The Warmist hate is really boiling at Salon

The "Salon" writer, Paul Rosenberg is a shrill critic of everything and everyone on the conservative side of American politics so his rant excerpted below is not unexpected.  The poor fellow is just full of hate. He never runs out of it.  So his denunciation of climate critics as worse than Hitler seems deranged but was to be expected.

But he is not insane.  Given his assumptions, climate critics are indeed a bad lot.  Rosenberg has drunken every drop of the Warmist Kool-Aid so really seems to believe that a "Climate holocaust" will soon happen.  So his whole rant is an excellent  example of a basic precept in logic:  "If your premises are wrong, your conclusions from them will also be wrong".  Rosenberg shows not the slightest awareness of any of the scientific facts about CO2 and climate so has violated that basic rule of logic.

He has not bothered himself to find out what the climate facts are. He knows what his fellow Leftists say and that is good enough for him.  He lives in a little bubble of self-congratulatory Leftist  illusions.  What his fellow Leftists say is Fact to him.  He is a credulous ignoramus basically. He seems to have no power of independent or critical thought. One has to feel rather sorry that such an eloquent man is so cut off from reality.  He has talents but is using them futilely

And his credulity gets quite amusing at times: His reverence for  "a 128-page report" from the corrupt World Health Organization, for instance.  That credulity is behind his rage is also suggested by the fact that he is a mere journalist.  As a journalist he is presumably only modestly paid for his rants. The people who get the gravy from the warming scare are the academics who keep the whole hoax going.  In the form of research grants, they get showered with gold for their efforts.  Can do better, Herr Rosenberg.  Is being a cog in a fraud machine the best you can do?   -- JR

AP took a big step forward by deciding to stop using the term “climate change skeptic”, following concerted pressure from scientists and activists. But they also took a big step backward by deciding to not use the term “climate change denier” instead, and to actively nix it as well. “Climate change denier” sounded too much like “Holocaust denier,” AP explained, so it was out, too. They added the following to their style guide (which many journalists outside AP use as well):

Our guidance is to use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science and to avoid the use of skeptics or deniers. This is, quite simply, wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

You can tell it’s wrong because of just how pleased the deniers are with AP’s decision, as Science magazine reported:

Meanwhile, some traditionally associated with the “skeptic” or “denier” side are claiming victory. Marc Morano, who runs the contrarian site Climate Depot, told National Journal that he preferred the term “skeptic,” but that “doubter” still suggests there’s room for debate. By ditching “denier,” AP is “entering the realm of objectivity,” Morano said. Meanwhile, Anthony Watts, a former TV meteorologist who runs the popular contrarian blog Watts Up With That?,also praised AP’s decision as a “positive and long and overdue change” to ditch the “ugly climate term ‘denier.’”

This wasn’t just a one-time error in judgement. It’s an ongoing journalistic sin we’re talking about, a sin of commission, a continuing misrepresentation of reality, something that no journalistic entity worth its salt ought to be a party to.

AP’s new style guidance clearly resulted from a letter to the media last December asking journalists to “stop using the word ‘skeptic’ to describe deniers.” [letter/press release] It came from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and was signed by 48 of its fellows, including Nobel laureate Sir Harold Kroto and philosopher Daniel Dennett. AP referred to them specifically (though a bit inaccurately) in its announcement:

Scientists who consider themselves real skeptics – who debunk mysticism, ESP and other pseudoscience, such as those who are part of the Center [sic] for Skeptical Inquiry – complain that non-scientists who reject mainstream climate science have usurped the phrase skeptic. They say they aren’t skeptics because “proper skepticism promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims.” That group prefers the phrase “climate change deniers” for those who reject accepted global warming data and theory.

But it’s more than a preference. It’s a matter of accuracy, something that science and journalism are supposed to have in common. And it’s downright inaccurate for AP to pretend it’s simply a matter of preference. Having diminished CSI’s objection, AP then elevated the deniers:

But those who reject climate science say the phrase denier has the pejorative ring of Holocaust denier so The Associated Press prefers climate change doubter or someone who rejects mainstream science.

This is a classic example of false balance on AP’s part, with multiple problems on both sides of the scale and one big thing wrong at the middle: “doubt” is not mid-way between “skepticism” and “denial” . It far closer to the former than to the latter, which is why the deniers were so pleased with it.

Joe Romm cited three problems with AP’s reason: First, that AP had an easy alternative, pointed out by Justin Gillis in the NY Times in February: “others have started using the slightly softer word ‘denialist’ to make the same point without stirring complaints about evoking the Holocaust.” Second, that the most prominent deniers, like James Inhofe “knowingly use phony arguments to stop the world from acting in time…. Since when should anyone care about the phony concerns of such self-destructive anti-scientific people?” Third, Romm noted that many deniers actually like the term. If they don’t have a problem with it, why should we?

All that is true, but there’s a further point worth making: climate change denial is actually much worse than Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial deals with the deaths of millions in the past, which it did nothing to cause, however morally odious it surely is. Global warming denial deals with the deaths of millions in the future, which it helps to cause, by crippling efforts to prevent them. And that’s something much worse, as is reflected in law: It’s not a crime to lie about murders in the past, except to hinder a police investigation, or prosecution; but it is a crime to tell enabling lies about future murders—it’s called conspiracy to commit murder.

The most recent estimate (2014) from the World Health Organization (a 128-page report) projects that “Under a base case socioeconomic scenario, we estimate approximately 250,000 additional deaths due to climate change per year between 2030 and 2050.” That’s 5 million deaths over just that 20 year window. Major impacts will come via diarrhea, malaria, childhood undernutrition, and heat exposure in elderly people. But the total will undoubtedly be significantly higher:

AP says we shouldn’t use the term “denier”, because it has a “pejorative ring.” Which begs the question: isn’t a pejorative ring precisely what’s called for? Isn’t it both morally necessary and empirically accurate? The problem isn’t that “denier” has a “pejorative ring,” it’s that it’s not nearly pejorative enough. “Climate holocaust co-conspirator” would be more apt.

You either align yourself more or less with the climate deniers—consciously or unconsciously—or you align yourself against them. There is no “neutral” ground outside of or above the debate, however much one might wish for it.

SOURCE





New study: Sun not CO2 causes climate change

by Dr. Ed Berry (Ph.D., Atmospheric Physics)

A new, peer-reviewed professional paper shows our sun, not our carbon dioxide, causes climate change. It also shows atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations are an insignificant player, and possibly a non-player, in climate change.

The authors, Willie Soon, Ronan Connolly, and Michael Connolly received no government, corporate, or any outside funding for their work on their paper.

You can read their whole 49-page paper (like I did) if you want all the scientific details. The authors have provided their data files.

Here, I will make their conclusions very simple for you to understand.

They used northern hemisphere data from 1880 to 2014. They used data, not theories, to make their case.

First, they constructed the best possible temperature record from 1880 to 2014. Remarkably, no one had ever done this before. This required using only surface temperature data from stations not affected by a changing environment.

They show their temperature record is compatible with temperature trends derived from sea surface temperatures, glacier length records, and tree-ring widths.

Their corrected “composite” temperature record shows warming from the 1880’s to 1940’s, and from the 1980’s to 2000’s, with a cooling period from the 1950’s to 1970’s. The record shows the current warm period is similar to the previous warm period from the 1880’s to 1940’s.

They show climate models do not reproduce the correct temperature record when back tested. This means, of course, climate models are of no value in making climate predictions. The reason is obvious. Climate models do not properly simulate the physical effects of carbon dioxide, water vapor, clouds, aerosols, and solar irradiance.

Second, they constructed the best possible record for Total Solar Irradiance. Then they compared their data.

Here is their four-piece summary chart. The blue circles are the annual temperature data. The bold blue line is the smoothed temperature data. The blue lines are the same in all four charts.

The red dashed lines are what they call the “modelled” temperatures.

The top chart (a) compares the CO2 modelled temperature with actual temperature. The next chart (b) adds the solar correction to the CO2 model. This fails because the CO2 model already “muddied the water.”

The third chart (c) compares the Total Solar Irradiance modelled temperature with actual temperature. The next chart (d) adds the CO2 correction to the solar model. The difference between (c) and (d) is insignificant.
SoonTempSolarSummary
Figure 31. Comparison of the four different models to our Northern Hemisphere composite (land & ocean rescaled version).

Charts (c) and (d) show our sun causes most climate change. Ocean currents, volcanoes, and other natural forces cause the annual deviations from the solar prediction.

Finally, here’s how to determine your belief in climate change:

If you truly believe the red CO2 line in chart (a) fits the blue Temperature line better than the red Solar line in chart (c), then you are a true believer in Al Gore and Obama’s version of climate change.

But if you believe the red Solar line chart (c) fits the blue Temperature line better than the red CO2 line in chart (a), then welcome to the world of reality.

Clearly, climate model predictions as reproduced in chart (a) do not represent reality. Therefore, the global warming, climate change promoted by our government, our schools, and our media is a hoax.

In conclusion, our sun, not our carbon dioxide, drives climate. Even if we stopped all carbon dioxide emissions from all humans on our planet, we would not change the climate.

SOURCE. (See the original for graphics)





Clouding the debate over climate change

The new U.N. chairman knows economics, not science

Last week, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) held a news conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, to introduce South Korean bureaucrat Hoesung Lee as its new chairman. Mr. Lee’s remarks to the press demonstrated that he is sadly out of touch with the actual status of today’s climate science.

This is not surprising. Although Mr. Lee said, “The hard science of climate change will remain the foundation of the IPCC’s work,” he has practically no hard science training or experience. Instead, he has a doctorate in economics and a career as an economist, IPCC insider and environment professor. Yet, when Jill Peters, weather broadcaster for Belgium Television, referred to Mr. Lee as a “climate scientist” in her question at the news conference, he did not correct the mistake.

Bob Carter, former head of the School of Earth Sciences at James Cook University in Australia, commented: “The idea that an economist can make a suitable chair for an IPCC-type organization is misguided. The basic issue is a scientific one. Yet we now have another chairman who will be generally unaware of the complexities inherent in climate science and, in particular, of the high degree to which scientific advice about global warming has been corrupted by those with an interest in perpetuating needless alarm.”

Lee C. Gerhard, senior scientist emeritus at the University of Kansas, and past director and state geologist of the Kansas Geological Survey, summed up the situation well: “The appointment by the U.N. of Lee as chair of the IPCC is yet another attack by the U.N. war on science. His green credentials are impeccable, but his scientific credentials are non-existent.”

Mr. Lee demonstrated this when he told reporters, “We know with 95 percent confidence that human activity is causing climate change.” While it is true that by replacing forests with farms, buildings and roads, we cause regional climate change, Mr. Lee should know that this is not the primary issue at hand. The most important question is this: Are our carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions likely to cause climate change dangerous enough to be worth changing the way we generate and use energy?

Contrary to Mr. Lee’s assertion that “We know that, to avoid the severe, pervasive and irreversible consequences that will come, we will need to act now,” no one actually knows this. Mr. Gerhard remarked, “Despite more than 20 years of effort and billions of dollars in expenditures, the IPCC has not addressed whether recent climate change exceeded [that] documented by the records of the past several thousand years. Similarly, they have not examined whether there is any credible data that substantiates the hypothesis that human-source CO2 has significant impact on global climate. Mr. Lee’s background does not inspire hope that these two fundamental questions will be addressed.”

Referencing the U.N.’s much ridiculed “King Canute” clause, which assumes humanity controls climate as if we had a global thermostat, the new IPCC chairman asserted, “Our global emissions [of mainly CO2] should not be above 50 gigatons per year at the latest 2030 to achieve a 2 degrees stabilization. We need to have at least a minus 3 percent emissions reduction every year for the rest of the century so that by the end of 2100, the net emissions will be zero.”

The reports of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) demonstrate that many climate scientists dispute the idea that carbon-dioxide emissions need to be reduced at all. Mr. Lee is clearly not qualified to imply that NIPCC scientists are wrong.

In addition, the lack of global warming over the past 18 years, a period during which carbon-dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has risen 10 percent, shows there is something seriously wrong with the human-caused warming theory the new IPCC chairman holds dear.

Regardless, as Mr. Carter explains, “No empirical evidence exists that a planetary warming of 2 degrees Celsius would have a net detrimental effect — either environmentally or economically.”

Referring to Mr. Lee’s remarks as “tired cliches,” University of Western Ontario applied mathematician Chris Essex, an expert in the mathematical models that are the basis of the IPCC’s concerns, called the chairman’s comments “the same old meaningless poli-speak patter that only makes sense to those without any sense.”

NIPCC report chapter lead author Timothy Ball, environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, concluded: “There is one possible parallel between what Lee does and the IPCC. It is said of economists that they try to predict the tide by measuring one wave. The IPCC climate scientists try to predict the climate by measuring only one variable, CO2.”

Although Mr. Lee’s remarks do not mark an auspicious start to his chairmanship, he offered a glimmer of hope that the U.N. might start to consider alternative points of view on climate change. Saying that he wanted to “change what needs improvement across the IPCC,” Mr. Lee admitted, “there is always room to know more, to better understand how this complex and complicated thing we call the climate system works.”

Let’s hope Hoesung Lee leads the IPCC to finally open the door to a balanced consideration of the science driving the climate scare. There is too much at stake to do otherwise.

SOURCE





Obama’s Disastrous Clean Power Plan

by Deroy Murdock

Harry Alford is right. The president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce lately has taken heat from liberals for opposing Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The Left finds it inappropriate that a black man, who represents 2.4 million black-owned businesses, would dare to criticize Obama’s latest bid to foil so-called “global warming.”

This regulation spans 1,560 confounding pages and gargles 76 different acronyms. “The proposed Clean Power Plan would impose severe and disproportionate economic burdens on poor families, especially minorities,” Alford told the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee on Tuesday. “The EPA’s regressive energy tax threatens to push minorities and low-income Americans even further into poverty.”

Alford cited a study that his group had commissioned. It found that by 2035, the CPP would have boosted energy costs for blacks by 16 percent and Hispanics by 19 percent. For further proof of the CPP’s enormous burden, Alford easily could have turned to Obama’s own Energy Information Administration. Its May report titled Analysis of the Impacts of the Clean Power Plan and data on its website echo Alford’s warnings and show, if anything, that he should slam this draconian scheme even harder.

Using EIA data, I calculate that — between 2015 and 2040 — the CPP will:

 *  Slash real GDP by $993 billion, or an average of $39.7 billion per year.

 *  Slice real disposable income by $382 billion, or $15.3 billion annually.

 *  Chop manufacturing shipments by $1.13 trillion, or $45.4 billion a year.

 *  Cut light-vehicle sales by 310,000 units, or 12,400 yearly.

 *  Hack non-farm employment by 900,000, or 35,000 per annum.

 *  Whack manufacturing employment by 1.7 million, or 68,000 each year. (For my detailed analysis of this pending fiasco, please click here.)

On the bright side, Obama estimates that the CPP will save American households $7 per month on their electricity bills, come 2030.

A White House fact sheet says that the CPP sets a “goal of reducing emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.”

This sounds lovely. However, mandating that emissions be 27 percent below 2005’s 6 billion metric tons of energy-related carbon dioxide would slash such output to 4.4 billion metric tons — an amount last observed in 1983.

 It seems cruel to demand that the 335 million Americans who the Census forecasts will live here in a decade produce as little carbon dioxide as just 234 million Americans yielded 42 years before 2025.

Such lofty, fanciful central plans are a blueprint for economic stagnation. Because of the anticipated padlocking of coal-fired plants under the CPP, the Southwest Power Pool predicts that “the power grid would suffer extreme reactive deficiencies,” including “cascading outages and voltage collapse.”

 Despite its immense costs, the CPP is expected to deliver paltry ecological “benefits.” By 2050, carbon-dioxide concentrations would drop by less than 1 percent.

When he secured the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Obama crowed, “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow.” Now we know by how much. The CPP would limit sea-level rise by 1/100 of an inch — as high as three sheets of paper. Even if one embraces

Satellite data demonstrate that Earth’s average temperatures have been stable since 1998. Even if one embraces Obama’s breathless fantasies about a planet boiling in its own pressure cooker, the CPP does remarkably little about this. The EPA estimates that Obama’s contraption will cut Earth’s expected warming by 0.02 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050.

If such a temperature trim costs $382 billion in disposable income, a 1-degree Fahrenheit reduction would require $19.1 trillion — with a T — slightly higher than today’s $18.4 trillion national debt.

As the EPA and IRS Have Shown, with Big Government Comes Little Accountability “The value of this rule is not measured in that way,” EPA administrator Gina McCarthy told Representative Lamar Smith (R., Texas) at a July hearing of the House Committee on Science.

“It is measured in showing strong domestic action which can actually trigger global action to address what’s a necessary action to protect” the planet.

So, as the EPA’s chief admits, Obama has concocted a vastly expensive symbol. It kills jobs and, its authors hope, will inspire foreign governments to handcuff their economies and shackle their people.

SOURCE





The EPA: Armed and Dangerous

The troubled Environmental Protection Agency has a lot of problems, but according to Adam Andrzejewski of Open the Books, a lack of military-style weapons for the agency’s 200 environmental law enforcement agents isn’t among them. The Washington Times reports on Andrzejewski’s findings of how the agency has spent millions of dollars over the past decade in arming its special agents:

    Among the weapons purchased are guns, body armor, camouflage equipment, unmanned aircraft, amphibious assault ships, radar and night-vision gear and other military-style weaponry and surveillance activities, according to a new report by the watchdog group Open the Books.

    “Protecting the environment just got real. With millions of dollars spent on military style weaponry, the EPA is now literally ensconced with all institutional force,” said Adam Andrzejewski, founder of Open the Books and the author of the report.

    “Our report discovered that when the EPA comes knocking they are armed with a thousand lawyers, arrest/criminal data, credit, business and property histories, plus a ‘Special Agent’ with the latest in weaponry and technology,” Mr. Andrzejewski added.

Stephen Moore of Investor’s Business Daily provides a list of some of the Environmental Protection Agency’s more unusual expenditures for armaments, which includes the following:

    $1.4 million for “guns up to 300mm”

    $380,000 for “ammunition”

    $31,000 for “armament training devices”

    $42,000 for “special ammunition”

The “guns up to 300mm” specification caught our attention because the caliber of ammunition for such a weapon would be nearly 12 inches in diameter. To get a sense of what such a gun would look like, we searched and found a picture of a gun that size:



According to the accompanying specifications, the 300 mm Type 7 Short Howitzer captured by U.S. troops from Japanese forces in the Phillippines was capable of firing a 300 mm caliber projectile out to a range of nearly 7.4 miles.

Clearly, the use of such a weapon is not good for the environment....

Meanwhile, we should note that like the Environmental Protection Agency’s special agents, the FSA rebels have also been funded and trained by the U.S. government.

One wonders just how the EPA’s special agents would use that size weapon to enforce the nation’s environmental protection laws. Someone at the EPA really needs to explain why it would ever need that kind of firepower to justify using that particular specification on its gun purchase requisitions.

SOURCE






Carbon Dioxide: The Good News

In an important new report published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, former IPCC delegate Dr Indur Goklany calls for a reassessment of carbon dioxide, which he says has many benefits for the natural world and for humankind.

Dr Goklany said: “Carbon dioxide fertilises plants, and emissions from fossil fuels have already had a hugely beneficial effect on crops, increasing yields by at least 10-15%. This has not only been good for humankind but for the natural world too, because an acre of land that is not used for crops is an acre of land that is left for nature”.

Pointing to estimates that the current value of the carbon dioxide fertilisation effect on global crop production is about $140 billion a year, he notes that this additional production has helped reduce hunger and advance human well-being.

But the benefits go much further than this. It is not only crops that benefit from this “carbon dioxide fertilisation effect”: almost without exception, the wild places of the Earth have become greener in recent decades, .largely as a direct result of carbon dioxide increases. In fact, it has been shown that carbon dioxide can increase plants’ water-use efficiency too, making them more resilient to drought, so that there is a double benefit in arid parts of the world.

And as Dr Goklany points out: “Unlike the claims of future global warming disasters these benefits are firmly established and are being felt now. Yet despite this the media overlook the good news and the public remain in the dark. My report should begin to restore a little balance.”

In a powerful foreword to the report, the world-renowned physicist Professor Freeman Dyson FRS endorses Goklany’s conclusions and provides a devastating analysis of why “a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts”, arguing that “the thinking of politicians and scientists about controversial issues today is still tribal”.

SOURCE

***************************************

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.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************