NY Times Disparages the Scientific Method While Attacking NOAA Scientists

The New York Times (NYT) published an October 27 article accusing President Trump of fighting “against climate science,” while the NYT itself misrepresents climate science.

In the article titled, “As Election Nears, Trump Makes a Final Push Against Climate Science,” the NYT implies the Trump administration is fighting against climate science by appointing research meteorologist Ryan Maue, Ph.D., as chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and appointing David Legates, Ph.D., former state climatologist for Delaware, as deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction at NOAA. Maue’s appointment is problematic according to the NYT because he “has criticized climate scientists for what he has called unnecessarily dire predictions.”

A google scholar search of Maue’s publications shows he is well qualified for the position of NOAA chief scientist. Maue has authored or co-authored more than 30 peer-reviewed articles discussing climate change. Simultaneously, Maue served as a meteorologist at WeatherBELL Analytics, a widely used weather forecasting service. Much of Maue’s research presents real-world data to demonstrate that human-induced climate change is not causing more powerful and more frequent hurricanes.

A Google Scholar search of Legates’ name shows he has authored or co-authored 140 peer-reviewed climate-change-related articles. The topics of Legates’ papers range from the earth’s climate sensitivity as shown by actual measurements, the validity of climate models, drought and flood patterns across the United States, and the impact of warming on polar bear populations. Once again, the objective record shows Legates is well qualified to direct and inform government research on climate related matters.

The NYT is not the first mainstream media outlet to criticize the Maue and Legates appointments. For example, Climate Realism refuted the ad-hominem charges leveled against Legates by National Public Radio shortly after his appointment to NOAA. The author of that Climate Realism article wrote, “The very definition of science, in its most-basic sense from The Enlightenment to 2020, is ‘questioning the basic tenets’ of current assumptions. [Legates has] examined the data for many, many years and has not seen persuasive evidence that humans are the chief drivers of climate change.”

NOAA is charged with assembling the National Climate Assessment every four years. The report includes input from 13 federal agencies and outside scientists, supposedly to present objective knowledge concerning the causes and consequences of climate change. Rather than being objective, NOAA’s 2018 report referenced the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) worst-case scenario to claim climate change poses an imminent and dire threat to the United States. The IPCC itself has disavowed its worst-case scenario, admitting it has only a three-percent chance of becoming a reality.

NOAA’s Climate Assessment ignored hundreds of unalarming peer-reviewed articles and books published by dozens of prominent researchers including, for example, physicists Will Happer, Ph.D., Richard Lindzen, Ph.D., Willie Soon, Ph.D., and atmospheric scientists, John Christy, Ph.D., Pat Michaels, Ph.D., and Roy Spencer, Ph.D. These scientists, and many others, have published research showing that the human impact on global temperatures is and will be, at most, minimal. According to these scholars, natural factors, such as, cloud formation, solar activity, and large-scale ocean circulation patterns are the dominant drivers of climate shifts. Other studies have concluded, based on measurable data, that the modest climate change the Earth has so far experienced has been beneficial. Research also indicates a continued modest increase in temperatures is highly unlikely to result in extreme weather changes.

NOAA has also previously ignored findings of the 14 peer-reviewed volumes produced by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. In particular, NIPCC’s Climate Change Reconsidered series presents a comprehensive literature review of the peer-reviewed evidence indicating human influence on climate is minimal and that present climate change is not catastrophic. NIPCC’s reports are written and/or reviewed by hundreds of researchers, yet the past political leadership of NOAA has ignored them and the thousands of peer-reviewed papers they reference.

The appointments of Maue and Legates to NOAA present an opportunity to reinforce the proper use of the scientific method in government research. The Scientific Method demands that researchers question self-proclaimed consensus science. In the field of climate research, this means carefully considering the broad range of evidence concerning the causes and consequences of climate change when federal reports are developed. This would represent a shift from NOAA’s previous practice, in which it referenced a narrow body of research to support the politically predetermined conclusion that dangerous human-caused climate change is happening.

It is not surprising that the NYT dismisses the Trump administration’s attempts to defend the Scientific Method from doctrinaire views of climate change. Trump’s previous efforts to bring transparency to scientific research and to prevent corruption in the funding process for scientific research have been similarly critiqued by climate alarmists. Left-leaning mainstream media outlets, academics who’ve learned to manipulate the current closed system, and political partisans who use the cloak of “following the science” to promote their personal political agendas reject transparency and support self-dealing.

As the peer-reviewed research by Legates, Maue and hundreds of other scientists makes clear, there is an active scientific debate concerning the causes, extent, and consequences of climate change. Trump’s appointments of Legates and Maue may bring justified and necessary balance to federal reports on the state of climate science.

https://climaterealism.com/2020/10/ny-times-disparages-the-scientific-method-while-attacking-noaa-scientists/

Was September 2020 The Warmest One On Record?

Recently there were many headlines proclaiming that this September was the warmest on record. It was from a report uncritically relayed by many.

The reasoning behind the conclusion is worth taking a little time to digest as it demonstrates that temperature statistics are often open to interpretation.

Consider the GISS Loti database on which September has a temperature anomaly of 100 (divide by 100 to get changes in degrees C.)

In its 140-year range of monthly data, GISS Loti has only 26 months with an anomaly of 100 or greater of which, with the exception of January 2007, all occur within the past five years.

The most any month has above 100 is four. Some months, June, July have none. May, August, and September have one (102, 102, and 100 respectively). The high-temperature anomaly values occur in the southern hemisphere summer months and show the warming of the South Pacific.

In GISS Loti, the past two Octobers have had anomalies of 102, which to me suggests that the September 2020 data is probably a boundary effect. Nature knows nothing of the ancient decision to have 12 months in a year!

September 2020 is very warm certainly, but if you use it as has been done to infer a global effect then you are using the data to mislead.

In September, Europe, northern Russia, and Siberia certainly had temperatures above the 10-year average. However, near the equator, the temperatures were near or below this average, and it was the same for the southern hemisphere.

The NOAA analysis of this September indicates that overall about 8.49% of the world’s land and ocean surfaces experienced a record September temperature – the second-highest percentage behind 2015.

However, taking the temperature values into account, they say that September globally was the warmest September on record.

This is not a definitive statement if you consider the errors. NOAA says that September 2020 surpassed September 2015 and 2016 by 0.02°C, which is insignificant given the errors are plus or minus about 0.1°C.

Why is it that an organization like NOAA, with its global role concerning climate change, continues to treat numbers in a way that would fail a physics 101 class?

Atmospheric data also shows September to not be among the warmest though again we have the common presentation of data with no errors.

There is another problem with NOAA and numbers. Looking at their 2020 year-to-date temperatures (again no error bars) are shown above. It can be seen that September is the second warmest September on record. Looking at this graph, I will not make any bets as to 2020 being the warmest year ever.

Looking at global maps shows that warming is confined to specific regions, especially northern Siberia. Consider this map of September temperature changes of the past 10 years. It shows that September temperature changes are not global but regional.

https://climatechangedispatch.com/was-september-2020-the-warmest-one-on-record/

Federal Agency Gives Additional Support to Wind and Solar Power

A new proposal offered by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gives additional federal support to wind and solar power developers. FERC is the agency that regulates the interstate transmission, wholesale sale, and interstate pipeline transportation of electricity, oil, and natural gas.

FERC’s proposed rule encourages federal power entities, regional transmission organizations and independent system operators, and state public utility commissions to set a price on carbon dioxide emissions as a way to accelerate the development electric power sources that produce no carbon dioxide emissions during power generation.

Power Rules Benefitting Renewables

Solar and wind energy developers have received subsidies in the form of a federal production tax credit, and individual manufacturers and power developers have also received federal grants and loan guarantees amounting to tens of billions of dollar over the past three decades.

At the state level, solar and wind power developers have also received property tax abatements and, in 29 states, renewable power mandates require that a politically determined amount of the power electric utilities provide comes from wind and/or solar power. In addition, numerous states have enacted net metering provisions forcing power companies to pay those owing roof-top solar panels the retail price for any excess energy they generate.

Research shows these policies have increased the price of electric power to ratepayers in states that have instituted them relative to ratepayers in states without such policies.

FERC’s policy proposal provides an additional advantage to solar and wind power generating sources by allowing them to compete more effectively in wholesale electric markets, where lower cost sources of electricity, usually generated by coal, hydroelectric, natural gas or nuclear, has dominated. Power generators must bid-in power at a set price for delivering specific amounts of electricity for use within wholesale interstate markets.

Should FERC finalize its proposal as a formal rule, any state that imposes a tax, fee, or cap-and-trade system on electric power generators in its state, will be disadvantaging traditional electricity generated using fossil fuels, relative to renewables when competing to sell power on wholesale power markets. In the process, states offering significant, expensive, support to renewable power sources in the form of mandates and net metering schemes will now be spreading the costs of such policies to ratepayers within the same regional power market, whose states have rejected such policies.

‘Properly Designed Policies’ will “Not be a dead Letter’
FERC’s proposal came on the heels of a meeting in September during which commissioners heard testimony from power market analysts, climate activists, power generators, and state regulators concerning the legal and economic consequences that could result from any decision FERC might make concerning state carbon dioxide pricing schemes.

Members of Congress have repeatedly introduced bills over the past two decades to impose a national pricing scheme on carbon dioxide emissions. None of these bills have been approved by a majority of members of both houses of Congress. FERC’s decision essentially replaces Congress’s judgement on the merits of carbon dioxide pricing schemes with that of a majority of the three member commission.

FERC’s October 13 decision effectively tells state regulators the commission would not reject out of hand taxes or fees intended to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, said Chairman Neil Chatterjee, a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump.

“[Power market regulators] should have confidence that those proposals will be not be a dead letter on our doorstep . . . confidence that we recognize the benefits that such proposals, if properly designed, could bring to our markets,” Chatterjee said in a statement. “Today’s proposal also puts down a marker signaling that this commission encourages efforts to develop wholesale market rules that incorporate a state-determined carbon price.”

One Commissioner Objects

One of the three sitting FERC commissioners, James Danly, objected to FERC’s proposal, saying the commission should not be issuing broad policy statements concerning the merits carbon dioxide pricing schemes. Danly also said FERC’s proposal was unnecessary.

“Generally speaking, it’s preferable to wait to be in receipt of tariff filings, especially when you’re forging new programs like this,” Danly said at the hearing during which the FERC’s proposal was adopted. “It’s certainly premature to opine on jurisdictional questions when we are denied the benefit of actually seeing details of what might be proposed.”

FERC’s proposal is now proceeding the formal rule making process including a public comment period.

https://heartlanddailynews.com/2020/10/federal-agency-gives-additional-support-to-wind-and-solar-power/

Israelis and Africans for Trump

Trump policies reshape Middle East politics and reject eco-imperialism for Africa and USA

Paul Driessen

President Trump is “the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said. According to an i24 News poll, 63% of Israelis say Trump would be better for Israel than Joe Biden, who received a mere 18% affirmation. They cite moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, rejecting the Obama-Iran nuclear deal, and normalization of relations between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan, along with greatly improved relations with Saudi Arabia, all largely because of Trump Administration efforts.

It’s easy to imagine similar reactions from all over Africa when you hear people like South African energy analyst and development champion Adil Nchabeleng, who says Mr. Trump “is doing so much good for humanity. Those that hate him are doing so because of their dislike for his achievements.” Or South African black trade unions, who say Trump “needs lots of support and must come back as an administration. They have their minds and heart in the right place.”

Contrast that to President Obama, who in 2010 told Africans they should reject “dirty” fossil fuels, and base their economies on the continent’s “bountiful” wind, solar and biofuel resources. Mr. Obama wasn’t keen on hydroelectric either, though a continent with few good rivers and a history of prolonged droughts isn’t very enthusiastic about hydro either. His support for nuclear power was minimal, at best.

Obama’s carbon-colonialist views were reflected in his administration’s policies and support for World Bank and “multilateral development bank” policies of lending only for “renewable” energy. That is a recipe for minimal job growth, barely improved living standards, interminably antiquated medical services and perpetually short life spans. It’s eco-imperialism and even eco-manslaughter.

I’ve condemned this and the evil of what are really anti-development banks in books and in multiple articles (here, here, here, here, here and elsewhere). For the most part, there’s been little reason to moderate my criticism. Even the Africa Development Bank, after promising to support coal and gas-fired power plants, caved in to radical green pressure groups and now says it will finance only wind and solar.

Indeed, the Deep State is still too much in control of US policies and messaging, and in denial of the horrific human and ecological damage it is causing. It’s all too easy to imagine what policies would be under a Biden-Harris-AOC regime. Africa (and the rest of the developing world) clearly deserve better.

That’s why President Trump’s call for supporting nuclear power in Africa and other developing nations is important, why he should (and probably will) support fossil fuel power plants in Africa during a second term – and why Africans and other common folk worldwide should (and probably do) support him. While too many US, UN and EU agencies and elites still promote and impose anti-fossil fuel policies, another four years of Trump would change much of that, for the great betterment of Africa and other regions.

You simply cannot build economies, industries, jobs and modern countries on expensive, intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar power – even if they are backed up, almost megawatt-for-megawatt, by redundant and equally expensive batteries or coal, gas, nuclear and hydroelectric power plants.

Wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, transmission lines and battery energy storage systems are reliant on far too many metals and minerals that must be dug out of the ground, processed and turned into pseudo-green technologies at rates and in amounts far in excess of what the world has ever achieved, ever before in history, and with massive adverse environmental consequences. None of these materials is renewable; none of the mining and manufacturing processes are sustainable at the rates envisioned.

Moreover, this “renewable” energy future is intended not just to meet Africa’s own needs. It is supposed to meet global demands for these same materials, so that every nation on earth can keep their fanciful pledges to “go green” and “carbon neutral” by 2030, 2050 or some other arbitrary year. (Most of these target dates are far enough away to be meaningless – and to ensure the politicians making the promises are dead or out of office, and can’t be held accountable for the devastation they will cause.)

The bottom line is very simple. No Green New Deal – for America, much less for the entire world – can break the laws of physics, or the laws of nature and ecology. Just the massive additional amounts of copper and concrete would be inconceivable – to say nothing of the rare earths, cobalt, lithium and scores of other materials we would need for Joe Biden’s transition from an oil and gas economy to one based on wind and sunshine.

These GND technologies are pseudo-renewable, pretend-sustainable, make-believe clean and green. You cannot build them without raw materials. You cannot get those materials without mining, fossil fuels and ecological impacts at hundreds of times the levels humanity and our planet have ever seen before. And because of American (especially environmentalist and Democrat) animosity toward mining anywhere in the USA, you cannot get them without violating every canon of “ethical, responsible sourcing,” and every US law and moral principle against “conflict minerals,” child labor and environmental degradation.

The hard reality is that all the GND mining, processing and manufacturing would be done overseas – primarily in Africa, Asia and Latin America ... primarily by Chinese and Russian companies ... paying little better than slave wages ... paying little attention to endangered species or ecological values ... and not giving a tinker’s damn about foreigner criticism ... perhaps especially because all those moralizing foreigners would be 100% dependent on the Chinese and Russian supply chains.

As a South African friend recently observed, African concern for the environment is much more intimate and ingrained than it is for most Americans and Europeans. Every African is spiritually tied to his or her ancestral rural homeland; each one knows which piece of land he or she came from. They believe those lands are sacred and occupied by the spirits of past generations, so they are spiritually in communication with the environment much more than “western first world” people.

Even African city dwellers, and certainly those still living in rural areas, are constantly aware that there are elephants, big cats and other animals around. They don’t want to upset the wildlife, much less see rhinos and other animals poached for superstitious Asian markets – much, much less see them sacrificed on the altar of GND transitions and climate change alarmism, as the continent is ravaged for minerals.

More and more Africans are recognizing that radical greens and climate catastrophists are really demanding that Africans accept living standards not much better than what they have endured for generations – while their environment is ripped up, their wildlife are killed off, and their countryside is blanketed with mines, turbines, panels, transmission lines and warehouses of battery modules.

More and more Africans are also beginning to understand that their future is dependent on oil, gas, coal and nuclear power. That the more they can generate reliable, affordable electricity with those sources, the more jobs they can create, the wealthier and healthier they will become, the more they can wean themselves off foreign dependency – and the less they will have to rely on the financing and dictates of foreign banks whose lending policies are dictated by climate fears and “carbon neutrality” demands.

Mr. Biden and President-in-Waiting Kamala Harris also want to fundamentally and totally “transform” America’s economy, culture, history, traditions, and freedom to read, hear, see, think and speak facts and ideas that differ from their ideologies and agendas. That intolerant, authoritarian government, media and educational system has personified Africa, China, Russia and the Middle East far too long. For it to dominate the United States would be a worldwide disasters.

If President Trump is reelected, he should bear all this in mind in charting his second term’s foreign and domestic policies. Americans should certainly reflect on this as they mark their ballots. And people everywhere should keep all this in mind, as they ponder their future electoral decisions.

Via email

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My other blogs. Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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