UN Report Shows Politics and Climate Science Are a Deadly Mix

The influential and widely discussed 2018 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes generally that the Earth is warming; that any increased warming will raise sea levels, harm coral reefs, and reduce crop production; that the warming is primarily man-made, the result of increasing amounts of trapped greenhouse gases, (especially carbon dioxide) in the upper atmosphere; and that it makes scientific and economic sense to reduce CO2 emissions now with petroleum-based energy taxes and regulations before more environmental damage is done.

There is a broad consensus among climatologists that global warming is fact and requires a strong political response in order to prevent weather and economic-related calamities from occurring within the next 10 or 20 years. However, there is also a strong minority position among some scientists and economists that is both skeptical of prevailing climate change science and also of the necessity for any governmental response to the alleged environmental dangers.

The scientific evidence on warming is reasonably clear: There has been a slightly more than 1 degree Celsius increase in atmospheric temperature since 1880 up to the present. Over those many decades, there have been periods of warming; periods of cooling; periods where no major changes have occurred; and, more recently, a relatively sustained period of warming. Most climate scientists expect the current warming trend to continue (absent any CO2 reductions) into the foreseeable future with substantial weather related problems (costs) if the warming advances another half degree Celsius or more.

There are several problems with this scenario. The first is that if the current warming trend moderates somewhat, stops all together, or reverts to a period of modest cooling, then few of the calamitous events predicted will occur within the IPCC benchmark 2030-2040 time-frame. The second is that it is still unclear whether warming actually generates more severe weather patterns as is frequently assumed. For example, the incidence of severe tornado activity (F3+) in the U.S. trends downward over the last 5 decades and 2018—perhaps the warmest year on record—marked a 13 year low.

Finally, any forecast of anything (GNP, divorce rates, cell phone sales) 10 to 20 years out has almost zero reliability and almost no chance of being correct. There are simply too many known variables that could change and skew the results; in addition, there are an unknown number of new variables that could arise that would work to radically alter outcomes predicted by climate models. Indeed, the spotty history of previous climate modeling should throw caution to the wind concerning all current predictions.

A far more serious problem, however, is that it is not entirely certain that man-made CO2 emissions are, if fact, driving temperature change in the first place. Carbon dioxide is a relatively minor greenhouse gas and the statistical association of specific levels of carbon emissions with specific temperature change is not impressive. And while CO2 emissions have steadily increased for many decades (much of it from expanding industrial activity in India and China) the Earth’s temperature, though trending upward, has displayed a marked variability over time. This suggests that there may be other factors aside from CO2 that are actually driving temperature.

One of the more likely candidates that would explain the variability of temperature over time, not unexpectedly, is the variability associated with solar activity. Indeed, the correlation of solar activity (surface temperature changes, sun spot cycles) with temperature variability may be far more robust than any CO2/temperature association. Are increasing CO2 levels irrelevant? Probably not entirely, but it is yet to be established beyond doubt that CO2 levels are the primary culprit in any warming scenario.

Yet if CO2 levels are not the primary driver of temperature change, then the entire economic and political case for carbon taxes and other regulations on emissions is severely weakened. Why should we increase the cost and price of energy generated from oil and natural gas if reducing emissions would produce no discernible environmental benefit? After all, there is one thing in this debate that is absolutely certain: Raising energy prices would harm consumers of energy. It would lower the standard of living of everyone and hurt low income households the worst. Thus, even though some advocates of energy regulation would frame their case in lofty moral terms, there is simply nothing inherently moral about inflicting costs on society without any predictable social payoff.

Some of us are old enough to remember the media scare concerning global cooling in the early 1970s. We were all going to freeze in the dark unless the government did something post haste. That concern looks relatively silly today. Perhaps the same thing will be true about the current climate change hysteria.

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New Book Trashes Greenhouse Gas Fake Science

As interest in a new book mounting a devastating attack on junk climate science gains traction we publish excerpts to show what the fuss is all about.

Canadian space scientist, Joseph E Postma’s new book ‘In the Cold Light of Day: Flat Earth in Modern Physics and a Numerical Proof for God: A Climate Alarm’ is a welcome addition to the growing body of carefully-researched work dismantling the cornerstone of man-made global warming.

Postma is well known for not pulling his punches in exposing the guilty in the biggest scientific fraud of all time. Below are a some excerpts to whet the appetite:

Introduction: This is a book which entirely debunks the pseudoscience of climate alarmism, and also disrupts the foundations of the entire field of climate science, and even science in general, itself.  That climate alarmism is pseudoscience will be entirely proven within this book.  Note that I am not a climate denier: I do not deny that the climate exists, and I do not deny that it changes.  The term “climate denier” is just one of those loaded idiotic sophistical phrases that means exactly nothing, which is in fact the same foundation that the so-called science of climate alarmism rests upon.  There is no such thing or such a person who denies the climate or denies climate change, and the joke here is that there are people who believe that there are other people who deny that the climate exists and deny climate change.

No one denies climate change, or the existence of the climate.  I do deny alarming climate change based on climate science’s concept of a greenhouse effect, because the latter can be quite easily proven not to exist.  I also deny that the climate is currently changing in an alarming way, given that geological history demonstrates that current changes in the climate are equivalent to nominal natural variations of the past.  The only thing which is remarkably changing is the atmospheric concentration of gaseous carbon dioxide, and with no climate alarm greenhouse effect then this change will have none of the claimed alarming effects upon the temperature of the atmosphere of the planet Earth.  The only real effect that an increased carbon dioxide concentration will have is that plant growth is enhanced, given that carbon dioxide is an atmospheric fertilizer of sorts.  The entire situation of human carbon dioxide emission from combustion of hydrocarbon fuels is a win-win for humanity and for the planet: man gets cheap and abundant energy, and life gets the carbon dioxide it is made out of back into the atmosphere where the carbon dioxide can be turned back into more life once again through photosynthesis.  If you’re pro-life, you should be pro-carbon dioxide.

The greatest travesty of climate alarmism based on its so-called greenhouse effect and so-called greenhouse gases is that the truly important questions in legitimate climate science aren’t being researched and answered.  For example, we still don’t seem to really know why the current interglacial period has lasted so much longer than the previous ones.  And it is still not clearly understood as to why the Earth was in a “little ice age” between 1300AD and 1850AD, why there was a warmer medieval period before that, and why the Earth came out of the little ice after 1850AD, etc.  In fact, climate alarm science has made researching those legitimate questions taboo because they can only be answered by natural variations which have as large as or larger of an effect on the climate than so-called modern anthropogenic changes via the climate alarmist greenhouse effect, and that destroys the alarmist narrative that modern climate variation is not within the bounds of expected natural variation, which it is.  It is almost as if someone doesn’t want research being done into the most important climate phenomena relevant to modern man, i.e., onset of ice ages, etc.  We could have another ice-age begin, and all the historical data shows that one should have started by now, and we would have no idea why!  The most difficult part of what you’re about to read is that it is unbelievable.  Once you see what has happened, you won’t believe it to be possible that science has gotten itself into this position.

For a treatment such as this it is impossible to not to have to refer to thermodynamics and its mathematics in order to understand how nature works.  Reality is governed by the physical principles and laws of physics which we can only understand and quantify through mathematics.  I will have a lot to say about mathematics and its relevance and meaning in science, and we will have to use some mathematics too.  For some sections, if you truly wish to follow the math along, it might be helpful for you to write down the equations on scrap paper as you read so that you can refer back to them given that sometimes a few pages may transpire between one equation and the next and it is often necessary to reference the previous equations.  If math isn’t your thing, then just “read around” the math as I will do my best to explain what is going on.

About the subtitle of the book:  Firstly, this book is nothing to do with supporting the ridiculous flat Earth meme which can be found around internet discussion forums these days. That part of the subtitle indicates that the flat Earth meme has actually been clandestinely if not accidentally inserted into modern physics to the extent that flat Earth theory is actually literally taught to science students by science professors in professional academic universities and their science departments.  Yes, seriously.

The second part of the subtitle about a mathematical proof for “God” is meant in the proper philosophical Idealist sense, and I leave the development of concepts in this book to get you there.  I could have written “universal noumenal mind” but no one would understand what that meant, and God is a somewhat near-enough substitute if you’re careful about what you mean by that, but it has all of the essential features a thinking person would expect in the aspects of it being omnipresent and omnipotent, immanent and transcendent, etc.  ……

The tone of the book is at times hostile and mocking, but…well…sorry…once you see what is going on and what has happened, if you understand it, you should feel a lot more than that, or perhaps you’ll in fact only feel that it confirms just how bad things have gotten in supposed intellectual discourse.

I would like to thank the group of scientists known as “The Slayers” and the subsequent group Principia Scientific International (PSI) for the moral support over all these years of our climate alarm skepticism.  There is not a single thing which is or has been enjoyable about this process and this position we have taken, and we have only had each other for consolation.  We have survived because our position is unassailable, because there is no argument to prove that the Earth is flat….

You see, I can’t just point out to science colleagues that climate alarm is based in flat Earth theory, given its very own diagrams for its very own greenhouse effect upon which it is based.  They don’t care.  They literally don’t care.  They value climate alarm and the culture of anti-human guilt more than they do what you think should be actual real science.  And so instead I need to figure out how to write a scientific paper explaining with scientific and mathematical reasons that the Earth is not a flat plane, and that using a flat plane to do science is not real science let alone good, fair, or even approximate science…..

How easy should it be for science to reject flat Earth theory?  It should be the easiest thing in the world.  In fact it is the most difficult thing for science to do once flat Earth theory has inveigled its way in to becoming part of the modern science pedagogy.  Science has no method for self-correction other than for generations to die…but in this case the generation that dies is the one who once understood that the Earth isn’t flat, and the new generation is the one which doesn’t care.  It’s not that the new generation consciously believes that the Earth is flat…no, it is that the new generation doesn’t care about using flat Earth physics and they will defend the right of other scientists to do so because they cannot comprehend what could be wrong in doing so.

The sensation of education and of being educated has become identical to that of cognitive dissonance, and the subconscious cognitive dissonance of utilizing flat Earth theory on the one hand while ridiculing it on the other must feel so perfectly highly educated.  How can science have arrived at any other result when it has been teaching students to just “shut up and calculate” instead of come up with a good reason for and understanding of the very math that they’re learning, and when it believes in cats which can be alive and dead at the same time?  The ridiculous alive-dead cat idea and the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics itself from which it came is the quintessence of cognitive dissonance, and this sort of thinking (i.e., non-thinking or ceased thinking or thinking with a wrench in the gears) has become standard pedagogy in professional academic science.  And so that is to say, to make it clear, that cognitive dissonance has become the standard for education in physics and academic science.  If you are a physicist, you can only feel like you are educated if you carry around with you the mental state of constant cognitive dissonance.  From Wikipedia:  “In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.” ....

Scientists think that climate alarm is the most important thing that science and modern science has done for humanity, and none of them care that it is based in flat Earth theory and actually has no true scientific or logical or empirical foundations whatsoever.  Scientists are strangely emotionally wedded to flat Earth climate alarm and all of its human-hating self-hatred overtones…..

We now live at a historical height of professionally instituted stupidity essentially mandated by law, worse than it has ever been because this state is now being claimed as highest reason by those who pass as intellectuals.

The absurdity of things today is that the intellectuals, the academics and the doctors of philosophy and of science profess themselves to be the epitome of reason while adopting the climatological consequences of flat Earth theory as their most important contribution to humanity in the modern age!  And they do this because for them it feels like the right thing to do, for them it feels like the educated thing to do, because for them the mental discomfort of their cognitive dissonance has become synonymous by their education with right opinion.

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Green Raw Deal: Carbon emissions continue to grow even as global economy, population and labor force continue to slow

Global carbon emissions continue to grow even as the global economy, population and labor force continue to slow down, showing that “green” policies designed to curb economic and population growth are having almost no impact on achieving the stated goal of reducing carbon emissions.

In 2018, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose to 408.52 parts per million (ppm), according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

In the meantime, the global economy has continued to slow down, according to data compiled by the World Bank, averaging 4.1 percent growth a year from 1961 to 1991, but then dropping to 2.8 percent annual growth for 1992 to 2017.

Similarly, the growth of the global labor force — those working or looking for work — has slowed, averaging 1.7 percent from 1992 to 2005, and then just 1.1 percent from 2006 to 2018.

So, too, has the overall growth the world’s population slowed down, once averaging 1.86 percent annual growth from 1961 to 1991, before slowing down to 1.3 percent average annual growth from 1992 to 2017.

It has been more than 20 years since the Kyoto Protocol was signed, and almost three years since the Paris climate accords were implemented. But other than commitments from partner countries to reduce carbon emissions, not much has been accomplished on that front. Carbon emissions are still accelerating.

Another unknown is what technologies might be developed that could supplant carbon-emitting fuels if economic growth was occurring more rapidly. What if regulations in advanced economies designed to reduce carbon emissions were inhibiting the very growth that might produce more efficient energy sources?

In the meantime, those very regulations tend to create cost advantages for developing countries like China, fueling rapid industrialization there, and in turn accelerating carbon emissions.

All of which calls into question what, if anything, the policies are actually achieving. Besides harming the economy and redistributing global wealth to developing countries, that is.

In other words, the policies are not merely counterproductive, they are practically futile as they fuel economic growth elsewhere. And surely that futility is dawning on policymakers who still favor reducing carbon emissions, leading to calls for a “Green New Deal.”

But what is that? Vox.com’s David Roberts defines the new deal as “a massive program of investments in clean-energy jobs and infrastructure, meant to transform not just the energy sector, but the entire economy. It is meant both to decarbonize the economy and to make it fairer and more just.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change outlined in its most recent report that “Limiting the risks from global warming of 1.5°C in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication implies system transitions that can be enabled by an increase of adaptation and mitigation investments, policy instruments, the acceleration of technological innovation and behaviour changes…”

The Panel also calls for “[s]trengthening the capacities for climate action of national and sub-national authorities…” in order to avert what it views as catastrophic global warming, per its report.

So, economies will continue to be transformed via “system transitions” to green energy that will be directed by national authorities with increased powers to implement the green political program.

If it sounds somewhat vague that’s probably the point. In short, that means fewer choices, fewer opportunities and more dictates coming from on high until governments hit the numbers they’re hoping for on carbon emissions, if ever. Vox.com’s Roberts notes that green programs hit roadblocks when conservatives won elections in the UK in 2009 and Republicans began to take back Congress in 2010 from total Democratic control.

So, the obstacles to the “Green New Deal” are: 1) continued economic growth, even if it is slowing, particularly in developing economies, but also everywhere else; 2) a growing population with greater energy needs, even if its growth is continuing to slow; and 3) party politics that prevent these unpopular policies from being fully implemented.

Meaning those touting pushes to reduce carbon emissions are being frustrated not only by the slowness by which democracies make decisions, but also by economic and demographic realities.

Since the industrial revolution, the world’s population has exploded as mechanization has led to abundance in agriculture, transportation and construction. All of which was fueled by the dramatic increased use of carbon-emitting fuels. It stands to reason, that to reduce the incidence of carbon emissions, one way would be to reduce the number of carbon emitters.

Hopefully the true believers have not come to that realization yet.

But to be sure, the policy is failing, as evidenced by the acceleration of carbon emissions growth, even as advanced economies take it upon themselves to slow down their growth and attempt to regulate coal and oil out of usage. Instead, the cost advantages generated are fueling growth elsewhere via globalization, leading to more carbon emissions.

On the whole, political ideologies do not tolerate obstacles for very long. Eventually, this will lead to a call for action. The obstacles must be removed. And make no mistake. Those pushing for the “Green New Deal” are calling for a revolution. The question is just how much of our freedoms are in the crosshairs?

SOURCE





Trump chooses oil man to head the Interior Department

LOL

President Trump on Monday announced he would nominate David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist and current deputy chief of the Interior Department, to succeed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who resigned amid allegations of ethical missteps.

In a message on Twitter, Trump wrote, “David has done a fantastic job from the day he arrived, and we look forward to having his nomination officially confirmed!”

While Zinke had been the public face of some of the largest rollbacks of public-land protections in the nation’s history, Bernhardt was the one quietly pulling the levers to carry them out, opening millions of acres of public land and water to oil, gas and coal companies. He is described by allies and opponents alike as having played a crucial role in advancing what Trump has described as an “energy dominance” agenda for the country.

“Bernhardt has really been running the show, directing the policy shop in a very strong way,” said Mark Squillace, an expert on environmental law at University of Colorado Law School. Echoing a frequent critique of Bernhardt, Squillace emphasized that the former energy lobbyist and lawyer, if confirmed by the Senate, would have broad authority to shape rules that affect his former clients.

Trump has pushed the Interior Department to strip away regulations on the oil industry and open new lands and waters to drilling.

After Trump ordered Zinke to open almost the entire U.S. coastline to offshore drilling, Bernhardt did the heavy lifting of developing the plan, which Zinke called “a new path for energy dominance in America.” And when the president told the department to weaken safety regulations on offshore drilling equipment, the agency’s proposal said its plan “would fortify the administration’s objective of facilitating energy dominance” by encouraging domestic oil and gas production.

As Bernhardt prepares to take the helm, he is well aware that he will face accusations of conflicts of interest. The issue came up repeatedly in his 2017 Senate confirmation hearing for the deputy job.

Bernhardt was narrowly confirmed to his current post by a vote of 53-43, with most Democrats voting against him. He is likely to face further scrutiny in his next confirmation hearings. If enough Democrats opposed his nomination, they could block a procedural motion requiring 60 votes to bring his confirmation to the Senate floor.

Bernhardt, who was also a top interior official in the George W. Bush administration, went on to work for some of the country’s largest oil and gas companies. As a partner in the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, he lobbied for the oil companies Cobalt International Energy and Samson Resources. His legal clients have included the Independent Petroleum Association of America and Halliburton Energy Services, the oil- and gas-extraction firm once led by Dick Cheney, the former vice president.

In August 2017, Bernhardt signed an ethics letter saying he would recuse himself from policy decisions that might stand to benefit former clients specifically.

If confirmed, Bernhardt will lead a sprawling department that oversees the nation’s nearly 500 million acres of public land, including vast national monuments and protected wilderness areas. Already, in little more than a year as the department’s deputy, he has overseen numerous polices aimed at opening public lands and waters to mining, drilling, farming and other development.

Environmentalists see him as a threat. “David Bernhardt is the most dangerous man in America for endangered species and public lands,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group, adding that he “has been dismantling basic protections for lands that belong to all of us and the vulnerable species, like the sage grouse, that depend on them.”

This year, Bernhardt oversaw the revision of a program to protect tens of millions of acres of habitat of the imperiled sage grouse, a puffy-chested, chickenlike bird that roams over 10 oil-rich Western states. His proposal to change that plan, made public in December, would strip protections from about 9 million acres of the sage grouse habitat, a move that would open more land to oil and gas drilling than any other single policy action by the Trump administration.

Bernhardt has also helped shepherd policies such as loosening the standards of the Endangered Species Act, speeding the path to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to new oil and gas drilling, and reducing the boundaries of national monuments to open the land to mining and drilling.

Among the first major decisions awaiting Bernhardt will be how to handle the administration’s plan to open the nation’s coastlines to offshore drilling — one of the issues for which Zinke is under investigation. After the Trump administration in early 2018 announced it would allow new offshore oil and gas drilling in nearly all U.S. coastal waters, Zinke made a surprise announcement a few days later on Twitter that he would exempt Florida from that plan.

The statement, which was accompanied by a photograph of Zinke and Rick Scott, the former Florida governor who was then running for a Senate seat, was seen as politically motivated. A federal investigation is continuing into whether it violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from using their offices to influence elections.

Governors of other coastal states have said that they, too, would like to be exempt from the drilling, and that if the plan to exempt Florida but not other states goes forward, they will sue the department.

Bernhardt will now decide whether to enact Zinke’s pledge to Scott, who went on to win his Senate campaign.

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Green policies are wrecking Australia

Viv Forbes, writing below, is a farmer and a geologist.  He seems a bit weak on economics however.  Most of what he says below is well said but he should have been more circumspect about the prospect of recycling abundant coastal water into the dry interior.  It is a proposal that seems commonsense and so has been rumbling on for decades but all the studies tell us it would be a big boondoggle.

The cost of doing it would be large and the benefit small.  It would allow the growing of more crops and the raising of more cattle but most primary products have long been in worldwide glut.  As a farmer Viv should know that. Only the most efficient producers can make a buck selling primary products --- and even efficient farmers can go broke if they are not close to their markets. Transport is a large component of costs.

It was all shown unambiguously in the Ord experiment. They could grow anything there and did but they could not sell it. The Ord was reasonably close to the huge markets of Asia but Asians wanted to grow their own rice and other food, thank you very much. And they're pretty good at growing their own food. Because of its near equatorial position, nearby Java grows two crops of rice every year. All that the Ord grows now for export is sandalwood -- no food

There is an existing market for products from inland Australia -- when drought allows -- but increasing the volume produced would undoubtedly decrease prices, which would be pretty self-defeating  and could send ALL the inland farmers broke.  A good use of taxpayer funds?  Australia certainly needs more dams for both flood control and water supply -- but only to serve nearby big cities

There is even a lot of scope for barrages.  They are simple and cheap and should not arouse much in the way of Greenie objections.  The barrage on the Fitzroy does a good job of providing the city of Rockhamption with potable water.  A barrage on the Brisbane river just upstream of the port could be very useful.

It would be a better alternative to Brisbane's absurd and costly desalination plant.  From a Greenie viewpoint a desalination plant is part of the problem.  It uses heaps of electricity every time it is switched on.  A barrage just sits there


Water conservation peaked in Australia in 1972 – our last big dam was Wivenhoe in Queensland, built 35 years ago.

Elsewhere in Australia, water conservation virtually stopped when Don Dunstan halted the building of Chowilla Dam on the Murray in 1970 and Bob Brown's Greens halted the Franklin Dam in 1983 (and almost every other dam proposal since then).

The Darling River water management disaster shows that we now risk desperate water shortages because our population and water needs have more than doubled, and much of our stored water has been sold off or released to "the environment."

However, we regularly see floods of water being shed by the Great Dividing Range, most of it ending up in the Pacific Ocean, while to the west of that watershed there is severe drought.

Our ancestors had the prudence and the will to build great assets like the Tasmanian and Snowy hydro schemes, Lake Argyle, Fairbairn Dam, and the Perth to Kalgoorlie water pipeline.  What are we building for our children?

Politicians can pass laws or find money for games, stadiums, climate jamborees, study tours, gifts to foreigners, green energy toys, and useless giant batteries.  Canberra alone spends a billion dollars every day.

Our engineers know how to lay large pipelines over hundreds of miles to export natural gas and bore road and rail tunnels through mountains and under cities and harbors.

But we cannot find the funds or the courage to build a couple of dams on the rainy side of the Great Divide somewhere between the Ross River at Townsville and the Clarence River at Grafton and some pumps, tunnels and pipes to use and release it into the thirsty Darling River basin.

Someone is always cursing either droughts or floods.

We need to curse less and dam more.

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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   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

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