Peak Global Warming: Two Predictions

Many of my generation remember where they were when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, or when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Most Americans remember where they were September 11, 2001 when Islamic terrorists killed more than 3,000 Americans.

Another memorable event is now occurring right before our eyes. Though it won’t garner the immediate headlines that the aforementioned historical events did, it will potentially be far more significant in its impact on the course of human history. This momentous new event is nothing less than our passage through the final phase of the peak of global warming. It includes two new predictions from me based on the highly reliable RC Theory.

Prediction 1.

We can now add this new event and date to our memories – February 2016. This is the month when global temperatures began a final long term decline into a deep and potentially dangerous abyss of record cold that will last for thirty years.

Mathematically, the smoothed peak of global warming measured over the current 206 year cycle of Sun that has brought us the recent twenty or so years of global warming has already passed. It likely did so exactly when I predicted such nine years ago – occurring sometime between 2007 and 2010. Unfortunately, this fifth order polynomial calculation escapes our country’s leaders, NOAA, NASA, and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN-IPCC) scientists who have their own politically correct version of calculating global temperature trends.

The eighteen years before January 2015, of essentially little to no growth in global temperatures, have also created a plateau of global temperatures which the global warming community has been unable to explain. This plateau has been punctuated by a dramatic though short spike in global temperatures from late 2015 to present. I explained in press releases and on a TV documentary about my climate book, “Dark Winter,” that the reason for this brief increased temperature marker was the result of a rare but critical step in the progress of the 206 year cycle. Instead of giving the global warming crowd a reason to celebrate, it was in fact the death knell of their manmade global warming theory based on greenhouse gas emissions.

My research has shown that in essence, just prior to descending into a multi-decade cold epoch, solar activity spikes at the top of the normal 11-year solar cycle. This special ‘trigger’ of solar-climate theory which happened right when it was supposed to during the top of our current solar cycle #24, should have made national headlines. It would have if science had its proper place in national discourse and if the mainstream media and our government had been preaching the truth – that the Sun controls our climate changes instead of mankind’s industrial CO2 emissions.

This assessment of the reason for this temperature spike has important ramifications for climate change theory and the future course of global temperatures for the next thirty years. This peak represents not only a possible short term record in global temperature between late 2015 and early 2016 at the end of this plateau but more importantly, it is a sign of things to come.

What we should now expect are rapidly declining global temperatures after February 2016, the apex of the 11-year cycle #24 solar heating. Steep drops in monthly global temperatures for the next year especially, are highly probable with longer term declines to follow.

According to my Relational Cycle Theory (RC Theory) of climate change, the next fifteen years will see a historic decline in global temperatures until we reach the bottom of the next cold epoch brought on by a ‘solar hibernation,’ a long term reduction in the Sun’s energy. This bottom, which I calculated for the year 2031, will be preceded by record cold and global crop damage for years on either side of that low point. The planet will not start to warm up again until the 2040’s and then, only moderately so.

Prediction 2.

Like the past 200 years of relatively continuous growth in global temperatures, the 2015-2016 warm temperatures were caused by the Sun. Unfortunately, the last two decades of solar heating, which have simultaneously permitted bumper crops for the world’s hungry masses, is in my opinion, the last of its kind for at least the next 400 years. The warmth we have enjoyed and that of generations to come is over.

Of course science should never be settled. We should always strive for better theories and more accurate analytical tools in all fields of science. That applies also to the RC Theory. However, if the predictions in this commentary go wildly astray, it would be the first instance in almost ten years when a major prediction based on the RC Theory has done so.

This achievement of climate science prediction, though, is about the power of the Sun and the reliability of its repeating cycles that determine climate change, rather than one man, one theory, or one climate research company. Though I was alone in 2007 with my controversial predictions, now, there are many other scientists around the globe who are telling their science communities and their governments that we need to prepare for an enduring cold climate of historic proportions.

This record of success in solar-driven climate science compares with the predictions of the so-called ‘leading scientists’ at the UN-IPCC and the US government using the greenhouse gas theory, who have been routinely wrong for over twenty years in their global temperature forecasts along with their other extreme forecasts like the Arctic sea ice completely disappearing by 2008 (later revised to 2013, then to 2030) or that there would be no more snow after 2003!

In the meantime, and quite irrespective of human politics, natural forces have been conspiring to bring the curtain down on mankind’s past scientific and political misconduct and are doing so with a last tease of warming. My Russian colleagues have already said a new “Little Ice Age” has begun. My own forecast is for a thirty year cold epoch similar to the Dalton Minimum of 1793 to 1830. The latter will be bad enough as bitter cold will bring global crop devastation. As if the new cold era isn’t challenging enough, we also know that concurrently, the world’s worst earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur during these same cold epochs or ‘solar hibernations.’

It is this collateral geophysical ill-effect that resulted in a notification sent by me in mid-2015 to FEMA to prepare for major quakes in South Carolina, the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) as well along major faults of the US West Coast. The President, FEMA, USGS, and all other US government agencies have ignored these earthquake warnings as they have before with my climate warnings and those of other cold-epoch-predicting scientists around the world.

Even if historians someday hold our President and the leaders of our government responsible for not preparing the country the coming cold climate and its catastrophic earthquakes, it will be no solace to those who are about to endure one of the most traumatic climate epochs in human history. Once again, the American people will pay the price during this ongoing passage of the peak of global warming into a new cold future.

This year 2016, and its implications for the human race will truly be, something to remember.

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A ‘Carbon Tax’ Is a Utopian Fix that Can’t Survive Contact with Political Reality by Diana Furchtgott-Roth

Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, suggests that Americans should pick a president who favors a carbon tax. But not even Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have proposed a carbon tax as part of their tax plans. All candidates have put forward detailed tax plans, and a carbon tax is not included in any of these plans.

What is a carbon tax? Why do so many academics and columnists love it? And why will Congress be unable to enact such a tax effectively?

No matter that only 16 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by America, and that by many measures global temperatures have not increased over the past decade. No matter than unless China and India reduce their carbon emissions, U.S. unilateral efforts will have no practical effect on global temperature. China has stated that it will reduce emissions in 2030, but has not made any definite commitment.

The carbon tax is a favorite of many academic economists for restructuring the tax system. Proponents include a bipartisan group of professors such as Tuft University’s Gilbert Metcalf, now Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment and Energy at the Department of the Treasury; Harvard University’s Martin Feldstein, Edward Glaeser, and Gregory Mankiw; and Columbia University’s Joseph Stiglitz.

However, as tax practitioners know, a carbon tax is complex to set up. It requires adjustments to make sure that the tax is not unduly regressive and does not encourage consumption of imports relative to domestic production.

But, as we saw from the passage of many tax and budget bills over the years, Congress does not think deeply before it passes major tax bills.

Rather, political expediency always triumphs over academic elegance. Congress is incapable of thoughtful tax solutions, no matter how many are offered by well-intentioned professors. Despite years of notice that the Bush tax rates were due to expire, Congress passed permanent tax laws at the last moment, without reading the bill.

Many academics see a carbon tax as an alternative to an individual income tax, a corporate income tax, or a European-style cap-and-trade system. But a quickly-passed carbon tax in the hands of Congress would be just another add-on levy, with exemptions for friends and punishments for enemies.

A carbon tax raises the price of energy and so discourages consumption without regulation. Carbon tax rates could be calibrated to be revenue neutral or to yield a net rise in federal tax receipts, with the increment possibly dedicated to reducing deficits.

What are the problems with a carbon tax?

Everyone would want to spend the revenue. Some people would want to use it to reduce the deficit. Others would want to use carbon tax revenues to lower other taxes, such as income taxes. And since high income tax rates reduce incentives to work, this could conceivably add to economic efficiency.

Carbon taxes are regressive. Since low-income people use more energy as a percent of their income than high-income people, a switch to a carbon tax would have to be accompanied by transfers to low-income groups.

Some academics suggest that offsets be returned to taxpayers through lower income taxes, perhaps with the proceeds going chiefly to low-income households (individuals and families), which are disproportionately hurt by what is in essence an energy consumption tax.

This could theoretically be done by adjustments to the income tax. However, low-income earners are not required to file returns, and they would have to do so in order to be identified and compensated. That means extra work for them, and for the Internal Revenue Service — which will already be overworked calculating and collecting penalties from Obamacare violators.

Energy-intensive sectors lose under a carbon tax. The prices of energy-intensive goods in America would increase relative to imports from countries without carbon taxes. So Americans will prefer to buy imports, and American firms will lose business. Proponents of the tax suggest putting tariffs on imports in proportion to their carbon content so that American companies will not be at a disadvantage. But the precise quantities are complex to calculate, and tariffs might be illegal under World Trade Organization regulations.

The shale oil and gas that are attracting energy-intensive manufacturing back to America would be taxed, to the detriment of these new industries — and their employees. Some industries, such as coal, would be big losers. Politicians from coal-producing regions are influential in Congress, and they would demand a share of revenues.

So for a carbon tax to make our tax system more efficient, its revenues would have to be used to offset other taxes in the economy. Its negative effects on low-income Americans and on energy-intensive regions would have to be ameliorated. Some border adjustments would have to be made so that domestic goods were not disfavored.

But our disfunctional Congress is incapable of crafting a carbon tax with these attributes. Any tax on carbon would be an additional tax, without the offsets that make it so attractive to university professors. It would hurt the poor and raise domestic prices relative to prices of imports.

None of the front-running presidential candidates have proposed a carbon tax as part of their tax plans, because they know it is unpopular and will not pass Congress. To lower global emissions, the large emitters of carbon such as China and India need to move to nuclear power or natural gas. That would indeed make a difference.

This post first appeared at Economics21.org.

Diana Furchtgott-RothDiana Furchtgott-Roth

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, is director of Economics 21 and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

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A Scientific Consensus on What Now? by Robert P. Murphy

Authority versus Science in the Climate Change Debate.

When it comes to the climate change debate, many of the loudest voices are confidently making assertions that are not backed up by the actual evidence — and in this respect, they are behaving very unscientifically.

One obvious sign that many people in the climate change debate are appealing to emotions rather than facts is their reliance on pejorative terminology. For example, rather than make an informative statement that they support subsidies for wind and solar, and taxes on coal and oil, they may instead say they support “clean energy” while their opponents favor “dirty energy.”

The coup de grâce, of course, occurs when partisans in the debate refer to their opponents as “climate deniers.” This is a nonsensical slur that would have impressed Orwell. Obviously, nobody denies climate. Furthermore, nobody denies that the climate is changing. And, when it comes to the serious debate among published climate scientists, people on both sides agree that human activities are contributing to warmer temperatures; the dispute is simply overhow much. (Those who think the change is mild have embraced the label “lukewarmers.”)

To label critics of a carbon tax or EPA regulations on power plants as “climate deniers” is utterly destructive of rational inquiry and tries to link legitimate skepticism to Holocaust denial. Those who use this term without irony demonstrate that they have no interest in scientific discovery.

Related to this lack of nuance, and the appeal to an exaggerated consensus, is the oft-repeated claim that “97 percent of climate scientists agree” on the state of human-generated climate change. Physicist-turned-economist David Friedman (among others) has investigated the methods used to generate such claims, and finds that they are seriously lacking.

Using the very data (on abstracts from published papers) that forms the basis of these headline announcements, Friedman reckons that more like 1.6 percent of the surveyed papers explicitly endorse humans as the main cause of global warming since the 1800s. Friedman further argues that this confusion — where the actual findings of the paper ended up being misinterpreted by the media — appears to have been deliberately produced by the survey’s authors.

“Hottest Year on Record” and “the Pause”

A January 2016 New York Times article epitomizes the advocacy disguised as reporting in the climate change debate. The very title lets you know that a serious case of scientism is coming, for it announces, “2015 Was Hottest Year in Historical Record, Scientists Say.”

Now, we must inquire, what is the purpose of adding “Scientists Say” at the end? Does any reader think that the Times would be quoting plumbers or accountants on whether 2015 was the hottest year on record? The obvious purpose is to contrast what scientists say about global warming with what thosenonscientist deniers are saying. The article goes on to let us know exactly what “the scientists” think about global warming and manmade activities:

Scientists started predicting a global temperature record months ago, in part because an El Niño weather pattern, one of the largest in a century, is releasing an immense amount of heat from the Pacific Ocean into the atmosphere. But the bulk of the record-setting heat, they say, is a consequence of the long-term planetary warming caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases.

“The whole system is warming up, relentlessly,” said Gerald A. Meehl, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

It will take a few more years to know for certain, but the back-to-back records of 2014 and 2015 may have put the world back onto a trajectory of rapid global warming, after a period of relatively slow warming dating to the last powerful El Niño, in 1998.

Politicians attempting to claim that greenhouse gases are not a problem seized on that slow period to argue that “global warming stopped in 1998,” with these claims and similar statements reappearing recently on the Republican presidential campaign trail.

Statistical analysis suggested all along that the claims were false, and that the slowdown was, at most, a minor blip in an inexorable trend, perhaps caused by a temporary increase in the absorption of heat by the Pacific Ocean.

This excerpt is quite fascinating. We have something reported as undeniable fact when it actually relies on assumptions of what might happen in the future (“may have put the world back onto a trajectory of rapid global warming”) and offers conjectures to explain why the measured warming suddenly slowed down (“perhaps caused by a temporary increase in the absorption of heat”).

The “statistical analysis” did not establish that the critics’ claims were false. It is undeniably true that the official NASA GISS records showed, for example, that the average annual global temperature in 2008 was lower than the annual temperature in 1998, and that’s why people at the time were saying, “There has been no global warming in the last ten years.”

Here is a NASA-affiliated scientist arguing that such claims are misleading, and perhaps they were, but it is similarly misleading to turn around and claim that the pause didn’t exist.

If you asked a bunch of Americans whether they gained weight over the last 10 years, their natural interpretation of that question would be, “Do I weigh morenow than I weighed 10 years ago?” They wouldn’t think it involved construction of moving averages since birth. In that sense, the people referring to the pause were not acting dishonestly; they were pointing out to the public a fact about the temperature record that would definitely be news to them, in light of the rhetoric of runaway climate change.

However, the more substantive point here is that the popular climate models predicted much more warming than has in fact occurred. In other words, the question isn’t whether the 2000s were warmer than the 1990s. Rather, the issue is given how much concentrations of greenhouse gases have risen, is the actualtemperature trend consistent with the predicted temperature trend?

To answer this, consider a December 2015 Cato Institute working paper from two climate scientists, Pat Michaels and Paul Knappenberger: “Climate Models and Climate Reality: A Closer Look at a Luke warming World.” They avoid the accusation of cherry-picking by running through trend lengths of varying durations, and they compare 108 model runs with the various data sets on observed temperatures. They conclude, “During all periods from 10 years (2006–2015) to 65 (1951–2015) years in length, the observed temperature trend lies in the lower half of the collection of climate model simulations, and for several periods it lies very close (or even below) the 2.5th percentile of all the model runs.”

Thus we see that the critics arguing about the model projections aren’t simply picking the very warm 1998 as a starting point in order to game the results. The standard models produced warming projections well above what has happened in reality, and for some periods the observed warming was so low (relative to the prediction) that there is less than a 2.5 percent chance that this could be explained by natural volatility. This is the sense in which the current suite of climate models is on the verge of being “rejected” in the statistician’s sense.

To be sure, I am not a climate scientist, and others would no doubt dispute the interpretation of the data that Michaels and Knappenberger give. My point is to show how utterly misleading the New York Times piece is when it leads readers to believe that “scientists” were never troubled by lackluster warming and that only politicians were trying to confuse the public on the matter.

Climate Economists Don’t Believe Their Models?

Finally, consider a December 2015 Vox piece with the title, “Economists Agree: Economic Models Underestimate Climate Change.” Furthermore, the URL for this piece contains the phrase “economists-climate-consensus.” We see the same appeal to authority here as in the natural sciences when it comes to climate policy.

The Vox article refers to a survey of 365 economists who had published in the field of climate economics. Here is the takeaway: “Like scientists, economists agree that climate change is a serious threat and that immediate action is needed to address it” (emphasis added).

Yet, in several respects, the survey reveals facts at odds with the alarmist rhetoric the public hears on the issue. For example, one question asked, “During what time period do you believe the net effects of climate change will first have a negative impact on the global economy?” With President Obama and other important officials discussing the ravages of climate change (allegedly) before our very eyes, one might have expected the vast majority of the survey respondents to say that climate change is having a negative impact right now.

In fact, only 41 percent said that. Twenty-two percent thought the negative impact would be felt by 2025, while an additional 26 percent would only say climate change would have net negative economic effects by 2050. Would anyone have expected that result when reading Vox’s summary that immediate action is needed to address climate change?

To be clear, the Vox statement is not a lie; it can be justified by the responses on two of the other questions. Yet the actual views of these economists are much more nuanced than the pithy summary statements suggest.

Authority versus Science

On this particular survey, I personally encountered the height of absurdity in the context of scientism and appeal to authority. For years, in my capacity as an economist for the Institute for Energy Research, I have pointed out that the published results in the United Nations’ official “consensus” documents do not justify even a standard goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, let alone the over-the-top rhetoric of people like Paul Krugman.

In order to push back against my claim, economist Noah Smith pointed to the survey discussed earlier, proudly declaring, “Apparently most climate economists don’t believe their own models.” Thus we have reached the point where partisans on one side of a policy debate rely on surveys of what “the experts say,” in order to knock down the other side who rely on the published results of those very experts.

This is the epitome of elevating appeals to scientific authority over the underlying science itself.

In the climate change debate, legitimate disputes are transformed into a battle between Noble Seekers of Truth versus Unscientific Liars Who Hate Humanity. Time and again, references to “the consensus” are greatly exaggerated, while people pointing out enormous problems with the case for policy action are dismissed as “deniers.”

Robert P. MurphyRobert P. Murphy

Robert P. Murphy is research assistant professor with the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University.

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UN ‘Green Climate’ Program Is a Slush Fund for Dictators by Marian L. Tupy

Wherever you stand on the subject of global warming, pay close attention to one under-reported aspect of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Paris Agreement. I am referring to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which is a financial mechanism intended “to assist developing countries in adaptation and mitigation practices to counter climate change.”

According to the current estimates, developed countries will be obliged to contribute up to $450 billion a year by 2020 to the GCF, which will then “redistribute” the money to developing countries allegedly suffering from the effects of global warming.

Lo and behold, Zimbabwe’s government-run daily “newspaper” The Herald reported that “Southern Africa is already counting the costs of climate change-linked catastrophes… In Zimbabwe, which has seen a succession of droughts since 2012, a fifth of the population is facing hunger… Feeding them will cost $1.5 billion or 11 percent of … the Gross Domestic Product.”

No doubt Robert Mugabe, the 91-year-old dictator who has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980, is salivating at the prospect of some global warming cash. Beginning in 2000, Mugabe started to expropriate privately-held agricultural land. The result of what is euphemistically called “land reform” was a monumental fall in productivity and the second highest bout of hyperinflation in recorded history.

Some three million of Zimbabwe’s smartest people, including tens of thousands of doctors and lawyers, have left the country. Most of those who have remained behind are subsistence farmers with very little wealth. There is, in other words, very little loot left for the government to steal.

Thankfully for the Zimbabwean dictator, there are plenty of gullible Westerners willing to believe that the frighteningly vile, comically incompetent government isn’t at the root of Zimbabwe’s food shortages, but that global warming is to blame.

Of course, this is pure nonsense. Botswana and Zimbabwe share a border and their climate and natural resources are exceptionally similar. Yet, since 2004, food production has increased by 29 percent in Botswana, while declining by 9 percent in Zimbabwe. It is not drought but government policies that make nations starve!

As befits a dictatorship, Zimbabwe is one of the most corrupt places on earth. The notion that GCF funds will be will used for environmental “adaptation and mitigation” is a dangerous fantasy.

Like much foreign aid before it, most of the “green aid” money will likely end up in the pockets of some of the cruelest and most corrupt people on earth. Congress must stand firm and refuse to appropriate any money for the fund.

This post first appeared at Human Progress.

Marian L. TupyMarian L. Tupy

Marian L. Tupy is the editor of HumanProgress.org and a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe departing after a state visit to the U.S.

Recent Energy & Environmental News

The latest Energy and Environmental Newsletter, is now online.

Three particularly revealing items from a very busy news cycle:

  1. As a reward for her efforts to assist New Englanders threatened by industrial wind energy, citizen advocate Annette Smith was sued for “practicing law.” Fortunately this sham was resolved shortly, in favor of common sense. (See here and here.)
  2. In an attempt to promote fiscal responsibility(!), some 350 of Australia’s climate scientists were given layoff notices. The argument to keep these positions was revealing. Before: they have high confidence computer models, and strong certainty that we understand the climate. After: there are many climate unknowns, and the models need a lot more work. (See here and here.)
  3. After dealing with thousands of adults on environmental and energy issues, it’s clear that our current education system is not working. We need to start someplace to fix this, so here are my initial recommendations.

Some of the more interesting energy articles in this issue are:

11 Ways To Kill Industrial Wind Projects

The Windmills of Bernie’s Mind

Archive Study: Renewables Won’t Save Us, So What Will?

Professor Investigating Flint: Greed has Killed Public Science

Proposed Oregon Law will monitor net impacts of energy policies (!!)

Commentary on US Supreme Court “Clean Energy” decision (and another)

Offshore Wind Turbine Maintenance Cost: “100 Times More Expensive Than A New Turbine Itself”!

Bad Incentives Undermine the Scientific Process

Some of the more informative Global Warming articles in this issue are:

What Do We Know About CO2 and Global Temperatures?

The Four Errors of Mann’s Recent Peer-Reviewed Study

Greens vs Transparency

Dr. Christy’s Congressional AGW Testimony

Climate Scientists Misapplied Basic Physics

Can we just hit the “restart” button with Climate Science?

300 Scientists Officially Protest NOAA Data Secrecy (+ more)

House Votes for Open, Accountable Science

Audubon goes over the edge

PS: As always, please pass this on to open-minded citizens. If there are others who you think would benefit from being on our energy & environmental email list, please let me know. If at any time you’d like to be taken off the list, please let me know that too.

Settled Science: Global warming causes sea levels to rise — oops — fall, er slowdown?  Whatever!

Screenshot 2016-01-25 at 10.20.32 AM-down

2016 Claim: Wait! What?! Study: There is so much global warming that it is slowing the rise of sea levels – ‘Is there anything global warming can’t do? Now it seems that there is so much global warming that it is slowing the rise of sea levels.’

Climate Astrology: ‘Global Warming’ commands sea level rise Increases…& sea level rise slowdown: NASA discovers that ‘global warming’ is slowing and not increasing sea level rise – NASA study claim: ‘Because the Earth has become more parched, partly because humans are pumping out more ground water, the rising oceans are being absorbed by lakes, rivers, and underground acquirers, much like a sponge absorbs water. An extra 3.2 trillion tons of water has thus been soaked up and stored and is not pouring into the streets of coastal cities.’

NASA Study Concludes ‘Global Warming’ Is Actually Slowing Sea Level Rise – A new NASA study concludes global warming increases the amount of water stored underground which, in turn, slows the rate of sea level rise. At a time when scientists are worried about accelerating sea level rise, NASA scientist John Reager and his colleagues found an extra 3,200 gigatons of water was being stored by parched landscapes from 2002 to 2014, slowing sea level rise by 15 percent.

2016 Study: Parched Earth soaks up water, slowing sea level rise

Flashback: Prominent Dutch Scientist: ‘I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting – a 6m sea level rise, 15 times IPCC number — entirely without merit’

Flashback 1987: FSU Professor: Global Warming Causes Sea Level To Fall

The Palm Beach Post – July 6, 1987: By Mary McLachlin – Palm Beach Post Staff Writer – Via Real Climate Science website

Excerpt: Florida State University Geology Professor William Tanner: “Tanner plotted 4000 years of sea-level data on 5,000 years of climatological data published in last year’s Encyclopedia of Climatology and found some interesting correlations. Every time the climate warmed a couple of degrees, the sea level went down. Every time the climate cooled a couple of degrees, the sea level went up. This happened four times, each cycle taking about 100 years, and spaced about 900 years apart.”

“He says sea level rise has been about six inches over the past century, and he now expects that to slow down and even reverse itself if humans continue warming the Earth.”

“We’ve made the assumption — and it’s logical — that if things get warm, the glaciers get warm, the glaciers are going to melt,” Tanner said. “But that’s not what these two curves show, no matter how logical it may be. Everybody’s been depending on logic without much data.”

“Tanner says he believes that when the climate warms just a little, it causes more evaporation from the oceans and they go down. He sees two separate systems at work — a big one in which the climate gets every warm or very cold and the oceans rise or fall dramatically, and a small system in which minor changes in temperature cause the opposite reactions.”

“My colleagues here to whom I have presented it in detail think it’s reasonable and probably correct.”

Screenshot 2016-01-25 at 10.20.32 AM-down

More on Geologist Dr. William F. Tanner here.  – William F. Tanner (1917-2000) Geologist – Of Tallahassee, Florida died on April 9, 2000. Tanner was an ASA fellow and a member of ASA’s Affil. of Christian Geologists. A prof. of geology at Florida State U. with emphasis on sedimentology, he was born in Milledgeville, Georgia in 1917. He holds a B.A. from Baylor University, an M.A. from Texas Technological College, and a Ph.D. from Oklahoma University, all in Geology. He has served as an Instructor at Oklahoma University, a visiting Professor of Geology at Florida State University, and Associate Professor and Professor of Geology at Florida State University. Since 1974 he has been Regents Professor. He has had geological experience in much of the U.S., mostly in the Southeast, Southwest, and Rocky Mountain areas,- maritime eastern Canada and Canadian Rockies,- Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, various parts of Brazil, and Venezuela. His specialties within geology include sedimentology, sediment transport (including beach and river erosion), paleogeography and paleoclimatology, history of the atmosphere and petroleum geology. Dr. Tanner is Editor of “Coastal Research, ” Science Editor for the New Atlas of Florida, and Editor of six volumes on coastal sedimentology. He is the author of 275 technical papers.

Real Climate Science website note: 

This picture of Boca Raton was in that issue of the paper.

Screenshot 2016-01-25 at 10.16.34 AM

And this is what that beach looks like today. Nothing has changed.

Background on sea level rise: 

Flashback 1977: West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melt To Raise Sea Level 20 Ft. – National Science Foundation reveals: ‘It has nothing to do with a warmer climate, just the dynamics of unstable ice’

1977: ROSS ICE SHELF, Antarctica-A huge portion of the Antarctic ice mass appears to be collapsing into the sea, a catastrophe that could raise the levels of the oceans by almost 20 feet.  “We’re seeing the West ice sheet on its way out,” said Richard Cameron of the National Science Foundation. “It seems to be doing something completely different than the east ice sheet. It has nothing to do with a warmer climate, just the dynamics of unstable ice.”…”We’re doing about the most we can do right now to study the possible collapse of the west ice sheet,” said Dr. Richard Cameron, NSF program manager for glaciology. “It has become an area of concern because we could be on the brink of a rise in sea levels.” SUCH A RAPID rise is not unprecedented. It may have caused the Great Deluge described in the Old Testament.

Flashback: Planet Healer Obama Calls It: In 2008, he declared his presidency would result in ‘the rise of the oceans beginning to slow’ — And By 2011, Sea Level Drops!

Climate Depot’s Morano: ‘It is just possible that Obama has powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men — since sea levels actually cooperated with Obama’s pledge!”

Flashback 1986 : Scientists Were “Sure” Sea Level Would Rise One Foot By 2016 –
2015-11-04-04-00-48

Analysis of latest sea leel rise claims: Examination of the data from the paper, however, shows the range of proxy sea levels is approximately 10 meters, far too large to discern the tiny ~1.5 mm/yr sea level rise over the past 150 years. The authors instead assume from other published studies of tide gauge measurements that the ~1.5 mm/yr sea level rise over the past 150+ years began at that point in time. Other papers find sea levels rising only 1.1-1.3 mm/yr over the past 203 years, and without acceleration. 

Regardless, even the IPCC concedes that there was no significant anthropogenic influence on climate prior to 1950, thus man is not be responsible for sea level rise beginning 150-200 years ago, at the end of the Little Ice Age.

The sea level rise over the past ~200 years shows no evidence of acceleration, which is necessary to assume a man-made influence. Sea level rise instead decelerated over the 20th centurydecelerated 31% since 2002 and decelerated 44% since 2004 to less than 7 inches per century. There is no evidence of an acceleration of sea level rise, and therefore no evidence of any man-made effect on sea levels. Sea level rise is primarily a local phenomenon related to land subsidence, not CO2 levels. Therefore, areas with groundwater depletion and land subsidence have much higher rates of relative sea level rise, but this has absolutely nothing to do with man-made CO2.

rate-sea-level-rise

Read more: http://www.climatedepot.com/2016/02/12/flashback-1987-global-warming-causes-sea-levels-to-fall-2016-global-warming-causes-slowdown-in-sea-level-rise/#ixzz402bm1npp

VIDEO: The Supreme Court Pause of EPA’s Carbon Regulations Explained

Why did the Supreme Court pause EPA’s Clean Power Plan?

The Supreme Court granted a stay of EPA’s carbon regulations—the Clean Power Plan.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board called it an “important rebuke to the political method of the anticarbon activists in the EPA and White House.”

Ditching fossils fuels will be a capital-intensive and generation-long transition, to the extent it is possible, and states must submit compliance plans as soon as this September that are supposed to last through 2030, or be subject to a federal takeover.

The legal challenges will take years, but the EPA hopes to engineer a fait accompli by bullrushing the states into making permanent revisions immediately. Once the Clean Power Plan starts, it becomes self-executing. If the EPA loses down the road, it will laugh that the opinion is too late and thus pointless.

[ … ]

The stay suggests that a majority of the Court won’t allow this deliberate gaming of the slow pace of the legal process to become de facto immunity for anything the EPA favors. It’s especially notable because courts tend to be highly deferential to executive regulation.

What exactly did the court do?

Why did the court do this?

And why have states, businesses, labor unions, and trade associations–including the U.S. Chamber—welcomed this decision as they fight EPA’s regulatory overreach?

I spoke with Heath Knakmuhs, senior director of policy at the Institute for 21st Century Energy to get some answers.

And to understand the international implications of the Supreme Court’s stay, read Stephen Eule’s piece.

New York’s Chilling Global Warming Witch Hunt by Walter Olson

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is pursuing an investigation of the Exxon Corporation in part for making donations to think tanks and associations like the American Enterprise Institute and American Legislative Exchange Council, which mostly work on issues unrelated to the environment but have also published some views flayed by opponents as “climate change denial.”

Assuming the First Amendment protects a right to engage in scholarship, advocacy, and other forms of supposed denial, it is by no means clear that information about such donations would yield a viable prosecution. Which means, notes Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, that the New York probe raises an issue of constitutional dimensions not just at some point down the road, but right now:

A prolonged investigation in response to someone’s speech can violate the First Amendment even when it never leads to a fine. For example, a federal appeals court ruled in White v. Lee, 227 F.3d 1214 (9th Cir. 2000) that lengthy, speech-chilling civil rights investigations by government officials can violate the First Amendment even when they are eventually dropped without imposing any fine or disciplinary action.

It found this principle was so plain and obvious that it denied individual civil rights officials qualified immunity for investigating citizens for speaking out against a housing project for people protected by the Fair Housing Act.

In another case, in which a company had been sued seeking damages over its participation in trade-association-related speech, a federal appeals court found that the pendency of the lawsuit all by itself caused enough of a burden on the firm’s speech rights that the court used its mandamus power to order the trial judge to dismiss the claims, a remarkable step.

Moreover, Bader writes, a string of federal precedents indicate that the constitutional rights Schneiderman is trampling here are not just Exxon’s but those of the organizations it gave to, which have a right to challenge his action whether or not the oil company chooses to do so:

These groups themselves can sue Schneiderman under the First Amendment, if Schneiderman’s pressure causes them to lose donations they would otherwise receive. Government officials cannot pressure a private party to take adverse action against a speaker.

Meanwhile, writing at Liberty and Law, Prof. Philip Hamburger of Columbia Law School takes a different tack: the subpoenas imperil due process and separation of powers because they issue at the whim of Schneiderman’s office.

Earlier ideas of constitutional government “traditionally left government no power to demand testimony, papers, or other information, except under the authority of a judge or a legislative committee.” In more recent years executive subpoena power has proliferated; so has the parallel power of lawyers in private litigation to demand discovery, but the latter at least in theory goes on under judicial supervision that can check some of its abuse and invasiveness.

Extrajudicial subpoenas by AG offices are particularly dangerous, Hamburger argues, because of their crossover civil/criminal potential: the targets do not enjoy a high level of procedural protection when “attorneys general claim to be acting merely in a civil rather than a criminal capacity,” yet the same offices can and do threaten criminal charges. Especially dangerous is New York’s Martin Act, a charter for general invasion of the private papers of anyone and anything with a connection to New York financial transactions.

An attorney general’s concern about fraud or the “public interest” is no justification for allowing him to rifle through private papers.

When he thereby extracts the basis for a criminal prosecution, he evades the grand jury process. When he thereby lays the groundwork for a civil enforcement proceeding, he evades the due process of law, for there ordinarily is no discovery for a plaintiff until he commences a civil action.

Even worse, when a prosecutor uses a subpoena to get a remunerative settlement, it is akin to extortion — this being the most complete end run around the courts.

Previously on the probe here and here (and earlier here and here), and on the New York attorney general’s office here and here.

Cross-posted from Overlawyered.

Walter OlsonWalter Olson
Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies.

Zika, Mass Murderers and Radical Environmentalists

If we were to compile a list of history’s most prolific mass murderers, who would we put on our list?  Attila the Hun ravaged the Roman Empire during the 5th Century, killing and maiming all who stood in his way.  In the 13th Century, Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes roamed far and wide, creating a bloody empire that stretched from China and the Korean peninsula all the way to Iraq and Eastern Europe.

From 1921 to 1959, Josef Stalin ruled the Soviet Union with a cruelty unprecedented in human history, killing some 60 million of his own countrymen.  In the 1930’s and 40’s, Adolph Hitler murdered some 6 million people – mostly Jews, Gypsies, and others who were deemed ineligible for membership in the “master race.”  And from 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Pol Pot, murdered nearly 4 million in a wanton political “cleansing” of the Cambodian countryside.

But who would we select as the greatest mass murderer of all time?  The leading candidate for that title would be American marine biologist Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, the principal force behind the banning of the pesticide DDT and the godmother of radical today’s radical environmentalists of the political left.

DDT is an odorless chemical pesticide used to control disease-carrying and crop-eating insects.  Developed in Germany in 1874, it did not come into common usage until World War II when it was effectively used for pre-invasion spraying of jungles and marshes.  Following the war, it was widely used throughout the world as a means of combating yellow fever, typhoid fever, malaria, and other diseases carried by insects.

Not only was DDT a major boon to the life expectancy of people throughout the world, it could be purchased for just pennies a pound.  In India alone, the number of cases of malaria was reduced from 75 million to less than 5 million in just ten years.

But then, in 1962, Rachel Carson published her book, Silent Spring, and environmental activism quickly became a leading fad among American liberals.  Carson charged that, as DDT entered the food chain, certain reproductive dysfunctions, such as thin eggs shells in some species of birds, might occur.

In late 1971, the Environmental Protection Agency initiated a series of hearings on the potential dangers of DDT.  After seven months of exhaustive hearings, the EPA’s Administrative Law Judge, Edmund Sweeney, ruled that, “DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man… The uses of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife… The evidence in this proceeding supports the conclusion that there is a present need for the essential uses of DDT.”

Nevertheless, in spite of all of the scientific testimony to the contrary, pressure by radical environmentalists caused EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus, a wealthy member of the Environmental Defense Fund, to reverse Judge Sweeney’s ruling, declaring that DDT was a “potential human carcinogen” and banning its use for virtually all applications.

Although reliable statistics are hard to find, it is estimated that, in the forty-five years since the banning of DDT, more than 9 billion cases of malaria have been reported, most of them in developing countries.  At the rate of 700,000 to 800,000 malaria-related deaths per year, more than 36 million people have lost their lives to malaria in the past forty-five years… 90% of them pregnant women and children under age 5.

By comparison, the Great Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 26, 2004, killed more than 227,900 people in 14 countries, and 125,000 more were seriously injured.  But the loss of life and the injuries due to drowning and the collapse of buildings may have been exceeded by those who would die as a result of starvation and the spread of disease, such as typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera, and malaria.

Typhoid fever, dysentery, and cholera can be treated with a combination of drugs and/or oral rehydration, but malaria is another matter.  Malaria is best controlled through the application of DDT in mosquito-infested areas.  But DDT is no longer an alternative.  Its use has been banned since the early ‘70s as a result of pressure by radical environmentalists in the United States and Europe.

But now, in the early months of 2016, epidemiologists are confronted with yet another incurable disease related to mosquito infestation.  According to a February 5, 2016 report by Investor’s Business Daily, “The Zika virus is spreading and some public health officials seem to be near panic.  Whatever happens, don’t blame the mosquitoes.  This is a man-made problem.”

The report goes on to say, “Maybe the Zika outbreak will fade without having become too widespread, the way the Ebola scare never lived up to the hype.  But for now, Zika is apparently on the move and government health officials believe it will spread throughout the Americas, except for Canada and Chile.”

A January 2016 report by the World Health Organization (WHO) tells us that, “Zika virus disease outbreaks were reported for the first time from the Pacific in 2007 and 2013 (Yap and French Polynesia, respectively), and in 2015 from the Americas (Brazil and Colombia) and Africa (Cape Verde).  In addition, more than 13 countries in the Americas have reported sporadic Zika virus infections indicating rapid geographic expansion of Zika virus.”

Although generally not fatal in either adults or infants, the normal symptoms of Zika virus infection include mild headaches, skin rash, fever, malaise, pink eye, and joint pain.  With symptoms lasting only a few days in adults, Zika fever has been a relatively mild disease of limited scope, with only one in five persons developing symptoms and with no fatalities.  As of 2016, no vaccine or preventative drug is available.  However, the WHO recommends that symptoms can be treated with rest, fluids, and acetaminophen.

However, the WHO reports that, “During large outbreaks in French Polynesia and Brazil in 2013 and 2015, respectively, national health authorities reported potential neurological and auto-immune complications of Zika virus disease.  Recently, in Brazil, local health authorities have observed an increase in Zika virus infections in the general public as well as an increase in babies born with microcephaly in northeast Brazil.  Agencies investigating the Zika outbreaks are finding an increasing body of evidence about the link between Zika virus and microcephaly.”

Microcephaly is a birth defect in which a baby’s head is smaller than expected when compared to healthy babies of the same sex and age.  Babies with microcephaly often have smaller brains that might not have developed properly.

Zika virus is a member of the virus family Flaviviridae (genus Flavivirus), transmitted by the sting of the Aedes mosquito.  Under normal circumstances, since DDT poses no threat to humans or to the environment when properly used, the mosquito populations could be controlled through the use of DDT.  However, controlling the spread of deadly diseases through the use of DDT is not a part of the radical environmentalist agenda.  As Investor’s Business Daily correctly points out, “(T)he eco-activists would rather tolerate tens of millions of Third World deaths for the sake of a political agenda.  That’s the cruel and inhuman way of the environmentalist.  He will trade lives – and jobs, and economic liberty, and others’ wealth – in exchange for making the world… worse.”

So who wins the title of the greatest mass murderer of all time?  If we count all of the lives that would have been saved in the past forty-five years through the application of DDT, that number would exceed the total number of people murdered by Attila, Genghis Khan, Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot, combined.

To allow all of those lives to be lost in the name of “environmental protection” and “animal rights,” using junk science as a basis, is not just inhumane, it is genocide on a grand scale.  The title of “Greatest Mass Murderer of all Time” goes to the late Rachel Carson and all of her radical environmentalist followers.

Education Emergency: Our Children (and U.S.) at Risk

As an independent physicist I’ve spent 40± years on environmental advocacy, and energy education. In the later part of this journey I’ve become increasingly distressed about what is happening in our education system.

After speaking out about this several times, in 2013 I was asked to put on a presentation to the US House Science, Space and Technology Committee, as well as to the North Carolina Legislators. The unabridged version of both of those talks is online at ScienceUnderAssault.info.

Since then, most of what I’ve seen indicates that the situation is getting worse, rather than remedied. This is a summary of key education parts that need to be immediately addressed. Hopefully it will encourage citizens to get more involved with rectifying this extraordinarily important matter.

1 – We can not effectively fix anything until we are on the same page. I believe that the place to start here, is that we need to fully agree on the overall objective of the education system. Exactly what is the product we expect to get at the end of a laborious 12+ year assembly line?

In my view, the number one criteria for determining whether the educational system has been a success or not is: do these graduates have the ability and inclination to do Critical Thinking?

Google founder Vint Cerf says that there is no more important skill to teach than Critical Thinking. He calls it the one tool we have to defend ourselves from the onslaught of misinformation we are saturated with today. He argues that Critical Thinking would enable citizens to be more thoughtful about what information they accept, then process, and then use. That skill is a major benefit in literally every aspect of life.

My experience is that while the education system gives lip-service to Critical Thinking, when the rubber-meets-the-road, it’s not really happening. An easy test is to ask any college or high school student today what they think about global warming. Do they provide a thoughtful, thorough analysis — or simply regurgitate propaganda?

My first recommendation is that this be adopted by every state education department, every local school board, every academic institution, etc:

“It is our obligation to produce critically thinking graduates.”

2 – I’m a zealous defender of my profession, Science. Most people are not aware of it, but Science is under a ferocious attack, worldwide. The reason is that individuals and organizations promoting political agendas, or their own economic interests, are acutely aware that real Science is not their
friend — as it will expose them for what they are.

Those self-serving parties realize that even though most citizens have faith in Science, very few actually understand what Science is. So they take advantage of that discrepancy, by purposefully making false Science claims. They are fully aware that only a small number of people will understand the fraud — and even fewer will say anything public about it.

From what I’ve seen, the most egregious assaults on Science are taking place in such newbie science branches such as Environmental Science, Earth Science, Ecology, etc.

This campaign is being supported by slick internet video “science” series like Crash Course, Bozeman Science, etc. Listen carefully to the Crash Course founder explaining why they made over 200 education videos. He says “We don’t really have a coherent answer.” SAY WHAT?! I call these QVC Science, as (IMO) they are effectively polished sales pitches.

Propagandizing Science starts in our local schools. The good news is that the solution is also there — and is entirely under our control (see #3). Recommendation number two is that I’m advocating that every state education department, every local school board, every academic institution, formally adopt and implement this standard:

“Science education will be apolitical.”

3 – In my countrywide travels and correspondences I’ve heard from many parents of students. Quite a few have complained about various matters going on in their district. I asked them what response they got when they expressed their concerns to the teacher, principal, school board or superintendent? Most said essentially the same thing: they were reluctant to speak out for fear of retribution to their child. What a wonderful system.

The remaining citizens are those with no school children. Those people understandably believe that the school system is being held accountable by those with the most at stake: parents of current children. But no!

My wife and I are in the second group. We were warned that because we had no kids in the system, that defenders of the status quo would instead attack us personally if we spoke up publicly about the secondary school system. We’d be accused of being anti-superintendent, anti-school board, anti-teacher, and/or anti-children.

It seems rather hypocritical that school districts who pride themselves for enforcing a “no tolerance” bullying policy between students, would actually tolerate intimidation of citizens who have the temerity to speak up about school system improvements…

Most people (including us) would like the federal government to stay out of the education business. Additionally we would also prefer that the state have minimal involvement in the education process. We want the ability to locally decide what is best for our children and our community. We rarely hear about the flip side to this freedom: responsibility. If we want to control things ourselves, for our interests, then that means that there has to be real community involvement — which includes unfettered and unpenalized inputs from parents and citizens.

So my third suggestion is that every state education department and school district officially adopt the following position for their interfaces with parents and the public (prominently putting it on their websites, letterhead, etc):

“Please tell us how we can do a better job!”

When inputs from the public are received the choice is very simple. The recipients can be genuinely appreciative that citizens take the time to make constructive suggestions to improve student education — or they can circle the wagons, and defend the status quo. Ironically, it’s the later action that necessitates more higher level intervention…

Whether you have children in the education system or not, is irrelevant. The future of our country, is literally at stake here. We all are going to sink or swim based on whether we have an effective education system. Please carefully investigate what is happening in your community.

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively, and to think critically.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of ShutterStock.com.

Climate Confusion

Many Americans are again confused over how the President and the United Nations can say we are at grave risk from man-made global warming (a.k.a climate change) when we continue to get pummeled by brutal, record shattering, winter storms. If this situation has you confused, take heart. You are not alone.

Once again the natural world has slapped the ‘warmist’ community down hard with yet another record breaking blizzard in the northeastern US between January 22 and January 24, 2016. Winter storm ‘Janus’ (a Weather Channel designation) dumped record snow totals in the major cities of the USA with a major snowstorm that stretched from Arkansas to Massachusetts. Here are but a few examples of the storm’s wrath:

New York City saw 26.8 inches of snow fall in Central Park, the second highest ever recorded. It missed tying the all time record by one tenth of an inch. JFK Airport had 30.5 inches of snow. Washington’s Dulles airport measured 28.3 inches, the second highest ever. Baltimore had 29.2 inches, its largest snow total ever recorded. The list of snow events and the breadth of this winter calamity that dumped record snow from the central US to the mid-Atlantic states to the Northeast was truly one for the record books.

What is also shocking about this ‘snowmageddon’ is that according to the manmade global warming crowd, none of this was possible. We were told by United Nations scientists there was not supposed to be any snow anywhere on the planet after 2003!  And who can forget the previous terrible winter of 2014-2015 here in the US, where new temperature and snow records were routinely broken. Again, that mercilessly long and cold winter was not possible either according to the climate models from the UN and the U.S. government. How can the impossible happen so often?

We should not forget other monstrously bad predictions, the ‘warmist’ community has proffered. NOAA scientists were telling us along with Al Gore, that the Arctic sea ice would be completely gone by 2008, then revised that to 2013. Of course neither happened. Global sea ice, especially in Antarctica, is in fact, growing rapidly.

Greenhouse gas emissions recently reached 400 ppm, yet the predicted overheating of the Earth is not happening – on the contrary. The 800 lb gorilla in the climate laboratory that the manmade warming community ignores is, that there has been no meaningful growth in global temperatures for eighteen years! That includes the so-called warmest year ever – 2015. Unfortunately, my colleagues and I have observed that the US government can no longer be relied upon to tell the truth about the Earth’s climate or its temperature.

The United Nations certainly cannot be trusted either. The corruption of climate science via its climate reports issued since 1990, has been so deep seated within that organization for so long, that we must now conclude they simply are unable and unwilling to be truthful. The UN climate models of which they, the US media, and our government are so enamored, are well over 100% in error in many of the models in predicting global temperature variation. Yet, the predictions from these failed models are still offered up as evidence of the need to shut down coal and CO2 production worldwide. Further, recent data suggests that the Earth’s climate appears to be relatively insensitive to CO2!  Even the UN is now confused.

It is my fondest hope that we can put the sad era of manmade global warming behind us soon and begin the preparations needed for the rapidly approaching cold epoch, a message I have been spreading since 2007. Starting this year, a long term decline in global temperature begins. It will be at the bottom during the 2020’s through the 2030’s. This time will be grim for our species as the cold era starts its destruction of crops around the world.

We humans are easily confused about the climate. Many of us actually believe what we want to believe, and not what the facts tell us we should. Worse; we are often intentionally deceived by our leaders.

The natural world does not suffer from these afflictions. It is never confused.

RELATED ARTICLE: 300 Scientists Want NOAA To Stop Hiding Its Global Warming Data

Recent Energy & Environmental News

windmillfog

How wind turbines can affect climate by creating fog. Photo courtesy of Professor E. A. Shinn, University of South Florida.

Energy and Environmental Newsletter, is now online.

Some of the more intriguing energy articles in this issue are:

Some of the most interesting Global Warming articles in this issue are:

PS: Please pass this on to open-minded citizens. If there are others who you think would benefit from being on our energy & environmental email list, please let me know. If at any time you’d like to be taken off the list, please let me know that too.

PPS: I am not an attorney, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters should be construed as giving legal advice. My recommendation has always been: consult a competent attorney when you are involved with legal issues.

MIT: Incandescents Now More Efficient than LEDs by Jeffrey A. Tucker

Researchers at the MIT are publicizing that they have fixed the incandescent light-bulb with a brilliant improvement. They have wrapped the interior filament in a crystal glass that both bounces light and contains heat. It recycles energy in a way that addresses the main complaint against Edison’s bulb: It burns far too much energy for the light that it produces.

Why is this interesting? About a decade ago, governments around the world developed a fetish for banning incandescents (through an efficiency rule) and replacing them with expensive LED technology and florescent bulbs. It happened in Europe first but eventually came to the United States. The last American factory to produce them closed in 2010, and they are ever harder to find in even the big-box hardware stores. (As with all such bans, there are exceptions for elites who desire specialty bulbs.)

The change has been seriously annoying for many consumers. It has even given rise to hoarding and gray markets (in Germany, such bulbs were repackaged as “heat balls”). It has produced something of a political backlash, too.

On a personal note, my own dear mother replaced all her incandescents with fluorescents several years ago. I was sitting in her house feeling vaguely irritated by the searing lights in the room — cold and dreary — and had to turn them off. Sitting in the dimly lit room, my thought was: this is what the government has done to us. A great invention from the dawn of modernity is being driven out of use. Do I have to bring my own candles next holiday season?

Why should governments be in the position of deciding what technologies can and cannot be used, as if consumers are too stupid to make such decisions for themselves? Who is to decide what is efficient, and what the proper trade off should be between the energy expended and the light produced?

Maybe some people don’t mind the “inefficiency” of incandescent bulbs relative to the warm and wonderful light they produce. Entrepreneurs need to be able to discern and serve their needs.

The bans have given rise to a vast debate about which bulb is best and what kind of light technology governments should and should not permit. But these are really the wrong questions. The real issue should be: Why should governments be in the business of picking right and wrong technologies at all?

As the MIT innovation in lighting suggests, there are possibilities yet undiscovered that regulators have not thought of. If you write detailed regulations about existing technologies, you are forestalling the possibilities that scientists and entrepreneurs will discover new ways of doing things in the future.

A vast regulatory apparatus on cell phone technology in 1990 could never have imagined something like a modern cellphone. Regulations on digital commerce in 2000 might have stopped the rise of peer-to-peer services like Uber. Indeed, one of the reasons that the digital world is so innovative is precisely because the regulators haven’t yet caught up with the pace of innovation.

Regulations on technology freeze the status quo in place and make it permanent. How, for example, will regulations respond to the news that a new and improved form of incandescent bulb is possible? Early tests show it to be more efficient than the replacements which the regulations favor. Will there be a new vote, a rewrite of the law, a governing body that evaluates new lightbulbs, the same way we approach prescription drugs? None of this can possibly match the efficiency of a market process of trial and error, of experimentation, rejection, and adoption.

In government, a ban is a ban, something to be enforced, not tweaked according to new discoveries and approaches.

Herein we see the problems with all attempts by government to tightly manage any technology. Bitcoin is a great example. As soon as the price began to rise and the crypto sector began to appear viable, government agencies got in the business of regulating them as if the sector was already taking a shape that would last forever. And because technology and industry are always on the move, there is never a rational time to intervene with the proclamation “this is how it shall always be.”

Regulatory interventions stop the progress of history by disabling the limitless possibilities of the human imagination.

By the time regulators get around to rethinking the incandescent, the industry will probably have moved on to something new and even better, something no one can imagine could exist today.

Jeffrey A. TuckerJeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Digital Development at FEE, CLO of the startup Liberty.me, and editor at Laissez Faire Books. Author of five books, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.  Follow on Twitter and Like on Facebook.

NOAA: Earth’s Hottest Period was Before Man Existed

Penny Starr in a CNSNews.com article titled “NOAA Website on Climate: Earth’s Hottest Period Occurred Before Man Existed” reports:

The global climate change agreement adopted at the United Nation’s conference in Paris is making headlines, but a federal government website dedicated to weather makes the case that the warmest time on Earth happened before mankind existed, and in fact, it was at one time so hot that crocodiles lived among palm trees in the Arctic Circle.An Aug. 12, 2014 article posted on climate.gov and titled, “What’s The Hottest The Earth’s Ever Been,” stated, “Earth’s hottest periods—the Hadean, the late Neoproterozoic, the PETM—occurred before humans existed.” It added, “Those ancient climates would have been like nothing our species has ever seen.”

The article noted that the Arctic Circle was once a tropical hot spot:

“Stretching from about 66-34 million years ago, the Paleocene and Eocene were the first geologic epochs following the end of the Mesozoic Era. (The Mesozoic—the age of dinosaurs—was itself an era punctuated by ‘hothouse’ conditions.)

Geologists and paleontologists think that during much of the Paleocene and early Eocene, the poles were free of ice caps, and palm trees and crocodiles lived above the Arctic Circle. The transition between the two epochs around 56 million years ago was marked by a rapid spike in global temperature.”

In its earliest days “when [Earth] was still colliding with other rocky debris,” the temperature was “upward of 3,600 degree Fahrenheit,” the article noted.

During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, “the global temperature appears to have risen by as much as 5-8 degrees” Centigrade (9 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit), the article stated. (Note: the Paris climate change agreement is designed to stop Earth’s temperature from rising 2 degrees Fahrenheit, an increase caused by human activity, according to the U.N.)

Read more.

EPA’s ‘Covert Propaganda’ Campaign to Sell Its Water Rule Explained

Covert propaganda” is something you’d expect from a foreign spy agency not from EPA. Yet that’s what the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded in a report on the agency’s efforts to sell its water rule– Waters of the United States (WOTUS), The New York Times reports:

Federal agencies are allowed to promote their own policies, but are not allowed to engage in propaganda, defined as covert activity intended to influence the American public. They also are not allowed to use federal resources to conduct so-called grass-roots lobbying — urging the American public to contact Congress to take a certain kind of action on pending legislation.

As it promoted the Waters of the United States rule, also known as the Clean Water Rule, the E.P.A. violated both of those prohibitions, a 26-page legal opinion signed by Susan A. Poling, the general counsel to the G.A.O., concluded in an investigation requested by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

“E.P.A. appealed to the public to contact Congress in opposition to pending legislation in violation of the grass-roots lobbying prohibition,” the report says.

bloomberg_ginamccarthy_senate_testify_1600px

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. Photo credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg.

The story came on the radar earlier this year when EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy bragged to a Senate Committee about the outpouring of public support for its (then) proposed water rule:

We have received over 1 million comments and 87.1 percent of those comments we have counted so far… are supportive of this rule.

As I wrote in May, The New York Times told us how that outpouring of support came about; EPA drummed it up.

Led by Tom Reynolds, the agency’s top communications adviser, EPA fired up its propaganda machine to counter critics of WOTUS—farmersranchers, home builders, the golf industry, and other businesses–who pointed out how the rule will empower federal bureaucrats to regulate “wetlands, intermittent streams, ephemeral steams (those that only flow after a rainfall or snowmelt) , and man-made bodies of water like ditches, ponds, and canals,” federalize local land use decisions, and make it even harder to build things in America.

One cog in that machine was social media. In September 2014, the agency used social media tool Thunderclap to push pro-WOTUS messages on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.

EPA’s Thunderclap campaign said, “Clean water is important to me. I support EPA’s efforts to protect it for my health, my family, and my community,” and included a link to an EPA webpage (now unavailable) that directed the public to submit comments on the draft regulation. The effort reached 1.8 million people.

EPA WOTUS Thunderclap social media campaign

GAO determined that EPA’s use of Thunderclap was a “covert propaganda” campaign and broke the law. EPA pushed pro-WOTUS messages without properly disclosing that the agency was the author of the messages:

While EPA’s role was transparent to supporters who joined the campaign, this does not constitute disclosure to the 1.8 million people potentially reached by the Thunderclap. To those people, it appeared that their friend independently shared a message of his or her support for EPA and clean water.

In addition, the Thunderclap campaign appears to have violated the spirit of internal EPA policy. A 2010 memo on indirect lobbying from EPA’s general counsel states:

EPA employees may not explicitly or implicitly encourage the public to contact Congress in support of, or opposition to, a legislative proposal, nor explicitly encourage the public to contact state or local governments for that purpose.

EPA’s Thunderclap campaign asked the public to leave comments in support of WOTUS, which EPA Administrator McCarthy then referenced in testimony before Congress to claim overwhelming public support for the controversial rule.

Not only was EPA caught producing propaganda, GAO also found the agency engaged in inappropriate grassroots lobbying of Congress, The Times reports:

The agency is also said to have violated the anti-lobbying law when one of its public affairs officers, Travis Loop, wrote a blog post saying he was a surfer and did not “want to get sick from pollution.” That post included a link button to an advocacy group that discussed the danger that polluted water posed to surfers and, at least at one point, also included text that said “Take Action,” telling the public to “tell Congress to stop interfering with your right to clean water.”

It’s bad enough that EPA is engaging in such unprecedented regulatory overreach by crafting WOTUS, but its aggressive (and illegal) advocacy of it shows how out-of-control that agency is.

As for Tom Reynolds, who spearheaded EPA’s illegal WOTUS communications efforts, he got a promotion and is now working on climate issues in the White House.

RELATED ARTICLE: Report: EPA Broke Federal Law With ‘Covert Propaganda’ on Social Media