Warmist Prof. in NYTimes: Failure of climate models vs. reality not important since we use them to predict the future

Reality does not seem to matter much to Leftists either.

If your models have no demonstrated predictive skill, relying on them is faith, not science.  Predictive skill is the first test of a model and a demonstration of no skill means back to the drawing board.

But Warmism is not science but a religion -- one in a centuries-old succession of apocalyptic religions (calamity predictions).  Check just William Miller and Charles Taze Russell for the 19th century but you can easily go all the way back to the tenth century for "end of the world" predictions.  And two of the earliest such predictions are to be found in Matthew Chap. 24 (note the urgency of verse 34) and Genesis chapters 6 & 7

Mankind is a religious creature and any system of thought that satisfies the religious craving will be powerful.  People have often died for their religion. Warmists just lie for it

There will certainly be a lot of obfuscation around the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the body charged by the United Nations to monitor information on climate change — and especially involving the results demonstrating a leveling-off of global temperature in the last 15 years.

But the complete candor and transparency of the panel’s findings should be recognized and applauded. This is science sticking with the facts. It does not mean that global warming is not a problem; indeed it is a really big problem.

Does the leveling-off of temperatures mean that the climate models used to track them are seriously flawed? Not really. It is important to remember that models are used so that we can understand where the Earth system is headed.

More HERE



Sea-level shenanigans in NC

Panic over sea-levels rising seems to have generated an unusual amount of momentum in North Carolina.  All sorts of political  follies in response to it were on the political drawing boards.  Amazingly, John Droz was almost singlehandedly able to prick the balloon by emphasizing the facts of the matter in any forum he could find.

You can imagine how popular he is with Warmists.  So what can only be described as a "hit piece" on him appeared recently in The Daily Climate.  In the joke of the day, that publication says of itself "all of our reporting, editing and publishing adheres to the highest standards of journalism, including honesty, accuracy, balance and objectivity."  In fact, like all hit pieces, its article about Droz consists of half truths, inaccuracies, innuendos, lies  and omissions.  Droz has sent them a reply pointing that out, as follows:

Some Errors of Commission

At your request I'll give you a few examples of the errors and misrepresentations in your Daily Climate piece...

1 - The title is more than "catchy" (your description) as it is really absurd, and only fuels the BS that SLR is a political issue. It is not!

2 - Under the intro pix it says "State planners cannot take future sea-level rise projections into account," That is totally false. They can not take SLR acceleration into their regulations, which is a completely different situation. They can use future linear SLR into account.

3 - The next paragraph says "John Droz has notched a remarkable record fighting sea-rise science". That also is totally false. The only SLR "science" I have been fighting is political science. I gave you the two studies (almost 50 pages) that refuted the CRC's report, and they unequivocally show that their paper is NOT based on science, but rather the opinion of a single (controversial) researcher. Dozens of much more qualified PhDs were cited in my papers showing the fatal flaws of his models.

4 - "John Droz has notched a remarkable record fighting... coastal development limits". I have no idea what that is about, as I have had no involvement with coastal development limits. So, another false statement.

5 - "John Droz Jr. is not the stereotypical back-room political player". I am not a "back-room" player in any regard, as I have been VERY public about every position I take, and why. For example, each of the presentations I gave the NC legislators is online for EVERY citizen to see. My name and email is listed there for EVERY citizen to respond to. The innuendo that I am working behind the scenes is misleading to say the least.

6 - "He's ... a political heavyweight" I am not a political heavyweight in any regards. I am simply a citizen who has the temerity to speak out — and saying things that many people find to be sensible. Just because almost all the other noise is from lobbyists hardly makes me a heavyweight.

7 - "Yet this ...  self-described environmental advocate" My exceptional environmental track record is public and available for anyone to see. To categorize it that it is "self-described" is an offensive and false innuendo.

8 - "He ...spends much of his time quietly and effectively plying the halls of power in Raleigh, N.C" Again a false impression. I go to Raleigh maybe twice a year, and I hardly "ply the halls" as some paid lobbyists would, as this sentence implies. Again, there is little I do that is "quiet" either, as I have been very open about the Science behind the issues.

This is just the problems in the first two paragraphs. Most of the rest is similarly inaccurate.

Part 2: Errors of Omission

Below are the key highlight points of what actually happened regarding the NC SLR situation, and my involvement. I explained all of these to you in our extended interview, in emails, in phone calls, in documents I provided you, and in links I referenced you to (e.g. here).

Fact #1: I was asked (as an independent scientist), by my county (Carteret) commissioners to provide them scientific help.
[Contrast this with the article's impression that I am some political busy-body, stalking the halls of Raleigh in the dead of night. Note that my SLR involvement had nothing to do with politics or Raleigh.]

Fact #2: The scientific help I was asked for, was to critique a specific 2010 SLR report issued by a CRC's Science Panel.
[I wasn't asked for — and did not provide — a SLR assessment for NC. Again, in this context, note the absurdity of the article's title. The only thing that was "stopped" was the implementation of this unscientific report.]

Fact #3: My response to the Commissioner's request was publicly published as: Report #1a, Report #1b, and Report #2.
[Where was any of this explained in the article, or the links provided so that readers could see this key information for themselves? I asked you whether you had carefully read these reports and you said yes. I asked you whether you had any questions on these reports and you said no.]

Fact #4: These reports were not from me, but were a compilation of comments about the CRC documents, by over thirty SLR experts (several with PhDs in oceanography). Most of those experts were identified in the reports.
[Was all of this explained in the article?]

Fact #5: The combined SLR expertise of the 30+ contributors to the reports I issued, far exceeds the combined SLR expertise of the NC CRC Science Panel.
[Was this significant fact spelled out in the article?]

Fact #6: The NC CRC Science Panel was given numerous opportunities to professionally respond to our critiques (e.g. a personal meeting with their CRC boss, Bob Emory). At no time did they acknowledge any of the numerous errors and deficiencies of their report. Instead they launched a character assassination campaign on the messenger, me.
[Is this the way real scientists behave? No.]

Fact #7: Because of this intransigence (not because I'm a political back-room operative), I was asked to give a presentation of this important state matter to NC legislators. I did do that in late 2011. Note that this is still online today, i.e. open for anyone to examine.
[Does the article put this in an accurate perspective? Compare the article to this more objective reporting.]

Fact #8: H819 was written by one of the attendees at my Raleigh SLR talk. H819 was also in direct response to the intransigence of the CRC Science Panel.
[So the CRC and their Science Panel brought this on themselves. If they had corrected the errors in their report, none of this would have happened.]

Fact #9: H819 was written Dr. Jeff Warren. His PhD happens to be in an oceanography related field.
[Dr. Warren's SLR qualifications meet or exceed those of any of the CRC Science Panel members. Were these significant matters conveyed in the article?]

Fact #10: H819 is not an attack on SLR (NC or otherwise), but is strictly a response to the CRC Science Panel's 2010 report.
[Those that write that this bill is about anything else are either purposefully ignorant of the facts (as they are all out there), or they have chosen to distort this story to suit their own political agenda.]

If you dispute any of the above basic facts, please provide me the documentation that shows I am in error, and I will correct what I have written here.

Otherwise, the question is: does this article present these facts, sequentially, explained in proper perspective? Not even remotely.

As such it is a grossly inadequate and misleading recounting of a significant scientific matter. For shame.

Via email




IPCC Reaches A Tipping Point

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia."  -- AFP: UN climate report: Key points

The IPCC has now abandoned any attempt to base their claims on facts. Historical data shows that the climate has gotten better since the 1950s.

US droughts were the worst in the 1950s



Violent tornadoes are down



Major hurricane landfalls peaked in the 1950s, and are down to historic lows in the current decade.



Record daily temperatures have declined in the US since the 1950s.



More HERE  (See the original for links




A coup de grâce to coal

A funny thing happened on the way to the coal plant the other day. But it wasn’t ha-ha funny. In fact, it was tragic – and on multiple levels. Tragic in that the federal government is overreaching yet again. Tragic in that it is making a major policy change based on questionable assumptions – again. And most tragic of all in that it is openly destroying an industry for no other reason than some people in Washington do not like it.

On Sept. 20, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a new carbon dioxide emission standard that analysts say will preclude the construction of new coal-fired power plants. This is a bold move, even from the administration that brought us Obamacare and Dodd-Frank. Coal power has long been Americans’ most affordable source of electricity, mainly because we have so much of it here at home.

As much of the nation continues to struggle with significant unemployment, higher electricity bills are the last Christmas present anyone needs. Yet, President Obama seems more concerned about the demands of his environmentalist supporters, who will implement their anti-carbon agenda at any cost.

I have to give the man credit for finally acknowledging something that my organization, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has been saying for years: Yes, Virginia, there is a war on coal. And just like other governmental regulatory wars – on tobacco, genetically modified crops, even lawn darts – it is nothing more than the use of power to force individuals and businesses to change behaviors that some in government find offensive.

The EPA’s proposed emissions standard would, for the first time, place uniform national limits on the amount of carbon dioxide coal and natural gas power plants will be allowed to emit in the future. It would mandate use of carbon capture and sequestration technology that is not even commercially available – and no doubt will be extremely expensive even if it does become available in future decades. Think about that for a second. The federal government has told an industry that to continue operating it must start using technology that essentially does not exist.

You might say, “Well, we do want clean air, right?” Sure, everyone wants clean air, just like everyone wants cleaner sidewalks, safer streets and cheaper medicine. But when the government institutes sweeping regulation purportedly to advance any one of these goals, we must ask: Does this regulation actually do what it’s supposed to do, and at what cost? Not even the wiliest Washington bureaucrat can mandate a free lunch into existence.

There is much about this new emissions standard that is upsetting.

First, its very foundation is questionable. The EPA’s proposed performance standards, which require carbon capture and storage, are largely modeled on a facility in Mississippi that is still under construction and not expected to begin operation until next spring and could not have been built without government money to begin with. In other words, the heavily subsidized facility that is supposed to theoretically demonstrate a plant’s appropriate performance level does not even exist yet!

Second, the EPA’s justification for the rule depends on a concept called the “social cost” of carbon – a highly subjective estimate of carbon dioxide emissions’ effect on humans and the environment.

Measuring it relies on assumptions about climate sensitivity and other complex issues – for example, how much an incremental increase in carbon will affect warming, how warming will affect sea levels, how much sea level changes will affect agriculture and how people may adapt to any changes. These issues are in no way settled. Yet, by feeding certain assumptions into a model and tweaking the parameters, government officials claim to be able to “measure” a social cost of carbon well into the future that justifies significant emissions regulation. Essentially, this would involve bureaucrats putting models in place that effectively give them the results they want.

Here’s the bottom line. Industries come and go all the time. Companies go bankrupt and the towns where they are located go quiet when market demand shifts to make a once-valued product obsolete. It’s a tough thing when people lose their livelihoods after an industry falls out of favor with consumers. But when industries die naturally through the ever-regenerating processes of creative destruction and competition, that’s a consequence of living in a free society – and essential for innovation and progress.

Yet, when the federal government decides to use the law to kill an industry, that’s an entirely different animal. It’s not just the thousands of people who work in the coal industry who will suffer – it’s all of us. Politicians and bureaucrats have an atrocious record in their efforts to pick industrial winners and losers. Giving them more power to decide which industries live or die is the surest way of bringing innovation and progress to a screeching halt.

SOURCE



Russia Busts Greenpeace‏

By Alan Caruba

I must confess I had a moment of schadenfreud—taking pleasure in another’s misfortune—when I read that, in late September, the Russians had seized the Greenpeace ship, Arctic Sunrise, and towed it to the port of Murmansk after Greenpeace personnel had boarded a Russian oil platform, “Priraslomnaya”, in the Pechora Sea.

Russia called the thirty people arrested “pirates” and, if found guilty, they face sentences from ten to fifteen years in prison. Five of them were Russians while the others came from some seventeen nations, including the United States.

Greenpeace is best known for its propaganda tactics, the latest being the trespass of the oil platform, but in 2009, while Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior was docked in Copenhagen, the tables were turned when members of CFACT, a U.S. think tank devoted to debunking environmental claims, boarded it and, while distracting the crew with donuts, hung a banner that obscured the word “Rainbow” with “Propaganda” turning it into the Propaganda Warrior.

A CFACT spokesman said that the piracy charged seemed too severe, but thought lesser charges should apply. Even Russian President Putin said that piracy did not apply, but their actions were reckless. “We can’t help but appreciate the irony. Greenpeace conducts ongoing campaigns for greater government control over individuals. In Russia, they may get a taste of where that leads.”

Greenpeace has incurred the wrath of many with its aggressive, attention-grabbing tactics and, in 1985 French Special Forces sunk the original Rainbow Warrior when it was docked in New Zealand. Ultimately, an international court ruled that France had to pay Greenpeace $8 million. More recently, Greenpeace campaigners who scaled the chimney of the UK’s Kingsnorth coal power plant were acquitted.

While the incidents Greenpeace stages are intended to draw attention to it, most people are unaware of how large the organization is. It has offices in more than forty nations as it pursues its campaigns devoted to global warming, deforestration, overfishing, commercial whaling, genetic engineering, and anti-nuclear issues.

One of its founders, Patrick Moore, became a critic of what he deemed the organization’s scare tactics and disinformation campaigns. In 2005 he said that the environmental movement had “abandoned science and logic in favor of emotion and sensationalism” and was devoted to inventing “doom and gloom scenarios” to advance an agenda that is essentially opposed to many scientific and technological advances that enhance the lives of billions around the world.

Greenpeace says it depends on 2.9 million individual supporters and on foundation grants, but a recent article by Nick Nichols, a retired crisis management expert and author of “Rules for Corporate Warriors”, examined the cost of tax exemptions noting that “three tax-exempt Greenpeace organizations in the U.S. reported $39.2 million in revenue and $20.6 million in assets in 2011.” Other environmental groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council also were worth millions and were exempted from taxes.

Consider the furor of the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of Tea Party movement groups seeking a similar tax exemption, it tells you just how agenda-driven the IRS is when it comes to groups that claim they are charitable or educational. Nichols notes that both New Zealand and Canada have stripped Greenpeace of its charity status.

While Greenpeace and comparable Green organizations enjoy tax exemptions that would otherwise generate millions, they are also engaged in a wide range of activities intended to undermine its economic welfare. From opposing coal mining to nuclear energy, these groups do everything they can to deny Americans the benefits of affordable and vital sources of energy. They continue to claim that global warming is going to destroy the planet despite the growing body of information that demonstrates it is a hoax.

Patrick Moore recently lead a demonstration outside the Greenpeace office in Toronto, Canada, regarding the Greenpeace opposition to genetically modified rice, known as Golden Rice for its vitamin A content.

His banner read “Greenpeace’s Crime Against Humanity—Eight million Children Dead. AllowGoldenRiceNow.org.” For lack of sufficient vitamin A, the World Health Organization estimates that up to 500,000 become blind every year  and half of them die within a year of becoming blind as the result of this nutritional deficiency that affects an estimated 250 million pre-school children worldwide.

Russia has provided an object lesson in how to deal with these Green “warriors” on oil, coal, and nuclear energy, and other issues that harm people. Having saved Obama from complete humiliation when he proposed bombing Syria, Russia now demonstrates how to deal with propagandists whose love for the Earth excludes the humanity that calls it home.

SOURCE



Australia:  How animal extremists and officious bureaucrats devastated a family business

Animal activists, with the help of gullible reporters, help to destroy a family business - and those depending on it - with dodgy allegations.  The ABC’s Landline explains:

    PIP COURTNEY, PRESENTER: In November 2011, allegations of animal cruelty were levelled at an abattoir in regional Victoria…

    Authorities quickly shut down the abattoir, sending a ripple effect through the local community, leading to job losses and business closures. But the most serious charges were dropped before the matter ever went to court, raising questions about the tactics of the animal right groups, Animals Australia, and the behaviour of the Victorian Government body responsible for the prosecution, PrimeSafe…

    COLIN GILES, ABATTOIR OWNER:… We’ve been through two years of hell.

    Monday November 21, 2011, dawned like most at LE Giles & Sons Abattoir.

    The abattoir, small by modern standards, processed cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. On that day, it was killing pigs and 60 of them quietly awaited slaughter in the holding pen. Mid-morning a visitor arrived. She gave her name as Kate and was led up to the killing floor.

    JAMES RODEWELL, FORMER ABATTOIR SUPERVISOR: On the way up I had a discussion with her and asked her what she was doing and she said, ‘I’m just taking a few photos for a university project I’m doing.’…

    COLIN GILES: She came in under the guise of being a photography student.

    BRUCE GILES, FORMER ABBATTOIR WORKER: She lied who her proper name and everything. And we had let schools in before.... So we’ve never, ever been shy of showing the place off…

    TIM LEE: This time the Giles family’s open approach to the public proved disastrous. Kate was in fact Sarah Lynch, a well-known animal rights activist… [As] the last few pens of 60 pigs were stunned electronically prior to slaughter, she got the footage she was seeking… Sarah Lynch raced the footage back to Melbourne to Animals Australia, which contacted PrimeSafe… Animals Australia claimed to have evidence of widespread cruelty at Giles Abattoir.

    PrimeSafe then contacted LE Giles & Sons and ordered an immediate halt to all work…

    TIM LEE: Colin Giles alleges they were told by PrimeSafe that unless they complied they faced the possibility of jail… For Terry and Sandra McPhee the closure spelt catastrophe. At Neerim South in the Eastern Ranges they’d built a fledgling, but thriving, enterprise raising prime quality meat goats. ..

    SANDRA MCPHEE: Devastating....  It was coming up to Christmas and we had a lot of Christmas orders ready to go, but we had no abattoir to slaughter the animals for us…

    TIM LEE: The abattoir’s closure had an immediate impact on stock markets the length of Gippsland and beyond… It took a terrible toll on Ray Giles.

    MORRIS GILES: He withdrew into himself. We had trouble getting him out of the house. He just was… just was traumatic, absolutely traumatic to see what it’s done to him. You know he’s, at the moment he’s at the Warringal Hospital undergoing therapy. We don’t know whether he will ever be the man he was.

    Dad had a stroke Christmas Eve, Christmas Day…

    TIM LEE: By now Colin Giles, quality assurance manager James Rodwell and three of the abattoir slaughtermen had been charged with a number of offences under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act…

    In September 2012 the three slaughtermen pleaded guilty to charges that they failed to ensure pigs did not endure: ‘unreasonable pain and suffering’, during slaughter. The judge found that any cruelty was not deliberate and noted the: ‘significant penalties’, the trio had already endured, including the loss of their jobs.

    All three escaped conviction and were each given a twelve-month good behaviour bond.

    NEVILLE GILPIN, FORMER SLAUGHTERMAN: It come down to a financial thing, where my solicitor said it could cost me a fair bit of money to fight this charge and not having a job and a daughter to put through uni I just took the easy way out, yes.

    TIM LEE: However, Colin Giles and James Rodwell were determined to have their day in court.

    But that day never came. The case was due to be heard here at the Morwell Magistrates’ Court on Monday, April 15. But on the Friday the Giles family was told all charges against them had been dropped because the DPI’s lawyers believed there was little chance of a successful prosecution…

    TIM LEE: Funding their legal defence had cost the Giles family more than $150,000 ... and it was pitted against the bottomless resources of the State Solicitor’s Office acting for the Department of Primary Industries.The cost of justice appeared prohibitive, so the family reluctantly accepted the legal truce. But the sudden abandonment of such a high-profile case has only fuelled speculation of gross injustice…

    Sarah Lynch took footage of one pig which escaped from the killing pen and got onto the abattoir floor.

    COLIN GILES: There was four or five blokes along here with knives and pouches and things on, and they’d left a sledgehammer up against the hide puller because they were doing a job and it had jammed or something, and the blokes just grabbed it and - which it says in the regs that, you know, in those sort of circumstances, as a safety thing, blunt trauma can be used… There was no cruelty in it. And that was the first charge that the DPI dropped, was the blunt trauma one…

    TIM LEE: Neville Gilpin alleges that Sarah Lynch caused that pig to escape. He claimed she’d stressed them by being far too close… Animals Australia is unwilling to discuss the case.

SOURCE


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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL  and EYE ON BRITAIN.   My Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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