embassy dispatches show America used spying, threats and promises of aid to get support for Copenhagen accord
Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.
The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial “Copenhagen accord“, the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.
Negotiating a climate treaty is a high-stakes game, not just because of the danger warming poses to civilisation but also because re-engineering the global economy to a low-carbon model will see the flow of billions of dollars redirected.
But intelligence gathering was not just one way. On 19 June 2009, the state department sent a cable detailing a “spear phishing” attack on the office of the US climate change envoy, Todd Stern, while talks with China on emissions took place in Beijing. Five people received emails, personalised to look as though they came from the National Journal. An attached file contained malicious code that would give complete control of the recipient’s computer to a hacker. While the attack was unsuccessful, the department’s cyber threat analysis division noted: “It is probable intrusion attempts such as this will persist.”
The Obama Administration has announced that it plans to enact Cap & Tax (energy taxes) and the so called “death panel” and other provisions into the health care law by abusing the power of regulation given to him. Congress denied him these laws, so he is going to do it anyways. Congress and the courts denied him the “Net Neutrality” regulations of the internet.
This is the problem that occurs when Congress grants federal bureaucracy such wide regulatory power to enact as they see fit. The bureaucrats get such wide power to enact law through regulation that they in effect become, as Justice Scalia once described as, “a junior varsity Congress” that can pass laws that are even against the will of Congress and the people. This action takes the entire purpose of Separation of Powers in the Constitution and tosses it right out the window. While Congress does have some minor delegable authority under the Necessary and Proper clause in no way did the Founders ever intend to have a situation where all three branches of government are legislating on their own and against the will of the people.
This action shows that the Obama administration and some of the Democratic leadership have nothing but utter contempt for the overwhelming expressed will of the American people.
Imagine what would happen in the elite if George Bush did something so extreme, or Sarah Palin?
Some of you may know Piers Corbyn form the film “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. He is the bane of global warming alarmists. They call him names, send him threats, and don’t want his work to appear in academic publications. He also predicts the weather correctly about 85% of the time according to the Mayor of London. And London’s city government isn’t the only organization that is listening to Corbyn rather than the official climate orthodoxy who has been wrong year after year.
Do you remember? They [The British Met Office and the Global Warming Orthodoxy] said it would be mild and damp, and between one degree and one and a half degrees warmer than average. Well, I am now 46 and that means I have seen more winters than most people on this planet, and I can tell you that this one is a corker.
Never mind the record low attained in Northern Ireland this weekend. I can’t remember a time when so much snow has lain so thickly on the ground, and we haven’t even reached Christmas. And this is the third tough winter in a row. Is it really true that no one saw this coming?
Actually, they did. Allow me to introduce readers to Piers Corbyn, meteorologist and brother of my old chum, bearded leftie MP Jeremy. Piers Corbyn works in an undistinguished office in Borough High Street. He has no telescope or supercomputer. Armed only with a laptop, huge quantities of publicly available data and a first-class degree in astrophysics, he gets it right again and again.
Back in November, when the Met Office was still doing its “mild winter” schtick, Corbyn said it would be the coldest for 100 years. Indeed, it was back in May that he first predicted a snowy December, and he put his own money on a white Christmas about a month before the Met Office made any such forecast. He said that the Met Office would be wrong about last year’s mythical “barbecue summer”, and he was vindicated. He was closer to the truth about last winter, too.
He seems to get it right about 85 per cent of the time and serious business people – notably in farming – are starting to invest in his forecasts. In the eyes of many punters, he puts the taxpayer-funded Met Office to shame. How on earth does he do it? He studies the Sun.
He looks at the flow of particles from the Sun, and how they interact with the upper atmosphere, especially air currents such as the jet stream, and he looks at how the Moon and other factors influence those streaming particles.
He takes a snapshot of what the Sun is doing at any given moment, and then he looks back at the record to see when it last did something similar. Then he checks what the weather was like on Earth at the time – and he makes a prophecy.
I have not a clue whether his methods are sound or not. But when so many of his forecasts seem to come true, and when he seems to be so consistently ahead of the Met Office, I feel I want to know more. Piers Corbyn believes that the last three winters could be the harbinger of a mini ice age that could be upon us by 2035, and that it could start to be colder than at any time in the last 200 years.
Here is Dr. Corbyn from last year debating a hoaxer –
A few thoughts on what Dr. Corbyn says; the first is that he predicted the storms hitting England 100 days prior. Again this is not unusual for Dr. Corbyn whose weather predictions year after year are consistently the most accurate and the only people who deny that are those who hope that you won’t look up the record. Corbyn, like so many other scientists and others such as Lord Monckton who have become experts on the issue, have challenged Al Gore and much of the rest of the global warming alarmist crowd to real debates. There are very few of these because the alarmists don’t want to debate. The only debate I am aware of that was of any notoriety was a when Lord Monckton debated an alarmist in front of a crowd of college students with the students acting as a jury. Monckton won the vote.
UPDATE – Here is Dr. Corbyn gloating about his accuracy on Fox News-
Dr. Corbyn wins American Thinker’s Best Climate Predictor Award – LINK
One can make money betting on weather predictions – guess who has been making money winning? – LINK
Why Weatheraction got the last three Summer and Winter predictions correct and the Met Office got it wrong http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09h48RJiQM0 Sky News August 2009
See audits and graphs of the accuracy events of Weather Action forecasts – LINK
Here we go again. Yet another in a long list of claims by global warming alarmists bites the dust.
The hurricane seasons did not continue to get worse, the Himalayan ice didn’t melt away, Arctic Sea Ice is rebounding fast, Antarctic sea ice in the upswing, … this list goes on and on. One of the other recent claims from the AGW alarmist crowd is that 2010 would be the warmest year on record. Well it hasn’t worked out that way. I found it amusing when the alarmist hoaxers went into a neo-orgasmic tizzy over a record hot day in Pakistan with some flooding. So if they can go crazy over a single hot day, and since turn about is fair play, can we have fun with record cold MONTHS and shove it in their face? Of course we can.
Of course we know the excuses up front, they will say one of two things, that this cold is due to weather and not climate, but that excuse seems to go bye bye when they go spastic reporting a single hot day. Or my favorite, it is colder because of global warming. Of course if it was warmer in spite of conditions that should make it colder all of the sudden their rhetoric would be “see its cause of global warming”. In fact our friends over at EUreferendum skewer global warming alarmist George Monbiot for predicting warmer and warmer winters and then when the nastiest cold one hits Monbiot says “see this is what I told you all along” – except that isn’t what he/they said at all. Monbiot, like other global warming hoaxers, is hoping that no one will go back and check.
Atlanta had its first White Christmas since 1882 –
Thousands of dead starfish that littered a beach near Charleston last weekend are the first signs of what might become a disastrous winter for coastal sea life. They died because water was chilled to a lethal temperature by frigid weather earlier this month.
New 2 day record December snowfall amount to the Minneapolis/St Paul area
While there have been a few high temperature records in the desert southwest and western Oregon, the majority of weather records in the USA this week have been for cold, snowfall, or rainfall. The biggest number of records have to do with the lowest maximum temperature.
Here’s a summary of the weather records:
Record Events for Mon Dec 6, 2010 through Sun Dec 12, 2010
NewsNet5: Scientists: Winter could be the coldest Europe has seen in the last 1,000 years[Question of the day – Did the computer models used by the IPCC and alarmists predict this ? – Umm guess :) – Editor]
CLEVELAND – If you are planning a trip to Europe this winter, better pack the winter woolies. Several scientists there say this winter could be the coldest Europe has seen in the last 1,000 years.
Why this dire prediction? Polish scientists say the coming cold is connected to the speed of the Gulf Stream. That’s the warm current of water that travels from the Tropical Atlantic up along the US East Coast and over to Europe. the Gulf Stream effectively brings warmer temperatures to Europe, especially during the cold season. Figure 1 photo shows an active Gulf stream back in 2009. Note the active streams of warmer water (reds and yellow streaks) moving northeast thru the Atlantic Ocean. Figure 2 shows the active warm water streams as of September 1st, 2010. they are substantially weaker!
The Gulf Stream has really slowed down in the past two years. Its now moving at just half the speed it was just a couple of years ago. The scientists believe that this means the stream will not be able to add that extra heat to the European Countryside and compensate for the cold, Arctic winds. These scientists also believe, when the Gulf Stream stops completely, a new Ice Age will begin in Europe…
Anthony Watts being the rather clever chap that he is – gave us a nice post comparing statements from the British Met and the Global Warming Policy Foundation and compared them to the results:
Met Office, 25 September 2008: The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. It is also likely that the coming winter will be drier than last year.
Reality Check: Winter of 2008/09 Coldest Winter For A Decade
Met Office, March 2009: Mean temperatures over the UK were 1.1 °C below the 1971-2000 average during December, 0.5 °C below average during January and 0.2 °C above average during February. The UK mean temperature for the winter was 3.2 °C, which is 0.5 °C below average, making it the coldest winter since 1996/97 (also 3.2 °C).
Met Office 2009 Forecast: Trend To Milder Winters To Continue, Snow And Frost Becoming Less Of A Feature
Met Office, 25 February 2009: Peter Stott, Climate Scientist at the Met Office, said: “Despite the cold winter this year, the trend to milder and wetter winters is expected to continue, with snow and frost becoming less of a feature in the future.
“The famously cold winter of 1962/63 is now expected to occur about once every 1,000 years or more, compared with approximately every 100 to 200 years before 1850.”
Reality Check: Winter Of 2009/10 Coldest Winter For Over 30 Years
Met Office, 1 March 2010: Provisional figures from the Met Office show that the UK winter has been the coldest since 1978/79. The mean UK temperature was 1.5 °C, the lowest since 1978/79 when it was 1.2 °C.
Met Office July 2010: Climate Change Gradually But Steadily Reducing Probability Of Severe Winters In The UK
Ross Clark, Daily Express, 3 December 2010: ONE of the first tasks for the team conducting the Department for Transport’s “urgent review” into the inability of our transport system to cope with snow and ice will be to interview the cocky public figure who assured breakfast TV viewers last month that “I am pretty confident we will be OK” at keeping Britain moving this winter. They were uttered by Transport secretary Philip Hammond himself, who just a fortnight later is already being forced to eat humble pie… If you want a laugh I recommend reading the Resilience Of England’s Transport Systems In Winter, an interim report by the DfT published last July. It is shockingly complacent. Rather than look for solutions to snow-induced gridlock the authors seem intent on avoiding the issue. The Met Office assured them “the effect of climate change is to gradually but steadily reduce the probability of severe winters in the UK”.
Met Office 2010 Forecast: Winter To Be Mild Predicts Met Office
Daily Express, 28 October 2010: IT’S a prediction that means this may be time to dig out the snow chains and thermal underwear. The Met Office, using data generated by a £33million supercomputer, claims Britain can stop worrying about a big freeze this year because we could be in for a milder winter than in past years… The new figures, which show a 60 per cent to 80 per cent chance of warmer-than-average temperatures this winter, were ridiculed last night by independent forecasters. The latest data comes in the form of a December to February temperature map on the Met Office’s website.
Reality Check: December 2010 “Almost Certain” To Be Coldest Since Records Began
The Independent, 18 December 2010: December 2010 is “almost certain” to be the coldest since records began in 1910, according to the Met Office.
Met Office Predicted A Warm Winter. Cheers Guys
John Walsh, The Independent, 19 January 2010: Some climatologists hint that the Office’s problem is political; its computer model of future weather behaviour habitually feeds in government-backed assumptions about climate change that aren’t borne out by the facts. To the Met Office, the weather’s always warmer than it really is, because it’s expecting it to be, because it expects climate change to wreak its stealthy havoc. If it really has had its thumb on the scales for the last decade, I’m afraid it deserves to be shown the door.
A Frozen Britain Turns The Heat Up On The Met Office
Paul Hudson, BBC Weather, 9 January 2010: Which begs other, rather important questions. Could the model, seemingly with an inability to predict colder seasons, have developed a warm bias, after such a long period of milder than average years? Experts I have spoken to tell me that this certainly is possible with such computer models. And if this is the case, what are the implications for the Hadley centre’s predictions for future global temperatures? Could they be affected by such a warm bias? If global temperatures were to fall in years to come would the computer model be capable of forecasting this?
Notice in the headline we said “again” – you see this round of record colds comes after the last round of record colds from last January – LINK.
By the way, Piers Corbyn of “The Great Global Warming Swindle” fame, has once again accurately predicted what this winter was going to be like. The Mayor of London is giving him praise.
Lord Monckton gives a less serious and more humorous speech on global warming alarmism at The Heartland Institute. Lord Monckton has had formal debates against the best of the AGW scientists and has won these debates so handily that none of them will debate him any more. Global warming alarmists spend their time staying out of Lord Monckton’s way hoping that they will never be in a position to face him.
In this speech Monckton laughs at global warming alarmists and the audience laughs with him.
In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years. This would mean a drastic change in lifestyles for many people in countries like Britain as everyone will have to buy less ‘carbon intensive’ goods and services such as long haul flights and fuel hungry cars.
Prof Anderson admitted it “would not be easy” to persuade people to reduce their consumption of goods. He said politicians should consider a rationing system similar to the one introduced during the last “time of crisis” in the 1930s and 40s. This could mean a limit on electricity so people are forced to turn the heating down, turn off the lights and replace old electrical goods like huge fridges with more efficient models. Food that has travelled from abroad may be limited and goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.
“The Second World War and the concept of rationing is something we need to seriously consider if we are to address the scale of the problem we face,” he said.
Heard enough yet? Or do you still believe this is about real climate and not about getting central control of the economy and diminishing national sovereignty?
At an all-day White House conference on “environmental justice,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that her department is creating a new task force to battle the effects of climate change on domestic security operations.
Speaking at the first White House Forum on Environmental Justice on Thursday, Napolitano discussed the initial findings of the department’s recently created “Climate Change and Adaptation Task Force.”
Napolitano explained that the task force was charged with “identifying and assessing the impact that climate change could have on the missions and operations of the Department of Homeland Security.”
According to the former Arizona governor, the task force would address specific questions, including:
“How will FEMA work with state and local partners to plan for increased flooding or wildfire [Fires are up because Clinton stopped the loggers from managing the federal forest land. Without management, clearing of the underbrush and man made fire breaks massive forest fires were the result – Editor] or hurricane activity [Max Mayfield the former director of the National Hurricane Center said that at Katrina we were at the peek of the 55 year hurricane cycle and the increased hurricane activity we saw was expected and had nothing to do with global warming. Of course the global warming alarmists tried to get him fired for daring to tell the truth but President Bush said no – Editor] that is more serious than we’ve seen before?
This is the problem when you have an administration that hires the most dedicated radicals and is willing to politicize most everything.
If you doubt just how politicized NASA has become:
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden created a firestorm after telling Al Jazeera in June 2010 that President Obama told him before he took the job that he wanted him to do three things:
1 – inspire children to learn math and science
2 – expand international relationships and
3 – ‘perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.’
So much for NASA’s primary mission of space exploration says former NASA administrator Micheal Griffin who calls the change in priorities “deeply flawed“.
This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Source: NOAA)
The ice core data never has shown CO2 levels above 284.7 over the last 70,000 years (see official Vostok Ice Core Data below) so where in the world did they get this graph and how was it generated?
First I started with the linked reference to NOAA, yes the same outfit that gets its recent data from James Hansen who stated that energy industry CEO’s should be put on trial for crimes against humanity, the same NOAA/NASA/ Goddard that has been caught manufacturing data and prefers data from ground station sensors that have been found on black top parking lots (don’t walk on it barefoot on a sunny day), next to building heat vents, at the beginning on runways so that jet engine jet wash hits them, placed on rocky like gravel, in refuge dumps, and all sorts of other places that serve to drive the measurements up.
So as I was saying, I examined the NOAA link and it brings you to this intimidating looking page filled with a long list of links to data sets. Seems pretty convincing right? Until I started examining the data on the page. The first thing I noticed is that no where on the page does it explain how these data sets were put together to generate this graph. So much for transparency. The second thing I noticed is that many of the links do not go to CO2 data sets at all many of them go to methane data sets like this one and ionized oxygen data sets like this one.
Again what is the claim made on NASA’s web site:
This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution.
[Keep that reference to the industrial revolution in mind because soon we are going to come back to it – Editor]
The final “hockey stick” shaped part of this graph I have seen before, but to make sure I wasn’t missing something I started looking for this image on the web sites of “noted” proponents of global warming alarmism. So I started doing some Google image searching and I found it. I should not have been surprised when I discovered that famed global warming alarmism debunker Anthony Watts had already outed one of the chief suspects using this bogus graph.
As Anthony Watts correctly reminds us, “Readers may also recognize Dr. Bradley from his co-authorship with Dr. Michael Mann in the famous MBH98 paper which produced the embattled ‘hockey stick’ graph.”
The hockey stick graph is a result of the now infamous computer model made by Dr. Michael Mann (of ClimateGate fame) and Dr. Bradley that generated this hockey stick no matter what numbers were entered into the model. The model could not generate known measurements when genuine data form the past was entered into it. Mann and Bradley tried to hide the raw data so that no one could verify their claims until they were forced to hand the data for the “hockey stick” over.
This video shows the story of how how the famed ‘hockey stick’, which was a key component of the IPCC and Al Gore’s movie, was destroyed by Professor Ross McKitrick and Professor of Applied Mathematics Christopher Essex:
Look at the circled parts of Dr. Bradley’s picture. He claims that this data is from the Vostok Ice Core Data with a number showing over 360. Anthony Watts examined every ice core data set to check for these numbers:
For readers not familiar with the CO2 data from the Vostok Ice Core, you can find the official data set here from NOAA’s FTP servers:
…and they offer this helpful graph, which is time reversed from Dr. Bradley’s graph, with the present day on the left:
The answer is seems, is that there is no new data from the Vostok Ice core. It ended, and the official repositories of that data have no new data. The last CO2 value for the Vostok Ice Core dataset is listed as being 284.7ppm.
So how does Dr. Bradley get ~360ppm? Easy, I think he uses the same technique he and his co-authors learned when writing the famous MBH98 paper that made the hockey stick -splice the instrumental record onto the paleo record:
[IUSB Vision Editor’s Note – Notice how this graph eliminates the “Medieval Warming Period” from the proxy hockey stick method used to generate the pre-1850 temperature record? See why this manipulation was important to them HERE and HERE; as they show how the proxy data averages can be manipulated and how the proxy data methods when used passed 1850 show gaps where it does not match the temperature record. It was because of this variation in the proxy method of measuring temperature post 1850, which shows global temps falling, that the ClimateGate scientists had to “hide the decline”. As has been argued and demonstrated by many data sets that skeptics have pointed out there is evidence that pre-1850 temp measurements have been steered down and more recent instrument data , such as the NOAA ground station data and the filling in the gaps data mentioned above have been used to steer modern measurements up. There are indeed several data sets that show that global temps have been flat-lining within the margin of error and/or show a slight cooling trend as you will see below, but global warming alarmists do not wish to discuss those… and they accuse us of cherry picking data. Pot meet kettle!]
Dr. Bradley’s 1999 article in Nature that shows (PDF) to the first Vostok Ice Core Data to have a CO2 PPM count of just over 280 and yet his photo shows it at over 360. The latest data sets linked above from the Vostok Ice Core is from 2003 which gives us the 284.7. So where does this 360+ number come from? [Keep these bold text years (1999 & 2003) in mind as that becomes crucial in a moment – Editor]
Aside from the bogus aforementioned ‘hockey stick’ method of graphing, there is only one raw data set that shows numbers that appear in the NASA graph and the Bradley picture. That dataset is from the weather station atop Mauna Loa Volcano in Hawaii. data is controversial because it always shows the very highest amount of CO2 in the atmosphere of any data set. Why? First, it sits atop an active volcano that constantly spews CO2. Second, Hawaii is a small land mass that sits in a very hot part of the world which is surrounded by the ocean. The warmer it gets the more the ocean releases its CO2 (think of the ocean like a giant CO2 sponge.) Not exactly the most objective choice to measure “global” CO2 to be sure.
So lets look at that Mauna Loa dataset. And at what year is the measurement just over 360 as in the Bradley picture and is today 380 just as it appears in the NASA graph – ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt :
The 1999 values are (hey look its Dr. Bradley’s numbers from the picture) –
Well well well, we have found our dataset and it is NOT from Vostok Ice Cores or any other ice core; nor is it just a direct CO2 reading from Vostok. Dr. Bradley, obviously using the same academic integrity he displayed in his “hockey stick’ sham, pasted the Mauna Loa data onto the Vostok Ice Core data to make one impressive looking graph. He of course just didn’t believe it was necessary to reveal that little detail. I examined the properties of Dr. Bradley’s photo and it was last modified on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 2:51:19 PM also known as Barack Obama’s inauguration day. Was someone trying to get attention for a grant or a job?
This data is also certainly not “a comparison of more direct measurements” as the NASA graph states or an average of the data given as the NOAA source link. It is the pasting of the raw numbers from the most elevated dataset they could find onto the Vostok Ice Core dataset, and presented as if it was some kind of “average”.
Anthony Watts states it this way:
Now here’s the problem. If you took surface temperature data [or CO2 data for that matter] from Antarctica, and spliced it with surface temperature data from Hawaii, and then presented it as the entire historical record from Antarctica, our friends would have a veritable “cow”.
Or, if you took stock performance data from poorly performing Company “A” and spliced on better performing stock data from Company “B”, and then made a new graph and used that graph to sell investors on Company “A”, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would have a veritable “cow” when they found out, wouldn’t they? People go to jail for such things.
But hey, this is Climate Science.
Remember how we told you to keep in mind the comment from the NASA graph about the Industrial Revolution? Keep in mind that CO2 is but one of the smallest players in global temps and global temps do not always follow CO2 levels. The sun has a much larger impact than man made CO2 and global temps often, but do not always follow solar output cycles. This shows that there are many factors that affect global temperatures.
Examine the graph [above] carefully. It shows that most of the warming that has happened in the last 200 years occurred before 1940; well before most industrialization and before most people had used cars. It shows that global temperatures actually decreased from 1940 to 1975, which is the time of the post war economic boom, the highest period of global industrialization in world history. According to the theory of man made global warming the temperatures should not have gone up much before 1940 and should have went up quickly after 1940. Exactly the opposite is what took place.
Says Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, the director of the International Arctic Research Center, “[man-made] CO2 began to increase exponentially in about 1940 but the temperature actually began to decrease and continued ‘til [sic] 1975. We cannot say that CO2 and temperature go together.” Dr. Nir Shaviv of the Institute of Physics, University of Jerusalem states that “there were periods in Earth history when we had three times as much CO2 as we have today or ten times as much CO2 as we have today and if CO2 has a large effect on climate we would see it in the temperature reconstruction.”
Dr. Piers Corbyn, lead climate forecaster for Weather Action (England) said, “None of the major climate changes in the last 1000 years can be explained by CO2.” Dr. Patrick Michaels from the University of Virginia and IPCC author states that “Anyone who goes around and says that CO2 is responsible for most of the warming of the 20th century hasn’t looked at the basic numbers.”
Dr. Ian Clark a leading paleo-climatologist from the University of Ottawa says, “If we look at climate in the geological time frame we would never suspect CO2 as a major climate driver. You can’t say that CO2 will drive climate. It certainly never did in the past.”
What about the rest of what is on that NASA page? While I do not have the data to refute all of the points listed, I do have the data to refute, or at least very credibly challenge, several data points they have listed.To see a long list of IPCC retractions go HERE, HERE, and HERE.
NASA Gives a Dire Warning About Global Sea Levels
Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) in the last century. The rate in the last decade, however, is nearly double that of the last century.
This is a typical example of relatively accurate information delivered with an “attitude” to imply a coming catastrophe. Look at the temperature chart above. The global temps did indeed rise several tenths of a degree before 1940 which shows why measurement over a century would show a sea level rise. Then for 35 years the Globe cooled during the massive CO2 output of the post war industrial boom. Then global temps rose quickly from 1976 to 1998 which would result in a rapid warming and expansion of the ocean just NASA says which makes sense given the date of their data set, but since most of this happened before the post war industrial boom how is this mans fault?
IPCC is already retracting doom and gloom claims of massive sea level rises.
Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels
Study claimed in 2009 that sea levels would rise by up to 82cm by the end of century – but the report’s author now says true estimate is still unknown.
Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.
Many scientists criticised the IPCC approach as too conservative, and several papers since have suggested that sea level could rise more. Martin Vermeer of the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany published a study in December that projected a rise of 0.75m to 1.9m by 2100.
Siddall said that he did not know whether the retracted paper’s estimate of sea level rise was an overestimate or an underestimate.
IPCC officials admit mistake over melting Himalayan glaciers
Senior members of the UN’s climate science body admit a claim that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 was unfounded.
The UN’s climate science body has admitted that a claim made in its 2007 report – that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 – was unfounded.
The admission today followed a New Scientist article last week that revealed the source of the claim made in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was not peer-reviewed scientific literature – but a media interview with a scientist conducted in 1999. Several senior scientists have now said the claim was unrealistic and that the large Himalayan glaciers could not melt in a few decades.
In a statement (pdf), the IPCC said the paragraph “refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.”
NASA Says Global Temperatures Rising
All three major global surface temperature reconstructions show that Earth has warmed since 1880. 5 Most of this warming has occurred since the 1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 and with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years. 6 Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase. 7
They are correct that the Earth warmed much since 1880 before the post war industrial boom. But they left out the cooling form 1940 to 1975 as shown in the chart above. The claim that most of the warming happened after 1970 is disputed to the point where I feel safe saying that the claim is demonstrably false. The claim that the surface temps continue to rise from 2007 to 2009 is from those NASA/NOAA/Goddard ground stations we told you about above. The other source for this is the discredited CRU which was the epicenter of the ClimateGate data manipulation and destruction of raw data. There are satellite datasets that dispute the 2007-2009 claim.
Phil Jones, the University of East Anglia (CRU) climate scientist at the centre of the Climategate scandal, concedes to the BBC we’ve had warming bursts just like the last one that the IPCC claims was probably man-made. Jones also admitted there has been no statistical significant warming since 1995. Herald Sun of Australia 15 Feb 2010 (another link HERE).
[Editor’s Note – So I get a tweet from one of the pro-AGW alarmist telling me that “Phil Jones was misquoted”. So I go to the LINK he sends and right there on the page it says:
Phil Jones is saying there is a warming trend but it’s not statistically significant.[Hello isn’t that what we just said – Editor] He’s not talking about whether warming is actually happening. He’s discussing our ability to detect that warming trend in a noisy signal over a short period. To demonstrate this, look at the HadCRUT temperature record from 1995 to 2009. The linear trend is that of warming. However, the temperature record is very noisy with lots of short term variability. The noisy signal means that over a short period, the uncertainty of the warming trend is almost as large as the actual trend.
This makes my point exactly, when the “noise” and the “trend” are within the margin of error and amount to tiny variations (CRU of ClimateGate fame has already shown that they are desperate to steer temperature data upwards anyways) there is a term for this, its called flat-lining. There is noise and variation within the margin of error that is not statistically significant. Maybe one day that will change, but is this the data that we want to completely reform our economy on and turn it over to far left central planners in the government? This is from the same guys that tried to make the entire world believe was catastrophic by manipulating the data and the peer review process to scare the hell out of people.
This dataset shows a flatline, other datasets show a slight cooling trend, some say we are going into a mini ice age, other alarmist scientists insisted that 2010 would be the warmest year on record which just hasn’t shown to be the case. Now they point to Pakistan that did have a hot year:
Socialist Worker blames global warming and capitalism for floods
But hey guys that’s weather not climate. I can do the same thing so why not link the following to the type of global cooling the IPCC author predicts in the video below?. England had the coldest year since 1996, Norway just had the coldest November in living memory, Europe is snow covered and cold (2) and the British Meteorological Office data shows that global temps have flat-lined for 15 years.]
The UK Hadley Center which (is global warming alarmist) published a dataset with the University of Alabama showing global cooling since 2002 HERE.
Roger Helmer from the European Parliament comments:
This graph shows average global temperature records for the last five [to 6.5 years] years from two of the world’s most respected meteorological institutes, the UK’s Hadley Centre, and the University of Alabama in the US. Both show a clear downward trend, and the graph contrasts that trend explicitly with the rising trend of atmospheric CO2.
This dataset form the National Climactic Data Center (a part of NOAA/NASA) shows the same cooling trend:
NCDC now has December 2008 in the database. Annual North American temperature since 1998 (11 years of data) is falling over the period at a rate of 0.78(F)/decade or 7.8(F)per century. At this rate we will be in an ice age within 5 decades. If you can get the graphic, the heavy black line is the average over the century 1901 to 2000.
There was so much cooling that the UK Telegraph published a column declaring 2008 to be the year that mane made global warming was disproved complete with a load of good links.
An IPCC lead author Mojib Latif tells us to expect 30 years of cooling –
So much for the old “All scientists agree” and “total scientific consensus”.
NASA Warns of Warming Oceans
The oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean showing warming of 0.302 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969.
But IPCC lead author Mojib Latif just told us in the video above that changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation and studies in changes of ocean temps would result in 30 years of cooling or a mini ice age [perhaps like Europe had a few hundred years ago].
NASA Warns of Shrinking Ice Sheets
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost 150 to 250 cubic kilometers (36 to 60 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2002 and 2006, while Antarctica lost about 152 cubic kilometers (36 cubic miles) of ice between 2002 and 2005.
Sounds ominous, luckily we have the University of British Columbia to make us all feel better as they went and ruined the alarmists day by publishing a study in Nature telling us about that Greenland ice sheet melt: “it’s weather, not climate”.
While there are some data sets that say Antarctic sea ice is shrinking, other data sets say quite the opposite. The CATO Institute quotes the IPCC which states that they expect Antarctic ice to grow in the 21st century and they also quote Nature in 2003 showing cooling and January 2008 Geophysical Research Letters expressing doubts.
NASA Warns of Declining Arctic Sea Ice
Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades. (And they show a picture of the ice at its minimum – scarey!)
A difference of: 1,576,563 square kilometers, now in fairness, 2008 was a leap year, so to avoid that criticism, the value of 6,857,188 square kilometers can be used which is the 10/13/08 value, for a difference of 1,369,532 sq km. Still not too shabby at 24.9 %. The one day gain between 10/13/08 and 10/14/08 of 3.8% is also quite impressive.
You can download the source data in an Excel file at the IARC-JAXA website, which plots satellite derived sea-ice extent:
Watch the red line as it progresses. So far we are back to above 2005 levels, and 28.7% (or 24.9% depending on how you want to look at it) ahead of last year at this time. That’s quite a jump, basically a 3x gain, since the minimum of 9% over 2007 set on September 16th. Read about that here.
Go nature!
There is no mention of this on the National Snow and Ice Data Center sea ice news webpage, which has been trumpeting every loss and low for the past two years…not a peep. You’d think this would be big news. Perhaps the embarrassment of not having an ice free north pole in 2008, which was sparked by press comments made by Dr. Mark Serreze there and speculation on their own website, has made them unresponsive in this case.
What I like about the IARC-JAXA website is that they simply report the data, they don’t try to interpret it, editorialize it, or make press releases on it. They just present the data.
November 22, 2010 AccuWeather Sea Ice Report – Northern Sea Ice still coming back – Southern Sea Ice on long increasing trend.
All of the charts are posted on the Sea Ice Page for all to see. Northern Sea Ice went on the downward curve on its cycle with the bottom coming in 2007. Now the ice trend is curving back up just as cycles do.
Global Warming Alarmist Defender Flowchart. These are the tactics commonly used by global warming alarmists when they start to lose the argument. Be sure to see the evidence in our Alarmism category.
The video below is typical of global warming propaganda. It is filled with ad-hominid attacks, claims that people like me are paid by someone combined with some very cherry picked and take out of context quotes. This video, by itself, makes an argument complete with emotional prodding that seems pretty convincing, until its claims are examined a little more closely.
But let us be clear first of all who it is that is getting paid.
These are just a couple of examples of some very serious cash. Evidence is readily available that Goldman Sachs, other investment bankers and people such as George Soros have big money riding on the acceptance of legislation like Cap & Trade schemes (look at the list of those who invested in the Chicago Climate Exchange which is now going through a reformation after Glenn Beck went after them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Other big businesses will pile on when they realize that they can use their money and influence to buy exemptions in the regulations for themselves while those regulations stick to their smaller competition.
While the alarmists claim that “deniers” are all paid for, which is demonstrably false, any examination of the grant money that goes to pro AGW groups and scientists shows massive money from just the groups we mentioned including ideological groups that have always favored centralized control of the economy. In fact as we reported just recently UN documents state that 31 out of the 62 final IPCC reviewers had a vested interest in promoting the AGW cause.
On with the propaganda complete with advanced associative advertising techniques. The production value and the cleverness of the techniques used shows that this was not done for free on someones Imac. The name of the video, and pay close attention to this as we will come back to it later, is Climate Denial Crock of the Week – The “Temp leads Carbon” Crock.
1 – At first you get the term “deniers” as if it is akin to holocaust deniers and then they go about with the Wizard of Oz imagery.
2 – They talk about what is a straw man argument, you put a false or incomplete argument in your opponents mouth and proceed to knock that down rather than the contextual argument that your opponent really presents.
3 – But at 1:30 they make a straw-man argument. They state that Dr. Ball and the other scientists in the video are falsely saying that climate scientists they oppose are claiming that “CO2 has always been and in every case the single controlling factor of global temperature” – The video they are showing is from a documentary called The Great Global Warming Swindle in fact when you watch the entire clip you will see that they are not responding to the claims of climate scientists in that section of the film, they are responding to the claim of Al Gore in his filmAn Inconvenient Truth when we all saw Al Gore show that 600,000 year chart and say “Now do they ever match up” directly implying a causation between CO2 global temps. The whole point of that section of the film is to begin to educate the layman viewer on the science and to debunk false narratives that are driven in the elite media.
Below is the same clip but just expanded a few moments and you can see that they are specifically and by name talking about Al Gore’s claims. A much longer clip can be seen HERE.
The truth is that the so called “deniers” never made that claim about all global warming alarmist scientists. Their careful bit of straw man making was pretty slick wasn’t it?
Let us continue.
4 – Like all good propagandists they follow their lie with something that is true. In the next minute of the video they accurately explain that changes in Earth orbit likely cause a glacial “ice age” period every 100,000 years. Keep in mind that this section of the video is a direct admission that natural forces far out-way CO2 as a climate driver.
5 – The BS starts again, as he quotes James Hansen who is one of the most zealous proponents of global warming alarmism. He even said that energy company CEO’s should be put on trial for crimes against humanity. It is important to understand just who it is that the video relies on as “the expert”.
Hansen is now at the NASA’s Goddard Institute/ NOAA. Data from NASA’s Goddard Institute has come under fire for making up gaps in data sets
The NASA/Goddard/NOAA ground stations have been touted as evidence of AGW for the last few years but look at where these ground stations have ended up – On parking lot black tops, next to heat vents on buildings, on the back of a runway so that hot jet engine jet-wash can hit the censor, in junk yards, in rock gravel areas. Anthony Watts has been tracking these sensors down and it has led to a long series of articles called “How not to measure temperature“.
Editor’s Note – But wait a minute haven’t they been telling us that heat is being trapped at the greenhouse layer because of more man-made CO2 and Methane? If that is so then it would be easy to measure the heat changes at and just below the greenhouse layer with satellites and balloon instruments? Well guess what, climate scientists have and now those methods are made fun of and minimized by the alarmists (LINK see CBS story at the link) because much of that data just doesn’t show the warming they want to see (LINK – LINK). So they only want to use methods like the NASA ground stations which you can see by the evidence directly above such data is not just lacking in scientific scrutiny, it is laughable.
6 – At 5: 05 the video claims that “deniers” are cherry picking data and he actually shows us the “source” from Nick Caillon. Now remember this entire section and purpose of the video is to convince you, as the title says, that the 800 year lag in CO2 statement is a “crock”.
The narrator says that “deniers” do not want you to read the paper, but in reality it is the narrator who is hoping that you will not see what we are about to show you.
We confirm the close correlation between CO2 and Vostok temperature during deglaciations (1). However, Fig. 3 indicates that CO2 increases and peaks at a shallower depth in the core than 40Ar. To closely examine their phase relationship, we searched for the best fit between those two properties by adjusting the scaling ratio between 40Ar and CO2. The best correlation (R2 0.88) was obtained when we shifted the CO2 profile by 800100 years (Fig. 4). Combining this uncertainty with the uncertainty introduced by ice accumulation (800 0.2, i.e., 160 years), we obtain an overall uncertainty of200 years, indicating that the increase in CO2 lags Antarctic warming by 800 200 years, which we must consider a mean phase lag because of the method we used to make the correlation. We cannot think of a mechanism that would make 40Ar lead the temperature change, although a lag is possible if the temperature or accumulation change affects the nondiffusive zone (27).
Now wait a minute, isn’t the entire point of this video that the 800 year lag in CO2 statement is a crock… as in not true? Yet there it is in black & white right on the very study he says that “deniers” didn’t want you to read. In fact I would be thrilled if you read the paper because the whole point is this:
Does climate change – yes
Is there such a thing as greenhouse effect – yes
Is CO2 a greenhouse gas – yes
With that said, CO2 is a trace gas, if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was doubled it would still be a trace gas. There are plenty of other gases that have a much higher impact on the greenhouse effect such as water vapor. Man’s contribution to CO2 is dwarfed by natural forces that put CO2 back into the air such as animals, insects, decaying plants, volcanoes etc. There are plenty of other natural forces that effect global temps other than greenhouse gas.
You all know the old saying that a butterfly flapping its wings can effect weather. This study says, and most people agree that made made CO2 may be responsible for a tiny portion of the greenhouse effect. Nut the question is, if we all started driving a Prius tomorrow and replaced all coal plants with nuclear what would the effect be and the answer which has been stated by Bjorn Lomborg, Lord Monckton, and countless others is that the answer would be a tiny fraction of 1 degree over many decades.
Back to Nick Caillon:
The 800-year lag cannot really rule out any of these mechanisms as having sole control. Any of these mechanisms might plausibly require a finite amount of warming before CO2 outgassing becomes significant. Nevertheless, we think that our results are more consistent with a process that involves the deep ocean, as its mixing time is close to the observed 800-year lag.
Finally, the situation at Termination III differs from the recent anthropogenic CO2 increase. As recently noted by Kump (38), we should distinguish between internal influences (such as the deglacial CO2 increase) and external influences (such as the anthropogenic CO2 increase) on the climate system. Although the recent CO2 increase has clearly been imposed first, as a result of anthropogenic activities, it naturally takes, at Termination III, some time for CO2 to outgas from the ocean once it starts to react to a climate change that is first felt in the atmosphere. The sequence of events during this Termination is fully consistent with CO2 participating in the latter 4200 years of the warming. The radiative forcing due to CO2 may serve as an amplifier of initial orbital forcing, which is then further amplified by fast atmospheric feedbacks (39) that are also at work for the present day and future climate.
So once again Caillon is making it clear that natural forces are the big movers and shakers in global temperature changes and that CO2 MAY have some amplifier affect on the changes that happen naturally. I agree, just as the butterfly’s wings also have an effect on a hurricane, man made CO2 may have an effect on large natural forces that are the movers and shakers of climate change, but for us to really feel it and see it the big natural mover has to happen. No where in the Caillon study does it predict that the CO2 caused by man will bring catastrophic results that require the wholesale change of society nor does he claim that by eliminating all fossil fuels can we save the planet as NASA’s Dr. Hansen likes to fear monger on about.
Also notice that Caillon indicates that this CO2 amplifier effect may participate in the last 4200 years of warming in the 100,000 year ice age cycle; the end/beginning of which we are no where even close to near.
Scared yet? Ready to trash the economy and turn freedom over to government central planners now? Cooler heads prevail.
7 – At 7:48 in the video the narrator starts his summation with a totally new false statement, “We know that the Sun has not been a significant factor in the last 50 years”. Wow, 50 years is a pretty short time, weren’t we just talking about lengths of time in 30,000 and 100,000 years? Wait a minute how does he “know” that ? The Caillon article nor the clip from the “deniers” film mentioned the sun, so where is this coming from?
Well it wasn’t from the University of Colorado data set featured on Tony Watts’ site showing a correlation between sea level rise and solar activity:
A year ago tomorrow, just before the opening of the UN Copenhagen world climate summit, the British Meteorological Office issued a confident prediction. The mean world temperature for 2010, it announced, ‘is expected to be 14.58C, the warmest on record’ – a deeply worrying 0.58C above the 19611990 average.
World temperatures, it went on, were locked inexorably into an everrising trend: ‘Our experimental decadal forecast confirms previous indications that about half the years 2010-2019 will be warmer than the warmest year observed so far – 1998.’
Met Office officials openly boasted that they hoped by their statements to persuade the Copenhagen gathering to impose new and stringent carbon emission limits – an ambition that was not to be met.
Last week, halfway through yet another giant, 15,000delegate UN climate jamboree, being held this time in the tropical splendour of Cancun in Mexico, the Met Office was at it again.
Never mind that Britain, just as it was last winter and the winter before, was deep in the grip of a cold snap, which has seen some temperatures plummet to minus 20C, and that here 2010 has been the coolest year since 1996.
Globally, it insisted, 2010 was still on course to be the warmest or second warmest year since current records began.
But buried amid the details of those two Met Office statements 12 months apart lies a remarkable climbdown that has huge implications – not just for the Met Office, but for debate over climate change as a whole.
Read carefully with other official data, they conceal a truth that for some, to paraphrase former US VicePresident Al Gore, is really inconvenient: for the past 15 years, global warming has stopped.
This isn’t meant to be happening. Climate science orthodoxy, as promulgated by bodies such as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU), says that temperatures have risen and will continue to rise in step with increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, and make no mistake, with the rapid industrialisation of China and India, CO2 levels have kept on going up.
According to the IPCC and its computer models, without enormous emission cuts the world is set to get between two and six degrees warmer during the 21st Century, with catastrophic consequences.
Last week at Cancun, in an attempt to influence richer countries to agree to give £20billion immediately to poorer ones to offset the results of warming, the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute warned that global temperatures would be 6.5 degrees higher by 2100, leading to rocketing food prices and a decline in production.
The maths isn’t complicated. If the planet were going to be six degrees hotter by the century’s end, it should be getting warmer by 0.6 degrees each decade; if two degrees, then by 0.2 degrees every ten years. Fortunately, it isn’t.Actually, with the exception of 1998 – a ‘blip’ year when temperatures spiked because of a strong ‘El Nino’ effect (the cyclical warming of the southern Pacific that affects weather around the world) – the data on the Met Office’s and CRU’s own websites show that global temperatures have been flat, not for ten, but for the past 15 years.
A small group of corrupt scientists peer reviewed each others work to promote it. They set out to shun and ridicule anyone who tried to publish data that opposed theirs. They conspired to delete original data if they were called on it (they were called on it and they did destroy the data). They also conspired to falsely debunk the well established “Medieval Warming Period” (These videos show why HERE and HERE). Recently they have been setting up groups to “investigate” each other for the purpose of exonerating one another.
Russia Today: More IPCC claims not based on real science. ClimateGate researchers hiding data. 141 scientists sent letter to UN stating that the solutions to global warming are not backed by the facts.
Russia Today: British MP investigating the leaked emails: This group of scientists were determined to agree with each other rather than agree with the facts. Massive money vested in this theory. They manipulated the data.
John Stossel discusses distortions in climate warming debate: 2500 IPCC scientists… well not quite
According to UN documents released through FOIA how many fully qualified climate scientists actually reviewed the IPCC report. The answer is 62. The UN admits that 31 of the 62 had a vested interest in pushing global warming alarmism. Of the 31 with no conflict of interest how many completely agreed with the IPCC report? While it says that many of them agreed with parts of the report, only four agreed with it in its entirety.
Here we go ….. and be sure to read every delicious word.
RWB News As reported by theGateway Pundit: Top US scientist Hal Lewis resigned this week from his post at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He admitted global warming climate change was nothing but a scam in his resignation letter.
From the UK Telegraph (What! No American elite media coverage?):
Professor Emiritus Hal Lewis Resigns from American Physical Society
The following is a letter to the American Physical Society released to the public by Professor Emiritus of physics Hal Lewis of the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis
From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010
Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).
Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?
How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:
1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate
2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.
3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.
4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.
5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.
6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.
APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?
I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.
I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.
Hal
Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)
And they let thus nut job have access to your kids folks….
College administrators are paid six figure incomes to have good judgment…
Longer version –
The heat wave that he talks about in Europe, it wasn’t as bad as he states but there were thousands of deaths, of course the government run health care system could not deal with the load from a hot summer, yet any bets that this clown supports a government take over of health care? I like the farming scare he uses about cutting down Brazilian raid forests to have farm land. As technology improves history has shown that we grow more with less.
“What about the 40,000 people killed in Europe because of YOUR decision” – wow…. this professor couldn’t win a Lincoln-Douglas style debate to save his career.
Yet another horrifying claim by global warming alarmist PhD’s debunked by real science. Reporting of the real science by the UK Guardian. Notice how American press wont cover this stuff?
The Global Warming Alarmist Claim:
Last year [2009], researchers at the Met Office Hadley Centre reported that a 2C rise above pre-industrial levels, widely considered the best-case scenario, would still see 20-40% of the Amazon die off within 100 years. A 3C rise would see 75% of the forest destroyed by drought in the next century, while a 4C rise would kill 85%.
OMG the horror of it all:
According to a study of ancient rainforests, trees may be hardier than previously thought. Carlos Jaramillo, a scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), examined pollen from ancient plants trapped in rocks in Colombia and Venezuela. “There are many climactic models today suggesting that … if the temperature increases in the tropics by a couple of degrees, most of the forest is going to be extinct,” he said. “What we found was the opposite to what we were expecting: we didn’t find any extinction event [in plants] associated with the increase in temperature, we didn’t find that the precipitation decreased.”
In a study published todayin Science, Jaramillo and his team studied pollen grains and other biological indicators of plant life embedded in rocks formed around 56m years ago, during an abrupt period of warming called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. CO2 levels had doubled in 10,000 years and the world was warmer by 3C-5C for 200,000 years.
Contrary to expectations, he found that forests bloomed with diversity. New species of plants, including those from the passionflower and chocolate families, evolved quicker as others became extinct. The study also shows moisture levels did not decrease significantly during the warm period. “It was totally unexpected,” Jaramillo said of the findings.
It gets better:
Jaramillo found that the plants he studied seemed to become more efficient with their water use when it became more scarce….. “What the fossil record is showing is that plants have already the genetic variability to cope with high temperature and high levels of CO2.
Before we begin it should be clear that the “Center for Public Integrity” CPI is a far left outfit complete with all the spin and trimmings. And while the story they tell is spun I find it to be directionally accurate. While it is rather obvious that environmental regulations go way beyond science and are in fact used to pick winners and losers for purposes of corruption, influence and donations; this article demonstrates that fact with detail. Unknowinglyand in it’s own way, the CPI has made the case against leviathan government and the kind of “Chicago Style” regulations that always result from it as well as this web log ever could.
In the name of job creation and clean energy, the Obama administration has doled out billions of dollars in stimulus money to some of the nation’s biggest polluters and granted them sweeping exemptions from the most basic form of environmental oversight, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found.
The administration has awarded more than 179,000 “categorical exclusions” to stimulus projects funded by federal agencies, freeing those projects from review under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Coal-burning utilities like Westar Energy and Duke Energy, chemical manufacturer DuPont, and ethanol maker Didion Milling are among the firms with histories of serious environmental violations that have won blanket NEPA exemptions.
Even a project at BP’s maligned refinery in Texas City, Tex. — owner of the oil industry’s worst safety record and site of a deadly 2005 explosion, as well as a benzene leak earlier this year — secured a waiver for the preliminary phase of a carbon capture and sequestration experiment involving two companies with past compliance problems. The primary firm has since dropped out of the project before it could advance to the second phase.
Agency officials who granted the exemptions told the Center that they do not have time in most cases to review the environmental compliance records of stimulus recipients, and do not believe past violations should affect polluters’ chances of winning stimulus money or the NEPA exclusions.
The so-called “stimulus” funding came from the $787-billion legislation officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in February 2009.
Documents obtained by the Center show the administration has devised a speedy review process that relies on voluntary disclosures by companies to determine whether stimulus projects pose environmental harm. Corporate polluters often omitted mention of health, safety, and environmental violations from their applications. In fact, administration officials told the Center they chose to ignore companies’ environmental compliance records in making grant decisions and issuing NEPA exemptions, saying they considered such information irrelevant.
Some polluters reported their stimulus projects might cause “unknown environmental risks” or could “adversely affect” sensitive resources, the documents show. Others acknowledged they would produce hazardous air pollutants or toxic metals. Still others won stimulus money just weeks after settling major pollution cases. Yet nearly all got exemptions from full environmental analyses, the documents show.
One need read no further than the U.N. International Climate Accord [PDF] ultimately shot down at Copenhagen’s climate summit last year to understand the organization’s international wealth redistribution goals. The failed treaty actually contained as many paragraphs outlining the payment of “climate debt” reparations by Western nations as it did emission reduction schemes.
Indeed, for nearly 50-years the U.N. has formulated its own unique brand of “social justice” under the guise of “saving the planet” by demonizing one byproduct of Western economic growth or another. Carbon Dioxide is, of course, merely the devil’s derivative du jour.
Now, a high-ranking member of the U.N’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has admitted that climate policy has little to do with environmental protection.
On Sunday, Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist and IPCC Co-chair of Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change, told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (translated) that “climate policy is redistributing the world’s wealth” and that “it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization.”
Edenhofer went on to explain that in Cancun, the redistribution of not only wealth but also natural resources will be negotiated, adding that:
The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War.
And another shot at playing Robin Hood with Americans’ money. As I addressed yesterday:
Now consider the U.N. plan to levy a climate reparations tax on the developed world (read that United States) on everything from airline flights and international shipping to fuel and financial transactions to the tune of $100 billion annually. That scheme is backed by both Obama advisor Lawrence Summers and radical anti-American billionaire George Soros as a means to meet the annual figure “international leaders” agreed to in Copenhagen and will be a primary goal at Cancun in a few weeks.
Will Barack Obama and his fellow recently repudiated Democrats actually entertain incurring further international debt on the backs of strapped American taxpayers (whose belief in AGW is at an all-time low), given Edenhofer’s staggering affirmation?
The IUSB Vision Weblog 
