Climate alarmists

Even the Climate Alarmists are Admitting it was a Hoax!

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BBC Alarmists admit the Global Warming Slowdown.
The BBC had its start as an eco-propaganda unit for the Global Warming Alarmist’s campaign after 30 key BBC staff’ and ‘30 invited guests’ attended a seminar. The Daily Mail reported that the BBC tried to hide this for 6 years:

The BBC has spent tens of thousands of pounds over six years trying to keep secret an extraordinary ‘eco’ conference which has shaped its coverage of global warming, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The controversial seminar was run by a body set up by the BBC’s own environment analyst Roger Harrabin and funded via a £67,000 grant from the then Labour government, which hoped to see its ‘line’ on climate change and other Third World issues promoted in BBC reporting.
At the event, in 2006, green activists and scientists – one of whom believes climate change is a bigger danger than global nuclear war – lectured 28 of the Corporation’s most senior executives. (link)
Seems like someone has taken the Kool-Aid (or is it FOOL-Aid?) from the BBC’s watercoolers because this week they not only acknowledged the warming hiatus, but have raised the possibility that the
Global warming slowdown ‘could last another decade’
The hiatus in the rise in global temperatures could last for another 10 years, according to new research.
Scientists have struggled to explain the so-called pause that began in 1999, despite ever increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The BBC reported a peer reviewed paper published in Science in August (link) which tried to explain the warming hiatus (or as they expressed it, “global-warming slowdown”)

Varying planetary heat sink led to global-warming slowdown and acceleration
A vacillating global heat sink at intermediate ocean depths is associated with different climate regimes of surface warming under anthropogenic forcing: The latter part of the 20th century saw rapid global warming as more heat stayed near the surface. In the 21st century, surface warming slowed as more heat moved into deeper oceans.
How the heat missed the surface and went into the deep ocean has not been explained.

The ‘deep ocean’ theory has been ridiculed by IPCC expert reviewer Lord Christopher Monckton:

The warming is hiding in the bottom of the ocean. Someday it will pop out and say BOO!
They are saying that it somehow managed to go from the atmosphere into the ocean. Not into the bit of the ocean that touches the atmosphere, no, it missed that out and it’s gone down and hidden in the bottom of the ocean where we can’t measure it. And one day it’s going to come out and say boo!

Global Warming Alarmists Being Less Than Honest With The Public! Not Surprised….

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This article ties in nicely, with the previous one

posted, telling Why they Lie

 

Are scientists cooking the books?

Warming scientists accused of adjusting temperature data to show warming

 Australian cooling turns to warming z

August 23, 2014 by  

Can there be a valid discussion about the climate if warmist scientists are cooking the books?

The failure of climate computer models to accurately project recent temperatures is a major embarrassment for warming campaigners.   The models nearly universally call for more warming than has actually occurred.  This has left the warming crowd scrambling to explain the missing warming.  The folks who publish the Hockey Schtick blog are now up to 38 excuses for the missing warming.  Marc Morano has details at Climate Depot.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts has been documenting accusations of researchers placing their thumbs on the scale to create warming for years.

Now comes reports that the Australian Met Office has been adjusting temperature data to cool the past and create a warming trend that does not appear in the raw data.

The escalating row goes to heart of the climate change debate — in particular, whether computer models are better than real data and whether temperature records are being manipulated in a bid to make each year hotter than the last. Marohasy’s research has put her in dispute with BoM over a paper she published with John Abbot at Central Queensland University in the journal Atmospheric Research concerning the best data to use for rainfall forecasting. BoM challenged the findings of the Marohasy-Abbot paper, but the international journal rejected the BoM rebuttal, which had been prepared by some of the bureau’s top scientists. This has led to an escalating dispute over the way in which ­Australia’s historical temperature records are “improved” through homogenisation, which is proving more difficult to resolve.  (The Australian, h/t Benny Peiser).

Marc Morano is also featuring reports that NASA is erasing past Arctic warming from its records.

Nothing is more fundamental to the scientific method than the rule that we must adjust our hypotheses to fit the data.  Adjusting the data to fit the hypothesis is an academic/scientific crime no matter how plush the funding.

Accusations of global warming data manipulation demand full and unbiased investigations.

Political correctness has no place in science.  Only scientifically correct will do.

– See more at: http://www.cfact.org/2014/08/23/are-scientists-cooking-the-books/#sthash.b5UY1NzA.dpuf

The Real Truth Behind the Global Warming/Climate Change Agenda!

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It’s about the money, not the climate

  • Who wants to be a millionaire

August 22, 2014 by , 

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), the Irish poet and dramatist, wrote “Pray don’t talk to me about the weather. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else.”

These days, when some world leader or politician speaks of the climate—the weather is what is happening right now wherever you are—they are not talking about sunshine or rain. They are talking about a devilishly obscene way of raising money by claiming that it is humans that are threatening the climate with everything they do, from turning on the lights to driving anywhere.

That’s why “global warming” was invented in the late 1980s as an immense threat to the Earth and to mankind. Never mind that Earth has routinely passed through warmer and cooler cycles for billions of years; much of which occurred before mankind emerged. And never mind that the Earth has been a distinct cooling cycle for the past seventeen years and likely to stay in it for a while. If the history of ice ages is any guide, we could literally be on the cusp of a new one.

If, however, a government can tax the use of energy, it stands to make a lot of money. That is why carbon taxes have been introduced in some nations and why the nearly useless “clean energy” options of wind and solar have been introduced even though they both require the backup of traditional coal, natural gas and nuclear energy plants because they cannot produce electricity if the wind isn’t blowing and the sun is obscured by clouds.

Taxing energy use means taxing “greenhouse gas” emissions; primarily carbon dioxide (C02) so that every ton of it added to the atmosphere by a power plant and any other commercial activity becomes a source of income for the nation. The Australians went through this and rapidly discovered it drove up their cost of electricity and negatively affected their economy so much that they rid themselves of a prime minister and the tax within the past year.

Fortunately, every effort to introduce a carbon tax has been defeated by the U.S. Congress, but that it has shelled out billions for

Rep. Henry Waxman

“climate research” over the years. That doesn’t mean, however, that 41 demented Democrats in the House of Representatives haven’t gotten together in a “Safe Climate Caucus” led by Rep. Henry A. Waxman. The Washington Post reported that when it was launched in February 2013, the members promised to talk every day on the House floor about “the urgent need to address climate change.”

Check out the caucus and, if your Representative is a member, vote to replace him or her with someone less idiotic.

When you hear the President or a member of Congress talk about the climate, they are really talking about the scheme to generate revenue from it through taxation or to raise money from those who will personally benefit from any scheme related to the climate such as “clean energy.”

The need of governments to frighten their citizens about the climate in order to raise money is international in scope. A United States that has a $17 trillion debt is a prime example, much of it due to a government grown so large it wastes taxpayer’s money in the millions with every passing day whether it is sunny or rainy, warm or cold.

In late July, Reuters reported that Christine Lagarde, the chair of theInternational Monetary Fund, (IMF) opined in her new book that “energy taxes in much of the world are far below what they should be to reflect the harmful environmental and health impact of fossil fuels use.”

Please pay no attention to the billions of dollars that coal, oil and natural gas already generate for the nations in which they are found. Nations such as India and China are building coal-fired plants as fast as possible to provide the electricity every modern nation needs to expand its economy, provide more employment, and improve their citizen’s lives in every way imaginable.

“For the first time,” Reuters reported, “the IMF laid out exactly what it views as appropriate taxes on coal, natural gas, gasoline, and diesel in 156 countries to factor in the fuel’s overall costs, which include carbon dioxide emissions, air pollution, congestion and traffic accidents.” The problem with this is that the costs cited are bogus.

Christine Lagarde

“Nations,” said Lagarde, “are now working on a United Nations deal for late 2015 to rein in greenhouse gas emissions that have hit repeated highs this century, but progress has been slow as nations fret about the impact any measures may have on economic growth.” As in bad impacts!

Ignore the claims that carbon dioxide affects the climate. Its role is so small it can barely be measured because CO2 represents 380 parts per million. When our primate ancestors began to climb down out of the trees, CO2 levels were about 1,000 parts per million. More CO2 means more crops, healthy growing forests, and all the other benefits that every form of vegetation provides. The breath we humans exhale contains about 4% of CO2.

The fact is that the United States and other nations are being run by politicians who are incapable of reducing spending or borrowing more in order to spend more. Venezuela just defaulted again on the payment of bonds it issued to raise money. They did this in 2001 and one must wonder why any financial institution purchases them.

There are eleven other nations whose credit ratings are flirting with big trouble. They include Greece, Ukraine, Pakistan, Cypress, and in the Americas Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador and Belize. Borrowing by such nations is very expensive. A U.S. Treasury Note pays an annual coupon of just 2.5%, but the yields on 10-year bonds issue by Greece reached 29% in early 2012, just before it defaulted.

Adding to problems in the U.S. is the Obama agenda being acted upon by the Environmental Protection Agency whose “war on coal” has shuttered several hundred plants that produce the electricity needed to maintain the economy. In coal producing states this is playing havoc and it is driving up the cost of electricity in others.

The growth of oil and natural gas production in the U.S. is almost entirely on privately owned land as opposed to that controlled by the government. Supporting the attack on energy are the multi-million dollar environmental organizations like Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club.

The world has not warmed since the nineties and many factors influence the climate other than CO2, the Sun, the oceans, clouds, and volcanic activity. Nothing any government does, here and worldwide, has any meaningful impact on it, but if nations can demonize the use of energy and tax the CO2 it produces, they can generate more money to spend and waste.

The lies that governments, the United Nations, and the International Monetary Fund tell about the climate are about the money they can extract from citizens who must be kept frightened enough to pay taxes on their use of energy.

 

– See more at: http://www.cfact.org/2014/08/22/its-about-the-money-not-the-climate/#sthash.2UXTRUgG.dpuf

Sherri Lange Appeals to the Auditor General to Audit the Disastrous GEA

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Canada’s Wind Power Disaster Laid Bare

August 22, 2014 by  

Ontario april-28-protest-rally-3

Ontario is about to boil over, as impacted and threatened communities unite in seething rage at what their political betters have done to energy policy (see our post here).

The hard-green-left Liberals have created a wind power policy so insane as to beggar belief: sending power prices through the roof (referred to as “hydro bills”, as the bulk of their energy comes from hydro power); killing hundreds of thousands of real jobs; and destroying the lives of thousands of hard-working rural people, who’ve been left to endure a swathe of giant fans speared into the heart of the most productive agricultural country in Canada, rendering hundreds of perfectly good family homes uninhabitable.

One of those taking up the fight is Sherri Lange, who heads up the NA-PAW (North American Platform Against Wind Power), is the Founding Director Toronto Wind Action, the Executive Director Canada, Great Lakes Wind Truth and is the VP Canada, Save the Eagles International.

In this brilliant letter to Ontario’s Auditor General, Sherri lays out the disaster that is wind power in Canada and details the scale and scope of the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time.

Ms. Bonnie Lysyk
Auditor General for Ontario
20 Dundas Street West, Suite 1530
Toronto
M5G 2C2
Fax 416 327 9862
August 11, 2014

Dear Ms Lysyk,

Please consider this letter as an urgent formal request for a complete and impartial audit for all matters pertaining to the Green Energy and Green Economy Act, 2009, and its false assertions and negative results for Ontario: these misrepresentations include vigorous job creation, suggested cleaner air space, the ability to create energy facilities, wind and solar, in particular, in a cost savings manner, or competitive manner.

The Green Energy and Green Economy Act has suggested with not a little hyperbole, that it will “spark” growth in “renewables sources in Ontario, while creating savings, and producing 50,000 jobs, direct and indirect,” and “make a positive contribution towards climate change objectives,” whereas in fact the GEA threatens to eviscerate the economy of Ontario and Canada as a whole. The factual results of the GEA are of economic chaos, massive job losses, environmental degradation of the highest order, a decay of our treasured environmental protections in law, and yet uncounted human health and productivity costs.

Under the guise of positive net growth, and climate change objectives, this Act has been used to gouge and tyrannize the province, materially and economically.

We believe that the mandate of the Auditor General to provide access to “value for money” data, within an audit, will provide even more information with respect to the waste and perhaps fraud at the highest levels; consumers are indeed not being provided with fair business practices, but are continually subjected to even more egregious attacks in their daily “energy expensive” lives due to a battered and debt ridden economy.

Jobs continue to leave Ontario. Some are relocating to Buffalo, to save, in one instance, $4 million per year in energy savings, or to Saskatchewan, for example. The bleed of jobs cannot continue, and we believe that an assertive and clear look at the funding and economic threat of the Green Energy Act will bear striking similarities to the international failure of wind power and Green Energy policies. Even information provided years ago by your office and the Fraser Institute did nothing to change the course.

We contend that none of the GEA assertions and projections have proven valid, and have in fact been a major contributor, likely THE major contributor, to the near demise of manufacturing in Ontario, to energy poverty for many Ontarians whose hydro bills have risen 30-40% with promises of more hikes, to the loss of jobs to the USA and western Canada, to the ill health of hundreds of Ontarians, some of whom have been forced to abandon homes, or been bought out by developers, or who reside in parking lots at Walmart, or at cottages, or with relatives. The energy chaos of Ontario now handily competes with that of Spain, Germany, or the UK.

All of this should be and should have been preventable, since the facts are well known. Indeed, the facts of the Green Energy failures of Europe should have been a lesson learned before this Ontario failure of a massive scale. (Ontario now has the unenviable position of having the highest cost of power in North America. The significance of this is not lost on Moody’s Credit Ratings system, with the threat of downgrades to Ontario.) The lessons of Europe have been put before the Legislature, all parties, on many occasions, without benefit or improvement.

The Fraser report of 2013 has already indicated that the assertions of the GEA are egregiously false.

“Already, the GEA has caused major price increases for large energy consumers, and we’re anticipating additional hikes of 40 to 50 per cent over the next few years,” said Ross McKitrick, Fraser Institute senior fellow and author of Environmental and Economic Consequences of Ontario’s Green Energy Act.”

“The Ontario government defends the GEA by referring to a confidential 2005 cost-benefit analysis on reducing air pollution from power plants. That report did not recommend pursuing wind or solar power; instead it looked at conventional pollution control methods which would have yielded the same environmental benefits as the GEA, but at a tenth of the current cost. If the province sticks to its targets for expanding renewables, the GEA will end up being 70 times costlier than the alternative, with no greater benefits.” (News release, April 2013)

The study goes on to indicate that returns to investment in manufacturingare “likely to decline by 29 per cent, mining by 13 per cent, and forestry by less than one per cent.”

Professor McKitrick explains in his report that wind is especially wasteful, as surplus generation occurs generally when demand is low, and the resulting “dumping” also results in net losses to Ontario.

“The Auditor General of Ontario estimates that the province has already lost close to $2 billion on surplus wind exports, and figures from the electricity grid operator show the ongoing losses are $200 million annually”, says the report.

Terrance Corcoran in the Financial Post quotes from the Auditor’s report that the cost of power is estimated to rise again another 46% in the next four years. In his analysis of the Auditor General’s 2011 report on electricity, Mr. Corcoran writes of “wilful negligence” and a “high level of fiscal negligence and abuse of process and disdain for taxpayers and electricity consumers.”

The Fraser report of 2013 has already indicated that the assertions of the GEA are egregiously false.

“Already, the GEA has caused major price increases for large energy consumers, and we’re anticipating additional hikes of 40 to 50 per cent over the next few years,” said Ross McKitrick, Fraser Institute senior fellow and author of Environmental and Economic Consequences of Ontario’s Green Energy Act.”

“The Ontario government defends the GEA by referring to a confidential 2005 cost-benefit analysis on reducing air pollution from power plants. That report did not recommend pursuing wind or solar power; instead it looked at conventional pollution control methods which would have yielded the same environmental benefits as the GEA, but at a tenth of the current cost. If the province sticks to its targets for expanding renewables, the GEA will end up being 70 times costlier than the alternative, with no greater benefits.” (News release, April 2013)

The study goes on to indicate that returns to investment in manufacturing are “likely to decline by 29 per cent, mining by 13 per cent, and forestry by less than one per cent.”

Professor McKitrick explains in his report that wind is especially wasteful, as surplus generation occurs generally when demand is low, and the resulting “dumping” also results in net losses to Ontario.

“The Auditor General of Ontario estimates that the province has already lost close to $2 billion on surplus wind exports, and figures from the electricity grid operator show the ongoing losses are $200 million annually”, says the report.

Terrance Corcoran in the Financial Post quotes from the Auditor’s report that the cost of power is estimated to rise again another 46% in the next four years. In his analysis of the Auditor General’s 2011 report on electricity, Mr. Corcoran writes of “wilful negligence” and a “high level of fiscal negligence and abuse of process and disdain for taxpayers and electricity consumers.”

A prime example of the negative impact on the Ontario jobs situation is reflected in Magna’s (the largest automotive parts manufacturer in Canada) announcement that due to the high cost of electricity in Ontario, it will not make any further investments. (Specifically, for Magna between 2013 and 2014, normal business activities resulted in an increased cost of electricity of 30 million dollars.)

The expressed primary purpose of the 2011 audit was to ensure that the OEB had sufficient and adequate systems in place to protect consumers, ratepayers. As noted also in the report, consumers are protected under the Energy Consumer Protection Act, 2010, and that under this legislation consumers shall be provided with the information they require about contracts, prices, and that they will be protected by fair business practices. This fairness has not been brought to fruition.

And the serial negligence continuing until this day, despite hearty and clear directives from the Fraser Institute and your office, has resulted merely in the advance of even more industrial wind in Ontario under Premier Wynne. Consumers are indeed not being increasingly protected, and continue to be recklessly thrown under the fiscal bus.

What we find most egregious is that the people of Ontario have warned the Premier(s) McGuinty and Wynne, and made reports to the Finance Committee, as well as reporting to these offices the results of energy chaos in Germany, Spain, the UK as well as other European states previously under the spell of “renewables.” (Please note the letter to the Editor, Financial Post, March 3, 2011: “No such thing as renewable energy.”) These abject economic failures in Europe should have provided clear warning of the folly of subsidizing inefficient non base load sources of power, particularly wind turbines.

The government and lobbying association CanWEA’s (Canadian Wind Energy Association) assertion that the wind turbine industry operates safely and without damage to human health is false and must also be examined, since the reports of ill health given to the MOE (Environment) now number in the thousands. The MOE (Ministry of the Environment) has recognized the problem, and admitted in an email obtained from an FOI that they “did not know what to do.” The costs of wind power to our medical system and human productivity have not yet been accounted for.

We remind you that with about 240,000 wind turbines worldwide, we yet only receive one half of one percent, NET ZERO, of our power needs from this source. This industry is a failure, plain and simple; does the build out then have something to do with massive subsidies deep in the pockets of developers? Who is receiving these massive double or quadruple profits?

We would like to see a chart of the major beneficiaries of the FIT program in Ontario. In Spain, the profits have been so tidy, that the Government recently asked for some retroactive repayments, understandably chilling the wind developers’ aspirations. (The lineup of crimes against consumers continues in Ontario: with 86% of Ontario’s wind power being produced on days when we are already in a surplus export mode. Another net loss for consumers is obvious.)

Please also include an environmental impacts costs study in your findings. The extreme damage to water tables, prime farm land, general ecological tragedies and killing of wildlife, has an external cost factor as well, to be borne, sadly, by our future generations.

Mr. Geoffrey Cox, a UK Conservative MP, expressed his disgust for the “gigantic machines” which are terrorizing his country:

“The reality is there is a Klondike-type gold-rush going on in rural areas where developers are anxious to get their applications through to pick up the vast profits that can be made.

“This is having a disruptive, devastating and distressing effect on dozens of small rural communities that are being torn apart by these huge industrial machines that are just yards away from their home.

“The number of applications seems to be going up rather than receding. What is going on is a stealthy, silent revolution of the most beautiful landscapes in Great Britain. “If we carry on we will have ruined this most extraordinary inheritance.”

SNAPSHOT
What we know

  • Industrial wind turbines are inefficient and pitiably useless
  • Industrial wind installations, factories, create energy sprawl and high levels of environmental pollution and toxic waste
  • Industrial wind does not work when we need it to and over performs at times to the extent that developers are sometimes paid to NOT produce
  • Huge subsidies support the industry, without which, the industry does not survive
  • The GEA suppresses all democratic opposition to wind and solar power, and the cards are stacked in favor of preferred accelerated promotion of wind turbines at the expense of Municipal and community cohesion and preferences
  • Massive amounts of base load back up power are always required; there is zero reduction in GHG’s
  • The industry (lobby) gets to sit at the table with policy makers and lay the table for the feast
  • There has been no reasonable or realistic or honest explanation for the massive outlay of wind turbines in Ontario
  • Energy poverty is abundant now in Ontario, along with massive job losses and gutting of the public purse
  • Lessons from Europe are not being acknowledged
  • IS THIS CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE?

We look forward to your prompt reply and a rapid advancement into an impartial audit of these matters in their complete impacts on Ontario, on the economy, and on fairness, or in this case, unfairness, to each consumer and job seeker. It will be extremely useful to untangle some of the Byzantine financial and undemocratic policy arrangements that have led to this “made in Ontario” crisis. We must immediately stop this re-creation of the catastrophic results of Green Energy failures in Europe.

Please conduct an impartial and in depth assessment of all financial matters pertaining to the GEA and relay these findings to the people of Ontario at your earliest convenience. We anticipate that your report might reflect also on the medical costs to Ontario families, the loss of economic vibrancy and stability of rural Ontario which continues to bear the assault fully on its shoulders, the loss of tourism, and the loss of property values, which also contribute to economic stagnancy. Please also conduct a study on a trace of the profits to developers, kWh by kWh, if possible. We have a right to know where our hydro dollars are going.

The high octane waste of the “Green Energy and Green Economy Act”, which has been repeatedly explained to legislators, must cease immediately. It must also be retroactively remediated. Your office has the ability to further outline to the Government not only how it may alter course, but how it must immediately repair.

(We will be writing under separate cover to Commissioner Hawkes, as we fully believe the waste and apparent fraud of the GEA far overpowers the ORNGE, E-Health, and Gas Plant scandals.)

Thanking you in advance,
Sherri Lange
CEO NA-PAW (North American Platform Against Wind Power)
Founding Director Toronto Wind Action
Executive Director Canada, Great Lakes Wind Truth
VP Canada, Save the Eagles International
www.na-paw.org

C.c. Vince Hawkes, Commissioner of the OPP
C.c. Honorable Joe Oliver, MP and Minister of Finance, Canada
C.c. Interested parties

sherriwithwildasterspp

Al Gore is Determined to Look Like a Complete Moron, and it’s Working!

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Arctic Alarmist Disaster – Much Worse Than It Seems

Posted on August 19, 2014by

As bad as this year has been for Arctic alarmists, their pain is just beginning. Melt has been extremely slow in August, in fact area has not changed for about a week, and is now larger than 2006

ScreenHunter_2078 Aug. 18 21.11

The ice has been getting compacted close to the pole, where it is too cold to melt. But the high pressure system which has been compacting the ice is breaking down, and in a week or so, the open water close to the pole in the Laptev Sea will begin to freeze, likely leading to an early minimum.

As I mentioned earlier, ice area is the highest in ten years, and may be higher than 1971.

ScreenHunter_2065 Aug. 18 07.24

Nobel Laureate Al Gore says there is a 75% chance the Arctic will be ice-free this summer.

 

Many Parts of the World, Are Returning to Sanity! No More Climate Alarmism!

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Germany’s Green Energy Policy

Beginning To Strangle Economy 

End Of The Wirtschaftswunder?

Germany’s Sudden Slowdown

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s abrupt exit from nuclear energy after the Fukushima disaster in Japan and aggressive push into renewables has unnerved German industry. A recent overhaul of the country’s complex renewable energy law has done little to alleviate uncertainty over future policy or assuage fears about German energy competitiveness. “Energy intensive industries in particular have lost confidence in the future of Germany as a business location,” said Thomas Mayer, a former chief economist at Deutsche Bank. —Reuters, 16 August 2014

The Green Party has criticised Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, for cancelling her attendance at the UN Climate Summit on 23 September in New York and accused her of giving preference to lobby interests. “Instead of fighting for global climate protection on the international stage, she rather goes to speak to the lobby group of German industry which is not known to be a haven of climate change activism,” said the party’s parliamentary deputy Oliver Krischer.–Die Welt, 15 August 2014

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the world’s third-largest greenhouse gas-emitting nation, won’t join his U.S. and Chinese counterparts at a United Nations climate summit next month in New York. Modi will skip the Sept. 23 event, according to the Economic Times, thwarting a potential meeting between the heads of states for the three largest greenhouse gas emitters — arguably the nations that will drive international negotiations next year in Paris. Modi’s absence is a bit of a blow to the summit, as India hasn’t made the type of ambitious gestures that China and the U.S. have floated. –Zack Colman, Washington Examiner, 15 August 2014

According to a group of Norwegian researchers, the prospects for achieving an effective international climate treaty are poor. The measures that are politically feasible are ineffective and the measures that would be effective are politically infeasible. The world is actually further away from achieving an effective international climate agreement today than it was 15 years ago, when the Kyoto Protocol was adopted. Little basis for optimism exists. —The Research Council of Norway, 14 August 2014

The movement to push through a binding international climate change treaty has lost most of its momentum in recent years, having failed at conference after  conference, summit after summit, to reach any sort of consensus about how the world ought to respond to the pervasive threats brought on by our warming world. The reason all this chatter is proving futile is that the developing and the developed world are engaged in a showdown. Attempting to reach a global agreement is the same as banging one’s head against the wall. The Global Climate Treaty movement wastes time and jet fuel, but sadly there’s no end to the charade in sight. –Walter Russell Mead,The American Interest, 13 August 2014

The chapter analysing the history of the industry in Spain is laugh-a-minute stuff, a tale of incompetent politicians and civil servants bumbling from one disaster to another and fraudulent investors cheating their way to a slice of public funds. We hear about the diesel generators generating “solar power” at night and that at one point the authorities estimated that half of new solar PV connections to the grid were fraudulent. You can see why the revolution led to disaster. I leave you with this apposite quote from the text: “Modern renewable energies, supposedly born to support a sustainable world, became one jewel of the most unsustainable of human activities, financial greed.” –Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill, 17 August 2014

In the run up to the general election, the mood music among political leaders seems to have become somewhat more cautious on shale development. At this stage in the political cycle, local opposition is bound to be at the forefront of politicians’ minds. But the public understands that shale development is a matter of national interest – recent polling suggests that 57 per cent are in support, while just 16 per cent oppose it. Shale could be a boon to our energy-intensive industries, creating jobs in the north of England, and increasing domestic gas production to keep wholesale prices down.  Policymakers should keep these huge potential benefits in mind in the run-up to the general election. –Benny Peiser & Daniel Mahoney, City A.M. 15 August 2014 

Another Ridiculous Climate Change Claim, “Blown out of the Water!

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National Wildlife Federation Great Lakes Warning!

Posted on August 15, 2014by

Global Warming and the Great Lakes

Already, Lake Superior has increased water temperatures and an earlier onset of summer stratification by about two weeks in just the past 30 years. Within another 30 years Lake Superior may be mostly ice-free in a typical winter.

Lake Erie water levels, already below average, could drop 4-5 feet by the end of this century

Global Warming and the Great Lakes – National Wildlife Federation

Lake Superior obliterated all records for ice this year, and the water level in all of the Great Lakes is above normal.

ScreenHunter_1940 Aug. 14 21.54 GLWLD – Great Lakes Water Level Dashboard

The Agenda Behind Climate Alarmism, is Far Worse than Climate Change!

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Climate Change And The Human Condition: Is It Time To Reconsider Climatic Determinism?

Posted on August 9, 2014 by

Guest Opinion by Dr. Tim Ball

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana (Original quote from his book The Life of Reason, much paraphrased.)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its supporters urge action because the planet and humans are threatened by global warming. We must modify our behavior, mitigate the warming, or die by the millions. In the centuries prior to the First World War (WWI) these reactions were classified as climatic determinism, the idea that human behavior is dictated by climate. As one research group explains.

Climatic determinism has a very long and checkered history. It gave a framework for thinking about the relationship between the human and natural environments by making the climate a demiurge of social universe.

Later, they explain why they are discussing the concept.

While most of such thinking has been discredited, in recent years, the omnipresence of anthropogenic climate change has caused a resurgence of similar ideas, causing scholars and commentators to ask if these represent a revival of climatic determinism and, if so, with what consequences?

The truth is, it should not have been discredited or abandoned. Shakespeare said, “The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.” This doesn’t mean we discredit or abandon them. A complete analysis is required about why the concept was abandoned and how it was used and misused for a political agenda.

The history of the hypothesis of climatic determinism illustrates the fundamental difference between Science and Social Science. A scientific hypothesis is validated by predictive success. Social Science hypotheses invalidate themselves, because humans react to the predictions and alter the outcome. The latter failure is due to something that cannot be quantified – free will.

Failed predictions caused the IPCC to adopt the term projection as early as the second Report (1995). Their projections continue to fail because they blend invalid and inadequate science with the inherent failures of social science. The entire theme behind the Club of Rome, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Agenda 21 and the IPCC is neo-Malthusian. Populations, especially when industrialized, will outgrow all resources. They chose global warming and latterly climate change as the dangers imposed, in a modern form of climatic determinism that ignores their belief in evolution.

Climate Influence On Evolution and Human History

We commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I. Hopefully, we learned from that history, but, ironically, history indicates we don’t. World leaders forgot the lessons of World War I very quickly, as the Treaty of Versailles demonstrated. Treaty failures, skillfully exploited by Hitler, resulted in World War II becoming a continuation of the problems. In fact it was one war with a brief interlude.

Appropriately, we commemorate the sacrifices and losses of people. We acknowledge the positive changes that occurred because of the wars, such as the role of women in both Wars and the emancipation of colonial regions. What we rarely remember are other casualties of war, usually ideas or intellectual pursuits.

As a graduate student in the 1960s I escorted Professor Fisher, from the University of Durham, on a tour of Winnipeg, Manitoba. We passed an English style lawn bowling facility. He asked about it, given the climate of the region. I somewhat flippantly suggested it contradicted the philosophy of climatic determinism. He angrily replied, “Don’t mention that vile topic again.”

I became interested in the topic for a few reasons, but mostly because scientific studies of natural changes omitted humans as an agent. For example, variables listed as part of soil formation included, parent material (rock), weathering, organic agents and chemical activity. The “organic agents” did not include humans. It was part of the ongoing, but essentially ignored, debate about humans as animals.

At about the same time, I became aware of the work of a conference and subsequently an important book by William Thomas titled Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth.The concepts came from George Perkins Marsh, an earlier author I also knew from research for my Honors Thesis, “Some Philosophical Considerations of Humans as a Source of Change”. You can study history and geography separately, but you only have clear understanding when you put them together. I hold that history is the play and geography the stage and only by combining them understand and find appropriate solutions.

 

Products of the Earth: Climatic Determinism Misused.

Climatic determinism is a subset of environmental determinism, which was effectively resurrected as part of social Darwinism. Resurrected, because it was an idea rooted in many early philosophical works from Ancient Greece through to the present.

For example, Montesquieu, the French lawyer and philosopher wrote about it extensively.As one history commentator wrote,

In his famous book, The spirit of laws, French philosopher Montesquieu proposes the controversial theory that geography and climate can influence the nature of men and societies.

The rider, “controversial theory” is wrong. It wasn’t controversial when written, relatively new, but not controversial.

At the end of the 19th-century Darwin influenced Friedrich Ratzel’s influential bookAnthropogeographie (French version). It was a book grossly misused by Adolf Hitler, but gave academic justification for what he did. Karl Haushofer, a German General in WWI, was a keen student of Ratzel’s His views were transmitted to Hitler by Haushofer’s assistant, Rudolf Hess. Anthropogeographie included the term lebensraum to describe how a more powerful state will occupy weaker states as it expanded – a natural process he called the organic state theory.

Seeking or misusing academic justification for political action is common since the emergence of universities. Global warming is just a recent example as Gore and others misused the ideas of Roger Revelle.

Ratzel’s work applied Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” to the merging nation-states. Herbert Spencer coined the phrase. Darwin liked it and as a strong supporter of Spencer’s work, put it in the sixth edition of Origin of Species. This is all part of today’s intellectual and philosophical contradiction that people, who totally agree with Darwin, are also usually advocates of socialism, the desire to make all things equal by actively offsetting natural inequalities.

 

The other misapplication of Ratzel’s work by Hitler did greater damage to climate determinism. This was the claim that people from cool and temperate climates were aggressive, industrious and superior, while people from hot climates were lazy, indolent and inferior. It became the most damaging part of what happened to climatic determinism because of the clear racial superiority implication.

Many issues, crucial to understanding human history and human evolutionary history, are not properly or fully examined. The current condemnation of humans, as the cause of environmental degradation, global warming and the goal to reduce human populations, especially developed and industrialized nations are not discussed in a complete context. A fundamental assumption is human activity is not natural, which infers humans are not natural. Also, it assumes we are not continuing to evolve, which is subtly built in to such assumptions as “business as usual”.

Ellsworth Huntington and Ellen Semple Churchill were two American supporters of Ratzel’s work at the turn of the 19th-century. Huntington contributed to the rejection of climatic determinism because he also promoted eugenics. Churchill was different. She learned German and attended lectures by Ratzel. She disconnected herself from his ideas disagreeing, particularly, with his organic state theory. She incorporated the wider idea of the relationship between history and geography in the 1903 publication of “American history and Its Geographic Conditions. The point about Churchill is she didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, as happened to climatic determinism.

 

Drought Patterns and Human History

Huntington, like Alexander von Humboldt, also travelled extensively visiting all continents except Antarctica and wrote from observation and experience. Despite ethnocentricity and his support for eugenics, Huntington produced some fascinating observations about climate, specifically climate change, and determinism. His important work, The Pulse of Asia published in 1907 argued that the history of Eurasia was determined by the periods of drought and desiccation of grasslands. There are vast grasslands in central Asia, particularly the Tarim Basin. (Map)

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Drought patterns cause a periodic growth and decline of the grasses that support grazing herds. Most important for the Mongolian people are the horses essential as a food source, but transport for a migrating aggressive people. Huntington argues that the pulse is created as the population waxes with wetter conditions and expand out to surrounding regions and wanes as the dry conditions set in. Location and orientation of the Great Wall of China appears to support the theory, as does the fear of Mongol hordes throughout eastern and even parts of Western Europe. That fear extends to the present. The British, using their standard technique of divide and conquer, split the Kurdish people into four new countries, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria.

Modern Adaptation Of Humans To Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) drew all the attention to temperature, to CO2 and specifically warming; even most skeptics became narrowly focused. There’s no question that temperature reaches limits that force responses and adjustments. The problem is climatic determinism is mostly about changing precipitation, particularly with regard to plants and animals, including humans. Governments prepare for warming and assume it will all be business as usual. They generally don’t allow for technological advances or any other adjustments, as humans have done in the past.

Climatic determinism is interpreted to mean that people, like animals, are passive victims of change. The only adaptations are to move or die. What is overlooked in the entire discussion was the transition from humans, as passive victims, to active controllers of their destiny. It is an evolutionary transition that environmentalists oppose. Consider Ron Arnold, Executive Vice-President of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, observation that,

“Environmentalism intends to transform government, economy, and society in order to liberate nature from human exploitation.”

David Graber, a research biologist with the National park Service said,

“Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet. I know social scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn’t true. Somewhere along the line – at about a billion years ago – we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”

That was likely the source of Prince Philips comment that, if reincarnated he would return as a deadly virus and eliminate most people. That’s fine if they start with monarchies. Richard Conniff’s comment in “Audubon” extends the idea.

“Among environmentalists sharing two or three beers, the notion is quite common that if only some calamity could wipe out the entire human race, other species might once again have a chance.”

 

Technological advances to offset the extent of climatic determinism, include, fire, clothing, irrigation and the transition from hunter-gatherer to sedentary agriculture. Why isn’t that part of evolution? It is, but it is philosophically opposite to the basis of environmentalism. Why assume that this evolution will not continue? Of course, if the environmentalists have their way we will be doomed back to absolute climatic determinism. The hockey stick rewrote history. The historic temperature record is lowered to rewrite history. Now they want to redress and halt evolution, the very theory sacrosanct to their belief in Darwin. Confused. Of course, because they haven’t learned from history, except to rewrite it for their political agenda.

Climate Alarmists Stubbornly Refuse to Face Reality…

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‘Hoodwinking the Nation’ on climate issues

Posted on August 7, 2014 by

Guest essay by Charles Battig, M.D. VA-Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment

American popular culture has scattered nuggets of perceived wisdom. In order to understand and perhaps explain our continuing frustration with getting more of the American public and politicians to accept the reality of climate issues, I invoke “Cool Hand Luke.” In that 1967 film the prison warden tells Luke: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach…”

Both short statements encapsulate the problem of getting out and accepted the scientifically validated climate information labored over by so many at this site and at other similar sites. Both the mainstream press and government officials are particular challenges. The public-at-large seems to be getting the message that our weather events are not deserving of prime-time concern.

The media loves an attention grabbing headline too much to concede the climate panic button re-set for any event, real or imagined. Our political ruling class and its corporate sycophants are entwined in a mad love and financial embrace that validates “love is blind.” They are blind to any facts of climate research that might threaten their profitable symbiotic relationship.

This conundrum of effective communication of validated scientific fact became of great concern and dismay to Julian Simon. “Hoodwinking the Nation” (1999) was Julian’s last published book, and is just 140 pages.

He was the eternal optimist which made him a rare bird amongst those of the “dismal profession.” Perhaps he is best remembered to the general public for his 1980 wager with Paul Ehrlich. Ehrlich had insisted that a basket of commodities would become more expensive over the next ten years because they would become scarcer as increased global population depleted natural reserves. Simon bet the opposite. His inherent optimism reasoned that more people meant more opportunities for new discoveries which would result in cheaper costs of exploration and extraction. For him, people and their potential discoveries were the “Ultimate Resource.” Fortuitously, Simon won the bet.

In “Hoodwinking the Nation,” Julian describes his successful 1980’s effort to debunk the prevalent claim of the day that urbanization of U.S. farmland was creating a potential shortage of food for the U.S. and its food exports. By 1984, Julian’s analysis of the government’s own data showed that there was no such thing as a vanishing farmland crisis…it was all a scam. The Soil Conservation Service, the National Agricultural Lands Study, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture all reversed their earlier scarcity claims. Julian was proved correct, yet the press “did nothing to uncover the scam.” In the section, “A postmortem,” Julian describes his attempt to understand this lack of interest by the press to publicize the factual good news. His finding: “When shown the facts, these journalists usually say that even if cries of an environmental danger are somewhat overblown, they contain the germ of truth.” I think that this reality is still valid today. The media are pre-disposed to look for “false bad news” or to fabricate it to catch a headline.

The remainder of the book attempts to define and explain this whole phenomenon of good news being crowded out by false bad news. Why is the public pre-disposed to believe things are getting worse, even if facts prove otherwise? Some chapter headings identify the dilemma: “Chapter 1: What Do Americans Wrongly Believe about Environment, Resources, and Population,” “Chapter 4: Why Does the Public Not Hear Sound Environmental Thinkers?” “Chapter 9: How Psychology Affects the Evaluation of Trends,” and “Chapter 10: Why Do We Hear Prophecies of Doom from Every Side?”

These same questions and his answers are just as timely today as writers here and elsewhere lament the fact that they have won the scientific climate debates fairly at numerous climate conferences and conventions, yet the press and politicians, as well as competing academics, refuse to acknowledge their findings. In the contests of political propaganda, emotional appeals have an unfair, but proven advantage over scientific facts. Parents and politicians succumb to images of cute children waving “clean air’ banners. Do not think that arguments centered on climate sensitivity, relative risk, and negative feedback loops will prevail in that arena.

It is encouraging that the public-at-large has continued to rank “climate change issues” at the bottom of possible concerns, and so there is hope that persistent repetition of verifiable facts is finding receptive ears. The Internet was not yet prime-time in Julian’s day, but now it provides an end-run about a mainstream media intent on scares and not science.

So “Cool Hand Luke,” we have come a long way with the ability to communicate. However, we have yet to conquer the: “some men you just can’t reach…” Significant progress there rests upon voting out of office those we cannot reach by reason alone.