February global temperature rise proves nothing

The shrill article below is panicking over February temperatures so I suppose I should point out a few obvious things.  I have really dealt with this nonsense before but a few comments anyway.

For a start, hanging anything on the figures for one month is dumb.  You can have unusually hot months in a year where there is no overall change.  Even figures for one year are rubbery.  Figures for years can go up and down but still show no overall trend.  You need a trend over a period of years to conclude anything.  2015 was a touch warmer but 2016 could be a touch cooler overall.  If we get an early return of La Nina, the later months of 2016 could be cool in the same way that the early months were warm.  That's all elementary stuff -- even if it is conspicuously overlooked below.

It was a bit boring writing all that freshman-level stuff above but I was listening to some Stravinsky while I wrote it so that kept me alert and happy

But now to get onto the specifics about February 2016:  According to NOAA (See here) The February 2016 temperature was 5.69°F above the C20 average.  That seems a lot.  One can understand it being called "whopping".  But wait a minute.  2005 was 4.12°F above the same average.  Was that "whopping" too?  Did that presage climate catastrophe?  Ten years later we can say that it clearly didn't.  And February 2015 was -0.85°F -- BELOW average.  Did that warn of an oncoming ice age?  Clearly not.  Hanging your hat on one month is brick thick. I really shouldn't have to point out what excreta the article below is.  Temperatures fluctuate but there is no statistically significant long-term trend.

So Feb 2016 was a bit higher than 2005. Why?  Easy:  El Nino. Despite what is said below, it was in fact TOTALLY due to El Nino. How do I know that?  Because it was NOT due to a rise in CO2.  The recent temperature rises did not fit neatly into any one year.  They were concentrated in late 2015 and early 2016,  And that is PRECISELY a period over which CO2 levels plateaued.  From August 2015 to February 2016, CO2 levels have been stuck on 398 ppm, according to the Cape Grim data.  CO2 levels over that period only varied by less than one part per million.  Annual changes before that were around 2 parts per million.

The big Warmist story is that warming is due to CO2 levels.  If that were so, the recent rise in temperature would be a mirror of rising CO2 levels.  But the CO2 levels belie that. They didn't rise.  Once again temperature and CO2 are disconnected. So El Nino is the only explanation left for the recent temperature uptick.  It is an entirely natural fluctuation with nothing to do with human actions.  That's what the data tells us.  Do look up the Cape Grim data yourself to check it


February shattered climate records, scientists worried we could see 2C warming within months.

Does everybody still believe global warming is a hoax? Yet more data confirms what scientists have feared for a long time, the planet is warming, and it may have passed a tipping point. The latest data now reveals that February 2016 was the hottest February on record, and it blew that record by a wide margin.

February is a cold month, especially in the northern hemisphere, so it's surprising to see that it was so hot. And hot is the right word to use. According to climate data, the entire northern hemisphere was 2.43 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than average, and a full  third of a degree hotter than the record.

Whens peaking of climate records, it is common to deal in tenths or even hundredths of a degree. To see a third of a degree, or, in this case, nearly two-and-a-half degrees, overall, is literally unprecedented. February 2016 is the first month in history that global average temperatures exceeded the 1.5 degree (Celsius) average.

Scientists also noted that the warmth was unusually concentrated in the Arctic, contributing to record ice melt and likely weather anomalies.

While El Nino can be blamed for some of the weather anomalies for 2015-2016, global warming also has a major role to play in both El Nino and overall temperature rise. Also, EL Nino, despite its hype, is  only responsible for a tenth of a degree Celsius rise in years when it occurs, which means the additional 1.2C degrees of warming cannot be attributed to the Pacific weather phenomenon.

The heart of the problem is simple thermodynamics. The planet is absorbing more radiation from the Sun than it is putting back out into space, resulting in a slow warming trend. The additional radiation is stored as heat, both in the atmosphere and in the oceans. Part of the reason for this imbalance appears to be rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. Carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas, which traps heat. The increased heat increases evaporation, and water vapor is an even better store of heat energy, which causes yet more warming.

Scientists are alarmed because it has taken over a century to see the planet warm a full 1 degree Celsius. Now, in the past five months, the planet has warmed another half degree. Will we see 2 degrees before the summer is though? It's an alarming thought.

According to the most pessimistic global warming hypothesis, once the planet sees 2 degrees Celsius of average global warming, the climate trend will be virtually irreversible. The polar ice caps will melt, resulting in sea level rise and destroying cities. Shifts in weather patterns, as well as more extreme weather will destroy food crops and render some regions nearly uninhabitable. Mass extinctions of many species could occur.

These changes will impact humanity by forcing mass human migration, while also disrupting food and water supplies. This means more conflict and chaos overall.

Indeed, we have already seen the beginning of polar ice melts with Arctic ice now the lowest it has ever been recorded for a winter season. Animals, especially in the Arctic, are facing famine as food supplies run low. Polar bears are dying off in large numbers. And people are being impacted too. The warmer temperatures mean less snow and ice, which is hurting people whose lives depend on the snow and ice. As coastal villages thaw, erosion as well as a lack of food available for hunting is creating challenges all around the Arctic.

In the tropics, scientists are alarmed because around the world, they're observing the single greatest coral bleaching event in history.

Despite these well-documented changes, a hardcore of deniers continues to dispute that anything unnatural is happening, insisting that either humans are blameless, or that nothing unusual is happening at all. However, to believe this requires the denial of the nearly unanimous consensus of the scientific community.

Even climate skeptic Roy Spencer characterized the warming as "whopping."

Thousands of climate scientists around the world have no reason to lie about this basic truth: humans are pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere with predictable effect. If we are to survive the future without extreme climate disruption and mass extinctions, we need to curtail emissions. Scientists are not getting rich off these discoveries. However, the fossil fuel lobby, has been implicated in pushing climate change skepticism. The scandal is such that authorities in the U.S. have even discussed bringing suit against prominent deniers, much the same way the government sued those who claimed cigarette smoking wasn't harmful.

While few Americans would support such harsh action against climate deniers, their work is producing a discernible harm, as our nation fails to decisively tackle its own problems with CO2 emissions.

How hot does it have to get for us to see that the scientists are right? How many species need to go extinct before we start to care? How high does sea level need to rise before we act? How bad does global warming have to impact your life before you change your attitude?

SOURCE





Up to 70 Percent of Northeast U.S. Coast May Adapt to Rising Seas

Much of the coast from Maine to Virginia is more likely to change than to simply drown in response to rising seas during the next 70 years or so, according to a new study led by the U.S. Geological Survey. The study is based on a new computer model that captures the potential of the Northeast coast to change, driven by geological and biological forces, in ways that will reshape coastal landscapes.

In a paper published Monday in Nature Climate Change, the researchers reported that 70 percent of the Northeast Atlantic Coast is made up of ecosystems that have the capacity to change over the next several decades in response to rising seas. For example, barrier islands may migrate inland, build dunes, change shape, or be split by new inlets as tides, winds, waves and currents sculpt their sands. Marshes trap sediment and break down decaying plants into new soil, which may elevate them sufficiently in some areas to keep pace with sea-level increases.

While most sea-level rise models that cover large areas show low-lying coastal land converting to open water in coming decades, many of these inundation models over-predict the land likely to submerge. The USGS model, developed in collaboration with Columbia University’s Earth Institute, produces a more nuanced picture of sea level rise as a mosaic of dry land, wetlands, and open seas, rather than as a uniform response across the landscape.

The USGS model is the first to factor in natural forces and make detailed predictions from the 2020s through the 2080s over a large coastal area, some 38,000 square kilometers (about 9.4 million acres). It is an advance over most regional models, which project drowning as the only outcome as the oceans rise. These are often referred to as “bathtub models” and assume the coast is progressively submerged as sea levels rise.

Projections from inundation models are straightforward: some coastal land will remain above the levels of the rising seas and some will drown. The new model includes the potential for dynamic coastal change and shows where in response to future sea levels, coastal lands fall on a continuum between dry land and open water.

“Geologists have always known that the coast has some potential for give and take,” said lead author Erika Lentz, a research geologist at the USGS Coastal and Marine Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. “But the standard bathtub models of sea level rise don’t reflect that. This approach couples what we do know about these systems with what we still need to learn—how different ecosystems may respond to different sea-level rise scenarios— to estimate the odds that an area will persist or change instead of simply drown.”

By casting results in terms of odds, the new model provides a more accurate picture of sea-level rise vulnerability for informing adaptation strategies and reducing hazards, the USGS researchers say. They make it clear, however, that just because an area is less likely to drown might not mean it is less vulnerable. “Our model results suggest that even natural changes may pose problems,” Lentz said. “For example, the likelihood that barrier islands will change could impact the infrastructure and economies of coastal communities, and the barrier islands or marshes may not protect coastal communities in the same way they do today.”

In fact, the outcome is uncertain for the Northeast’s low-lying developed coastlines, where seawalls, buildings and other immovable structures thwart some natural processes. The model found the region’s developed coastal lands lying 1 meter (about 3 1/2 feet) or less above sea level will likely face a tipping point by the 2030s, when humans’ decisions about whether and how to protect each area will determine if it survives or drowns.

A 2012 USGS study identified the densely populated region from Cape Hatteras to Boston as a hot spot where seas are rising faster than the global average, so land managers urgently need to understand how their coastal landscape may change, said John Haines, coordinator of the USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program.

“The model allows us to identify vulnerable areas, and that information can be very valuable to land managers as they consider whether to protect, relocate or let go of certain assets,” Haines said. “Even when the results are uncertain, it’s useful to know there’s a 50 percent chance that an important habitat or infrastructure project may be lost in a few decades.”

To come up with their model for the Northeastern United States, the researchers mapped all coastal land between 10 meters (about 33 feet) above sea level and 10 meters below it, from the Virginia-North Carolina line to the Maine-Canada border. They factored in a variety of forces that affect coastal change, from planetary phenomena like the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates to local ones like falling groundwater levels that cause land surfaces to sink. Looking at parcels of 30 meters by 30 meters—about the size of two NBA basketball courts side by side—they weighed the balance of forces on each parcel.

Using scenarios that assume humans will continue adding moderate to high levels of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere through the 21st century, the team projected global sea level rise for the 2020s through the 2080s, and applied that to the coast. The model then estimated the likelihood, from 0 to 100 percent, that each parcel will persist above sea level at the end of each decade.

Predictions for many parcels fell close to 50 percent in the first few decades, a tossup between drowning and surviving. The uncertainty was greatest when the researchers had to wrestle with more than one question that can’t yet be definitively answered. Among them are, how fast will seas rise, can coastal marshes make new soil quickly enough to stay above the waves, and what engineering strategies will people use to protect some shorelines?

“By building in our understanding of the sea level rise response of the coastal landscape, we’re providing a more realistic picture of coastal change in the Northeastern U.S. over the next several decades,” Lentz said.

SOURCE  





Plant carbon dioxide may not make global warming worse, study suggests

Plants may be better at acclimatising to rising temperatures and contribute less to carbon dioxide in a warming world than some have previously thought, a new study suggests.

"Maybe some of our models are over-predicting the degree to which plant respiration will cause accelerating feedback that speeds up climate change," said Professor Peter Reich, an ecologist and plant physiologist from the University of Minnesota who led the study published today in Nature.

Plants absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and release it when they burn sugar to produce energy in a process known as respiration.

For every 10 degrees Celsius of temperature increase, plants are known to double their rate of metabolism, which has led to fears that global warming will trigger a positive-feedback loop, switching plants from being a net carbon dioxide sink — absorbing more carbon dioxide than they release — to becoming a net source of the warming gas.

According to Dr Reich, however, the jury is still out on how big this problem is.  "The best models on the planet disagree wildly about what will happen in 40 or 50 years, with some saying that the land surfaces will still be a strong sink, but others saying they will become a big source," he said.

Part of the problem is there is a lack of basic science on plant respiration, especially how plants acclimatise to changing environments.

As temperatures increase, the enzymes involved in metabolism work faster so fewer enzymes and resources are needed to obtain the same amount of energy, and less carbon dioxide is produced.

How well this acclimatisation occurs will determine when, and if, plants switch from becoming a net sink to a net source of carbon dioxide.

To find out, the Dr Reich and his colleagues studied 10 North American tree species exposed to temperatures that are 3.4C above normal over several years in the field.

Experiments on North American trees

The researchers kept plots warm using above-ground infrared lamps and wires carrying electricity buried in the soil to simulate normal forest conditions. Temperature sensors connected to a computer controller ensured plot temperatures were kept stable.

In their extensive analysis, which involved supplementary lab experiments, Dr Reich and colleagues compared the respiration rate of trees acclimatised to "warm" plots and controls acclimatised to "ambient temperature" plots.

They found that for the given 3.4C above normal, plants that had experienced the warming treatments increased respiration by only 5 per cent, while the controls increased respiration by a whopping 23 per cent.

Dr Reich said the findings reduce the likelihood that increased respiration in plants in a warming world would make global warming worse. "This turn-around from plants providing net sequestration to becoming a net source of carbon dioxide will take a lot longer, if it happens at all," he said.

Dr Reich said research with colleagues at the Western Sydney University Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, where he is a scientific adviser, has found that Australian eucalypt trees also acclimatise at the same rate as the North American species.

He said the findings should apply to rainforest species, which have the same "machinery" for respiration, however to be sure these species would need to be tested.

SOURCE  





Obama administration cancels plan for oil drilling off coast

The Obama administration withdrew its plan Tuesday to permit oil and gas drilling off the southeast Atlantic coast, yielding to an outpouring of opposition from coastal communities from Virginia to Georgia but dashing the hopes and expectations of many of those states’ top leaders.

The announcement by the Interior Department surprised many. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the move was chiefly driven by the widespread concerns of coastal communities, as well as the military’s reservations about permitting drilling near some of its largest installations. The move also comes as oil prices have plunged to near record lows, which could ease some of the political backlash.

“We heard from many corners that now is not the time to offer oil and gas leasing off the Atlantic coast,” Jewell said. “When you factor in conflicts with national defense, economic activities such as fishing and tourism, and opposition from many local communities, it simply doesn’t make sense to move forward with any lease sales in the coming five years.”

The decision represents a reversal of President Obama’s previous offshore drilling plans and comes as he is trying to build an ambitious environmental legacy. It could also inject the issue into the 2016 presidential campaigns, as Republican candidates vow to expand drilling.

The Obama drilling plan, once completed, would be in place from 2017 to 2022, but a future administration could draft a new plan to allow Atlantic drilling after that.

In January 2015, Obama drew the wrath of environmentalists and high praise from the oil industry and Southeastern governors after the Interior Department put forth a proposal that would have opened much of the southeastern Atlantic coast to offshore drilling for the first time.

The proposal came after governors, state legislators and senators from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia all expressed support for the drilling. Lawmakers in the state capitals saw new drilling as creating jobs and bolstering state revenue.

But the offshore drilling proposal, which was still in draft form and was not to be finalized until later this year, provoked a backlash from coastal communities including Norfolk, Va., which supports the world’s largest naval base; Charleston, S.C.; and tiny tourist towns around Myrtle Beach, S.C., and on the Outer Banks of N.C. More than 100 of those coastal cities and towns signed resolutions asking Obama to shut down plans for new drilling.

In addition, more than 80 East Coast state legislators and the owners of about 1,000 coastal businesses have signed letters to Obama opposing the drilling.

Interior Department officials said Tuesday that the Pentagon had expressed reservations about allowing drilling in the vicinity of the naval base.

The coastal opposition and inland support of the drilling was regional, rather than partisan. In prominent coastal communities such as Charleston, conservative Republicans such as Representative Mark Sanford, a former governor, helped lead the vocal opposition to the drilling. But inland in state capitals, Democrats such as Governor Terry McAuliffe of Virginia have supported it.

Environmental groups and the oil industry have spent the past several months lobbying in town halls and statehouses throughout the Southeast. Officials from environmental groups such as Oceana also met with top White House energy and environment officials to press their case.

Environmental groups and many coastal residents fear that opening the Atlantic to drilling could lead to a repeat of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 people and sent millions of gallons of oil to the shores of nearby states.

“It’s a great day for the Atlantic coast, our beaches, and the coastal economy that depends on it,” said Rachel Richardson, director for the drilling program at Environment America. “This moment has come because Atlantic coast communities, businesses, and citizens have all spoken up to protect their beaches, treasured marine life, and President Obama listened.”

“If the Atlantic is taken out, that means there’s less of an opportunity to invest in the US, and those dollars will flow overseas, and we’ll hear more and more of that in the presidential election,” said Randall Luthi, president of the National Ocean Industries Association.

In a statement, the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, said: “President Obama is so intent on solidifying his radical climate legacy that he has backed out of his commitment to a large, bipartisan coalition of state leaders. These states simply want to explore their own energy potential, but the president’s reversal has disenfranchised them of this chance. This is a lost opportunity for new jobs and economic growth in these coastal states, not to mention much-needed revenues for the federal Treasury.”

However, administration officials noted that the move to block drilling comes as oil and gasoline prices have plunged to near record lows, and as onshore oil and gas development has rapidly expanded.

SOURCE





Masters of disguise

‘Green’ evangelicals disguise anti-life policies as pro-life, perpetuating suffering and death

By E. Calvin Beisner, Janice Shaw Crouse and Austin Ruse

The evangelical “creation care” movement professes to be pro-life and, for the most part, rightly so. But some creation care advocates give reason to wonder.

Case in point: the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN) recently launched a “Pro-Life Clean Energy Campaign,” promising to “organize half a million pro-life Christians to participate” in efforts to curb pollution by demanding a switch from fossil fuels to wind and solar. It calls this campaign “pro-life” and says it will “free our children from pollution all across America with 100% clean electricity from renewable resources by 2030.”

Even if it were true that pollution from generating electricity from fossil fuels endangers children—and modern pollution control technologies and actual emission levels make this assertion questionable—the reasoning is ethically fallacious.

The Bible makes a stark and fundamental distinction between intentional and accidental killing. When God instructed Israel to provide “cities of refuge” in the Promised Land, He said:

If anyone kills his neighbor unintentionally without having hated him in the past—as when someone goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down a tree, and the head slips from the handle and strikes his neighbor so that he dies—he may flee to [a city of refuge] and live, lest the avenger of blood … strike him fatally, though the man did not deserve to die, since he had not hated his neighbor in the past. …

But if anyone hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and attacks him and strikes him fatally so that he dies, and he flees into one of these cities, then the elders of his city shall send and take him from there, and hand him over to the avenger of blood, so that he may die. [Deuteronomy 19:4–6, 11–12]

Most legal systems today incorporate this fundamental ethical distinction, as by distinguishing accidental killing from negligent deaths, and intentional but not premeditated from premeditated homicide. They typically inflict no criminal penalty on the first and graduated penalties on the rest.

Some American evangelicals fail to make this distinction today. That failure weakens the pro-life movement and their pro-life arguments.

Like most ethics professors, when Dr. Beisner taught ethics in seminary, he made sure his students understood that proper ethical judgment considers carefully both the intent and the outcome of our acts. EEN’s campaign ignores that distinction and twists the facts about the outcomes.

The campaign morally equates fossil fuel electricity generation with abortion. However, the ethical differences between abortion and pollution are glaring.

First, the intent differs. In abortion, the intent is to kill a baby. In energy production, the intent is to provide energy that people need to sustain life and health. Any pollution that is a byproduct of energy production is an unintended risk—like the risk of an axe head flying off while cutting wood.

Second, the factual outcomes differ. In abortion, the outcome of every “successful abortion” is a dead baby. In energy production, the outcome of the energy produced is enhanced human health, living standards, and life spans. The effect of any pollution byproducts may be a slight reduction in some people’s health—but certainly not enough to outweigh the intended beneficial outcome. By contrast, the result of denying people access to affordable electricity is often to reduce their living standards, health, and life spans.

The term “pro-life” was coined in the 1970s to designate those who sought to restrict abortion. That has been its primary meaning ever since. To apply it to efforts to reduce the relatively small risks from pollution from electricity energy generation in the United States is to cheapen the term.

Moreover, EEN’s campaign does more than cheapen the term. Expanding on efforts that it began four years ago with its “Mercury and the Unborn” campaign, EEN’s current campaign continues the organization’s practice of disseminating erroneous information about pollution.

EEN’s previous campaign claimed that mercury from power plant emissions put 1 in 6 American infants at risk of “devastating … permanent brain damage.” In reality, the number exposed to enough mercury to have detectable effects was closer to 1 in 1,000; the risk was a delay in neurological development so slight as to be detectable only by trained specialists; and even that risk disappears in most children by age seven. In no case does it exceed about a half-point reduction in IQ, a difference common in identical twins raised in the same household. Further, less than 5% of mercury in US air comes from power plants.

Ironically, implementing EEN’s demand for “100% clean electricity from renewable resources by 2030” would likely impair human health or even kill more people than the pollution it prevented. By raising the cost of electricity, the mercury regulations alone are calculated to cost about 2,500 to 4,250 deaths per year. Getting 100% of our electricity from “renewable sources” (basically wind and solar) would cost multiples more. (The US Supreme Court ultimately struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s mercury regulation, for these and other reasons, but EPA had already implemented it.)

Nonetheless, by morally equating the risks from power plant emissions with abortion, EEN justified applauding members of Congress who supported EPA’s proposed mercury regulation as “sensitive to pro-life concerns”—and chastening members who opposed it as not “sensitive to pro-life concerns.”

Whom did EEN applaud? Among the 13 members named, Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin (both D-MI) both had 100% pro-abortion voting records  in the 110th Congress (2007–2008), and Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe (both R-ME) and David Pryor (D-AR) all had 78% pro-abortion voting records. Only two of the 13, Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) and Cong. Bob Latta (R-OH), had 100% pro-life voting records.

By broadening the definition of “pro-life” as it does, EEN obscures its meaning. By describing people with 100% pro-abortion voting records as “pro-life” solely because of their environmental views, EEN divides the pro-life movement, extols suspect health claims, and ignores the benefits of fossil fuels.

As a result, EEN makes it more difficult to identify and elect truly pro-life people to office, and thereby postpones or prevents victory in the long struggle to end the intentional slaughter of hundreds of thousands of babies every year in the United States (over 52 million since the infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973).

Further, by presenting its environmental concerns as “pro-life,” EEN draws activists away from truly pro-life work into environmental causes tightly tied to the population control movement, which promotes abortion all around the world. It also delays bringing reliable, affordable electricity to billions who do not yet enjoy its wondrous benefits, and thus prolongs their poverty, disease, and premature deaths. These consequences are now so obvious and undeniable that promoting anti-fossil fuel policies in poor nations amounts to reckless disregard for human suffering and death—hardly a pro-life position.

Four years ago, more than 30 pro-life leaders signed a statement repudiating EEN’s deceptive mercury campaign. Now concerned citizens can join many more in signing a new statement condemning EEN’s deceptive “Pro-Life Clean Energy Campaign” for the same reasons.

By all means, let us be good stewards of God’s creation. Let us seek ways to reduce risks posed by pollution, while still providing the abundant, affordable, dependable energy that is indispensable to lifting entire societies out of abject poverty and enabling them to enjoy the health and living standards we do.

And in seeking to reduce relatively small and unintentional risks, let us not undermine the efforts of truly pro-life people to end the killing of millions of babies here and abroad every year.

Via email





Another Climate Scientist Indicted for Financial Fraud

Here we go again. Daniel Alongi, a researcher/racketeer with the Australian Institute of Marine Science — though he’s no longer listed on its website — is facing trial for using a scheme to erroneously pocket half a million dollars in taxpayer money that was supposedly being used on climate change research. According to The Heartland Institute, “Alongi has been indicted by the Australian government on charges of defrauding taxpayers out of $556,000 in false expenses since 2008. Alongi has already admitted to creating false invoices, credit card statements, and e-mails to cover his misappropriation of funds.” As you might expect, “Alongi’s indictment raises serious questions concerning the credibility of his research,” Heartland adds. Meteorologist Anthony Watts says, “If Alongi falsely claimed to have spent half a million dollars on radioisotope testing, it would look pretty strange if he didn’t produce any false test results, to justify the expenditure of all that money.”

Any of this sound familiar? It should. Last October, House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology chairman Lamar Smith opened a probe into Institute of Global Environment and Society president Jagadish Shukla. Mr. Shukla, you may remember, implored the White House to prosecute climate dissenters. Not only was it an attack on free speech, it also violated laws on government-funded institutions. As Rep. Smith pointed out, “IGES appears to be almost fully funded by taxpayer money while simultaneously participating in partisan political activity by requesting a [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act] investigation of companies and organizations that disagree with the Obama Administration on climate change. In fact, IGES has reportedly received $63 million from taxpayers since 2001, comprising over 98% of its total revenue during that time.” The climate lobby is all about taking care of the earth — after they’ve taken care of their wallets.

SOURCE

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