Right Wing Granny

News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.

Right Wing Granny

The Next Big Climate Scare

In America (and in some other places) we just aren’t paying enough attention to our impending doom due to global warming, global cooling, or whatever climate change is currently fashionable. Therefore, it is time to raise the stakes to get our attention. Brace yourself, we are about to start hearing about deaths due to climate change. How you actually calculate that is a mystery, but that hasn’t stopped the propagandists yet.

On Thursday, wattsupwiththat reported:

The next big climate scare is on the way. Advocates of measures to control the climate now propose that we begin counting deaths from climate change. They appear to believe that if people see a daily announcement of climate deaths, they will be more inclined to accept climate change policies. But it’s not even clear that the current gentle rise in global temperatures is causing more people to die.

In December, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at COP28, the 28th United Nations Climate Conference, and mentioned climate-related deaths.

“We are seeing and beginning to pay attention and to count and record the deaths that are related to climate,” she said. “And by far the biggest killer is extreme heat.”

According to Ms. Clinton, Europe recorded 61,000 deaths from extreme heat in 2023, and she estimated that about 500,000 people died from heat across the world last year.

Global temperatures have been gently rising for the last 300 years. Temperature metrics from NASA, NOAA, and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom estimate that Earth’s surface temperatures have risen a little more than one degree Celsius, or about two degrees Fahrenheit, over the last 140 years. But are these warmer temperatures harmful to people?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most cases of influenza occur during December to March, the cold months in the United States. Influenza season in the southern hemisphere takes place during the cold months there, April through September. The peak months for COVID-19 infections tended to be the cold periods of the year. More people usually get sick during cold months than in warm months.

More people also die during winter months than summer months, according to many peer-reviewed studies. For example, Dr. Matthew Falagas of the Alfa Institute of Medical Sciences and five other researchers studied seasonal mortality in 11 nations. The research showed that the average number of deaths peaked in the coldest months of the year in all of them.

It’s easier to stay healthy when the weather is warm–the sun provides Vitamin D, and as long as you don’t overdue it, fresh air and sunshine are healthy.

Please follow the link to the article. It includes some very interesting charts, including the one below:

 

Numbers don’t lie.

Settled Science?

First of all there is no such thing as ‘settled science.’ The scientific method calls for constant questioning and re-evaluating. Second, if something is declared settled science, you can be sure that someone with a potential financial gain is promoting it (sorry for my cynicism).

On Sunday, WattsUpWithThat reported that the idea of net zero carbon is based on insufficient date. Wow. We are crippling some of the world’s major economies based on insufficient data.

The article quotes and article from The Telegraph posted on Saturday:

Britain’s climate watchdog has privately admitted that a number of its key net zero recommendations may have relied on insufficient data, it has been claimed.

Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, who led a recent Royal Society study on future energy supply, said that the Climate Change Committee only “looked at a single year” of data showing the number of windy days in a year when it made pronouncements on the extent to which the UK could rely on wind and solar farms to meet net zero.

“They have conceded privately that that was a mistake,” Sir Chris said in a presentation seen by this newspaper. In contrast, the Royal Society review examined 37 years worth of weather data.

Last week Sir Chris, an emeritus professor and former director of energy research at Oxford University, said that the remarks to which he was referring were made by Chris Stark, the Climate Change Committee’s chief executive. He said: “Might be best to say that Chris Stark conceded that my comment that the CCC relied on modelling that only uses a single year of weather data … is ‘an entirely valid criticism’.”

The CCC said that Sir Chris’s comments, in a presentation given in a personal capacity in October, following the publication of his review, related solely to a particular report it published last year on how to deliver “a reliable decarbonised power system”.

The article at WattsUpWithThat concludes:

It is now clear that Parliament authorised Net Zero without any proper assessment, whether financial or energy, and the whole Net Zero legislation must now be suspended until a full independent assessment is carried out.

In addition, the whole of the CC should now be disbanded. Unfortunately it is still required by law, but it should now be staffed by truly independent members, with a remit to prioritise energy security and cost/benefit goals. The ideological pursuit of Net Zero must not override the wellbeing of the British public, put its energy security at risk or make the public worse off.

But the current and past members of the CCC who have overseen this attempt to bamboozle and defraud the public must be held to account, and excluded from any further influence over the country’s energy policy, or indeed on any issue of public policy.

So why are we even thinking about doing some of the things we are doing to bring down carbon?

I Can’t Believe He Said That

On Tuesday, Wattsupwiththat posted a video of John Kerry speaking about climate change at Davos. I can’t figure out how to put the video here, but if you follow the link above, you can watch the video.

This is the transcript:

0:00 And when you stop and think about it, it’s pretty extraordinary that we select group of human beings because of whatever touched us at some point in our lives, are able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet.

0:20 I mean, it’s so almost extraterrestrial to think about, quote saving the planet.

0:26 If you said that to most people, most people they think you’re just a crazy tree hugging lefty, liberal, you know, do good or whatever, and and there’s no relationship.

0:35 But really, that’s where we are.

The elite echo chamber at Davos is nothing more than an elite echo chamber. The scientists who disagree with the elite echo chamber are marginalized or silenced. The green energy movement is killing people and wildlife as the elites go on their merry way. They are not going to save the planet–they are simply going to make life more difficult for the rest of us.

Breaking Up A Monopoly In The Supply Chain

Yesterday wattsupwiththat posted an article about the worldwide chip shortage.

The article reports:

Prompted by a worldwide chip shortage already impacting automobile production, President Biden in February signed an executive order directing a 100-day broad review of supply chains for critical materials for semiconductors and large-capacity batteries, including rare-earth elements. It builds on analyses, reports and executive orders initiated several years ago by the Trump Administration.

The stark truth that this review should highlight is that the U.S. and its Western allies have been left behind at the starting gate in a race only China seems to have realized was taking place. 

The Chinese began building their now-dominant supply chain decades ago. The U.S. has been 100% net import reliant on rare-earth elements, with 80 percent of those imports sourced from China.

Technology metals consultant Jack Lipton has described five steps in a total rare-earth supply chain. Mining comes first, followed by extraction of the rare-earths from mining concentrates and preparation of clean, pre-PLS (pregnant leach solution) mixed rare-earths products. (Actually, there is another step that precedes mining, at least in Western countries – gaining permission to mine – and it is often the most difficult and most time-consuming step of all.)

The article continues:

In a four-part series addressing Chinese dominance in the rare-earths industry, Jamil Hijazi and James Kennedy explained that China built its rare-earth industry as part of a carefully designed nationalistic strategy for world domination, one not motivated by the quest for private profits.

Now, with their market share dominance, “China uses opaque subsidies to eliminate any profit potential for competitors. No profit potential, no competitors, China’s metallurgical monopoly remains secure and uncontested.” Even more daunting, the lack of non-Chinese processing, refining and metallurgical capacity means the world sells China its low value ore-concentrate and China sells back much higher value end products.

Menell (TechMet Chairman and CEO Brian Menell ) points out that China’s rare-earths dominance is “the result of decades of successful central planning, to secure the minerals required to develop technologies across strategic sectors such as energy, auto and defense.”

President Biden’s executive order supporting the concept of resilient, diverse, secure supply chains is certainly admirable. However, Menell says, the United States must make the supply of critical minerals a central part of both domestic and foreign policy.

Menell notes that the Biden Administration also needs to educate the American public that the mining and processing of critical materials can be done with much lower environmental impacts by American companies than by Chinese firms, and that America’s economic well-being depends heavily on an integrated rare-earths value chain.

As the world depends more and more on various computer chips, this is going to become more of a problem. China (as usual) has played the long game while the west ignored its growing dependence on rare-earth metals. America needs to act on this problem quickly, but with an eye to a long-term solution rather than a quick fix.

It Really Is A Matter Of Perspective

Yesterday WattsUpWithThat posted an article that puts the claims that July 2019 was the hottest July ever in perspective. I don’t claim to be science oriented, but I can look at pictures and learn from them.

The article included two pictures that tell the story:

For people who actually understand scientific papers, the article refers to an article by Dr. Roy Spencer titled, ” July 2019 Was Not the Warmest on Record.”

The earth’s climate is constantly changing. Some scientists in the 1970’s said we were heading for a global Ice Age; others predicted a period of warming. So far, no scientist has created a computer model that is accurate. The weatherman can’t even tell us if it will rain tomorrow. At any rate, July 2019 was not the warmest July ever.

The Problem Is Underneath–Not Above

In August 2018 (yes, I know that was last year, but I missed this), The Climate Change Dispatch posted an article with the following headline, “Multiple NASA Studies Confirm Bedrock Heat Flow Behind Melting Polar Ice, Not Global Warming.” Wow. Who knew?

The article includes the following photo:

The article reports:

In what amounts to dissension from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) climate change policy, a series of just-released studies by working-level scientists prove that geological and not atmospheric forces are responsible for melting of Earth’s polar ice sheets.

NASA Antarctica Study October 30, 2015

This research study authored by NASA Glaciologist Jay Zwally concluded that Antarctica is gaining, not losing, ice mass and thereby challenging the conclusions of many previous studies, most importantly the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report (see the quote from the study below).

“A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.

“The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.

The article continues:

The conclusions of this NASA study were immediately challenged by numerous climate activist groups and biased media outlets (see here). These challenges have since been proven incorrect for several reasons.

Statements by NASA Glaciologist Jay Zwally concerning his soon-to-be-published Antarctic follow-up study reconfirm that Antarctica is gaining, not losing ice.

The results of this follow-up study are bolstered by two other NASA research studies.

The first, dated January 1, 2018, shows that East Antarctica has for many years been accumulating huge amounts of snow that compact into ice and increasing overall ice mass (see here).

The second NASA study released on July 19, 2018, showed that the atmosphere above the Antarctic Continent has been continuously cooling and not warming for many years (see here).

Obviously, it’s impossible to melt Antarctica’s glaciers via atmospheric warming when the atmosphere is not warming.

Lastly, a NASA study dated Feb. 20, 2018, concludes that outflow of East Antarctic glaciers into the ocean is stable and not increasing (see here). This is proof that East Antarctica’s ice mass is not being diminished by glacial outflow into adjacent oceans.

Bottom line, research by NASA scientists clearly shows that the well-documented ice loss in West Antarctica is more than accommodated by ice gains in East Antarctica. Contrary to hundreds of pro-melting articles, Antarctica’s ice mass is increasing!

When you read an article about man-made climate change, consider the following:

In March 2016, I posted an article with the following:

…Then listen to the words of former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:

“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.

So what is the goal of environmental policy?

“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.

It’s really not about the climate.

In Case You Were Worried About This…

Anthony Watts at wattsupwiththat is reporting today:

A new Policy Brief from The Heartland Institute shows there is no evidence of acceleration in the rise of global sea levels since the 1920s and concludes the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) concerns over this issue is “without merit.”

The Policy Brief, titled “Global Sea Level Rise: An Evaluation of the Data,” authored by Dr. Craig Idso, chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Dr. David Legates, professor of climatology in the Department of Geography at the University of Delaware, and Dr. S. Fred Singer, is taken from a chapter of Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels, a report fromthe Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

According to IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, “it is very likely that the rate of global mean sea level rise during the 21st century will exceed the rate observed during 1971–2010 for all Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios due to increases in ocean warming and loss of mass from glaciers and ice sheets.”

However, Idso, Legates, and Singer argue “sea-level rise is a research area that has recently come to be dominated by computer models. Whereas researchers working with datasets built from long-term coastal tide gauges typically report a slow linear rate of sea-level rise, computer modelers assume a significant anthropogenic forcing and tune their models to find or predict an acceleration of the rate of rise.”

…Instead of accelerated sea-level rises, the authors find “the best available data” shows “evidence is lacking for any recent changes in global sea level that lie outside natural variation.” They point out that if the negative effects of the claimed accelerated rise in sea level, such as a loss of surface area, were to be visible anywhere, it would most likely be in the small islands and coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean. However, research indicates many of these islands and atolls are actually increasing in size. Simply, they are “not being inundated by rising seas due to anthropogenic climate change.”

Fears of an accelerated rise in sea levels caused by anthropogenic climate change are misplaced and overblown. Further, this fearmongering should not be used by policymakers in coastal states and cities to advocate for policies that would seek to limit or eliminate carbon dioxide emissions.

No, we are not all going to drown in five years because of sea-level rise. Some politicians are screaming ‘the sky is falling’ because they believe it will get them the votes of young people who are not scientifically schooled. The earth’s climate is cyclical, we are in a cycle. There will be another cycle. We need to do what we can to limit pollution, but in the end, we are not important enough to make a significant difference. Pride is one of the things the fuels the extreme environmental movement.

An Editorial Written By People Who Choose To Ignore Basic Facts

On September 11, The Washington Post posted an editorial about Hurricane Florence. The editorial noted that President Trump was complicit in the damage the hurricane was going to do. Wow. Was he also complicit in Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Hurricane Hazel 1954, Hurricane Bob 1991, Hurricane Camille in 1969, and Hurricane Hugo in 1989, etc.? Many of those hurricanes were larger and stronger than Florence. Those of us who live on the east coast or the Gulf coast understand that hurricanes happen. Blaming the current President for those hurricanes or their severity is ridiculous.

The editorial states:

Yet when it comes to extreme weather, Mr. Trump is complicit. He plays down humans’ role in increasing the risks, and he continues to dismantle efforts to address those risks. It is hard to attribute any single weather event to climate change. But there is no reasonable doubt that humans are priming the Earth’s systems to produce disasters.

Actually, there is a reasonable doubt that humans are causing climate change. It is also unfair to say that President Trump is aiding and abetting climate change.

On August 21, I reported:

Yet the latest world climate report from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy finds that in 2017, America reduced its carbon emissions by 0.5 percent, the most of all major countries. That’s especially impressive given that our economy grew by nearly 3 percent — so we had more growth and less pollution — the best of all worlds. The major reason for the reduced pollution levels is the shale oil and gas revolution that is transitioning the world to cheap and clean natural gas for electric power generation.

Meanwhile, as our emissions fell, the pollution levels rose internationally and by a larger amount than in previous years. So much for the rest of the world going green.

Yes, President Trump has reduced the regulations, but he has not done anything to increase pollution. He has encouraged energy independence, which includes natural gas, which burns cleaner than most other fuels.

A website called wattsupwiththat reminds us of the following:

Back in the late 1600s, the Salem Witch Trials accused defendants of using black magic to cause bad weather, during a prolonged period of bad weather.

Have we reached the point where we are returning to the Salem Witch Trials in order to make political points?

 

Going ‘Not-so Green’

On Friday, WattsUpWithThat posted an article about the promotion of off-shore wind farms by some eastern states in America. The article details some of the problems with off-shore wind farms.

The article cites the cost of the wind farms and the cost to consumers:

The governors of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia have signed executive orders or passed laws to procure offshore wind systems valued at billions of dollars. Officials are eager to win leadership in what is perceived to be a new growth industry. The US Department of Energy has funded over $200 million in offshore wind research since 2011.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed a law in 2016 requiring utilities to purchase 1,600 megawatts of electricity from offshore wind systems over the next 10 years. The law requires that wind systems be “cost effective to electric ratepayers.” But history shows that costs are likely to be far above the New England wholesale market price of 5 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Massachusetts paid solar generators a subsidy of 25 cents per kilowatt-hour during the state’s solar build-out in 2013. Rhode Island’s Block Island wind system, the first offshore system in the United States, now receives over 27 cents per kW-hr, with an annual guaranteed rate increase of an additional 3.5 cents per kW-hr. New England residents must enjoy paying renewable generators more than six times the market price for electricity.

When we lived in Massachusetts, we were able to choose the source of our electricity. Since we lived in an all-electric house, it was to our advantage to choose carefully. We chose a company that got its electricity from Canada in order to avoid the increased cost of Massachusetts’ going green. I am not sure if that option is still available to Massachusetts utility customers.

The article explains the problem of wind turbines and hurricanes (which do happen on the east coast):

Specifications call for wind systems to withstand gusts up to 156 miles per hour, but this isn’t good enough for some of our Atlantic hurricanes. Last September, hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico with Category 4-strength winds and destroyed many of the wind turbines on the island.

Strong hurricanes occasionally collide with our eastern coastal states. The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 brought Category 3 winds to New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. The Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 delivered Category 2 winds along the coast from North Carolina to Maine. Hurricane Carol in 1954 and Hurricane Gloria in 1985 brought Category 3 winds to the shores of the wind system-promoting states.

Finally, the Norfolk and Long Island Hurricane of 1821 passed through most of the proposed wind turbine sites with up to Category 4 wind strength. The expensive wind systems planned by Atlantic States could all be destroyed by a single well-placed hurricane.

Offshore wind turbines are expensive, prone to early degradation, and in the case of the US East Coast, at risk in the path of strong hurricanes. State officials should reconsider their plans for offshore wind systems.

I sometimes wonder if our search for green energy is similar to man’s search for the perpetual motion machine. It would be wonderful, but the laws of physics seem to indicate that this may be more of a challenge than first thought. There may be green energy in our future, but it won’t happen until the government gets out of the way and lets someone make a huge profit in the free market. That is called incentive!

Somehow This Didn’t Make The News

WattsUpWithThat posted an article today about temperature records set during the past two years. The records were not what was expected.

The article reports:

NASA data show that global temperatures dropped sharply over the past two years. Not that you’d know it, since that wasn’t deemed news. Does that make NASA a global warming denier?

Writing in Real Clear Markets, Aaron Brown looked at the official NASA global temperature data and noticed something surprising. From February 2016 to February 2018, “global average temperatures dropped by 0.56 degrees Celsius.” That, he notes, is the biggest two-year drop in the past century.

The article also includes some other climate news that the major media seemed to overlook:

There was the study published in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate showing that climate models exaggerate global warming from CO2 emissions by as much as 45%. It was ignored.

Then there was the study in the journal Nature Geoscience that found that climate models were faulty, and that, as one of the authors put it, “We haven’t seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models.”

Nor did the press see fit to report on findings from the University of Alabama-Huntsville showing that the Earth’s atmosphere appears to be less sensitive to changing CO2 levels than previously assumed.

How about the fact that the U.S. has cut CO2 emissions over the past 13 years faster than any other industrialized nation? Or that polar bear populations are increasing? Or that we haven’t seen any increase in violent weather in decades?

This is not to say that we shouldn’t do what we can to limit air pollution, protect clean water, and keep our planet clean. We need to do that because we are responsible human beings. However, we don’t have to run around with our hair on fire about something we can’t change.

 

 

Bias Can Be What You Leave Out Of A Story As Well As Choosing The Stories You Report

Global warming is one of the sacred cows of the political left. Part of this is due to the fact that climate change can be used as a weapon against capitalism, free markets, and successful democratic nations.

In February of last year, I posted an article that included the following quote:

…Then listen to the words of former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:

“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.

So what is the goal of environmental policy?

“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.

So that explains why the political left is so in love with the idea of global warming. Now let’s look at the omissions in a recent Associated Press article about global warming as reported in The Daily Caller.

The article reports:

An Associated Press reporter sent some questions to Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. about what role global warming played in this year’s slew of billion-dollar natural disasters.

Pielke, an expert on natural disaster costs, apparently didn’t give AP reporter Seth Borenstein the answers he was looking for, because his ensuing article didn’t have any quotes from the University of Colorado professor.

The following questions and answers were omitted from the AP article:

Please follow the link to The Daily Caller and read the entire article. It illustrates how the media tries to shape the debate rather than simply reporting facts. As I have stated before, the best website on the internet for climate information is wattsupwiththat.com.

 

Much Ado About Nothing

President Trump has doomed the earth to extinction! We have all heard some variation of that chicken-little headline because President Trump has directed the EPA to roll back former President Obama’s hugely expensive Clean Power Plan.

Well, yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about the impact of President Trump’s directive.

The chart below is from the article:

The article explains exactly what the chart illustrates:

Take a look at the Clean Power Plan — Obama’s most ambitious climate change effort. Despite the costs of this regulatory monstrosity, the Clean Power Plan would have no discernible impact in global carbon dioxide emissions over the next three decades.

That’s not the conclusion of climate change “deniers.” That’s what the Obama administration’s own Department of Energy said in a report issued in May 2016.

As part of its International Energy Outlook, the Energy Information Administration provided long-term forecasts of energy-related CO2 emissions, comparing global emissions with the Clean Power Plan, and without it.

What it shows is that with the Clean Power Plan, global carbon emissions would still climb 32% in 2012 and 2040, only slightly below what the increase will be without it.

So why did we cripple our domestic energy production and put thousands of people out of work? Rush Limbaugh has commented many times that the environmental movement is the new home for the socialists and communists of the world. As countries with basic freedoms have become more prosperous, countries that do not have basic property rights have become poorer. Those poorer countries would very much like to find a way to extort money from the richer countries. That is exactly what a worldwide carbon tax would do. How do you implement a worldwide carbon tax? You convince people that wealthy nations are ruining the earth and need to pay a price for it, and you give the money to the tyrants of the world.

Please understand, I am not in favor of pollution. However, I am in favor of balancing the economy and the environment.

The article further points out:

As we noted in this space recently, without any government mandates, energy-related CO2 emissions in the U.S. fell 12.4% from 2007 to 2015. Overall carbon intensity — a measure of how much CO2 it takes to produce a dollar of GDP — declined an average 1.5% a year since 2005.

These gains are due both to the fracking breakthrough, which unleashed massive supplies of lower-carbon natural gas, and the unending pressure the free market puts on businesses to be more efficient.

This same market-driven decarbonizing trend has been happening around the world.

Between 1990 and 2012, the carbon intensity of developed nations dropped by 33%, and by 25% in developing countries. By 2040, the carbon intensity of developed nations will be cut in half, the report projects, and will drop by almost 40% in developed countries, the Energy Department report shows.

Yet overall energy-related CO2 emissions will still climb by 51% in developing countries, and 8% among industrialized nations, from 2012 to 2040 — even with the Paris agreement.

Why? “Increases in output per capita coupled with population growth overwhelm improvements in energy intensity and carbon intensity,” the report explains.

In other words, barring some miracle scientific breakthrough, the only reliable way to cut global carbon emissions would be to depopulate the planet or kill economic growth.

The global warming panic is nothing more than a stealth attack on our economy and freedom. As I have stated before, the best site on the Internet for good, scientific information on climate change is wattsupwiththat.com. I strongly recommend that you visit the site when you wonder about the scientific accuracy of whatever current panic attack the environmentalists are having.

Science For Fun And Profit

The Daily Caller posted a story about climate research at the global warming research center at the London School of Economics.

The article reports:

The UK government gave $11 million dollars to the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP) in exchange for research that the organization reportedly never actually did.

Many papers CCCEP claimed to have published to get government money weren’t about global warming, were written before the organization was even founded, or were written by researchers unaffiliated with CCCEP. The government never checked CCCEP’s supposed publication lists, saying they were “taken on trust,” according to the report.

…“It is serious misconduct to claim credit for a paper you haven’t supported, and it’s fraud to use that in a bid to renew a grant,” Professor Richard Tol, a climate economics expert from Sussex University whose research was reportedly stolen by CCCEP, told The Daily Mail. “I’ve never come across anything like it before. It stinks.”

Meanwhile, the CCCEP was attempting to get another $5.4 million from the government to pay for operations until 2018.

The article also reports:

The author who received $3.65 million, Charles Driscoll, even admitted to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the result of his study was predetermined, saying “in doing this study we wanted to bring attention to the additional benefits from carbon controls.”

Now think about that for a minute. If the results of the study were predetermined, why did they do the study? Also, what does that tell us about the scientific aspect of the studies on climate control–are those results predetermined also? Even with my limited knowledge of the Scientific Method, I know there is something wrong with reaching the conclusion before you do the research (or without doing the research).

In case you are a new reader of this blog, I would like to recommend wattsupwiththat.com as the best, most honest website on the Internet dealing with climate change.

Now The United Nations Wants To Control What We Eat

On June 30th, The Providence Journal posted an article about the United Nations concerns for the heath of the world if people continue to eat meat.

The article reports:

It may be delicious, but the evidence is accumulating that meat, particularly red meat, is just a disaster for the environment – and not so great for human beings, too.

By 2050, scientists forecast that emissions from agriculture alone will account for how much carbon dioxide the world can use to avoid catastrophic global warming. It already accounts for one-third of emissions today – and half of that comes from livestock.

That’s a driving reason why members of a United Nations panel last month urged its environmental assembly to consider recommending a tax on meat producers and sellers. By raising the cost of buying meat, it would ultimately aim to reduce production and demand for it.

Maarten Hajer, professor at the Netherlands’ Utrecht University, led the environment and food report that recommended the meat tax.

“All of the harmful effects on the environment and on health needs to be priced into food products,” said Hajer, who is a member of U.N.’s International Resource Panel, which comprises 34 top scientists and 30 governments. “I think it is extremely urgent.”

First of all, I would like to point out that human beings have canine teeth–they are designed for eating meat. Second of all, I would like to point out that man-caused global warming is a myth. For honest information on global warming see wattsupwiththat.

The United Nations has forgotten its purpose. The United Nations  supposedly originally started to avoid world wars by creating a place for negotiation and dialogue and to encourage the expansion of individual freedom in all countries. However, in recent years, the United Nations has become an organization desiring to form a one-world government and take away individual freedom. Agenda 21 is a prime example of this. If you are unfamiliar with Agenda 21, google it or use the search engine on this website. The United Nations wants to control where you live, how big your house is, how much property you own, and now, how you eat.

The article further reports:

But, governments must soon move to limit major carbon producers, Hajer said. Food companies will naturally be part of that.

The idea of a meat tax has developed over the past 25 years as a “completely obvious” measure to economists and environmentalists, Hajer said, as knowledge of the environmental toll of meat emerged.

Agriculture consumes 80 percent of water in the United States. For a kilogram of red meat, you need considerably more water than for plant products.

Governments are starting to take notice. China, which consumes half of the world’s pork and more than a quarter of its overall meat, announced new dietary guidelines last week that advise the average citizen to reduce meat consumption by half. That country’s meat consumption has increased nearly five-fold since 1982, even though their population has only increased by 30 percent during that time.

Denmark went a little further in May. The Danish government is considering a recommendation from its ethics council that all red meats should be taxed. Red meat accounts for 10 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, and the council argued that Danes were “ethically obliged” to reduce their consumption.

I am very concerned about the world we will be leaving our children and grandchildren. Junk science is not a basis for extorting money from people who produce or eat a product that has fallen out of favor with the elites. My question is simple, “What are they serving at diplomatic dinners at the United Nations?”

 

The First Amendment Is In Danger

The First Amendment protects the right of free speech. It reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Evidently some of our state attorneys general are not aware of this law.

On Friday, The Blaze reported:

It only took a week before the warnings from free speech advocates to come to fruition about the 17 state attorneys general launching investigations into climate change skeptics, as the probe has expanded beyond an energy company to a think tank.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank in Washington, moved to quash a subpoena from the U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker.

The Virgin Islands subpoenaed 10 years worth of communications, emails, statements, drafts, and other documents regarding CEI’s research on climate change and energy policy. This included private donor information. The demand is for information from 1997 to 2007.

“CEI will vigorously fight to quash this subpoena,” CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman said in a statement. “It is an affront to our First Amendment rights of free speech and association for Attorney General Walker to bring such intimidating demands against a nonprofit group.”

The subpoena itself is part of several states’ investigations into whether Exxon-Mobil violated any laws in showing skepticism about climate change. Several other states, led by New York state Attorney General Erich Schneiderman, are using the racketeering statutes – commonly used to go after organized crime – to investigate companies government officials say might have misled the public about global warming.

States are investigating whether Exxon-Mobil violated laws by showing skepticism about climate change. What? Showing skepticism about something is now a crime?

On Monday, The Daily Signal reported:

Speaking at a press conference on March 29, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said, “The bottom line is simple: Climate change is real.” He went on to say that if companies are committing fraud by “lying” about the dangers of climate change, they will “pursue them to the fullest extent of the law.”

The coalition of 17 inquisitors are calling themselves “AGs United for Clean Power.” The coalition consists of 15 state attorneys general (California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington State), as well as the attorneys general of the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands. Sixteen of the seventeen members are Democrats, while the attorney general for the Virgin Islands, Claude Walker, is an independent.

The inquisitors are threatening legal action and huge fines against anyone who declines to believe in an unproven scientific theory.

In the Middle Ages, I believe that those who stated that the earth was round were treated the way that climate change skeptics are being treated by these attorneys general.

The Daily Signal further reports:

The officials on hand during the announcement talked only about targeting large companies. But Anthony Sadar, a certified consulting meteorologist and author of “In Global Warming We Trust: Too Big to Fail,” fears it could expand to individuals.

“RICO, to my knowledge, is meant to target organized crime, drug traffickers and illegal gambling, not energy companies,” Sadar told TheBlaze. “If it can be used to make big industries cave, then they could go after others that view long-range global climate projections with some skepticism.”

Attorney and author Chris Horner, a senior fellow at CEI, agrees.

“It is clear that, with most opposition already chilled and most support for opponents already scared off, the itch this effort is trying to scratch is the desire to coerce a massive fund to underwrite the global warming industry,” Horner told TheBlaze.

“That explains the call for civil RICO. Still, if they manage to get an investigation rolling into political speech as racketeering, nothing inherently limits it from turning into a criminal pursuit; any state or federal department of justice official who joined in in such a scheme would have already abandoned any normal restraining impulses,” Horner said. “Similarly, there is nothing inherently limiting these investigations to corporations or groups.”

It is my fondest hope that the companies investigated will sue the state attorneys general involved in this into the next galaxy. This is a total affront to free speech. It also sounds very much like a totalitarian government bringing in the thought police. This is a total misuse of the RICO statutes. There needs to be a huge pushback against the states that are involved in this.

When watching this situation, we need to remember that climate change could very quickly become a billion dollar industry. To some extent it already has. Government subsidies finance alternative energy companies, and the United Nations wants to redistribute the wealth of prosperous countries in the name of past sins that may have impacted the climate. Oddly enough, the wealth would move from free countries to countries where the  money would go to tyrants leading the country and not to the poorer people who might actually need it.

For anyone new to reading this blog, one of the most informative sites on the internet for valid information on climate change is wattsupwiththat. I strongly recommend checking that site periodically to see the next stunt attempted by those who will profit greatly if they can convince the rest of us that we cause climate change.

Lies Scientists Tell In Order To Get Grant Money

Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article about the lies being told by scientists pushing the Global Warming agenda. I am not a scientific type, so I don’t understand exactly how this works, but even in my nonscientific state, I can understand that inventing numbers in reporting temperatures will change the results. The source of the article at Power Line is an article at wattsupwiththat.com, probably the best climate site on the internet.

The article reports:

This article at Watts Up With That? adds incrementally to that picture. John Goetz analyzes the U.S. temperature data that finds its way into “official” tabulations. This is particularly important because, while the U.S. represents only 6.6% of the total land area of Earth, we account for close to half of the data relied on by the Global Historical Climatology Network. This is a big topic, and you should study the Goetz article in its entirety if you have time. I am still digesting it.

But a few highlights are obvious. First, Goetz finds that approximately 92% (or even more, depending on how you calculate it) of US surface temperature data consists of estimated or altered values. Very little raw data finds its way into the warmists’ climate models–which, of course, is the way they want it. Second, the adjustments that are made to the U.S. data consistently skew the numbers as we have described many times before–they try to make the present look warmer, compared with the past.

It’s all about the money.

The article at Power Line reports:

Why do the alarmists, lavishly funded by the world’s governments, persistently alter the data before they feed it into their computer programs? Because the raw data won’t get them where they are trying to go, to keep the money flowing. This is what you see if you just plot the temperatures that were recorded on thermometers here in the U.S. No warming:

uscrn-trend-plot-from-ncdc-data

It’s bad enough that politicians routinely lie to the public, but it really bothers me when scientists do it.

The Most Accurate Weather Predictor

Oddly enough, the group of people who have most accurately predicted weather in recent years are the writers of the Farmer’s Almanac. There is a reason many American farmers rely on their advice on when to plant and when to harvest–they are generally right.

On Monday The Daily Caller posted an article about the successful prediction record of The Farmer’s Almanac vs. the global warming people.

The article reports:

Who cares what a folksy book of hocus pocus for farmers says about the weather? We know better. Al Gore, Barack Obama, and the supposed consensus of 97 percent of climate scientists all say global warming, climate change, is real. They base their reasoning on “solar cycles, climatology, and meteorology” which happens to be what the Old Farmer’s Almanac uses for its forecast too.

So who’s right? Last year the Almanac predicted, “Snowfall will be above normal in most of the Northeast.” Turns out Boston set a new record for the snowiest season. Eight years ago, “Al Gore predicted that the North Pole could be completely liquidated by 2014 due to the impending threat of global warming.” Instead the Arctic ice cap is growing.

It seems global warming only exists in the world of computer models. And how accurate are these predictions? When tropical storm Sandy became a hurricane, the forecast track was all over the map, literally. Most models had her heading to Bermuda and only a few tracks leading to the New York metro area. This was only five days before she made landfall in New Jersey.

It is ironic that the people who have been so often wrong are the ones guiding U.S. energy, economic, and foreign policy. It is also ironic that none of the computer models that have predicted global warming have proven to be accurate. The global warming debate has consistently been an area where politics has trumped science. That is unfortunate for all of us.

Just as a reminder in case you are new to this site, the best website on the Internet for information on global warming is wattsupwiththat.com. On occasion the site can be a bit overly technical, but it is a great source of information on climate change.

The Truth Matters When You Are Trying To Justify Causing Economic Chaos

Unfortunately in recent years, science has become political. Scientists are not stupid people, and they figured out rather quickly that it is easier to get grant money if you say a crisis of some sort is imminent. The global warming alarmists are a prime example of this. The other part of the story is that if politicians can convince everyone that global warming is man-made, they can use it to control the economies of the major countries of the world. Also, countries that are not economically successful can use the idea of global warming to blackmail countries that are wealthy. All that needs to happen is that the numbers have to be cooked enough to be believable. Well, guess what? The evidence that the temperature numbers are being cooked is piling up.

Herman Cain posted a story on his website today about three countries that have been altering their temperature numbers.

The article reports:

Thanks to the excellent work of the Heartland Institute’s H. Sterling Burnett, we know that at least three countries – Australia, Paraguay and Switzerland – appear to have altered some of their meteorological data to exaggerate the rate at which their temperatures are rising. Burnett writes:

In previous editions of Climate Change Weekly (CCW), I reported weather bureaus in Australia (CCW #139) and Paraguay (CCW #158) were caught adjusting datasets from their temperature gauges. After the adjustment, the temperatures reported were consistently higher than those actually recorded. Science journalist Markus Schär of the Swiss news weekly Weltwoche discovered the Swiss Meteorological Service (SMS) tampered with its datasets as well.

For example, in Sion and Zurich, SMS adjustments resulted in a doubling of the temperature trend. Schär notes there has been an 18-year-pause in rising temperatures, even with data- tampering. As a result, Schär calls the adjustments a “propaganda trick, and not a valid trend.”

In light of significant urbanization resulting in an expanded heat island effect near many temperature gauges, Schär argues the adjustment of raw data to report higher temperatures than are actually measured is unjustifiable. “The corrections … appear so massive that they represent half of the entire temperature increase,” said Schär.

Even with fudged data, governments have been unable to hide the fact winters in Switzerland and in Central Europe have become colder over the past 20 years, defying predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate alarmists.

When the government comes calling for more of your money in order to fight global warming, it might be a good time to remind them that global warming is not happening. The best site on the internet for scientific information about climate change and what is true and what is not is wattsupwiththat.com. I strongly recommend it.

 

If You Don’t Like The Data–Change It!

The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday about the latest numbers released (make that changed) by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) about temperatures in America’s corn belt last summer.

The article includes two charts–one of the actual temperature data and one of the data after NOAA ‘adjusted’ the numbers:

These are the charts:

Source: NCDC climate data presented by Roy Spencer on www.drroyspencer.com.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

The article reports:

Meteorologist Anthony Watts has also caught NOAA changing the temperature record. For two years, NOAA claimed that July 2012 was the hottest month on record — that is, until it quietly adjusted the data so that July 1936 was the hottest month on record.

“Two years ago during the scorching summer of 2012, July 1936 lost its place on the leaderboard and July 2012 became the hottest month on record in the United States,” Watts wrote. “Now, as if by magic, and according to NOAA’s own data, July 1936 is now the hottest month on record again. The past, present, and future all seems to be ‘adjustable’ in NOAA’s world.”

Generally speaking it is very easy to lie with statistics–you can make them say anything you want them to say. However, it is really easy to lie with statistics when you arbitrarily change the numbers. That seems to be what is going on with NOAA.

Don’t Let Scientific Information Get In The Way Of Your Political Agenda

The roots of the outcry about the dangers of global warming are political. If global warming is a crisis, government can exert more power over citizens. Government can choose winners and losers in the business world (e.g. subsidies to Solyndra or avoiding the Keystone Pipeline to increase the business on Warren Buffett‘s railroad, etc.), and generally those in power can consolidate their power by employing quid pro quo policies without being obvious about it. So what about some of the claims used to sell the theory that we are melting?

Yesterday WattsUpWithThat posted an article about some recent claims that the North Pole is melting. Good grief, what will happen to Santa Claus?

The picture below was posted on Facebook by the Climate Reality Project. The picture was described as a picture of the North Pole showing that the North Pole was melting. There’s only one problem with that–the picture was taken 300 miles from the North Pole. So how much difference does 300 miles make? Three hundred miles is the approximate distance between Boston, Massachusetts, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Anyone who has been in these cities in February knows that 300 miles matters.

Drifting_webcam_Capture

In case you are still fearful that we are melting, the article at WattsUpWithThat included a few pictures from the 1960’s.

Seadragon (SSN-584), foreground, and her sister Skate (SSN-578) during a rendezvous at the North Pole in August 1962

Seadragon (SSN-584), foreground, and her sister Skate (SSN-578) during a rendezvous at the North Pole in August 1962 (US Navy Photo).

The article also includes a picture of the North Pole from the 1980’s when Time Magazine was proclaiming the dangers of global cooling.

The following video posted on YouTube with the explanation below to clarify what is actually happening:

Published on Jul 27, 2013

There was quite a bit of hype bouncing around the Instanet on a “lake” at the North Pole. This video tries to clarify what’s up. Ponds of meltwater form routinely on Arctic Ocean sea ice in the summer. The sea ice is floating on the Arctic Ocean and in constant motion. The webcam that took these images was placed on the ice a few dozen miles from the North Pole in early spring, but has since drifted hundreds of miles.
The North Pole Environmental Observatory Web site:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpo…

I went on the 2003 expedition to set up the same batch of instruments in 2003 and wrote an award-winning book about the project and the once and future North Pole:
http://us.macmillan.com/newyorktimest…

Andrew Freedman’s Climate Central post is helpful as well:
The Lake at the North Pole, How Bad Is It?
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/me…

More on my blog on Arctic climate change and sea ice: http://j.mp/dotPole

Before you purchase waterfront property in West Virginia in anticipation of global warming, you might want to look at the facts.

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The Coming Ice Age

On Friday, Anthony Watts posted the graph below on his WattsUpWithThat website.

“Data adapted from ‘The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum’ by A.S. Dyke et. al., which was way better than the sequels ‘The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum: The Meltdown’ and ‘The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum: Continental Drift’.”

The bottom line here is simple–we are more at risk from global cooling than from global warming. Before we panic, we might also consider that as of yet we haven’t come up with an accurate computer model that correctly predicts long term trends in weather. Weather is the result of all sorts of things–carbon levels, sun spots, ocean temperatures, etc. Even at that, we really don’t know which of these things exerts the greatest influence or how they interact. Generally speaking, we need to do everything we can to keep the planet clean, but we need to balance that effort against the needs of the people who live on earth.

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