Obama Kicks Off First Foreign Speech With An Astonishingly False Statement On Global Warming

Former President Barack Obama told those gathered at an agricultural conference that man-made global warming was already impacting agriculture on a global scale, shrinking crop yields and raising food prices.

“Our changing climate is already making it more difficult to produce food,” Obama said at the Seeds & Chips conference in Milan, Italy Tuesday, according to The New York Times.

“We’ve already seen shrinking yields and rising food prices,” the former president said in his first speech outside the U.S. since leaving office in January.

But is global warming already hurting agriculture? There’s not a lot of evidence for that claim.

In fact, 2016 was a record year for crop yields, which have basically doubled since 2007.

Production of wheat, coarse grains and rice hit record levels in 2016, according to United Nations data. Cereal production is set to shrink 0.4 percent in 2017 “from the 2016 record high,” but “supplies are likely to remain large with next season’s cereal ending stocks remaining close to their record high opening levels,” the UN reports.

As for food prices, they’re well below recent highs hit in 2010. UN data shows the inflation-adjusted food index — the average of five commodity price indices — is just below where it was in 1965. the food price index peaked around 1975.

Some scientists predict global warming will shrink crop yields as extreme weather events, like droughts, storms and floods become more common. Crop production may improve marginally over higher latitudes, but countries at mid-and-lower latitudes could see food supplies crumble.

The Guardian reported “across Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could decline by as much as 50% by 2020,” summarizing UN findings.

Other experts say global warming, at least in the near-term, will be good for agriculture since increased carbon dioxide will boost plant growth. Current evidence suggests a “global greening” trend from increased CO2 from fossil fuel combustion.

Obama pocketed more than $2.7 million for Tuesday’s speech on how agriculture is contributing to global warming.

Ironically, the former president flew a private jet to Milan where a 14-car convoy and 300-strong police escort awaited him. Obama’s entourage included a helicopter and took up two floors of the more than $9,000 a night Park Hyatt hotel.

Obama’s speech focused on how greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture were on the rise, posing a problem for future development. Obama said “the energy to bring about change” in agriculture will come from ordinary people.

“It’s going to come from parents who are concerned about the impact climate change may have on their child, from business people who say how can we use less energy or waste less resources in making our products,” Obama said. “It’s millions of decisions made individually that have the ability to make changes.”

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Tree panic: Seattle Times Climate Change Article is Dead Wrong

By Cliff Mass, Professor, Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle

The big front page story in the Seattle Times today, both online and in print, is about how climate change has caused the death of a 72-year old pine tree in the University of Washington arboretum.  Unfortunately, the underlying premise of the story is false, representing another unfortunate example of exaggerating the impacts of global warming.

The writer of the story, Linda Mapes, could not have been more explicit:

"The cause of death was climate change: steadily warming and drier summers, that stressed the tree in its position atop a droughty knoll"

So, lets check the data and determine the truth.   My first stop was the nice website of the Office of the Washington State Climatologist (OWSC), where they have a tool for plotting climatological data.  Here is the summer (June-August) precipitation for the Seattle Urban Site, about a mile away from the tree in question.   It indicates an upward trend (increasing precipitation) over the period available (1895-2014), not the decline claimed by the article.

Or lets go to the Western Region Climate Center website and plot the precipitation for the same period, considering the entire Puget Sound lowlands (see below) using the NOAA/NWS climate division data set and for June through September.  Very similar to the Seattle Urban Site.  Not much overall trend, but there is some natural variability, with a minor peak in the 70s and 80s.

It is also important to note that summer precipitation is relatively low in our region--most our precipitation arrives in four months from late fall to midwinter. Looking at annual precipitation (see below), we find the same story:  modest upward trend in precipitation.

So the claim that summers in our region are drying is simple false.  Busted.

So what about temperature?  Let's examine the maximum temperature trend at the same Seattle Urban location for summer (June through August).  There is a slight upward trend since 1895 by .05F per decade. Virtually nothing.

 What about the period in which the poor lived (it was planted in 1948)?  As shown below, temperatures actually COOLED during that period.

You get the message, the claim that warming summer temperatures produced by "climate change" somehow killed this pine is simply without support by the facts.

So the bottom line of all this is that the climate record disproves the Seattle Times claim that warming and drying killed that pine tree in the UW arboretum.  There is no factual evidence that climate change ended the 72-year life of that tree.  The fact that a non-native species was planted in a dry location and was not watered in the summer is a more probably explanation.

Why is an important media outlet not checking its facts before publishing such a front page story? Linda Mapes is an excellent writer, who has done great service describing the natural environment of our region.  Why was she compelled to put a climate change spin on a story about the death of a non-native tree?

Now something personal.  Every time I correct misinformation in the media like this, I get savaged by some "environmentalists" and media.  I am accused of being a denier, a skeptic, an instrument of the oil companies, and stuff I could not repeat in this family friendly blog.  Sometimes it is really hurtful.  Charles Mudede of the Stranger is one of worst of the crowd, calling me "dangerous" and out of my mind (see example below).

A postdoc at the UW testified at the Environment Committee of  the Washington State House saying that I was a contrarian voice.  I spoke to her in person a few days later and asked where my science was wrong--she could not name one thing.  But she told me that my truth telling was "aiding" the deniers.  We agreed to disagree.

My efforts do not go unnoticed at the UW, with my department chairman and leadership in the UW Climate Impacts Group telling me of "concerns" with my complaints about hyped stories on oyster deaths and snowpack.    One UW professor told me that although what I was saying was true, I needed to keep quiet because I was helping "the skeptics."  Probably not good for my UW career.

I believe scientists must provide society with the straight truth, without hype or exaggeration, and that we must correct false or misleading information in the media.   It is not our role to provide inaccurate information so that society will "do the right thing."   History is full of tragic examples of deceiving the public to promote the "right thing"--such as weapons of mass destruction claims and the Iraq War.

Global warming forced by increasing greenhouse gases is an extraordinarily serious challenge to our species that will require both mitigation (reducing emissions) and adaptation (preparing ourselves to deal with the inevitable changes).  Society can only make the proper decisions if they have scientists' best projections of what will happen in the future, including the uncertainties.

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Top NASA Climate Modeler Admits Predictions Are ‘Mathematically Impossible’

Top American Climatologist, an expert in climate modeling, exposes the fallacy that current climate models provide a realistic or reliable prediction of future climate change. In a 1-2-3 step guide to disposing of the global warming debate Dr. Duane Thresher says successful modeling with modern computers is “mathematically impossible.”

Dr Thresher is among the elite of computer climate modelers. He has performed extensive work in climate proxy modeling at the University of Alaska and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany. He earned his PhD in Earth & Environmental Sciences (climate modeling/proxies) from Columbia University and at NASA he worked for Dr. James Hansen, the father of global warming, and Dr. Gavin Schmidt.

Dr Thresher offers his step-by-step guide below:

1. It is fundamentally mathematically impossible for climate models to predict climate.

Chaos Theory’s Butterfly Effect is usually described as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Japan resulting in a hurricane in the Atlantic. This is not artistic hyperbole, this is mathematical reality.

Climate is a quintessential example of this phenomenon.

Unless climate models do the absolutely impossible and account for even a butterfly’s wings flapping, particularly when they are initialized, and then calculate with infinite precision, they can not predict climate.

Climate models are just more complex/chaotic weather models, which have a theoretical maximum predictive ability of just 10 days into the future. Predicting climate decades or even just years into the future is a lie, albeit a useful one for publication and funding.

Qualified climate modelers know all this but almost all won’t publicly admit it out of fear for their careers.

2. Climate proxies are far too inaccurate, unreliable, and sparse to prove anything about past global climate, e.g. that it was colder.

Climate proxies are things like tree rings and ice cores. Given old methods and instruments, even historical climate measurements have to be considered climate proxies.

They are called climate “proxies” because they are substitutes for real climate measurements. Obviously, there are no instruments in these climate proxies so how is it done? The climate measurements have to be inferred from loosely-related characteristics of the proxy, e.g. temperature from tree ring widths. This usually involves primitive modeling or misuse of statistics. It is thus inaccurate and unreliable well beyond what is required for the conclusions drawn.

Climate proxies are very sparse. A single measurement often has to represent thousands of square miles or more, particularly in remote ocean regions, and is usually not representative of that area (e.g. sampled trees are not chosen randomly) or doesn’t even have a knowable bias. A single temperature for the Earth averaged from these measurements is meaningless and absurd.

The reason for using climate proxies is that there is nothing else, which is not a good reason … unless you have to get published or funded.

3. Scientific consensus is not proof of global warming, just publication and funding bias.

Scientific consensus = all published research shows global warming.

Climate model/proxy research that does not show global warming will not get published or funded because of:

Non-publication of negative results (no global warming found)
Fearful self-censorship

Conflict of interest (a need to get results, regardless of validity, that further careers)

Corrupt fanatical unqualified “working” scientists

Censorship by established scientists in a fundamentally-flawed peer review process (peers are all-too-human competitors)

Corruption of climate science overall

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Forget Price Caps: UK Climate Policies Will Add Nearly £600 To Energy Bills

Theresa May’s “cap” on energy saves £1.4 billion a year; this will be dwarfed by the additional £7.4 billion a year due to be added to our energy bills under the Climate Change Act

I would defy anyone unfortunate enough to hear the Today programme at 8.10 last Tuesday morning to have made head or tail of an interview in which our Business Secretary, Greg Clark, droned on for 10 minutes with Justin Webb about the Tories’ promise of a “cap” on energy bills. The essence of this flood of deathly jargon was that, thanks to something called the Competition and Markets Authority, this could save 17 million households a total of £1.4 billion a year.

What Clark and Webb never mentioned, of course, were the figures recently published by the Office for Budget Responsibility, showing the soaring cost of those green subsidies and taxes we all pay for through our energy bills. These are officially projected to more than double by the end of this Parliament, from £7.3 billion last year to £14.7 billion, or from £292 a year for each household to £565.

In other words, even if Theresa May’s “cap” on energy saves £1.4 billion a year, this will be dwarfed by the additional £7.4 billion a year due to be added to our bills under the Climate Change Act.

But if you ask any candidates in this make-believe election what they think of those figures, almost certainly they will never have heard of them. If they come to your door, try it.

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The end of petrol and diesel cars? All vehicles will be electric by 2025, says expert

Greenie false prophecies never stop

No more petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will be sold anywhere in the world within eight years. The entire market for land transport will switch to electrification, leading to a collapse of oil prices and the demise of the petroleum industry as we have known it for a century.

This is the futuristic forecast by Stanford University economist Tony Seba. His report, with the deceptively bland title Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030, has gone viral in green circles and is causing spasms of anxiety in the established industries.

Prof Seba’s premise is that people will stop driving altogether. They will switch en masse to self-drive electric vehicles (EVs) that are ten times cheaper to run than fossil-based cars, with a near-zero marginal cost of fuel and an expected lifespan of 1m miles.

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

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