Response of the CO2 Coalition to calls for Facebook censorship

Statement by CO2 Coalition Chair Patrick Moore and Executive Director Caleb Stewart Rossiter on the Abrams-Steyer letter asking Facebook to shut down the Coalition's page and censor its articles on other pages.

Climate Power 2020 recently published a letter signed by former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, former presidential candidate Tom Steyer, and 13 leaders of groups working to ban the fossil fuels that are the source of over 80 percent of U.S. and world energy. The letter calls on Facebook to shut down the page of the CO2 Coalition of 55 climate scientists and energy economists, and to censor posts of its members studies and articles on other users' pages.

The CO2 Coalition is proud to be the target of this letter, whose signatories represent alarmist organizations that routinely publish scientific and economic misinformation about climate change and energy options. The letter, like Facebook's efforts to censor our posts and articles, is a badge of honor for our atmospheric physicists, climatologists, and statisticians' recent publications about how computerized climate models that project future temperatures work - and don't work.

As E & E News recently wrote in its coverage of Facebook's censoring of our opinions on climate models, these mathematical models "are the foundation used to craft many carbon regulations."

The 2009 EPA Greenhouse Gas Endangerment finding that has led to increased energy prices for businesses and households is entirely based on computerized temperature models that have since proven incorrect.

The CO2 Coalition publishes studies and articles explaining that these models are adjustable projections rather than oracles. When tested after a few years against actual temperatures, the UN model projections have proved to run three times too hot. It is these publications that Facebook has been censoring.

The UN IPCC and U.S. government scientific agencies agree that their data show no statistically significant increases in rates of sea-level rise, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and other dangerous or damaging weather in the 70 years since carbon dioxide emissions became a factor in global temperature. 

The failure of the alarmists' predictions in these areas - and in this letter they simply ignore the UN consensus - has increased the importance of modeled projections of future temperatures in justifying calls to end the use of the fossil fuels.  Hence, these recent attacks on our explanations of why those modeled projections are by their nature too unlikely and uncertain to use as a basis for policies that will make energy around the world far less reliable and far more costly. 

The movement of heat in the atmosphere and oceans is complex, with major contributions from both chaos and poorly-understood, decades-long cycles. As a result, the models require the input of thousands of guesses about mathematical values for key processes. As Oxford physicist Fred Taylor says in his textbook, Elementary Climate Physics, the models are "opaque" and "in their infancy."

As with stock market and COVID models, climate models are "back-fit" with estimates that make them line up with the temperature record to date, and then run forward with the same estimates.  As with stock market and COVID models, betting on climate models' projections is a good way to lose your shirt -- and your economy and your health.

The letter labels our members as "climate deniers." We ask each of the 15 signatories to Climate Power 2020's letter to identify a single denial of a scientific or economic fact in our publications or public statements. Surely some of the answers will involve climate models. Even though model projections are more opinion than fact, more mathematical art than physical science, we look forward to such a debate.

And since we are asking for the signatories' critiques, we will provide one ourselves. One of the letter's signers is the president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. For 15 years the Union of Concerned Scientists has refused to discuss or publicly debate the science of its alarmist narrative and the economics of its subsidy-rich calls for transportation and electricity powered by what it calls "renewable" wind and solar energy. Mining, shipping, refining, construction, transmission, and disposal of the infrastructure of these intermittent sources of power is almost entirely fossil-fueled. and so hardly renewable. Wind and solar are also four times more expensive than natural gas-fired electricity and gasoline transportation.

We invite this group, or any of the others involved in the Abrams-Steyer letter, to join us in debate at one of our upcoming congressional presentations of our research.
 
Email from The CO2 Coalition: info@co2coalition.org





South Pole Warming Claims Contradicted by Actual Temperature Measurements

At the top of Google News results this week for “climate change,” an article in Treehugger is titled, “The South Pole is Warming 3 Times Faster Than the Global Average.” The New York Times, Yahoo News, and many other prominent media outlets published similar articles. However, the claim is based on computer model estimates that have been contradicted by actual temperature measurements. In short, the South Pole warming claim is another alarmist fraud promoting the nefarious Climate Delusion.

The media articles this week are citing a study in Nature Climate Change, whose authors claim Antarctica has warmed three times faster than the global average over the past three decades. The authors claim the asserted warming is likely partly due to human caused global warming.

The article in Treehugger is a perfect example of the media’s fawning, fraudulent coverage of the report.

Using weather data run through computer model simulations, the researchers claim Antartica warmed by 1.8 degrees Celsius between 1989 and 2018, with large variations across the continent.

“In the early decades after 1957, when measurements were first recorded at the South Pole, average temperatures remained steady or declined. Near the end of the 20th century, temperatures began to rise,” writes the author of the Treehugger piece. This is a lie. The actual data show just the opposite temperature trends occurred. In Antarctica, average temperatures as recorded at the weather locations across the continent rose fairly steadily from the 1950s through the late 1990s and then began to fall off. Indeed, recorded temperatures have significantly cooled since 1998. So, what the data show is for 20 of the 30 years the Nature study computer simulations show warming, actual temperature readings show either declining or steady temperatures across Antarctica.

Beyond the ground-based measurements, global satellite data recorded from 1979 to 2019 show no warming or cooling trend at all for the South Pole.

Interestingly, the explosive growth of permanent research stations on Antarctica may be a warming influence on the continent. Of the more than 70 permanent research stations on Antarctica and 8 stations on the surrounding islands, where most weather and temperature data for the continent are recorded, only two were established before the 1940s. This means the vast majority of permanent Antarctic stations were established from the 1940’s through the 1980s, as recorded temperatures were rising. During the same time period, outside of Antarctica, the rest of the globe experienced a modest cooling from the 1950s through the early 1980s, sparking speculation by some scientists, and warnings in front page stories in the mainstream media, the earth could be entering an overdue ice age.

One might wonder if Antarctica’s anomalous recorded surface temperature rise during this period could, at least in part, be a result of the heat island effect of the permanent human habitations being established where none previously existed.

In a Climate Realism post from April, James Taylor goes into some detail describing the cooling temperatures and ongoing ice and snow accumulation measured on Antarctica, even as the Nature Climate Change study claims, based on model simulations, Antarctica was warming three times faster than the globe. Quite simply, the Nature study’s findings are undermined by the actual data, and thus the study’s claims are provably wrong.

The authors of the Nature Climate Change piece don’t stop there, however. They go well beyond computer model temperature projections to pure speculation. Although acknowledging in their report that natural factors including large-scale, multi-year and multi-decadal shifts in wind and ocean currents on and around Antarctica are the dominant factors driving climate there, they then go on to assert, without presenting any evidence, “atmospheric internal variability can induce extreme regional climate change over the Antarctic interior, which has masked any anthropogenic warming signal there during the twenty-first century.” (emphasis mine)

As reported by Treehugger, Kyle Clem, postdoctoral research fellow in Climate Science at the University of Wellington and lead author of the study, repeated this conjecture in an interview with the Guardian, saying, “The temperature variability at the South Pole is so extreme it currently masks human-caused effects.” For Clem, et al, evidently, when you can’t find the anthropogenic climate change disaster signal you believe should be evident, it is sound scientific practice to simply assert nature is temporarily hiding it!

The take away is, neither the ground-based nor satellite measurements of temperatures in Antarctica show it has warmed, much less warmed three times faster than the planet as a whole. Even if Antarctica was warming, however, with the average temperatures ranging from -60 degrees C (-76 F) during winter to -20 C (-4 F) in summer, no meltdown would in the offing.

SOURCE 





Dangers Of Nuclear Energy ‘Much Less Than Previously Thought’

An important new paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals that low-level nuclear radiation might be much less dangerous than previously thought.

According to authors, Professor Edward Calabrese and Dr Mikko Paunio, recent reviews of seminal research conducted in the decades after the Second World War has uncovered serious flaws in the “linear no-threshold” assumption – the idea that nuclear radiation is dangerous even at very low exposures.

According to Professor Calabrese, Professor of Toxicology at the University of Massachusetts, these claims are now known to be based on scientific studies that were deceptive, flawed, or even fraudulent: 

“The key work that was done in the US after the war was fatally flawed. But influential scientists managed to suppress the evidence and ensure that the linear no-threshold assumption survived.”

And Professor Calabrese’s position is confirmed by a review of recent findings from Japan, which have been reviewed by Dr Paunio, a former chairman of the Finnish Radiological Protection Board. According to Dr Paunio, key support for the linear no-threshold assumption came from a major study that followed the life histories of the hibakusha – the survivors  of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs.

Their error was extraordinary”, says Dr Paunio. “They failed to account for the effects of secondary radiation exposures and fallout. This means that the rather low numbers of cancers observed in the hibakusha in the decades after the war were actually caused by quite high exposures to radiation.”

The implication of these reviews is that nuclear radiation seems to be relatively harmless at low levels. If correct, it means that the nuclear energy industry is being grossly over-regulated for no reason at all.

According to GWPF director Benny Peiser, there is now a need for government to act.

“Over the weekend, it was reported that the government might finally kick the small modular nuclear programme into action. If so, then it’s a welcome development, but there remains a real risk that the programme will be sunk by the environmental bureaucracy.

If the extremely costly regulatory burden is really as pointless as these new findings suggest, there is an important opportunity for the country. It’s time for a major review of the new radiation science”.

SOURCE 





Minnesota Sues Chemical, Energy Companies, Claiming Climate Change Fraud

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued ExxonMobil Corp., Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute, claiming they deceived consumers for decades about the causes and consequences of supposed human-caused climate change.

Ellison’s lawsuit, filed June 24 in Ramsey County District Court, argues the defendants have violated multiple Minnesota consumer protection laws dealing with deceptive trade practices, false advertising, and fraud.

The lawsuit demands the defendant companies compensate Minnesotans for the harm Ellison alleges they have suffered from the climate deception, and that the companies be forced to fund a public education campaign presenting the state’s view of climate change.

Ellison suggested the total payout for the requested restitution and educational campaign could be similar to the $7 billion payout the tobacco industry agreed to in 1998.

“The defendants deceived, lied, and misrepresented the effects of their product to the public,” Ellison said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit. “For 30 years, [they] made misleading statements about climate change.”

Ellison says the companies being sued also mislead consumers through their contributions to think tanks whose research has raised questions concerning the claim human energy use is causing a climate crisis.

The lawsuit alleges, for instance, “Koch-controlled foundations gave more than $127 million to groups that obfuscated climate science,” between 1997 and 2017.

Similar Lawsuits Rejected

Ellison’s lawsuit is one of a number of lawsuits aimed at energy companies for climate-change effects. At least 15 other states, including Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island, and cities such as Oakland and San Francisco, have filed similar lawsuits. In the cases having held hearings so far, the courts have tossed the lawsuits as being unfounded as a matter of law and questionable as a matter of policy.

New York state Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager dismissed a lawsuit brought by state Attorney General Letitia James against ExxonMobil in December 2019. James’ office argued Exxon defrauded investors of $1.6 billion by failing to disclose what it knew about the costs of climate change, thus lying to investors about the company’s business prospects in light of the possible costs of government regulations to fight climate change.

“The office of the Attorney General failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that ExxonMobil made any material misstatements or omissions about its practices and procedures that misled any reasonable investor,” Ostrager wrote in his decision. “The office of the Attorney General produced no testimony from any investor who claimed to have been misled by any disclosure.”

Ostrager dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought again based on these facts in the state of New York.

SOURCE 

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