Murdered by climate change deniers (?)

I suppose I should join a lot of my fellow skeptics by having a laugh at dear little "Schatzie" (Yiddish for little treasure) who wrote the hymn below.  It passionately celebrates faith -- faith in global warming.  No knowledge of actual climate facts or interest in climate data is evident.

Her logic is a bit hard to follow but she seems to be saying that Arctic explorers would not have to explore so hard if everybody accepted the global warming gospel. So when Arctic explorers die, that is the responsibility of climate skeptics, who undermine faith in global warming.

I am of course sad to hear of the missing Dutchmen but no evidence that they were motivated by a desire to refute climate skeptics is offered.  And the possibility that explorers explore because they like to explore is also not mentioned.

She has certainly not considered the possibility that the big money showered on climate research as a result of the warming scare might have been responsible for the upsurge in climate "research" generally, and the research being done by the dead Dutchmen in particular.

And as far as loss of human lives is concerned, has she considered the number of people who died because they have been denied access to reliable, affordable electricity and other modern technologies?  –- thanks largely to the Big Green factions Schatzie extols.  That loss of life would be far greater by many orders of magnitude than what even she could possibly attribute to us wicked skeptics.

She is actually a good example of an old axiom in logic which says that if your premises are faulty your conclusions are likely to be absurd.  Her unquestioning faith in the tenets of global warming has certainly led to an absurd conclusion in this case.  Talking facts to her would clearly be pissing into the wind

Jo Nova has also had a laugh at this sad little lady


Two Dutch Arctic ice researchers, Marc Cornelissen and Philip de Roo, have disappeared and are presumed drowned. They were last heard from on Thursday, when Cornelissen, who is the founder of Cold Facts, jokingly left a voicemail on his organizations answering machine lamenting the fact that the unexpectedly warm weather where they were located (200 km south of Bathurst Island in the Canadian Arctic) had forced the pair to ski in their underwear.

Cornelissen and de Roo were on a months long mission planning to measure the thinning Arctic ice as part of the Last Ice Survey.

So, you may be wondering, how were the pair murdered by climate change deniers? Scientists, and I mean REAL scientists, not the Willie Soon crooked bunch of characters, are risking lives and limbs every day to not only try and figure out how all the known, and unknown, feedback loops interact and are impacted by climate change, but they are forced to defend their every move by buffoons such as Senator James Inhofe, et al, who lazily park their fat asses in their comfy office chairs, cashing in fossil fuel dollars, while shooting spit balls at the scientific community.

This obfuscation utterly squanders the efforts of scientists and researchers who must constantly work up against the walls erected around them by deniers instead of actually working towards reversing out of the planetary death spiral we are all on.

Moreover, as scientists around the world go to extreme and heroic lengths to document and prove their point, the fossil fuel industry, aided and abetted by the US government and other western leaders, work around the clock to JUST MAKE IT WORSE by green lighting every lunatic idea (such as Shell trying to drill for oil again in the melting Arctic) the fossil fuel industry puts forth. It’s like the drunkest EVER bar patron asking to be hooked up to a never-ending supply of bourbon, and then, right before he’s going to pass out, handing him keys to a Ferrari (and expecting benign results).

Think about this for a moment: we KNOW what is causing the Earth to heat up to the point of inhabitability: burning fossil fuels. We know how to stop making it worse: stop burning fossil fuels. Are we going to end up in caves, living like the Flintstones when we stop burning fossil fuels? No, because we have 100% technologically advanced renewable energy sources ready to fill that gap. SO, where is the logjam preventing us from beginning to heal the horrific insults we have inflicted upon our planet? Climate deniers, who make the work of scientists all the more difficult and s-l-o-w down the demise of the fossil fuel industry.

Deniers, who keep the public thinking that there is still some sort of DOUBT about the validity of global warming (there is NOT) continue to pour money into the politicians and other sell-outs who keep the fossil fuel industry profitable. Ergo, climate change deniers and their ilk have viciously killed these young men. They are entirely responsible for their deaths. And you can bet that if they were charged with causing these deaths, and penalized in a real way (not the bogus monetary fines imposed on the biggest polluters), they’d think twice before building that next oil well.

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Obama's carbon plan could save 3,500 lives annually

And pork might become airborne.  Just modelling again.  Who needs evidence when you've got models?

The Obama Administration's hotly debated plan to reduce heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the nation's power plants will save about 3,500 lives a year by cutting back on other types of pollution as well, a new independent study concludes.

A study from Harvard and Syracuse University calculates the decline in heart attacks and lung disease when soot and smog are reduced - an anticipated byproduct of the president's proposed power plant rule, which aims to fight global warming by limiting carbon dioxide emissions.

Past studies have found that between 20,000 and 30,000 Americans die each year because of health problems from power plant air pollution, study authors and outside experts say. The study was published Monday in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Climate Change.

The proposed EPA rule, which is not yet finalized, is complex and tailored to different states. It aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Study authors said their research, while not hewing to the Obama plan exactly, is quite close and comparable. The study also finds about the same number of deaths prevented by reducing soot and smog that the administration claimed when the plan was rolled out more than a year ago.

Some in Congress have been trying to block the regulation from going into effect, calling the plan a job-killer and an example of government overreach.

The study finds that the rule would eliminate an average of 3,500 deaths a year - a range of lives saved from 780 to 6,100 - with more than 1,000 of the lives saved in just four states that get lots of pollution from coal power plants: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas and Illinois. The new regulation would reduce hospitalizations by 1,000 a year and heart attacks by 220 a year, the study says.

Cleaning the air as part of reducing carbon dioxide has immediate and noticeable benefits, the authors said.

"There could be lives saved associated with the way we implement the policy," said study lead author Charles Driscoll, an environmental engineering professor at Syracuse. "Why not kill two birds with one stone if you can?"

Lab studies on animals show how soot and smog harm the cardiovascular and respiratory systems and epidemiological studies link tens of thousands of deaths each year to soot and smog pollution, said study co-author Joel Schwartz, a Harvard environmental epidemiologist. The study's authors examined 2,417 power plants and used computer models to project and track their emissions.

The study was praised by outside academics, the Environmental Protection Agency and environmental advocacy groups. But officials in the energy industry called it costly and flawed.

"This is more than just an academic exercise to the tens of millions of Americans who depend on affordable, reliable electricity to power their homes and places of work every day," said Laura Sheehan, senior vice president for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. "For them, this is about their livelihoods. Coal provides nearly 40 percent of the nation's electricity and its use is becoming cleaner all the time. And while these academics are hypothesizing about unprovable consequences, what's known is that families are struggling to pay their monthly bills and companies are struggling to stay in business - and any increase in energy costs will unnecessarily burden them. "

EPA, in a statement, said the study confirms their earlier research, which shows that for every dollar spent complying with the regulation, "Americans will see up to $7 in health benefits."

Three top science officials in the George W. Bush Administration who are now outside academics - George Gray at George Washington University, John D. Graham at Indiana University and Howard Frumkin at the University of Washington - praised the study to various degrees.

"This analysis is both sound and useful," Gray, former EPA science chief and now director of risk science and public health, wrote in an email. "The cool thing is the question they ask: What public health effects might occur due to changes in air pollutants as we act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?"

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Now Seismic Upheavals Are Humans’ Fault?

Joe Bastardi notes the inconvenient linkage between earthquakes and volcanoes

Basically, no matter what happens, it’s used as a reason to fuel hysteria. This latest volley claims that a warming planet is going to cause an increase in seismic activity. (Strange since objective measurements show no warming for 18 years, and even a suggestion of cooling the last 10, and there is no apparent linkage between CO2 and temperatures)

I am sometimes amazed at the logic used by the alarmist crowd, but, given the lack of intellectual curiosity by those that buy it, they get away with it. They assume that no one will a) question them on what they are saying or b) examine the folly of their assumptions. So they use it. First of all, my approach to the whole climate problem can be likened to playing chess. I love to simplify the board, trade down and then be left with a battle over basic endgame positioning. In science, two ideas on this come to mind.

1.) Occam’s Razor.

The principle states that among competing hypotheses that predict equally well the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Other, more complicated solutions may ultimately prove to provide better predictions, but in the absence of differences in predictive ability the fewer assumptions that are made, the better.

Given the track record of the warming hysteria the past 20 years, the idea of the climate being cyclical not only is predicting equally well but is far superior to the modeling!

2.) Le Chatelier’s Principle.

When a system at equilibrium is subjected to change in concentration, temperature, volume or pressure, then the system readjusts itself to (partially) counteract the effect of the applied change and a new equilibrium is established.

I will use it in a devil’s advocate way.

Suppose I concede that the so-called warming is leading to more seismic activity. This would also imply that there is an increase in volcanic activity, a known linkage to earthquake activity. Increased volcanic activity is linked with cooling. Therefore it is logical to assume that, even if the premise put forward here is right, nature will simply correct to the opposite conclusion of what the hysteria-based article is concluding!

In other words, if the author is right in the shorter term, he is wrong in the long run because the increase he fears, and it’s part of something I have been pushing for years as one of the legs of climate, would lead to cooling in the end.

So, being the nice guy I am, I will give him his due. Let’s assume he’s right. Then you have to agree with me — that such an increase would lead to the response, and if we simplify to the logical conclusion nature adjusts!

Not only is this intuitive, but Le Chatelier’s Principle would argue for it. Unless of course he seeks to simply throw it out, which we see happen quite often to data that does not seem to fit the missive being pushed.

This is not to say I accept his premise. It is to say that if he wants to play that game he has to then play mine. It’s pay me now, or pay me later.

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A Winter to Remember: In the Northeast USA January through March was Harshest since 1717

If it's unusually hot somewhere, Warmists seize on that as "proof" of global warming.  So we do well to note when other places are unusually cold

By Joseph D'Aleo

No one who has lived in many parts of the Northeast into Canada experienced a six-week and calendar month as extreme for the combination of cold and snow as we have this late winter. From this writer’s viewpoint in southern New Hampshire, February 2015 was the coldest month ever recorded in nearby Nashua with an average temperature of 12.2 degrees Fahrenheit. It beat out January 1888, which had averaged 12.9F. A record 18 days had low temperatures at or below zero (as cold as 14F below). 25 days remained freezing or below, also a record.

Not far away in Boston, where temperature records began in 1872, February 2015 was exceeded only by February 1934, which brought Boston its all-time record of -18F. Temperatures never rose out of the 30s this year in February in Boston, though it topped 40 four times in 1934.

The cold in February 2015 was not confined to the Boston-Nashua area. It was the coldest month ever in Worcester, Hartford and Portland. It was the coldest February in Chicago and Cleveland, third coldest in New York City and fifth coldest ever in Detroit and Baltimore, both with records back into the early 1870s.

Boston set a record for monthly snow with 64.6 inches in February and 100.4 inches in the 39 days following January 24th. The 110.6 inches for the entire season exceeded the 107.6 inch record from 1995/96. The snow that year was spread out over six months with thaws, not concentrated so much in less than six weeks. The snow blitz and the intense cold is why the snow piles were so high this year. College students were shown on local television jumping out second story windows onto huge snowbanks in their bathing suit.

ONLY 1717 BEAT THIS?

Looking back through accounts of big snows in New England by the late weather historian David Ludlum, it appears for the eastern areas this winter’s snow blitz may have delivered the most snow since perhaps 1717.

That year, snows had reached five feet in December with drifts of 25 feet in January before one great last assault in late February into early March of 40 to 60 more inches. The snow was so deep that people could only leave their houses from the second floor, implying actual snow depths of as much as eight feet or more.  The New England Historical Society’s account indicated New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut were hardest hit, a lot like 2015 in what was known as the year of the great snows.

“Entire houses were covered over, identifiable only by a thin curl of smoke coming out of a hole in the snow. In Hampton, N.H., search parties went out after the storms hunting for elderly people at risk of freezing to death… Sometimes they were found burning their furniture because they couldn’t get to the woodshed. People maintained tunnels and paths through the snow from house to house.”

You may hear or read that increased snow is consistent with global warming because warmer air holds more moisture. In actual fact, 93% of the years with more than 60 inches of snow in Boston were colder than normal.

During the 40 days of snowy weather this winter, we averaged over 11F below normal, and moisture content of the air in the snow region was well below the long-term average. Cooling, not warming, increases snowfall. Indeed, winter temperatures have cooled over the last two decades in the Northeast and the 10-year running mean of Boston area snowfall has skyrocketed to the highest level since snow records were first kept.

The cold continued in March here in New England. The month averaged 5.1F below in Boston and 5.8F below normal in Nashua. There were only four 50F days in March after no 40F days in February in Boston. This compares with seventeen 50F days, eleven 60F days, seven 70F days and one 80F day in March 2012.

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Oil Production Is Up 53% Since 2010, But It’s Declining on Federal Lands. Here’s Why

Thanks to hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling methods perfected at the end of last decade, production of crude oil in the United States has skyrocketed.

U.S. oil production is up 53 percent since 2010, but the increase has occurred almost entirely on non-federal lands. Production on federal lands has not seen a similar liftoff, and is actually down overall.

The reasons federal area drilling has lagged is not because of lack of oil.  Proved oil reserves under federal areas account for about 26 percent of all proved crude oil reserves. (Proved oil reserves are amounts accessible under current policy, prices and technology). If the new methods for extracting oil increase production on private lands, they can also on federal lands.

The main difference between drilling for oil on non-federal and in drilling on federal lands is whether or not the driller has to navigate the complex regulatory obstacles required by the federal government.

President Obama has said, “As Democrats, we believe in reducing our dependence on foreign oil and protecting our planet. Today, America is number one in oil; number one in gas; number one in wind power.”

But if America is number one in oil and gas, it is certainly not because the federal government is making it easy to drill. During the Obama administration:

* Fewer federal leases are being offered than in previous years.

* Federal permits to drill have taken longer to be approved than during previous years, and

* According to the Congressional Research Service, the permitting process is complex and cumbersome.

In fact, the Bureau of Land Management took 227 days on average to process an application for permission to drill in 2014. State agencies sometimes approve permits in 10 days, and leave many surface management issues to be negotiated between the oil producer and the private land owner. For obvious reasons, an oil producer would rather deal with one farmer than be ordered around by a complex and multi-faced federal government.

Now the Obama administration is seeking to raise royalty fees for oil and gas leases on federal lands. That’s a shame, since more complex rules and higher costs will result in less production, not more; all bragging rights aside.

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NZ: Dr Vincent Gray's Letter to Sir Peter Gluckman

Dear Sir Peter,

I would like to comment on the speech "Trusting the Scientist", a summary of which you delivered to the recent seminar "Scientists Speak Out" organised by the New Zealand Association of Scientists.

You begin with the following statement:

"It is instructive here to consider what the public role of science has been until now. For much of history beyond the classical period, the answer is a simple one: little or none.  Or so it was, at least up until the modern inter-war period, and even then it was rather limited until perhaps the late 1980s. Before then the scientist with a media profile was, too often, looked upon with suspicion by his or her colleagues."

Surely science has always had a vital public role if you interpret science to mean the discoveries which are the basis for the many technologies which have led to the progress of human race. You seem to accept the existence and importance of the early science which culminated in ancient Greece and was the main influence throughout the Middle Ages, Modern science is regarded as beginning well before the 1980's with Copernicus, Kepler Galileo and Newton.

Early astronomy had always been professional  In Britain King Charles the Second, who founded the Greenwich Observatory in 1675, appointed the first Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed.

The King had already founded the Royal Society of London in 1663. In 1714 the British Government offered a prize for a simple practical method for determining longitude. Isaac Newton was one of the administering Committee. The story has been told in the book by Dava Sobel. The winner, John Harrison, competed with the Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne. One of Harrison's chronometers  was used by Captain Cook on his second voyage in 1772.

The French Revolution set up a committee which led to the metric system in 1799. A shame they did not do a better jpb on the calendar.

Weather Forecasting has a long history. The British Government set up its Meteorological Office in 1854 with Admiral Robert Fitzroy, former Governor of New Zealand. Its first gale warning for ships was made in 1859. Fitzroy was a mathematician and cartographer who believed in scientific measurements. He even designed a barometer.

You might note that the New Zealand Weather Service is by far the most popular scientific TV programme. It presents the climate of the entire earth every night and it enjoys the trust of everybody who consults it.

Scientists had a positive media profile when I grew up. Ernest Rutherford attracted crowds to his lectures. My school took us regularly to the lectures at the Royal Institution where we were introduced to the wonders of science.

I recently bumped in to a former colleague in the DSIR Chemistry Division who made a comment on how the public rang up the DSIR on any subject and had absolute trust in the reply. Hamish Campbell at the Seminar showed how he helped people with geological questions today.

So we now have to get down to what was the elephant in the room at the NZAS Seminar. Why is it that some scientists today are not trusted?

Everybody there knew the answer to this, but nobody dared to mention it.

The truth is that many people are beginning to believe that some of the statements from scientists who are involved with climate change are deliberate lies. I will give you some examples.

Some weeks ago the Dominion Post had a front page spread with a map showing how Wellington will soon be overwhelmed with a rise in sea level. This was inspired by climate scientists.

Now there are no science journalists nowadays, so it did not occur to the presenter to enquire whether there is any evidence for this coming disaster. He did not know, for example that there is a tide gauge in Wellington harbour which has shown a fall in the sea level for the past ten years, and there are similar measurements all over New Zealand which provide no reason for imminent action.

Most people probably fell for the scare as their knowledge of science was insufficient to find out the facts.

But there are many local residents on our coasts whose experience has shown them that sea level is not rising, so they have been disturbed by demands from local Councils that they must immediately upgrade their coastal defences or vacate their properties because of the advice of climate scientists to the Council that urgent action is needed. Some have succeeded  in reversing this nonsense, But their opinions of scientists have taken a dive.

The same thing has happened in the Pacific Islands. The Australian Government established in 1991 an elaborate programme for monitoring sea level in 12 Pacific Islands using state of the art equipment called Seaframe. There has been little or no change in sea level in any island since then, particularly after GPS levelling was introduced in 2000.

Yet everybody believes the islands are about to fall into the sea. This belief suits the Island Prime Ministers since it attracts aid and ease of emigration. But why does the New Zealand Government endorse this lie?

Then. we continue to be drenched with stories claiming the continued effects of global warming. Yet the preferred technique for assessing this properly, the Mean Annual Global Surface Temperature Anomaly Record (which has been used to claim global warming in all previous IPCC Reports) has now been practically constant with little change for over 18 years. The excuses they give are pitiful.

The change is decadal, when we already have nearly two decades. Then it is natural variability when they have previously assumed that this was not involved the temperature rise. Only now it matters.

The Climate Models which are supposed to give projections and not predictions consistently fail to agree with current global or lower atmosphere temperature measurements.

Your own climate paper features the claim that the Arctic ice is melting: when it is largely influenced by ocean currents, but you do not mention the Antarctic continent which now has record amounts of ice.

The UK Met Office which has been taken over by Climate Change people has consistently predicted warm winters when there are record cold ones. The recent US snowstorm led to protests by people wondering where the global warming had gone.

Your speech showed no sign that you would do anything about its subject except to encourage the rogue scientists to promote their lies, on the Dr Goebbels Principle that maybe people will believe them if they are repeated enough.

SOURCE

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