Filed under: Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science, Media Bias, News, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear, Politics, Science/Technology | Tags: Climate Change, Global Warming, Junk Science
The big thing to remember in all climate writings and excess, is that the climate of the earth has been changing for millions of years. It has been far warmer in the past during the Medieval Optimum, when wine grapes grew in England and wheat in Norway, and society flourished. It has also been far cooler during cold spells, such as the Little Ice Age in the 1800s, remembered as “1800 and Froze to Death.”
Climate panics take place regularly, for there are vast numbers of pessimists out there who don’t bother to do their required homework, and get all excited when someone appears in a polar bear suit, or in the case of Vegans — eats meat. Sure that fossil fuels are the source of planet doom (and that Oil and Gas companies are not only rich (the bad are usually rich) but destroying the world with CO2 )emitted by our nasty habit of driving cars and so on and so on. To the contrary, CO2 is plant food, and is greening the world. to such an extent that it can be seen from space. It is feeding the hungry with bountiful crops.
I believe firmly that we are being dumbed down by the internet and social media. We are being taught that we are to be informed by snappy headlines or tweets, and do not pursue the entire subject for lack of time and energy. You have to read the whole thing, not just the headline. Tweets may be interesting. but are not intended to pass on knowledge. The danger of an ill-informed public is extreme.
Filed under: Australia, Bureaucracy, Canada, Capitalism, Crime, Domestic Policy, England, Global Warming, History, Junk Science, Media Bias, Politics, Progressivism, Science/Technology, The United States, United Kingdom, United Nations | Tags: Climate Change, CO2 is Essential to Life, Junk Science
On the 75th anniversary of D-Day, Elizabeth Warren announced that Climate Change is “A Bigger Threat Than World War II”, and launched a Two Trillion “infrastructure investment plan” to address the threat of climate change, which she claims is a bigger threat to the American way of life than the enemies the Allied forces faced in World War II. The climate crisis in this country is a threat to the very existence of every living thing on this planet.
Not to be outdone in the climate panic department, our very own governor, Jay Inslee, who is running for the presidency on a climate based campaign in which the American people have showed no interest whatsoever, told an NBC News correspondent that President Trump’s stance on global warming is “treason.”
Something that is becoming increasingly obvious about Democrats is that they simply do not do their homework. It is remarkably obvious as well in the other 23 declared candidates for the presidency. They open their mouths and say something that should disqualify them from not only the presidency, but from whatever office they currently hold. Before you start spouting about existential threats to all life on the planet, you should have actually looked into the science. You could start with Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr.Tom Christy who measure the temperatures of the Earth for NASA at the University of Alabama at Huntsville.
The climate of the earth has been warming and cooling for millions of years. When the current interest fading into panic first reared it’s ugly head, all sorts of grants became available to anyone who could write a good grant proposal. Science departments in many universities felt that they could accomplish something with more powerful computers and the program used by financial people to forecast what the markets would do. Trouble was there were all sorts of unanswered questions out there, like the part played by clouds. They entered what they knew for sure, which was not all that much, and then their best guesses, and a few wild ones, and so we arrived at the current state of affairs.
Thing is, the planet is actually cooling, not warming. Glaciers are not melting, they are growing. Glacier National Park has quietly removed the signs “Gone by 2020” after the glaciers just kept on not being gone, but actually growing. The increased CO² in the atmosphere is greening the earth, since carbon dioxide, which we exhale, is a natural fertilizer for plants.The increased greening is visible from space.
The major greenhouse gas (95%) of the atmosphere is not Carbon Dioxide (CO²) but water vapor. (Clouds) According to Dr. Tim Ball, the next most important greenhouse gas of relevance is methane CH4, but it is only 0.000175 percent of atmospheric gases and 0.036 percent or all greenhouse gases. Water vapor is 95% of the atmosphere by volume, and is by far the most abundant and important greenhouse gas. And we just don’t understand clouds at all.
Surely when you were a kid, at some point you lay out on the lawn on a nice summer day to just watch the clouds drifting across the sky. If the action of clouds is a major determinant of climate, how do you measure that? Sometimes there are layers of clouds, each layer going in different directions. Sometimes there are lovely white clouds in front, and off in the distance big black thunderclouds, everything moving.
Then there is Christiana Figueres. She was the general secretary of the IPPC who admitted in a press conference that the goal of environmental activists was not to save the world from ecological calamity — but to destroy Capitalism.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
There are numbers of others in the climate field who have made similar admissions. There are innumerable books on climate and the error of climate panic, from Britain, Australia, Canada and the U.S. There’s a wide range of websites devoted to climate, I’ve listed just a few in the sidebar.
*The photo is looking due north. If you head over to the snowy peak and jump off towards the North, you will be where I grew up. This mountain is the northernmost anchor of the West range of mountains in Idaho. Nice country.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Democrat Corruption, Education, Environment, Free Speech, Freedom, Global Warming, History, Humor, Junk Science, Regulation, Science/Technology, The United States | Tags: Global Warming, Junk Science, Panic in the Streets
In a press release, the World Meteorological Organization said:
The long-term warming trend has continued in 2018, with the average global temperature set to be the fourth highest on record. The 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years, with the top four in the past four years.’
The BBC and others picked up on that and said:
Climate change” Last four years are the ‘world’s hottest”
And the Guardian:
“Past four years hottest on record, data shows.”
As you can see a graph tells a very different story. The past decade has a climate change contribution but what elevates the past four years above the previous ones is an El Nino event, the strongest one on record. As we have said many time before an El Nino is not a climatic phenomenon, it is weather. What’s more, after its peak in 2016 the global temperature has fallen by around 0.4° C. The past four years being the warmest on record is true, but it has been primarily due to the 2015/16 super El Nino.
Warmest on record? Not exactly, the WMO got weather and climate mixed up. For the full commentary, go here.
It is fascinating that in the information age, when we supposedly have access to anything and everything in the way of information, it is so hard to figure out just what the truth is. What is not politicized, seems to be printed in sheer ignorance. Politics trumps Truth every time. We should make a little more noise about facts and truth. Google employees apparently wanted to ban any Conservative commentary, yet are happy to connive with the Chinese government in suppressing the freedom of China’s citizens to complete control. Apparently those who have spent their lives so far learning technology issues, have neglected to learn any history, or read the Constitution, or learn the nature of the free enterprise system.
Filed under: Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science, Progressivism, Science/Technology | Tags: James Delingpole, Junk Science, Ocean Acidification
James Delingpole, British writer, rants regularly at Breitbart about the utter goofiness of the world’s climate true believers. He wrote today about a climate “science” scam that keeps on rearing its ugly head, in spite of being debunked thoroughly over and over.
Aside from the need to debunk once more, it’s a classic example of the workings of climate science. In this case, one of Delingpole’s articles was supposedly debunked in The Marine Biologist (the magazine of the marine biologist community). He wrote:
There was a time when I would have just ignored it: the guy who wrote it – one Phil Williamson – is the embodiment of Upton Sinclair’s dictum that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Not only is Williamson based at the “University” of East Anglia – aka Climate Alarmism Central, heavily featured in the Climategate scandal – but since 2010 he has been paid as Science Coordinator of the UK Ocean Acidification research programme. This project has received around £12.5 million of UK government funding, most is provided by the Natural Environment Research Council (for which conveniently Williamson also works).
Dr. Robert (Bob) Carter, the late Australian Marine Geologist, laughed once and said “As long as there are rocks in the ocean, it will never be acid.” (that may not be an exact quote, but close), the sensible message stuck with me.
Many climate scientists who are based at one university or another find the drive do battle with “global warming” has financed a new and important department, the needed equipment, and the advocacy keeps drawing taxpayer funding to support it. It’s all a very incestuous scheme that should be considered scandalous, were they not so serious about it all.
Climate Change, says Delingpole “represents a global industry worth around $1.5 trillion — all of this predicated on the notion that man-made carbon dioxide is a problem because it causes catastrophic global warming. Now clearly if — as seems to be increasingly likely — CO2 turns out to be just a harmless trace gas whose influence on climate is marginal, than an awful lot of vested interests are going to be heavily out of pocket. Hence the appeal to the vast climate alarmist conspiracy of Ocean Acidification; the handy theory which ensures that even if global warming doesn’t happen, there will still be plenty of snout-space at the trough for all those rent-seekers, crooks, green-heads, scamsters and shills involved in the “decarbonisation” industry.”
Do read Mr. Delingpole’s whole piece. They are always great fun, but full of good information as well. I think he really relishes the role of “debunker.”
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science, Politics, Science/Technology | Tags: Junk Science, Patrick Michaels, The Story of Climate
Patrick Moore, when he was young and radical, was a founder of Greenpeace. He found, long ago, that Greenpeace was more interested in being radical than in having a relationship with truth and simple facts. Here he explains why and how the climate is always changing, why we cannot predict the future, and why the label “denier” which the Left tries to stick onto the folks who are interested in the real science of climate change, but don’t believe it is an approaching catastrophe — because we can’t predict the future.
Filed under: Junk Science, Regulation | Tags: Dietary Guidelines, Health Outcomes, Junk Science
For decades, the federal government has been telling us what to eat — not that we pay that much attention — but nevertheless they regularly establish dietary guidelines. A new article by University of Alabama Birmingham researcher Edward Archer and colleagues Gregory Pavela and Carl Lavie and published this week in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, informs us that the conclusions drawn by the federal government’s 
controversial Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) are bunk. They were more polite, they said their work rests on fatally flawed assumptions about usable data, and the research used to support their work is so far off base as to be scientifically useless.
The DGAC is a rotating group of academics who have been charged by Congress since the 1990s with meeting every five years to recommend broad federal dietary policies. Unlike experiments in the hard sciences of chemistry, physics and biology, most diet studies are based on self-reported data. Study subjects are examined for height, weight and health, then are questioned about what they eat. Their food choices are then linked to health outcomes — cancer, mortality, heart disease etc,
Edward Archer says that’s a poor way of doing science. “The assumption that human memory can provide accurate or precise reproductions of past ingestive behavior is indisputably false.” Well, yes, can you remember what you had to eat on Friday? “An analysis conducted by Archer in 2013 found that most of the 60,000 + NHANES subjects report eating a lower amount of calories than they would physiologically need to survive, let alone to put on all the weight that Americans have in the past few decades.”
They’ve just been plain wrong as well. We were told never to eat butter, but to use margarine instead. Now we are urged to eat butter and not use margarine. The grocery stores are well ahead of the feds. They hardly carry any margarine at all anymore. The dietary guidelines mistakenly urged us to rely on lots of whole grains and other carbohydrates, and the stores stocked up on lots of tasty snacks, If they are wondering where the obesity came from — there you go. And pay no attention to the healthy plate diagram shown above. That’s bunk too.
It is even worse than shown by this graph. 1977 was a year chosen by the “warmists” to demonstrate the “massive” increase in temperature. It was actually the low temperature period of the 20th century. Headlines were full of a “New Ice Age” scare.
(h/t: Cato Institute & Never Yet Melted)
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economy, Energy, Global Warming, Junk Science, Liberalism, Politics, Science/Technology | Tags: EPA's C:ean Power Plan, Junk Science, Unworkable Policies
President Obama tried to pressure “climate change deniers” in a recent interview. He said that most CEOs in the United States are paying attention to climate change, and they are more concerned with the administration’s climate policies than with debating the science. What they want is some certainty about the regulations so they can start planning. They have to make capital investments and have to look at investments for 20 and 30 years out. They have to know if we are putting a price on carbon? Are we serious about this?
“But none of them are engaging in some of the nonsense that you’re hearing out of the climate change [deniers},” Obama said.
The president drew a stark contrast between the questions CEOs are asking about his carbon pollution limits on existing power plants and the attacks from Republicans in Congress who say the standards will devastate the economy and businesses.
Companies like General Mills, Microsoft, IBM and Coca-Cola have joined efforts to mitigate climate change. Some oil companies like Shell have also joined others in supporting strong cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.
Obama said that CEOs always complain about regulation, but that his “policies have produced a record stock market, record corporate profits, 52 months of consecutive job growth, 10 million new jobs, the deficit being cut in half, an energy sector that’s booming, a clean-energy sector that’s booming, a reduction of carbon pollution greater than the Europeans or any other country.” He added:
I think you’d have to say that we’ve managed the economy pretty well and business has done OK.
This is so delusional, you just have to wonder. We are also told that he doesn’t talk to anybody outside of his closest advisers. Certainly he has no understanding that his job growth does not compensate for the new people who are entering the job market and those who have given up and are no longer looking. The situation is getting worse, not better.
Nobody is a “climate change denier.” Climate change is always going on and the planet warms and cools in cycles that are not yet well understood. What we do deny is that the slight increase in warming — less than 1° in a century —is anything to get excited about. The planet has been far warmer in the past, and the Medieval Warm Period which was much warmer, was the finest climate known to man. The Vikings settled in Greenland and built farms. Wine grapes grew in northern England, and the fine climate meant the fend of the Dark Ages and the flowering of the Renaissance.
Today there has been no warming for over 17 years, for the sun has gone quiet. The greens insist that warming will mean more hurricanes, more tornadoes, more forest fires, rising oceans, the list of things that are or will be caused by global warming climate change is unbelievably long, and fairly amusing.
A dozen states filed suit on Friday to stop the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from enacting its “Clean Power Plan.” These are the new rules that would put many coal-fired plants out of business, and hundreds of people out of their jobs. The EPA held hearings last week for the public about the plan. Four hearings, nationwide. In Pittsburgh thousands of coal workers turned out to register their objections to the Obama administrations intentions.
Leading industry groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, the National Mining Association, American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and more, have told the EPA that their new climate regulation is “not workable.”
“There is obviously going to be legal action in the future,”said Jay Timmons, CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers. “We would like to see the rule altered and see the agency stop and listen to constituents and the consumers that will be most impacted. But assuming all things stay as they are, then we’ll see some action in the courts.”
The Clean Power Plan is a very bad regulation that has far more negative results that the EPA understands. If the climate is actually cooling, and last winter was a preview, then America will need more electric power, not less. Coal-fired power plants currently provide about 40 percent of our electricity needs, reliably and cheaply. Retrofitting those plants to meet EPA standards may mean that most will shut down because the possible retrofit is too expensive. Big jumps in the cost of power on top of big jumps in the cost of health care may be, to use a favorite theme of the left — unsustainable. Increases in the cost of energy means inflation as the cost of everything goes up dramatically. The Left does not understand incentives, and they really don’t understand, nor look for, unintended consequences. They still do not understand that wind and solar are simply unworkable and can never produce any significant part of our energy needs.
Filed under: Education, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science, Science/Technology | Tags: Junk Science, Science Fact and Falsehood, What Do We Really Know?
(h/t: Maggie’s Farm)
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Energy, Junk Science, Politics, Statism | Tags: Chasing Rainbows., Environmental Protection Agency, Junk Science
President Obama was speaking in Ohio a couple of weeks ago on one of his many campaign swings, and he said quite specifically:
We also need to keep investing in clean energy like wind power and solar power.
And as long as I’m President, we are going to keep on making those investments. I am not going to cede the wind and solar and advanced battery industries to countries like China and Germany that are making those investments. I want those technologies developed and manufactured here in Ohio, here in the Midwest, here in America. (Applause.) By American workers. That’s the future we want.
The president has picked three industries and is arguing for an industrial policy to subsidize them — in part, just because other countries are subsidizing them. This is the same president who argues that we must remove such subsidies from our tax code. If he wants to subsidize wind and solar power because he wants to accelerate the development of carbon-free alternatives, then he should make that argument. These edicts bypass the legislative process, but Obama has little interest in the legislative process unless it backs him on whatever he wants to do. Without their cooperation, he’ll just do it on his own. He’s president. Who’s going to stop him?
Germany, in the meantime, is cutting their subsidies for solar energy. Their solar cell manufacturing companies are going bankrupt, and Germany is turning to coal for energy. The Germans are paranoid about nuclear energy, though the French, next door, are committed to nuclear energy. Obama, on the other hand, is not only not up on what other countries are doing, but he simply does not change his mind:
If someone wants to build a new coal-fired power plant they can, but it will bankrupt them because they will be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.
Candidate Barack Obama, 2008
We were warned. This week the out-of-control bureaucrats at the EPA announced a set of proposed rules designed to target greenhouse gas emissions. If enacted, these rules will essentially destroy the coal industry. Under the proposed rules, new power plants will be required to emit no more than 1.000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour of electricity. Coal plants average 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt. Natural gas plants already meet this requirement, but if a utility wants to burn coal for electricity, it will need to install carbon capture technology— which is very expensive.
The EPA stresses that the new rules would apply only to new plants, but nobody believes that. David Doniger, climate program policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council notes that the Clean Air Act will undoubtedly make it inevitable that the EPA will tackle existing coal-fired plants. Mr. Doniger promises “We look forward to reaching an agreement with EPA on a schedule for completing the standard for new sources and developing standards for existing sources. Excuse me, but who elected the Natural Resources Defense Council to have any voice in official policy? And the American people have no voice?
Isn’t this the very same Barack Obama who was out on the campaign trail bragging about his “all of the above” energy policy, because people are upset with high gas prices? The “all of the above” claim was clearly a lie. But there is an enormous problem here. Coal-fired power plants produce 45 percent of our electricity. These EPA standards effectively bans new coal-fired plants, and will lead to higher energy costs as the country is forced to switch to natural gas for base-lead supply. Coal is our cheapest energy source, and the United States is the “Saudi Arabia” of coal.
The big problem is that the EPA seems determined to shut down coal plants first, assuming that Obama’s new green energy will replace it. That will not happen. Both wind and solar require 24/7 backup from a regular power plant. Manufacturing states like Michigan are particularly dependent on coal, with 70 percent of the state’s electricity needs coming from coal. Carbon capture technology is still ‘under development.’ Expensive and not available. The natural gas industry is historically very volatile. The natural gas industry has discovered vast new resources in the U.S. but that exploration is coming under assault from the EPA.
This misguided ideological thrust is heading into unknown territory of brownouts and blackouts. Our need for energy in increasing at the same time that Obama is waging war on cheap available fossil fuels. The lack of any significant warming for over a decade makes it more difficult for the warmists to demonize CO2. CO2 is not, contrary to EPA claims, a pollutant. Life on earth has flourished for hundreds of millions of years at much higher CO2 levels than we see today. Increasing CO2 levels would be a net benefit, because plants grow better and are more resistant to drought at higher CO2 levels. Nations that have plentiful supplies of cheap, abundant fossil fuels are far more prosperous and healthy than those without.
The administration has decreed that by 2020 — in just eight years—we are to get 30% of our electricity from “renewable resources.” The current amount that we get in total pow from renewable resources is just 8.2%. So the nation that is the world powerhouse of cheap, abundant fossil fuels — oil, natural gas and coal — is supposed to dump those and depend on windmills and solar shingles that cannot exist without huge governmental subsidy and full time backup by—fossil fuel power plants.
That makes sense only if you are a failed president who needs the backing of the big environmental organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club and the others who are all awash in money.
Filed under: Education, Energy, Environment, Junk Science | Tags: Environmental Literacy, http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/06/27/maryland-adds-environmental-literacy-in-high-schools/?test=latestnews, Junk Science
The state of Maryland has become the first state in the country to impose a new requirement for kids to graduate from high school—something called “environmental literacy.”
The new rule is a regulation from the State Board of Education, not a law passed by the legislature. Governor Martin O”Malley offers no details but praises it saying that “it will infuse core subjects with lessons about conservation and smart growth and the health of our natural world. O’Malley also said that it will also serve as a “foundation for green jobs.”
An analyst remarks that training for those is just like it is for any other job. “You need to know how to get there on time, how to be alert, how to work hard, how to absorb a lot of information, how to — learn new skills.
The state board of education leaves all content up to local school boards. Sarah Boder of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation supports the initiative and says that students could learn by doing. “Kids have the opportunity to participate in some real world learning, such as raising native oysters and replenishing reef habitat. By raising the oysters they can learn math and read about the history of oystering in the state of Maryland and throughout the Chesapeake Bay and that gets them excited and that helps to boost their achievement.”
Sounds like a pretty complicated way of getting kids to learn math. Could there possibly be political agenda? Well, in short, yes. The local school boards won’t get any extra money, so a group called the North American Association of Environmental Education offers a teacher’s guide.
An early passage from the guide says “consumption of natural resources, air and water pollution, and the impacts of climate change are among the many complex challenges that threaten human health, economic development, and national security.” It goes on to talk about the need to “take informed action.”
That’s not education, it’s indoctrination. Myron Ebell of CEI points out that “it’s propaganda and it’s designed to raise up a new generation of easily led and poorly educated and misinformed students.”
Beware of associations and groups that are just delighted to step in and offer all sorts of free materials to help with the education of your children. They usually have an agenda. When kids’ ability in math is a problem, it’s not wise to take more time away from the subject to play around with activist agendas. Environmental literacy, indeed. Our school have been busy indoctrinating kids in “environmentalism” because they can write papers about cute polar bears and find all sorts of pictures on the internet. Do they learn that polar bear numbers are increasing, and the bears are not endangered? Not likely.
They call them NGOs. Non-governmental organizations. Because they call themselves “an association” and have a website and a 501(3)C designation doesn’t mean that then are anything other than a bunch of activists with an agenda.
Filed under: Energy, Environment, Science/Technology | Tags: Junk Science, Roy W. Spencer PhD, The Left's Global Warming Agenda
A complete debunking of the left’s global warming agenda, from Roy W. Spencer, former NASA climatologist and climate expert. Dr. Spencer, at University of Alabama at Huntsville, continues his work with NASA as the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite.
He has published two popular books on global warming that are completely accessible for those who are not scientists. He’s a good explainer. His first was Climate Confusion (2008), followed by The Great Global Warming Blunder, which has the coolest cover ever. And for more on this topic, purchase his new Broadside, “The Bad Science and Bad Policy of Obama’s Global Warming Agenda” by clicking here: http://amzn.to/jYWz
He has provided expert testimony to Congress several times on the subject of global warming.
[via @adamsbaldwin on Twitter]
American Elephants 