The unfortunate Keith Kloor @keithkloor

Keith Kloor has taken huge criticism for his brave stand that "frankenfoods" (GMOs) are safe and beneficial.  He has a long article outlining that here. It is far too long for me to reproduce on this blog.

Suffice it to to say that he thought his credentials as an established environmentalist would protect him from criticism and cause his arguments and information to be heard.  It did not. He was demonized with all sorts of false allegations and his erstwhile friends on the Green/Left deserted him.  The only friends he ended up with were people at Monsanto, the plant breeders who are arch-villains to most of the Green/Left.  He concludes that you cannot blame journalists for failing to expose  popular anti-science beliefs.  The backlash if you do is too awful.

Something that he uses to cling on to respectability is his criticism of Donald Trump and his support for global warming. Trump is an easy target because of the loose way he speaks so that does not earn Kloor much kudos.  It is global warming that  is his reputational lifeline.  If he rejected that he would be sunk in just about every possible way.  His only friends would be people he has spent much of his life opposing.  Rather awful!

So there are good reasons why Kloor clings to the global warming theory.

But it is nonetheless a wonder that he cannot see that Warmists do exactly the sort of thing that the anti-GMO brigade do. They rely heavily on appeals to authority, "ad hominem" abuse and easily refuted "science".  If he would just read all sides of the debate on the key issue of climate sensitivity, he would see that Warmist claims are at least highly speculative if not built entirely on sand. But he is a journalist so perhaps that is too complex for him.  With climate science, he too relies on appeals to what passes for authority.

Keith is halfway up the hill leading to the broad sunlit uplands of truth.  He should complete the journey.  Global warming is dead anyway.  Trump will see to that.




Satellites show no sustained warming since 1998

Both tabulators of satellite data show that 2016 was 2 hundredths of one degree warmer than 1998 overall.  Since the margin of error was one tenth of a degree, there was no significant difference between the two years.  Both years were El Nino years

RSS Confirm 2016 Is Tied With 1998 As Warmest Year:



(Graph plotted from RSS figures here)

RSS have also now released their temperature data for December, which, as with UAH, shows a big drop from the month before. [Anomaly fell from .391 to .229]

Annually, RSS come to the same conclusion as UAH, that 2016 was 0.02C warmer than 1998.

As Roy Spencer has pointed out, the margin of error is 0.1C, so statistically 2016 is tied with 1998 as the warmest year in the satellite record.

The fact that there has been no warming for the last 18 years is a massive blow to the credibility of climate science.

SOURCE





A good comment on all the official temperature reports that are given to an accuracy of hundredths of one degree:

Where can I buy one of those thermometers that measures in 100ths of a degree? I have a fever thermometer that measures in 10ths of a degree but it only has a range of about 6 degrees. Scientists should be totally ashamed to publish data graphs plotted in 100ths of a degree.

I can get 50 different readings by walking around with a very accurate thermometer and taking measurements at ground level, in the shade, 3 ft above the ground, over grass, over the sand lot, over the drive way pavement, in the wind, shielded from the wind, shielded from the sun.....and on and on and on. If I had submitted a report with such absurd data as found in  these studies I would have been kicked out of the class. Nothing angers me as much as these scam publications.

Received via email from a reader.  The reported 100ths of a degree are just a statistical artifact created by averaging




Massive Decline In The Integrity Of NOAA

The oldest trick in the book about how to lie with statistics is to pick and choose your starting and ending points.  Tony Heller below demonstrates how NOAA have done that recently by comparing their latest claims with data in the 1995 IPCC report.  NOAA are outright frauds

NOAA reports a massive decline Arctic sea ice and snow through late November, and that their satellite records for sea ice began in 1979.



NOAA satellite records actually extend back much further than 1979, but NOAA hides them because 1979 was the peak and the earlier records wreck their scam. Ice extent in 1974 was nearly two million km² lower in 1974 than it was in 1979.



The massive decline in snow reported by NOAA is actually a massive increase. Snow extent  this autumn was the second highest on record.

SOURCE





Slippery Warmist Prof. hilariously fails to name source of 98% ‘consensus’ claim

A college professor claimed that “98 percent of the world’s scientists” agree that manmade climate change is real — but things soon became awkward when Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked the academic to name the source of his information on-air.

“I am interested in the claims you’ve made about climate science, that it’s settled, and that 98 percent of worldwide scientists believe that. How do you know that? Are you a scientist or have you polled other scientists? Where did you get that figure?” Carlson asked California State University-Sacramento professor Joseph Palermo on Wednesday.

Palermo clearly wasn’t prepared to defend his previous assertion.
“Well, see, that’s another one of those interesting kind of questions is that, that wasn’t what the blog was about,” Palermo replied, referencing “right-wing websites” misconstruing science for “catchy headlines” and “clickbait.”

But Carlson was determined to get an answer. So he asked the question a second time.

Palermo dodged the question again, saying, “I didn’t want to get into — are you a climate change denier, or a skeptic?”

That’s when Carlson laid into the academic, reminding him that not taking everything at face value is how science works.
“The essence of science, and of journalism,” Carlson said, “is skepticism, because it seeks to get to the truth.”

“And I’m asking as you as someone who just said, as a statement of fact, that 98 percent of the world’s scientists agree with you, with whatever you believe, I’m wondering how you know that,” Carlson added.

Palermo avoided providing evidence to his claim twice more. At one point, he even urged Carlson to send out his “giant research team” to “find out about it,” a suggestion that prompted a good laugh from the Fox News host. “You just made the claim!” Carlson pointed out.

SOURCE




Obama Seized Enough Land and Water in 8 Years to Cover Texas Three Times

Last week, in one of his final moves out of the Oval Office, Obama executively designated more than 1.5 million acres of land as national monuments, preserving their untouched façade while closing them to human expansion, development, energy use, ranching or state or local jurisdiction.

In a move ignored by the liberal media last week, Obama unilaterally seized more than 1.3 million acres from Utah to establish the Bears Ears Monument, preserving it at the behest of conservationist groups and Native American tribes who claimed the land was sacred. Utah’s state legislature, however, opposed the unilateral land grab across party lines, with many speculating that Obama’s move is the latest in an attempt to limit efforts from incoming President Donald Trump to expand domestic energy production.

Obama also claimed 300,000 acres in Clark County, Nevada, as the Gold Butte National Monument, effectively closing the area off to future development for uranium mining, oil drilling or natural gas production.

While it's certainly nothing new, Obama's habit of unilaterally confiscating land has ramped up heading into the final stretch of his presidency. In the eight years he’s been in office, President Obama has seized more than 553 million acres of land and water (roughly 865,000 square miles) and placed it under federal ownership and control – enough square mileage to cover the entire state of Texas more than three times over. In fact, the self-aggrandizing conservationist-in-chief has placed more land and coastal areas under federal control than any other president in history, shutting off millions of miles of land to energy production or human settlement, along with shifting it outside the scope of local and state jurisdictions.

Just this past summer, Obama bragged about executively creating the nation’s largest marine preserve off the coast of Hawaii, conveniently omitting that the move took a $10 million chunk out of the local fishing industry.

Wielding the Antiquities Act of 1906, Obama has seized vast swaths of land and water for the federal government a total of 29 times, claiming more than 260 million acres as federally-protected spaces in 2016 alone (including a more than 100-million-acre plot in Alaska that amounts to the size of New Mexico).

In fact, of the 154 times the Antiquities Act has been used by a president to seize land over the past 110 years, President Obama’s executive land grabs together make up about 20 percent.

Thanks to executive actions by Obama and presidents like him, more than 80 percent of the state of Nevada and about 65 percent of Utah is now owned by the federal government, according to the National Public Radio.

SOURCE

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