Tag Archives: Just the facts

GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE – WILL TRUMP POP THE HOT AIR BUBBLE?

Remember Al Gore?  didn’t he invent the internet?; he also put forth the theory on “global warming.” Made a lot of money. His father taught him well. Speaking about his father, the Senior, if memory serves us correctly wasn’t he involved in some kind of double dealing as well? And then there is the al-Jazzera affair, we will get to the that at a later time.

Armand Hammer, who built Occidental Petroleum into the behemoth it is today and who’s been described as “the Godfather of American corporate corruption,” liked to say that he had Gore’s father, Sen. Albert Gore, Sr., “in my back pocket.” When the elder Gore left the Senate in 1970, Hammer gave him a $500,000-a-year job as the chairman of Island Coal Creek Co., an Occidental subsidiary, and a seat on Occidental’s board of directors. By 1992, Gore owned Occidental stock valued at $680,000.

Al, was never one to miss an opportunity that involved a big payoff, actually he invented that too, referring to his hubris on inventing the internet. And while we are speaking about him, we add in a special note – for instance, he was very good at defending illegal contributions to the Slick Willie campaign. That is the period when he was at the top of his game. He said that “there was no legal authority” which controlled illegal campaign contributions to the Clinton campaign.” Got to hand to him for his vigorous fortitude.

That brings us to the G-7 and the global warmer/climate change bigwigs; they go with the wind, put their finger in the air and see which way it is blowing and wham o, they get caught up in the vortex. But don’t count Trump among them. He doesn’t go with the flow.  Seven wealthy democracies ended their summit Saturday in Italy without a unanimous agreement on climate change, as the Trump administration plans to take more time to say whether the U.S. is going to remain in the landmark Paris accord that fights climate change. The other six nations in the Group of Seven agreed to stick with their commitment to implement the 2015 Paris deal that aims to rein in greenhouse gas emissions to slow down global warming.

Fighting words from Alden Meyer, the director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group in Washington, said the discord over climate change was unusual for G-7 meetings. “There have been differences, to be sure, in some past summits, but not a sharp open split like this,” he said.

Meyer said many U.S. states, cities, and companies are moving forward on climate action while the Trump administration is “waffling” on the Paris Agreement. “President Trump should join these leaders in protecting Americans from the mounting impacts of climate change and reaping the economic benefits of the clean energy revolution, rather than trying to shore up the flagging fortunes of the polluting coal and oil industries,” Meyer said.

Most skeptics attribute global warming—few if any doubt any longer that the warming itself is occurring, given the worldwide rise in surface temperature—to natural cycles, not emissions from power plants, automobiles and other human activity. “The observational evidence…suggests that any warming from (click for global climate aficionados get whipped) the growth of greenhouse gases is likely to be minor, difficult to detect above the natural fluctuations of the climate, and therefore inconsequential,” says atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, an outspoken global warming skeptic and founder of the advocacy-oriented Science and Environmental Policy Project.

(click)Just the facts says Joe Friday:

The facts about climate change

1.     Climate has always changed, and it always will. The assumption that prior to the industrial revolution the Earth had a “stable” climate is simply wrong. The only sensible thing to do about climate change is to prepare for it.

2.    Accurate temperature measurements made from weather balloons and satellites since the late 1950s show no atmospheric warming since 1958.  In contrast, averaged ground-based thermometers record a warming of about 0.40 C over the same time period. Many scientists believe that the thermometer record is biased by the Urban Heat Island effect and other artefacts.

3.    Despite the expenditure of more than US$50 billion dollars looking for it since 1990, no unambiguous anthropogenic (human) signal has been identified in the global temperature pattern.

4.    Without the greenhouse effect, the average surface temperature on Earth would be -180 C rather than the equable +150 C that has nurtured the development of life.

     Carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas, responsible for ~26% (80 C) of the total greenhouse effect (330C), of which in turn at most 25% (~20C) can be attributed to carbon dioxide contributed by human activity. Water vapour, contributing at least 70% of the effect, is by far the most important atmospheric greenhouse gas.

5.    On both annual (1 year) and geological (up to 100,000 year) time scales, changes in atmospheric temperature PRECEDE changes in CO2. Carbon dioxide therefore cannot be the primary forcing agent for temperature increase (though increasing CO2 does cause a diminishingly mild positive temperature feedback).

6.    The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has acted as the main scaremonger for the global warming lobby that led to the Kyoto Protocol. Fatally, the IPCC is a political, not scientific, body.

Hendrik Tennekes, a retired Director of Research at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, says that “the IPCC review process is fatally flawed” and that “the IPCC wilfully ignores the paradigm shift created by the foremost meteorologist of the twentieth century, Edward Lorenz“.
7.    The Kyoto Protocol will cost many trillions of dollars and exercises a significant impost those countries that signed it, but will deliver no significant cooling (less than .020 C by 2050, assuming that all commitments are met).

The Russian Academy of Sciences says that Kyoto has no scientific basis; Andre Illarianov, senior advisor to Russian president Putin, calls Kyoto-ism “one of the most agressive, intrusive, destructive ideologies since the collapse of communism and fascism“. If Kyoto was a “first step” then it was in the same wrong direction as the later “Bali roadmap”.

8.    Climate change is a non-linear (chaotic) process, some parts of which are only dimly or not at all understood. No deterministic computer model will ever be able to make an accurate prediction of climate 100 years into the future.
9.    Not surprisingly, therefore, experts in computer modelling agree also that no current (or likely near-future) climate model is able to make accurate predictions of regional climate change.
10.   The biggest untruth about human global warming is the assertion that nearly all scientists agree that it is occurring, and at a dangerous rate.

The reality is that almost every aspect of climate science is the subject of vigorous debate. Further, thousands of qualified scientists worldwide have signed declarations which (i) query the evidence for hypothetical human-caused warming and (ii) support a rational scientific (not emotional) approach to its study within the context of known natural climate change.

LAYING TEN GLOBAL WARMING MYTHS

Myth 1     Average global temperature (AGT) has increased over the last few years.

Fact 1       Within error bounds, AGT has not increased since 1995 and has declined since 2002, despite an increase in atmospheric CO2 of 8% since 1995. 

Myth 2     During the late 20th Century, AGT increased at a dangerously fast rate and reached an unprecedented magnitude.

Facts 2      The late 20th Century AGT rise was at a rate of 1-20 C/century, which lies well within natural rates of climate change for the last 10,000 yr. AGT has been several degrees warmer than today many times in the recent geological past. 

Myth 3     AGT was relatively unchanging in pre-industrial times, has sky-rocketed since 1900, and will increase by several degrees more over the next 100 years (the Mann, Bradley & Hughes “hockey stick” curve and its computer extrapolation).

Facts 3      The Mann et al. curve has been exposed as a statistical contrivance. There is no convincing evidence that past climate was unchanging, nor that 20th century changes in AGT were unusual, nor that dangerous human warming is underway.

Myth 4     Computer models predict that AGT will increase by up to 60 C over the next 100 years.

Facts 4      Deterministic computer models do. Other equally valid (empirical) computer models predict cooling. 

Myth 5     Warming of more than 20 C will have catastrophic effects on ecosystems and mankind alike.

Facts 5      A 20 C change would be well within previous natural bounds. Ecosystems have been adapting to such changes since time immemorial. The result is the process that we call evolution. Mankind can and does adapt to all climate extremes.

Myth 6     Further human addition of CO2 to the atmosphere will cause dangerous warming, and is generally harmful.

Facts 6      No human-caused warming can yet be detected that is distinct from natural system variation and noise. Any additional human-caused warming which occurs will probably amount to less than 10 C. Atmospheric CO2 is a beneficial fertilizer for plants, including especially cereal crops, and also aids efficient evapo-transpiration. 

Myth 7     Changes in solar activity cannot explain recent changes in AGT.

Facts 7      The sun’s output varies in several ways on many time scales (including the 11-, 22 and 80-year solar cycles), with concomitant effects on Earth’s climate. While changes in visible radiation are small, changes in particle flux and magnetic field are known to exercise a strong climatic effect. More than 50% of the 0.80 C rise in AGT observed during the 20th century can be attributed to solar change. 

Myth 8     Unprecedented melting of ice is taking place in both the north and south polar regions.

Facts 8      Both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are growing in thickness and cooling at their summit. Sea ice around Antarctica attained a record area in 2007. Temperatures in the Arctic region are just now achieving the levels of natural warmth experienced during the early 1940s, and the region was warmer still (sea-ice free) during earlier times.

Myth 9     Human-caused global warming is causing dangerous global sea-level (SL) rise.

Facts 9      SL change differs from time to time and place to place; between 1955 and 1996, for example, SL at Tuvalu fell by 105 mm (2.5 mm/yr). Global average SL is a statistical measure of no value for environmental planning purposes. A global average SL rise of 1-2 mm/yr occurred naturally over the last 150 years, and shows no sign of human-influenced increase. 

Myth 10   The late 20th Century increase in AGT caused an increase in the number of severe storms (cyclones), or in storm intensity.

Facts 10    Meteorological experts are agreed that no increase in storms has occurred beyond that associated with natural variation of the climate system.

 

Robert M. Carter is a Research Professor at James Cook University (Queensland) and the University of Adelaide (South Australia). He is a palaeontologist, stratigrapher, marine geologist and environmental scientist with more than thirty years professional experience.

Joe FridayJUST IN FROM BREITBART:Breitbart News.svg

Bast: Happy Memorial Day, You Stupid, Arrogant, Liberal Global Warming Alarmist! – Breitbart It’s that time of year again, a holiday where you stand around the grill and patiently (or not) explain the truth to your liberal relatives and friends.

Mentioning an article that ran in the Washington Post in 1922, misreporting evidence of short-term weather variability in the Arctic as evidence of a long-term warming trend, is a good way to poke a stick in the eye of your global warming alarmist friends. A conversation starter!

 The article illustrates a past case where (quoting Snopes, the liberal self-described fact checker) “current warming trends” were misinterpreted as being “indicative of long-term climatic changes rather than relatively short-term weather pattern variability.” Don’t oversell it! It doesn’t prove that people today who refer to warming in the Arctic region as proof of a long-term warming trend are necessarily wrong… only that they might be, that the mistake was made in the past (when man-made emissions could not have been a factor), and so the burden of proof rests on those who say this time is different.

Global warming alarmists often claim the recent Arctic warming is unprecedented or must be due to the human presence. On its face, the 1922 article makes those claims dubious. Closer study reveals they haven’t made the case. For example, a scholarly article released just this month suggests the recent reduction in Arctic ice is most likely just a natural correction to a build-up that occurred from the 1940s to the 1970s. Scientists with the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) produced a lengthy review of the literature in 2014 that essentially found the same thing. But how many people subscribe to Hydrological Sciences Journal or want to read 1,000-page tomes?

Here are some good short references to the climate debate to share with family and friends over the Memorial Day holiday:

Craig Idso, Robert Carter, and S. Fred Singer, Why Scientists Disagree

Joseph Bast, An Open Letter to Ivanka Trump

Roger Andrews, Catastrophic climate change – a reminder of what the IPCC actually said

NIPCC testimony to the Commons Select Committee of the United Kingdom Parliament

NIPCC Scientific Critique of IPCC’s 2013 ‘Summary for Policymakers’

Joseph Bast, Seven Theories of Climate Change

A fascinating (and utterly damning) look at the history of the global warming scare campaign is Donna Laframboise’s The Delinquent Teenager who was mistaken for the world’s top climate expert.

A website hosted by meteorologist Anthony Watts, WattsUpWithThat.com, is a wonderful place to go to watch the real science debate taking place over the causes and consequences of climate change. I really don’t think you can visit the site more than two or three times and not come away a “skeptic.”

Heartland also produces a free weekly e-newsletter, Climate Change Weekly edited by H. Sterling Burnett, to which you can subscribe here.

Best regards, happy holidays, and don’t burn the brats!

Joseph L. Bast is president of The Heartland Institute, a nonprofit research and education organization based in Arlington Heights, Illinois. He can be contacted at jbast@heartland.org.