Help us Expose the Great Global Warming Fraud

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H. L. Mencken

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” H. L. Mencken

Here in their own words is how the indoctrination of the world on the alleged perils of global warming evolved. We have found no evidence here and here and even more here and here) that any of the claims are right.

See Stephen Moore’ right-on assessment here.

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Changes observed are cyclical and we can explain them entirely with natural factors (outside of localized effects from changes to the local environment like urbanization). Recall that the idea that a degree or more of warming would be disastrous is ludicrous when a normal day sees a 30F change, the warmest month is 50F on average warmer than the coldest and the highest and lowest extreme record temperatures changes 120F or more in middle latitudes. It changes in our homes from room to room and within rooms sometimes several degrees at any moment.

Temperature trends compared for middle latitudes.

As Jonathan Gruber of MIT said, the elitists could depend on the ‘fact’ that people are stupid and would believe anything they were told by officials especially when the compliant media acts as an echo chamber. Hitler had shown that and his regime was green and used indoctrination of their youth and public effectively.

My philosophy when I taught college was to show my students how to think - not what to think. As Socrates said, “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” I told my students that data is king, and models are only useful tools. Any model’s output or any theory needed to be examined and validated using data, and must always used with caution.

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Well before this episode started, we were warned in 1961:

“… [In] the technological revolution during recent decades… research has become central ... complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government ... the solitary inventor ... has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields ... the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”
- President Eisenhower in his Farewell address

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ONE WORLD GOVERNANCE IDEAS BASED ON POPULATION AND RESOURCE WORRIES

”The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
- The Club of Rome Premier environmental think-tank and consultants to the United Nations.

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“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
- Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation

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”No matter if the science of global warming is all phony...climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
- Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment

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THE USE OF MODELS TO HYPE THREATS

“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
- Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research

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”The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.”
- Dr David Frame, climate modeler, Oxford University

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“I believe it is appropriate to have an ‘over-representation’ of the facts on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience.”
- Al Gore, Climate Change activist

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“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
- Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace

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“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
- Emeritus professor Daniel Botkin

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“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis...”
- David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive member

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‘The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature’s proper steward and society’s only hope.”
- David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth

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“If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism.  I don’t think it is possible under capitalism”
- Judi Bari, Principal organizer of Earth First!

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“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
- Maurice Strong, Founder of the UN Environment Programme

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“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”
- Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies

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“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.”
- Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund, Princeton Professor

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“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty,reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
- Professor Maurice King

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“We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of acres of presently settled land.”
- David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!

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“Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.”
- Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute

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“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
- Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University

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”The future is to be [One] World Government with central planning by the United Nations. Fear of environmental crises - whether real or not - is expected to lead to compliance.”
- Former Washington State Democratic governor Dixy Lee Ray

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“Urgent and unprecedented environmental and social changes challenge scientists to define a new social contract...a commitment on the part of all scientists to devote their energies and talents to the most pressing problems of the day, in proportion to their importance, in exchange for public funding.”
NOAA’s Administrator Jane Lubchenko, when she was president of AAAS in 1999

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“Our aim is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to change the global economic system… This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.” In simpler terms, replace free enterprise, entrepreneurial capitalism with UN-controlled centralized, One World government and economic control.
- UN Climate Chief Christiana Figueres

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“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. “It is not. It is actually about how “we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.”
- IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer

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THE FACT THE MODELS AND ALARMIST CLAIMS ARE FAILING MISERABLY IS IGNORED VIOLATING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

The great Nobel Laureate Physicist Richard Feynman taught students: “If a theory disagrees with experiment (or data), it’s wrong… That simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are, or what your name is… If [your hypothesis] disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.”

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Einstein schooled his fellow scientists: “A model or a hypothesis cannot ‘prove’ anything. But data can invalidate a hypothesis or model. It takes only one experiment to prove me wrong.”

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“Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. (Galileo, Newton, Einstein, etc). There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”

See Dr. Patrick Moore, ecologist, radical environmental activist and co-founder of Greenpeace talk about his journey to the truth and skepticism. He speaks about the benefits of the demonized gas CO2.

Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout - Dr Patrick Moore

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“The entire Apollo project to put a man on the moon cost less than $200 billion. We are spending twice that much every year on climate change. This tsunami of government money distorts science in hidden ways that even the scientists who are corrupted often don’t appreciate. If you are a young eager-beaver researcher who decides to devote your life to the study of global warming, you’re probably not going to do your career any good or get famous by publishing research that the crisis isn’t happening.”

- Stephen Moore, author of Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy

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“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic...on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections...proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”
- MIT professor of atmospheric science Richard Lindzen

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-Nobel Laureate physicist Ivar Giaever changes his mind on global warming, recognizes it as a psuedoscience.

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Gruber was talking about health care promises about Obamacare but trust me they have used it in perpetuating the global warming hoax. Sadly, they have taken over our schools and our children have been indoctrinated into the liberal talking points and bad science. That includes young journalists. We truly have an uphill battle. They have billions to spend. That is how oil and gas pipelines and hydro power lines get voted down and wind farms get funded. I recall having lunch with university economists from Spain and Italy where the renewable mandates led to 3 to 4 jobs lost for every green job created and only 1 of 10 green job was permanent. What followed was soaring electricity costs and brownouts and blackouts. Now the democrats and Jeff Flake want to propose a carbon tax bill. They pay no attention to what is happening worldwide.

BREXIT happened in part because of EU green mandates. The French pay up to 70% in taxes and had enough when Macron tried to impose an additional $.25 cent/gallon tax on gasoline. The ‘yellow jackets’ have rioted and Macron had to back out with his approval rating down to around 19%.  They feel the elites want to implement something that will make them ‘feel good’ at their expense. Brazil reacted to socialist programs that devalued their currency and increased costs by electing a conservative leader as did Italy, Australia. Austria, Belgium and other countries are pushing back. Eastern European nations remember the communist days and want no part of it (see this from Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic in 2012). The UN as we showed above is radical and wanting a global carbon tax that would if adopted raise gasoline prices to $49/gallon. It is saying give us your money and we will save you.

Rolling blackouts, skyrocketing costs coming if enviros prevail

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Icecap has worked pro-bono in teams of scientists, econometricians, lawyers and policymakers (here and here for example) trying to prevent an assault on our nation’s energy by radical environmental groups and politicians who benefit from pushing not ready for primetime energy sources. Where in the word these efforts have been tried on a large scale, electricity prices have skyrocketed and there were lengthy power blackouts, which in our latitudes would be dangerous in the coldest months. The wind doesn’t always blow nor the sunshine. Some of these countries have rushed to build coal plants. Even warmists like James Hansen and Kerry Emanuel have said wind and solar are foolish and nuclear would make far more sense as long as you don’t build them on volcanically active locations. 

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Meanwhile we are battling junk science, the latest example is the total disgrace called the CSSR 2017 where many agenda driven psuedoscientists joined with scientists riding the grant gravy train to produce a work of pure fiction. Even moderate scientists are shaking their heads about the propaganda presented as science. I guess it is not surprising when the Lead author is is Don Wuebbles.

We have prepared many briefs for influential people who can advise members of the administration of the real facts about natural climate change and the risks of enacting bad policies. After the election, the rich globalists and politicians promise to turn their attention and considerable funding to persuade congress and force the administration to move away from clean, affordable energy and trying the same failed policies now being abandoned by countries that tried it. This global effort was planned many years ago to make people world wide more dependent on big government and together with indoctrination in the schools at all levels, make them willing to accept the ceding of sovereignty to some centralized government (UN) which would make arbitrary decisions about how, where we live, how much we get to keep from what we make, even require a license to have children (the whole effort started with elitist concern about population and resources). The UN recommended tax on CO2 production would impose a new tax on a gallon of gasoline to $49. Filling your gas tank would cost $600!!! The money would fill UN coffers to be redistributed to fund a new huge incompetent bureaucracy and reward their friends in the NGOs and media that helped them get there.

Trump knows that because he was a democrat and attended many meetings where they discussed their their plans which as a business man and patriot he knew he needed to push back against. The intensity of the assault on them is because they fear that the public will turn against them. They had assumed like Jonathan Gruber of MIT admitted they though the public is basically stupid and would believe what they said with reinforcement from the like minded media echo chamber. He was talking about health care promises about Obamacare but trust me they have used it in perpetuating the global warming hoax. Sadly, they have taken over our schools and our children have been indoctrinated into the liberal talking points and bad science. That includes young journalists. We truly have an uphill battle. They have billions to spend. That is how oil and gas pipelines and hydro power lines get voted down and wind farms get funded. I recall having lunch with university economists from Spain and Italy where the renewable mandates led to 3 to 4 jobs lost for every green job created and only 1 of 10 green job was permanent. What followed was soaring electricity costs and brownouts and blackouts.

Please help us with even SMALL DONATIONS to fund our efforts that are likely to involve travel to meet with policymakers.

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Rolling blackouts, skyrocketing costs
By David Spigelmyer

While Americans across the country benefit from energy savings tied to greater domestic production, consumers in one of our nation’s most densely populated regions remain energy starved because of misguided, dangerous policies. Lacking modern infrastructure access to Marcellus Shale production, millions of New Englanders continue to face skyrocketing costs and the prospect of rolling blackouts.

Make no mistake, thanks to shale development, America’s energy outlook has positively changed - from a position of scarcity to one of abundance and security. The tip of the spear is close by in Pennsylvania, where companies produce a quarter of the nation’s natural gas demand, driving energy savings and significant air-quality improvements.

According to a recent University of Pennsylvania analysis, natural gas development has saved consumers a bundle, driving down home heating costs 40 percent compared with a decade ago. As clean-burning natural gas contributes a larger share of power generation, electricity prices have plummeted too.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, along with others closely aligned with the radical “Keep It in the Ground” movement, has blocked key energy infrastructure projects, ensuring consumers throughout New England will continue to be starved of the energy they need when they need it most.

Projects like the Millennium and Constitution pipelines, which are thoroughly vetted and would be built to the highest safety standards by skilled building trades union members, have been denied New York state permits, severely delaying and even blocking key pathways to more affordable and domestic natural gas.

Rather than turning to reliable resources just a few states away, New England’s demand, as a result, is largely met through importing natural gas from the Caribbean. With New England relying on natural gas to produce half of the region’s electricity, according to the Department of Energy, an overreliance on imported fuel results in shortages and severe price spikes during high-demand periods.

The impact of these politically motivated decisions came to bear during last winter’s “Bomb Cyclone.” The deep freeze triggered a 60-fold surge in the price for natural gas in the New England region, as families turned up the heat to stay warm during the arctic blast.

As natural gas prices topped $175 per million British thermal unit (MMBtu) in New York, setting a North American record, natural gas prices for Pennsylvania’s in-state utilities stayed less than $5 per MMBtu.

Concerns around energy security, reliability, and affordability for millions of Americans is a worrisome trend. ISO New England - an independent, nonprofit organization responsible for the reliable operation of the region’s power grid - warned in a new report that the region will face rolling blackouts and outages during peak times if gas infrastructure constraints are not addressed.

And it’s not just consumers who suffer from the lack of adequate energy infrastructure. America’s energy security is threatened as well. A cargo ship loaded with Russian liquefied natural gas - sent through France from a Russian company under U.S. sanctions - docked in Boston harbor recently, marking the first import of Russian natural gas to this country.

Forcing New Englanders to use imported Russian natural gas, when America is awash in energy abundance, sets a dangerous precedent that we should be working together to avoid.

Clean, abundant Marcellus Shale gas is the solution to New England’s energy woes. Without modern, efficient infrastructure, New Englanders will continue to suffer the consequences of radical, outside-the-mainstream policies pursued by fringe activists and allied politicians.

David Spigelmyer is president of the Pittsburgh-based Marcellus Shale Coalition, a natural gas trade association.

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New England’s needless energy crisis

By Karen Harbert, Providence Journal

A new study conducted by the independent grid operator in New England includes a stark warning for utilities, politicians and customers. While the United States has already become the world’s leading energy producer, ISO New England’s research shows that the region may have to rely on increasing amounts of imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) to meet its future power needs, even though it sits on the doorstep of one of the world’s largest natural gas fields.

The research is consistent with the region’s lack of natural gas infrastructure that was highlighted in our own report ‘What if Pipelines Aren’t Built into the Northeast’ released last year. This shortage means that the region could face a regular risk of rolling winter blackouts by 2024 and would have to rely on more expensive fuel and overseas LNG to meet peak demand.

Worse, the problem is so severe that emergency measures will likely be necessary almost every winter by the mid-2020s, with the grid operator estimating that rolling blackouts would be necessary in 19 out of the 23 scenarios they studied.

ISO New England’s study concluded with a blunt assessment of the problem: “while the use of natural gas for both heating and power generation is growing, the natural gas supply infrastructure is not expanding at the same pace, resulting in natural gas supply constraints in winter. Given the region’s current and growing reliance on natural gas, limitations on the region’s natural gas delivery infrastructure are the most significant component of New England’s fuel-security risk.”

None of this should come as a surprise to those who have been following the energy debate in New England over the past few years. The region has seen closures of many of its coal and nuclear plants, making it increasingly dependent on natural gas generation. A lack of infrastructure has already led to residential electricity prices that are 44 percent higher than the U.S. average, and 62 percent higher for industrial users. New Englanders are also paying 29 percent more, on average, for natural gas.

The impact of those high prices is significant. Our report found that if additional pipeline infrastructure isn’t built, it will cost New England more than 78,000 jobs and $7.6 billion in regional GDP by 2020.

Of course, the irony is that neighboring states like Ohio and Pennsylvania sit above the Marcellus and Utica Shales, two of the world’s richest gas reserves. Unfortunately, an aggressive and well-funded campaign by extreme activists has fought against and prevented new pipeline projects that proposed to deliver this energy resource to New England markets.

Projects like the Northeast Energy Direct, Access Northeast and Constitution pipelines could bring abundant and affordable Pennsylvania gas to New England, but activists have successfully lobbied regulators to deny key permits necessary for pipeline construction.

These misguided efforts have actually worked against regional environmental goals. While renewable sources of energy show great promise, they also require backup sources that must be quickly scaled up to meet peak demand and pick up the slack when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. People still need fuel to heat their homes and power their businesses, schools, and hospitals.

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But because of a lack of infrastructure, rather than using cheaper and cleaner domestic fuel from neighboring states, New Englanders are forced to pay more to burn fuel oil and import higher-priced natural gas from overseas to meet their energy needs. Neither of these scenarios makes economic or environmental sense.

New England needs modern infrastructure to compete. Energy infrastructure is no exception. We applaud the current administration’s focus on revamping our nation’s infrastructure, and hope New England is included. It’s time for state and local lawmakers to face reality and put consumers over extreme special interests to ensure affordable, reliable energy for all of their residents.

Karen Harbert is the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute.

WHERE’S THE BEEF?

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IPCC ‘Knows’ Less About Future Climate Today Than It ‘Knew’ in 1998

Icecap Note:

Michael Oppenheimer, 1990, The Environmental Defense Fund: “By 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots..."(By 1996) The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers...The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.” (now a ‘professor’ at Princeton).

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IPCC ‘Knows’ Less About Future Climate Today Than It ‘Knew’ in 1998

By Dennis Avery

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reveals their team knows even less about Earth’s global warming than it claimed to know almost 30 years ago.

The dominant thing the IPCC “knew” in 1998 was that we were already suffering a powerful, dangerous warming trend that would essentially shake humanity’s faith in its future. But that didn’t happen. Instead, we spent the last 20 years with no significant warming at all, while we wasted tens of billions of dollars fruitlessly re-analyzing the climate models that failed to forecast the non-warming.

Our recent “hottest years” headlines were essentially statistical gimmicks, citing temperatures that were “record-high” by thousandths of a degree C. The claims were possible only because lots more of our “official” thermometers are now located in bigger and more intense Urban Heat Islands than 30 years ago. The official thermometers are now surrounded by more cement and less greenery.

Simultaneously, the official thermometers at bigger and bigger airports have more and bigger planes burning more jet fuel as they await take-off.

Meanwhile, literally hundreds of “formerly official” rural thermometers have been decommissioned—perhaps because they showed so little warming? Dr. Edward Long took one pair of official thermometer sites from each of the 48 States, one rural, one urban, for the years 1900-2010. The raw data for the rural sites showed only one-fifth as much warming as the urban sites. But the officially “adjusted” data shows both rural and urban instruments closely matching the urban record! NOAA had adjusted the rural sites to match the polluted “Urban Heat Island” trend.  (See post here)

Obviously, NOAA wanted to see “record warming,” and wasn’t above finagling the numbers to get it.

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Now, about our 20-year warming “hiatus.” The climate modelers claim to be baffled by it, but they aren’t.  It’s just a 60-year cycle in the Pacific Ocean that periodically warms that vast ocean by about 2 degrees Celsius for 25-30 years. Then the Pacific temperatures drop back to roughly their earlier level for the next 25-30 years.  It’s called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The record shows PDO warmings at 1860-1880, 1915-1940—and during the “Al Gore” years from 1976-98! Thus we can expect another ten years or so of “hiatus” while the climate models fruitlessly whiz out “new” forecasts.

In other words, there was nothing unusual about the Earth’s warming from 1976-1998. It wasn’t “unprecedented man-made warming,” it was just another PDO cycle.

It’s no coincidence that over the past 150 years our newspaper headlines show we’ve had climate scare headlines every 25-30 years—coinciding with the PDO shifts.  When the trend was cooling, we scared ourselves about another Ice Age. When the trend was warming, we saw forecasts of an “ice-free Arctic” and a huge sea level rise. 

The PDO cycle recurs, just like the longer Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle that brought us the Roman Warming (200 BC to 600 AD), the Medieval Warming (950 AD to 1300 AD). The Modern Warming dates from the end of the Dalton Minimum that dipped our temperatures from 1790-1830, and it’s not “unprecedented” either. We’re not yet as warm as the peaks of either the Medieval or Roman Warmings.

Nor will the alarmists get to claim runaway warming again after this PDO phase ends about 2030. NASA is now forecasting a deep solar sunspot minimum that could give us 60 years of even lower temperatures than we’ve had during the current 20-year “hiatus.” The temperatures are likely to drop again about 2040. Past solar sunspot minimums like the Maunder and Dalton were famous for causing big famines, but minimums during warmer periods were sometimes missed. Recent reanalysis shows these minimum come about every 200 years, and the Dalton ended in 1830.

What’s apparently cooling the upper atmosphere already is extra Galactic Cosmic Rays, which create extra cloud seeds as they shatter carbon and oxygen molecules.  The extra cloud seeds mean more clouds, which are already cooling the outer layer of Earth’s air. 

Earth will likely get more cloudy - and thus cooler - until the sunspot minimum is over. In complete defiance of the IPCC!

What else did we “know” in 1998 that has since proven untrue?

NOAA has recently told us there’s no link between the temperatures we’ve had recently and the extreme weather that we’ve always suffered.

There are more and healthier polar bears than the Inuit have ever seen in the past.
Land areas of 90 percent of the Pacific atolls are either stable or growing.

Greenland’s ice mass has added 150 billion tons of ice this year compared to the 1981-2010 average.

Our moderate warming, far from killing humans, is saving millions of human lives each year. Cold normally kills about 18 million people due to cold-induced heart attacks and other cold-weather events in an average current year.

A record of failures like the IPCC’s could get a football coach fired in mid-season. 

Study Blows ‘Greenhouse Theory Out of the Water’

’All observed climatic changes have natural causes completely outside of human control’

By Alex, WND

“Our analysis (paper) revealed a poor relationship between global mean annual temperature] and the amount of greenhouse gases in planetary atmospheres across a broad range of environments in the Solar System,” the paper explains.

“This is a surprising result from the standpoint of the current Greenhouse theory, which assumes that an atmosphere warms the surface of a planet (or moon) via trapping of radiant heat by certain gases controlling the atmospheric infrared optical depth,” the study continues.

Enlarged ClimateGraphic

The paper outlines four possible explanations for those observations, and concludes that the most plausible was that air pressure is responsible for the greenhouse effect on a celestial body.

In essence, what is commonly known as the atmospheric “greenhouse” effect is in fact a form of compression heating caused by total air pressure, the authors told WND in a series of e-mails and phone interviews, comparing the mechanics of it to the compression in a diesel engine that ignites the fuel.”

And that effect is completely independent of the so-called “greenhouse gases” and the chemical composition of the atmosphere, they added.

“Hence, there are no greenhouse gases in reality - as in, gases that can cause warming,” Nikolov said when asked to explain the paper in layman’s terms.

“Humans cannot in principle affect the global climate through industrial emissions of CO2, methane and other similar gases or via changes in land use,” he added. “All observed climatic changes have natural causes that are completely outside of human control.”

For the first time, Nikolov said, there is now empirical evidence from NASA data that the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere is not caused by the trapping of heat, but by the force of atmospheric pressure.

The pressure is the weight of the atmosphere, he added.

And the combination of gravity and the mass of the atmosphere explains why the Earth, for example, is warmer than the moon.

“The moon receives about the same amount of heat from the sun as Earth, yet it is 90 degrees [Celsius] colder than the Earth, because it has no atmosphere,” Nikolov explained.

Polar bear climate change global warming

What it all means for science and the climate debate

This is not the first paper to reject the greenhouse’gas theory entirely.

In 2009, for example, Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf Tscheuschner published a paper titled “Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics” in the International Journal of Modern Physics.

They wrote that the “atmospheric greenhouse effect” that “is still supported in global climatology” basically “describes a fictitious mechanism.” The second law of thermodynamics, they said, shows that “can never exist.”

However, their paper did not propose a mechanism to explain the higher temperature of Earth relative to the moon.

The new paper by Nikolov and Zeller does propose such a mechanism - atmospheric pressure.

If correct, the implications of the discovery would be enormous, multiple scientists told WND.

For one, it means the climate projections used to forecast warming doom and justify a wide range of policies are completely wrong.

That is because they were produced by computer models built around a “physically deeply flawed concept, the radiative greenhouse theory,” said Nikolov, who works as a federal scientist but did the new study completely on his own time.

“One major implication of our recently published study is that there is indeed a fundamental problem with the physics of current radiative greenhouse concept,” he told WND, highlighting the origin of the “inaccurate” theory in two 19th century papers.

“The foundation of the greenhouse theory was born of an assumption, it was never shown experimentally, and our results show this is completely wrong,” Nikolov said. “Our study blows the greenhouse theory completely out of the water. There is nothing left.”

“Hence, the public debate on climate needs now to shift focus to the fact that the basic science concept underlying current climate projections by the UN [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] IPCC and other international bodies is physically flawed,” Nikolov added, saying the new findings require a “fundamental overhaul of climate science” and that Earth may be heading for a cooling period.

“This is what the data shows,” he said. “We didn’t start with a theory, we started with the data, which is the opposite of how the greenhouse theory came about.”

The greenhouse theory, Nikolov explained, is based on the assumption that a free convective atmosphere - an atmosphere with no “lid” on it - can trap heat.

“This was an assumption born out of a misinterpretation of experiments involving glass boxes in the early 19th century by Joseph Fourier, a French mathematician,” he said.

“Glass boxes get warmer inside when exposed to the sun not because they trap long-wave radiation, as thought by Fourier, but because they hamper the exchange of air between the inside of a box and the outside environment,” he added.

Next came Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist, who assumed Fourier was correct and in 1896 created an equation to calculate the Earth’s temperature based on CO2 in the atmosphere.

“This equation is both mathematically and physically wrong,” argued Nikolov. “Yet, this paper is still cited as ‘evidence’ that the physics of the greenhouse effect have been well-known for over 100 years.”

The atmosphere does, indeed, increase heat near the surface of celestial bodies.

“But until our paper, the mechanism to explain this - pressure - was not known,” Nikolov continued. “All of the climate science has been based on these false assumptions, all the computer models were based on the assumption, but it’s incorrect.”

Zeller, a retired U.S. Air Force reserve colonel and a retired research meteorologist who worked for the U.S. Forest Service and NOAA, also said that the monumental implications of the findings would extend even beyond the climate debate.

“The implications, beyond the scientific ones, of this study, are that once understood, it may be an opportunity for healing by looking back and seeing that even in this day and age science can be wrong,” he told WND.

“Possibly this will demonstrate that the world’s peer-review system needs to be rethought so that it doesn’t continue retarding the advancement of human evolution: Medicine, pharmaceuticals, cancer cures, proper dietary guidance, etc. are all hampered by combinations of greed and strongly held beliefs”,

he added.

In terms of advancing scientific inquiry, “our formula, if we can get it out there to the world, is going to open up all sorts of new lines of research,” Zeller continued.

Among other examples, he noted that if the formula is applied to the earth’s temperature record stretching back to previous warm and cold periods, it would explain everything from the observed reduced differences in temperature between the earth’s poles and the equator, to how pterodactyls could fly despite the physics of flight not working based on today’s atmospheric density.

While describing himself as a “flaming, bleeding heart liberal,” Zeller noted that this should all be about science, not politics.

“This climate controversy is costing billions, making the wrong folks rich, and keep us from solving real environmental problems,” he explained.

Must Read Lecture: Top Physics Prof Nails the ‘Global Warming’ Myth

9 Oct 2018

In its latest hysterical bulletin, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has urged that we need to spend $2.4 trillion a year between now and 2035 to avoid the potentially catastrophic consequences of ‘climate change.’

But the truth is that ‘climate change’ - at least as perceived by the IPCC - is bunk and all that expenditure (which, added up, amounts to a sum greater than the entirety of global GDP) would be a complete waste of money.

Or, as Professor Richard Lindzen, arguably the world’s greatest expert on the subject rather more elegantly put it in a lecture in London last night:

An implausible conjecture backed by false evidence and repeated incessantly has become politically correct ‘knowledge,’ and is used to promote the overturn of industrial civilization.

Lindzen, who for 30 years was Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is probably the scientist most loathed and feared by the climate alarmist establishment. That’s because he knows the subject rather better than they do and has never been bested in argument.

He is withering in his contempt for man-made global warming theory, as he demonstrated in some scientific detail at the annual lecture of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London, hosted by its president (Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer) Lord Lawson.

You can read the full text here.

The global warming scare has little to do with science, Lindzen began by noting, but is rather the product of ignorance of science.

Hence his lecture title: Global Warming for the Two Cultures.

This was a reference to the influential lecture given in the Fifties by the novelist and physical chemist CP Snow in which he decried the scientific ignorance among the supposedly educated elite.

Little has changed since, said Lindzen:

While some might maintain that ignorance of physics does not impact political ability, it most certainly impacts the ability of non-scientific politicians to deal with nominally science-based issues. The gap in understanding is also an invitation to malicious exploitation. Given the democratic necessity for non-scientists to take positions on scientific problems, belief and faith inevitably replace understanding, though trivially oversimplified false narratives serve to reassure the non-scientists that they are not totally without scientific ‘understanding.’ The issue of global warming offers numerous examples of all of this.

Later he singled out former Secretary of State John Kerry for especial scorn.

Former senator and Secretary of State John F. Kerry is typical when he stated, with reference to greenhouse warming, ‘I know sometimes I can remember from when I was in high school and college, some aspects of chemistry or physics can be tough. But this is not tough. This is simple. Kids at the earliest age can understand this’. As you have seen, the greenhouse effect is not all that simple. Only remarkably brilliant kids would understand it. Given Kerry’s subsequent description of climate and its underlying physics, it was clear that he was not up to the task.

Lindzen’s scientific case against the man-made global warming scare is essentially this: the world’s climate is a chaotic system whose workings, even after decades of intense study and billions of dollars of research funding, scientists have but barely begun to comprehend. Yet here they are deciding on the basis of no convincing evidence to pin the blame on just one of the many contributory elements to climate - carbon dioxide - and trying to persuade us that this trace gas is somehow the master control knob.

This notion is so ridiculous, he said, it is close to “magical thinking”.

Now here is the currently popular narrative concerning this system. The climate, a complex multifactor system, can be summarized in just one variable, the globally averaged temperature change, and is primarily controlled by the 1-2% perturbation in the energy budget due to a single variable - carbon dioxide - among many variables of comparable importance. This is an extraordinary pair of claims based on reasoning that borders on magical thinking. It is, however, the narrative that has been widely accepted, even among many sceptics.

Until the late 80s, not even climate scientists subscribed to this theory. It only took off for political reasons and because there was so much money to be made from it.

When, in 1988, the NASA scientist James Hansen told the US Senate that the summer’s warmth reflected increased carbon dioxide levels, even Science magazine reported that the climatologists were sceptical. The establishment of this extreme position as dogma during the present period is due to political actors and others seeking to exploit the opportunities that abound in the multi-trillion dollar energy sector.

Elites are much more susceptible to this nonsense than ordinary people.

As Lindzen explained, elites are less interested in truth than in what is convenient.

1. They have been educated in a system where success has been predicated on their ability to please their professors. In other words, they have been conditioned to rationalize anything.

2. While they are vulnerable to false narratives, they are far less economically vulnerable than are ordinary people. They believe themselves wealthy enough to withstand the economic pain of the proposed policies, and they are clever enough to often benefit from them.

3. The narrative is trivial enough for the elite to finally think that they ‘understand’ science.

4. For many (especially on the right), the need to be regarded as intelligent causes them to fear that opposing anything claimed to be ‘scientific’ might lead to their being regarded as ignorant, and this fear overwhelms any ideological commitment to liberty that they might have.

None of these factors apply to ‘ordinary’ people. This may well be the strongest argument for popular democracy and against the leadership of those ‘who know best.’

The scientists, meanwhile, don’t know nearly as much as they pretend they know. And in any case, many of them have been corrupted by money or their left-wing politics.

1. Scientists are specialists. Few are expert in climate. This includes many supposed ‘climate scientists’ who became involved in the area in response to the huge increases in funding that have accompanied global warming hysteria.

2. Scientists are people with their own political positions, and many have been enthusiastic about using their status as scientists to promote their political positions (not unlike celebrities whose status some scientists often aspire to). As examples, consider the movements against nuclear weapons, against the Strategic Defense Initiative, against the Vietnam War, and so on.

Scientists are also acutely and cynically aware of the ignorance of non-scientists and the fear that this engenders.

But what about all the scary “proof” that global warming is happening? Lindzen has no truck with any of it.

What about the disappearing Arctic ice, the rising sea level, the weather extremes, starving polar bears, the Syrian Civil War, and all the rest of it? The vast variety of the claims makes it impossible to point to any particular fault that applies to all of them. Of course, citing the existence of changes - even if these observations are correct (although surprisingly often they are not) - would not implicate greenhouse warming per se. Nor would it point to danger. Note that most of the so-called evidence refers to matters of which you have no personal experience. Some of the claims, such as those relating to weather extremes, contradict what both physical theory and empirical data show. The purpose of these claims is obviously to frighten and befuddle the public, and to make it seem like there is evidence where, in fact, there is none.

Just to repeat that last important point: Lindzen believes that there is no real-world evidence that supports man-made global warming theory. None.

Lindzen concluded:

What we will be leaving our grandchildren is not a planet damaged by industrial progress, but a record of unfathomable silliness as well as a landscape degraded by rusting wind farms and decaying solar panel arrays. False claims about 97% agreement will not spare us, but the willingness of scientists to keep mum is likely to much reduce trust in and support for science. Perhaps this won’t be such a bad thing after all - certainly as concerns ‘official’ science.

There is at least one positive aspect to the present situation. None of the proposed policies will have much impact on greenhouse gases. Thus we will continue to benefit from the one thing that can be clearly attributed to elevated carbon dioxide: namely, its effective role as a plant fertilizer, and reducer of the drought vulnerability of plants. Meanwhile, the IPCC is claiming that we need to prevent another 0.5C of warming, although the 1C that has occurred so far has been accompanied by the greatest increase in human welfare in history. As we used to say in my childhood home of the Bronx: ‘Go figure’.

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NOTE:

To abide by the IPCC report recommendations for taxing carbon production, to fill up your gas tank (12 gallons) in 2030 (just 11 years away), it would cost you over $600 each time you went to the gas station.

5/10/18 Wind energy results in more warming than Coal does

By John Droz

Yesterday a major study was released, that concluded that wind turbines cause more atmospheric warming than using coal does!

There have been other studies that have come to this conclusion (e.g. here), but maybe since this came from Harvard, more people will pay attention to it…

This is a good time to step back and look at the current Wind Energy Scorecard. Studies from independent experts (see prior Newsletters) have concluded the following:
1: Global Warming: Wind energy results in more warming than Coal does.

2: Climate Change: Wind energy produces more CO2 than Gas or Nuclear does.

3: Ratepayer Cost: Wind energy is 45 times the cost of conventional electrical energy sources.

4:  Local Economics: Wind energy is likely a net economic loser to a host community

5: Health: Wind energy can cause severe health consequences to nearby residents.

6:  Environmental: Wind energy has multiple major environmental impacts.

7:  Jobs: Wind energy is net jobs liability.

8:  Fossil Fuels: Wind energy assures a continued reliance on fossil fuels.

9: Sustainability: Wind energy has major dependence on unsustainable components (e.g. rare earths).

10: National Security: Wind energy can adversely affect the missions and operational readiness of military facilities, undermining our national security.

When we objectively look at the Big Picture, it is quite clear that there are no NET benefits from using wind energy. How did we go down such a losing path?

Because our energy policies were written by special-interest lobbyists, and these policies were NOT based on real Science.

As the well-known song says “...when will we ever learn?”

John Droz, jr.
physicist & citizen advocate

Note 1: We recommend reading the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone. Some documents (e.g. PDFs) are easier to read on a computer. We’ve tried to use common fonts, etc to minimize issues.

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Note 3: This Newsletter is intended to supplement the material on our website, WiseEnergy.org. The most important page there is the Key Documents page.

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Gallup Poll: No One Believes ‘Climate Change’ Is America’s Biggest Problem

Warmist ‘Climatologists’ from Hollywood and the political world stepped between the needles and poop on the street in San Francisco to have a conference on climate change, attacking Trump and republicans for their neglect of their global governance based agenda that has the big lie about climate change has its primary foundation. A rebuttal was held in SFO with real scientists fact checking the fantasy.

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Enlarged

UPDATE from Camp Constitution 2018 - 4 wonderful videos

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22 Jul 2018404

Americans came up with 36 answers to a Gallup poll asking the biggest problem currently facing the country, and no one answered “climate change,” with only two percent even mentioning the environment at all, Gallup revealed last week.

In a random poll of 1033 U.S. adults, immigration topped the list as the greatest problem faced by the United States at this moment, with 22 percent offering that response. While 17 percent responded that dissatisfaction with government was the biggest issue, others proposed race relations, national disunity, healthcare, and family decline.

Missing from Gallup’s list of causes garnering at least 3 percent of responses was the vague category of “Environment/Pollution,” which drew only 2 percent.

Gallup on most important problem facing U.S.

The new poll seems to signal a major disconnect between certain progressive leaders and the American people at large.

Last month, for instance, the Berkeley City Council issued a resolution declaring a worldwide climate emergency, calling it “the greatest crisis in history” after evoking memories of World War II.

“The United States of America has disproportionately contributed to the climate and ecological crises and to preventing a transition away from fossil fuels, and Americans thus bear an extraordinary responsibility to solve the crises,” the text reads.

While World War II involved the slaughter of six million as well as tens of millions of casualties, yet somehow the Berkeley City Council believes it was a lesser evil than the overarching problem of climate change, saying that the earth is “already too hot for safety and justice.”

Former President Barack Obama famously told the U.S. Coast Guard in 2015 that his administration considered climate change to be the most severe threat to national security.

“I am here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country,” the president told graduates of the Coast Guard Academy.

The following year, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry compared the effects of climate change to Islamic terrorism, suggesting that the two pose an equivalent danger to the peoples of the world.

“Yesterday, I met in Washington with 45 nations - defense ministers and foreign ministers - as we were working together on the challenge of Daesh, ISIL, and terrorism,” Kerry said at the Vienna summit. “It’s hard for some people to grasp it, but what we - you - are doing here right now is of equal importance because it has the ability to literally save life on the planet itself.”

In May of this year, the United Nations went even further, declaring “climate change” to be the greatest global menace facing humanity.

“Climate Change is the single biggest threat to life, security and prosperity on Earth,” said UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa at the roll-out of their yearly report.

“This annual report shows how UN Climate Change is doing everything it can to support, encourage and build on the global response to climate change,” Espinosa said, adding that “UN Climate Change’s mandate is to lead and support the global community in this international response, with the Paris Agreement and the Convention being the long-term vehicles for united global climate action.”

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Climate ‘worry’ ranks at bottom of New York Times survey - ‘Worry about climate change’ at 17th out of 18 reasons for not having kids

Climate Depot note: The New York Times survey found that climate ‘worry’ comes in at 11% - 2nd to last out of 18 reasons cited - for why young adults are not having kids.  So much for all the claims that people were forgoing having kids due to climate fears! (Flashback: A weatherman breaks down in tears and considers having a vasectomy, vows NEVER to fly again due to grim UN climate report: Eric Holthaus tweeted ‘no children, happy to go extinct’

By The New York Times | Source: Morning Consult survey of 1,858 men and women ages 20 to 45

New Study Shows Oceans Warmed By 0.02C Since mid-1990s, With Large Areas Cooling ocean

Climate Dispatch

A new analysis of top-to-bottom (0-5,000 m or 3.1 miles) ocean heat content changes since the mid-1990s reveals that (a) large regions of the global ocean have undergone cooling, and (b) the overall net temperature change for 1994-2013 was a modest 0.02C.

In contrast, during the Holocene the oceans naturally warmed at a rate and magnitude several times greater than the last few decades, undermining claims that the modern era change is unusual or unprecedented.

Image Source: Wunsch, 2018

Global Warming = Ocean Warming

According to the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the atmosphere accounts for only 1% of the heat energy change in the Earth system, whereas the 0-2,000 meter (0-1.2 miles) layer of the ocean is where 93% of the globe’s overall heat/temperature change has occurred in recent decades.

“Ocean warming dominates the total energy change inventory, accounting for roughly 93% on average from 1971 to 2010 (high confidence).

“The upper ocean (0-700 m) accounts for about 64% of the total energy change inventory.

“Melting ice (including Arctic sea ice, ice sheets, and glaciers) accounts for 3% of the total, and warming of the continents 3%. Warming of the atmosphere makes up the remaining 1%.’ (IPCC, 2013)

Deep Ocean Temperatures Cooling Since The 1990s

The IPCC chooses to exclude the layer of the ocean below 2,000 meters in their energy change inventories, even though about “52% of the ocean lies below 2,000 meters (1.2 miles) and about 18% below 3,600 meters (2.2 miles)” (Wunsch and Heimbach, 2014).

Perhaps the reason the deep ocean is disregarded is that recent analysis has revealed the deep oceans below 2,000 meters (1.2 miles) have been cooling since 1993.

“A very weak long-term [1993-2011] cooling is seen over the bulk of the rest of the ocean below that depth [2,000 m], including the entirety of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, along with the eastern Atlantic basin.” (Wunsch and Heimbach, 2014)

Image Source: (Wunsch and Heimbach, 2014)

Because of the cooling (thermal “retraction") occurring below 2,000 meters, the deep ocean removes a very uncertain -0.13 mm per year from global sea level change estimates (Llovel et al., 2014).

“Over the entire water column, independent estimates of ocean warming yield a contribution of 0.77 plus/minus 0.28 mm yr-1 in sea-level rise ... the deep ocean (below 2,000 m) contributes -0.13 plus/minus 0.72 mm yr-1 to global sea-level rise.” (Llovel et al., 2014)

Top-To-Bottom Global Ocean Temps Have Changed By 0.02C Since 1994...Large Regions Have Undergone Cooling

In a new paper, Harvard oceanographer Carl Wunsch provides an analysis of the overall temperature, salinity, and surface elevation changes in the global ocean for the 20 years between 1994-2013.

He focuses on the profound uncertainties in the data analysis and cautions that we still have much to learn about the ocean system.

Wunsch provides a novel assessment of the temperature data for the whole ocean (0-5,000 m), as the record doesn’t end at the 2,000-meter depth.

The results reveal that the global ocean has been cooling in some regions and warming in others for the last few decades, with an overall net change of 0.02C (~0.001C per year) during 1994-2013.

Read rest at No Tricks Zone

Weather Channel Pioneers, Tales from those that made it happen

Click on image to see more.

The Weather Channel turned 36 years old May 2nd.

In recognition of Independence Day, we have reduced the price to $17.76. Here Art Director Eddie (E.T.) Terrill talks about the book with a spoof of Neil Diamond’s America.

Most everyone has watched The Weather Channel at some time over the years. Have you ever wondered how the channel came about and what it took to become one of the most successful and well-recognized names in cable. The Founders and doers of the early days in ‘Weather Channel Pioneers’, give you a glimpse of these wild early days when it all came together. The updated website describes the adventure with videos and excerpts. It features a spoof video by a Pioneer honoring the Pioneers here and gone. Authors of the book include the late, great John Coleman, a friend, a true visionary and a fellow crusader for good climate science and many of the original staff.

John Coleman first told me about his dream of a 24x 7 cable weather network when I was working as a vacation fill-in weather producer for his weather shows for Good Morning America in the hot summer of 1980.  Like a moth to a flame I was drawn to follow him. My family and I left my home in beautiful Vermont to work with John full-time on Good Morning America (GMA) out of the WLS studio in Chicago.

John was a veritable meteorological broadcaster rock star. He worked magic with chromakey green screen technology, pulling weather maps out of the air on WLS and GMA in a world mostly still using magnetic maps. He was winning awards for his on-air weather presentations.

I worked with him, 2 artists and two producers all night starting before midnight to produce 4 shows. As exciting as that was, John was frustrated by the fact the time allotted for each show was never guaranteed. If the news or sports segments ran over, weather took the hit on time.

He was convinced that what was needed was a 24x7 weather network like CNN was doing for news instead of the 15 to 18 minutes of weather/day on the networks and most local channels. We would always be there when they needed weather information - much like what the internet brings today

Over the year, he polished up the business plan and sometimes after his last morning show would fly off to a distant city to try and sell the idea, was rejected or even laughed at, flew home, changed his clothes and came to work. The other days after the last show, we’d go to the office and talk about his weather cable idea. What would we produce and present, how many forecasters and broadcasters and artists would we need, what companies would we team with for data and technology. What doesn’t exist we will need to create to do it right.

After a year of rejections though I was feeling a little like Sancho Panza following Don Quixote on his impossible dream quest.

But suddenly there was interest - Dow Jones then WGN - each time the interest and our excitement spiked then faded but then Landmark Communications entered the picture - with newspapers, radio and TV stations, cable systems, they had wanted to expand into cable programming to do news when the CEO developed cancer. While they waited, Ted Turner launched CNN. After the CEO recovered, they set up new venture groups to explore alternatives. One of the members was in a poker game with John Coleman and when John told him about his weather programming idea. He brought him to Landmark, they quickly worked out a deal and we were off and running.

That’s when it got crazy - we were off to Atlanta in October1981. John and I were very busy defining the product with the artists and producers. I hired two of my students to help me screen candidates for on and off camera positions.  Resumes and tapes poured in during December and January. We hired many over the phone. The Pioneers reported for orientation March 1, we started practicing in April and launched May 2, 1982.

At start-up, amazingly we had 58 full-time broadcasters and forecasters with a total of 66 degrees and 450 years of meteorological experience.

We were state of the art for the time, but the technology was changing at a breakneck pace.

It was just the start of the computer graphics revolution in broadcasting and we lead the way with more than half a dozen such graphics systems including the first in the lines of high resolution paint boxes. Our artists, who originally did some graphics or art on paper that was then captured by cameras, quickly transitioned to using pen and palette. All graphics were funneled through a unique frame storage system. 

The On Camera Meteorologists would load their shows and control the graphics display from the studio desk.  There were no directors.

In parallel our technical staff worked furiously to be able to deliver the local weather, local forecasts and all severe weather NWS messages.  We developed computer units that went into every cable system that knew its location and grabbed and displayed its information in formatted pages in the Local Weather and across the bottom of the screen. For it to work, we had to get the NWS to change how they formatted their local forecasts and warnings with address coding that allowed our systems to know what was important to them and where they get displayed. 

When the weather was serious and it usually was somewhere in the nation, we were very serious on-air and worked very hard behind the scenes. When it was quiet, we let our hair down a little (it was the 1980s) and had some fun while still communicating information. The network in the early days was described as the first TV reality show, one of its appeals.

It really was an amazing journey that can’t be told in 1000 words, which is why we wrote a book.

In the book, we attempted to capture more of that story, that journey from one man’s vision to a shared vision of a large team of wonderful, courageous and talented individuals that came to Atlanta from all corners of the country in many different disciplines to undertake something special and unprecedented, unique people we call the Weather Channel Pioneers.

During this incredibly dynamic period, everyone went straight out, never entertaining the thought that what we wanted to do was impossible. We pulled off everyday miracles, overcame all obstacles and changed the paradigms for technology, weather data and warning delivery, graphics and on-air weather presentations. It was a time and a team like no other.

In the book, the Pioneers tell that story. It is about the early days not about what has transpired over the years.

http://Weatherchannepioneers.com is the web page that tells you more and links to the Amazon site where you can purchase the book. There are soft copy and e-book versions with over 120 pictures.  We dedicated it to john Coleman. We hope if there is any profit, it will help support the reunion of the original Pioneers in 2019 in Atlanta. It may be the last time we will be together to revisit those magical days. We have already lost over a dozen of the originals’. We hope to do a video with the originals revisiting the days leading up to and following the successful launch in a network that set new paradigms for meteorology, presentation, technology for local data, forecast and warning delivery and so much more. It will bring back memories. Tom Skilling, who was a sounding board and helped John market the idea wrote this about the significance of TWC and on “his friend John Coleman’s passing:

“It was in a world which had never seen a weather channel---had no idea what such an entity would even look like---that John Coleman embarked on a mission which would occupy years of his life and end up revolutionizing the way meteorological information was communicated.”

Then Tom after reading the book responded:

Hi Joe,

I just had to write to tell you the book is amazing! What a tribute to John and what an amazing piece of work. As I read through it, all I could think about is about is the work you put into it. It shows! You have produced THE written record of one of the seminal advances in the field of meteorology--the creation of the Weather Channel. Your role in putting a staff for the channel was an achievement in and of itself. There was no model to follow, you broke new ground--and what a job you did.

That you to included me in this effort is an honor beyond words. THANK YOU, Joe ”

Jim Cantore, the face of todays’s TWC echoed Tom:

“Even though I didn’t start my TWC journey until 1986, I had no idea as a young man of 22 years what a wonderful opportunity I had been given to learn about life and meteorology from many of these TWC Pioneers.  There are too many to name, but dozens of these men and women had a profound and lasting influence on the broadcaster I am today.  What an incredible trip down memory lane revisiting the heart and soul of The Weather Channel as it was being born and as it became one of the most trusted brands in the world. These TWC pioneers didn’t just start a cable TV weather channel, they saved lives and created a mission of service which still resonates with millions of people to this day.”
- Jim Cantore

Memories....from TWC Art Director Eddie Terrill

Let the Paris climate deal die. It was never good for anything, anyway

Opinion: Paris is a climate fairy tale. It has always been more about money and politics than the environment

Two weeks of climate talks in Bonn ended last week without agreement on a draft negotiating text, the Washington Post reports. Developing countries demanded to know when the US$100-billion package promised to them as part of the Paris climate agreement would be forthcoming. Hopefully, the answer will be “never” and that will lead to the end of the deal.

Paris is a climate fairy tale. It has always been more about money and politics than the environment. Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump wisely announced that America would withdraw. For developed nations who still believe Paris is a viable plan, the prospect of a massive transfer of wealth under the guise of carbon reductions must seem less attractive without the U.S. to help foot the bill. Still, other world leaders seem irrationally committed to pursuing the real objectives of Paris: wealth redistribution, virtue signalling and globalist governance.

At the core of Paris, signed in 2015, and its 1992 umbrella document, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.” The term means that developed countries are expected to go first, do more, and pay more. “To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities,” as Marx wrote in a similar vein.

The objective is to rebalance resources. How much more must developed countries do and how many more dollars should they transfer? In the Paris negotiations, the parties confirmed a breathtaking minimum transfer of US$100 billion per year starting in 2020, with the expectation that higher amounts would be forthcoming as time progressed. In exchange, developing countries with high and accelerating carbon emissions, such as China and India, talked of reducing emissions, eventually, probably.

At the time the UNFCCC was adopted in 1992, the greater share of global emissions did indeed come from wealthier countries. However, that has not been the case since approximately 2007 and annual emissions from developing countries now dwarf those from the developed world. China became the world’s largest carbon emitter in 2006 and by some estimates emits twice what the U.S. does annually. Yet under Paris, China has said its annual emissions will keep growing until 2030.

As a matter of arithmetic, the lifestyles of people in Western countries do not pose nearly as acute a risk to greenhouse gas concentrations as even a small rise in per capita emissions from countries with “emerging” economies and enormous populations. The Paris consensus blames the West for the world’s problems while privileging countries that pose the most serious threats. If the danger is carbon emissions, it is developing countries that are now the biggest problem.

Paris is more a movement than a legal framework. It imagines the world as a global community working in solidarity on a common problem, making sacrifices in the common good, reducing inequality and transcending the negative effects of market forces. In this fable, climate change is a catalyst for revolution. It is the monster created by capitalism that will turn on its creator and bring the market system to the end of its natural life. A new social order will emerge in which market value no longer determines economic decisions. Governments will exercise influence over economic behavior by imposing “market-based mechanisms” such as carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems. Enlightened leaders will direct energy use based upon social justice values and community needs. An international culture will unite peoples in a cause that transcends their national interests, giving way to the next stage of human society. Between the lines of the formal text, the Paris agreement reads like a socialist nightmare.

The regime attempts to establish an escalating global norm that requires continual updating, planning and negotiation. To adhere, governments are to supervise, regulate and tax the energy use and behavior of their citizens (for example, the Trudeau government’s insistence that all provinces impose a carbon tax or the equivalent, to escalate over time.) Yet for all of the domestic action it legitimizes, Paris does not actually require it. Like the US$100-billion pledge, reduction targets are outside the formal Paris agreement. They are voluntary; neither binding nor enforceable. Other countries have condemned Trump’s withdrawal and reaffirmed their commitment to Paris but many of them, including Canada, are not on track to meet even their initial promises. Global emissions are rising again.

If human action is not causing the climate to change, Paris is irrelevant. If it is, then Paris is an obstacle to actual solutions. If there is a crisis, it will be solved when someone develops a low-carbon energy source as useful and cheap as fossil fuels. A transition will then occur without government interventions and international declarations. Until then, Paris will fix nothing. It serves interests that have little to do with atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Will America’s repudiation result in its eventual demise? One can hope.

Bruce Pardy is Professor of Law at Queen’s University. This column is based upon an article forthcoming in the Journal of Environmental Law and Practice.

Enlarged

I Love Carbon Dioxide and You Should Too

Gregory Wrightstone

The demonization of the “miracle molecule,” carbon dioxide, continued last week with the announcement that its concentration had reached 410 parts per million (ppm). Nearly all reporting of this noted that this was the highest level in 800,000 years and predicted a host of associated climate calamities. While the current concentration of this vital gas is about 40% higher than at the start of the Industrial Revolution, unreported is that Earth has been suffering from steadily decreasing and perilously low concentrations of CO2. Until the consumption of fossil fuels began liberating this important gas from ancient rocks , the Earth had been flirting with dangerously low levels not seen for more than 600 million years.

During nearly all of Earth’s history, carbon dioxide concentration was at many multiples of our current level, averaging 2,600 ppm, or 6.5 times our current measurement. Forerunners of most of the plants we rely on for sustenance first appeared around 150 million years ago when CO2 levels were more than 2,000 ppm. Since that time CO2 has fallen steadily and precipitously.

In fact, at the end of the last ice age, carbon dioxide reached the dangerously low level of 182 ppm, thought to be the lowest since the Pre-Cambrian time period more than 600 million years ago. Why is it dangerous? Because 150 ppm is the lowest level at which plant life can survive. We came within a whisker of breaching that “line of death.” Until we began adding CO2 to the atmosphere, there was no guarantee that this horrific threshold would not be crossed in the future.

Rather than spreading fear of increasing carbon dioxide, we should be thankful that both the Earth and humanity are thriving, in part due to more CO2.

It has been long known that increasing CO2 benefits plant growth through the CO2 fertilization effect. Recognizing the benefits of this, greenhouses often increase CO2 to 1,500 ppm. Research from laboratory studies by the Center for the Study of CO2 and Global Change have documented that a 300 ppm rise in CO2 levels would increase plant biomass by 25 to 50%. This significant boost in plant productivity, along with a boost from lengthening growing seasons, means that we are better able to feed a hungry planet.

Enlarged

An additional significant benefit from this increasing CO2 fertilization is that the plants have smaller stomata (pores) and have lessened water needs. Less water used means that more stays in the ground and is leading to increasing soil moisture across much of the planet and a “greening” of the Earth. According to NASA, up to 50% of the Earth is “greening,” in part due to higher CO2 levels. This increased soil moisture is a primary cause for the long-term decrease in forest fires and droughts worldwide.

The benefits of increasing CO2 don’t stop with accelerating plant growth and increasing soil moisture. The biological impacts section of the 2014 white paper Climate change reconsidered II provided quite a lengthy list of additional benefits in addition to those mentioned above. The main points are listed below:

More CO2 makes plants grow faster and with less stress.

Forests are growing faster in response to increasing CO2.

More CO2 stimulates growth of beneficial bacteria in both soil and water.

CO2 fertilization, leading to more plant growth, means less erosion of topsoil.

More CO2 means bigger crop yields, and more and bigger flowers.

More CO2 fosters glomalin, a beneficial protein created by root fungi.

More CO2 helps plants to create natural repellants to fight insect predators.

Although I do not pretend to speak for the planet’s flora, I am quite certain that, if plants had a say in the matter, they would not lobby for reductions in CO2 levels. For plants, CO2 is food. They need more of it, not less.

]

‘We pulled off everyday miracles’: Inside the birth of the Weather Channel

By Jason Samenow, Capital Weather Gang April 19

John Coleman, left, and Joe D’Aleo, right, in 1982. (WeatherChannelPioneers.com)

When the Weather Channel launched in 1982, its founder, John Coleman, knew he was on to the start of something important and something special. In its first night on air, he presciently told viewers that the channel would “become the nation’s primary source of weather information” and that it would “serve the nation with information presented in such a way that it adds greatly to the quality of American life and the enjoyment of the television set.”

Shaking off skepticism from the outside world that it could succeed amid initial growing pains, the Weather Channel quickly became one of America’s most beloved cable networks and, indeed, the most-watched source for weather news.

Before the Internet, it provided unrivaled access to weather information and helped keep people safe in severe storms. Its programming had a magnetic quality, which despite its repetitiveness, lured many viewers to watch for hours on end.

Joe D’Aleo was the first director of meteorology at the Weather Channel and helped Coleman launch the network in 1982. He and Coleman, who died earlier this year, recently released a new book on the cable channel’s earliest days, ”Weather Channel Pioneers, Tales From Those Who Made It Happen.”

The book chronicles the formative years of the successful network, spurred by a visionary, and supported by a deeply passionate and motivated team.

D’Aleo generously took the time to respond to my questions about the book effort and the Weather Channel’s beginnings. His answers were lightly edited for length and format.

Tell us about the motivation for writing the book and its intended audience.

John Coleman and I and a number of the original Weather Channel pioneers decided to tell the story of what it took to revolutionize the way weather information was disseminated to the nation, to tell the story of how the Weather Channel was started. We wanted to write the book before time silenced many of us. John passed away a few months after the writing began.

Many of the pioneers contributed their own experiences of working those early days, and this makes the book an entertaining and informative history, “the inside story” behind the founding of one of the country’s favorite cable channels.

The book tells our stories and memories of how we succeeded in what was thought to be an impossible quest. We invite readers to step back in time and experience what it was like to make that dream a success and imagine sharing that adventure. The pioneers were in many ways trailblazers. We can only imagine how many careers in meteorology we have influenced over the years.

The book should appeal to just about everyone who loves weather and remembers the Weather Channel over the years. The book, we hope, is also an inspiration to anyone who has ever had a dream to do something different or difficult to take that chance.

John Coleman is often credited as the Weather Channel’s founder, with funding support provided by Frank Batten Sr. and Landmark Communications. I understand you played a pivotal role in the channel’s launch, as well. Can you briefly walk us through who the key players were in getting the Weather Channel off the ground?

John Coleman first told me about his dream of a 24/7 cable weather network when I was working as a vacation fill-in weather producer for his weather shows for “Good Morning America” in the hot summer of 1980. Like a moth to a flame, I was drawn to follow him. My family and I left my home in beautiful Vermont to work with John full time on “Good Morning America” out of the WLS studio in Chicago.

John was a veritable meteorological broadcaster rock star. He worked magic with green screen technology [in which maps are electronically added to the image behind the broadcaster], pulling weather maps out of the air on WLS and “Good Morning America” - in a world mostly still using magnetic maps. He was winning awards for his on-air weather presentations in the early 1980s.

As exciting as that was, John was frustrated by the fact the time allotted for each show was never guaranteed. If the news or sports segments ran over, weather took the hit on time.

He was convinced that what was needed was a 24/7 weather network like what CNN was doing for news. We would always be there when they needed weather information - much like what the Internet and mobile technology brings today.

Over the years, John polished up the business plan and sometimes, after his last morning show, would fly off to a distant city to try to sell the idea. His idea routinely was rejected. John flew home, changed his clothes and came to work.

After a year of rejections, though, I was feeling a little like Sancho Panza following Don Quixote on his impossible dream quest.

But suddenly there was interest from a number of major media players including Landmark Communications, which owned newspapers, radio and TV stations and multiple cable systems. They had wanted to expand into cable programming to do news when the CEO, Frank Batten Sr., developed cancer.

After Frank recovered, they set up new venture groups to explore alternatives. One of the members was in a poker game with John Coleman, and when John told him about his weather programming idea, he brought him to Landmark. They quickly worked out a deal, and we were off and running.

That’s when it got crazy. We were off to Atlanta in October 1981. John and I were very busy defining the product with the artists and producers. We got busy hiring.

Resumes and [audition] tapes poured in during December and January. We hired many over the phone. The pioneers reported for orientation March 1, we started practicing in April and launched May 2, 1982.

At start-up, amazingly we had 58 full-time broadcasters and forecasters with 66 college degrees and 450 years of meteorological experience.

When the Weather Channel launched, what was the level of confidence it would succeed?

Though there were doubters, we were confident internally we would be meeting our viewers’ needs and would succeed. A National Weather Service survey indicated that TV was the main source of local weather information. This was true despite the fact that a typical station or network only devoted 15 to 18 minutes on an average broadcast day to weather coverage.

We had major challenges, though - the biggest was providing the local information that the viewers needed. Our technical staff worked furiously to be able to deliver the local weather, local forecasts and all severe weather messages.

For it to work, we had to get the Weather Service to change how they formatted their local forecasts and warnings with address coding that allowed our systems to know what was important to them and where they get displayed.

During this incredibly dynamic start-up period, everyone went straight out, never entertaining the thought that what we wanted to do was impossible. We pulled off everyday miracles, overcame all obstacles and, along the way, changed the paradigms for technology, weather data, forecast and warning delivery, meteorology and on-air weather presentations. It was a time and a team like no other.

Some of the early Weather Channel meteorologists. (WeatherChannelPioneers.com)

What was the workplace culture like at the Weather Channel in its early days? What was a typical day like for you?

The workplace chemistry was generally very good, considering the fact that everyone had very significant workload responsibilities.

Our technology was state of the art for the time, but the technology was changing at a breakneck pace.

It was just the start of the computer graphics revolution in broadcasting, and we led the way with more than half a dozen such graphics systems. Our artists, who originally did some graphics or art on paper that was then captured by cameras, quickly transitioned to using pen and palette. All graphics were funneled through a unique frame storage system.

The on-camera meteorologists would load their shows and control the graphics display from the studio desk. There were no directors.

When the weather was bad, and it usually was somewhere in the nation, we were very serious on-air and worked very hard behind the scenes. When it was quiet, we let our hair down a little (it was the 1980s) and had some fun while still communicating information.

[The Weather Channel’s first attempt at a live shot in 1983 was a total bust]

The network in the early days was described as the first TV reality show, one of its appeals. Our viewers increasingly loved us. In 1983, a Nielsen survey showed that at least 40 percent of the cable households tuned in at least twice a day for an average of 28 minutes.

For me personally and our other managers in the operational departments, we had to deal with the stresses our staff that worked long days or nights or on rotating shifts faced. I knew from personal experience how difficult that is on the individuals and their families.

The biggest stressor for the “company” was financial. We had fixed costs to run the business. Despite very good ratings, viewer loyalty and increasing advertising sales, it wasn’t until the growing cable industry committed to providing subscriber fees that we turned the corner and became very profitable.

What are some of the book’s highlights and key messages that a reader will take away? What should a reader who obtains a copy look forward to?

There are many businesses that have been hugely successful by changing the paradigm and meeting needs in a new way, and the Weather Channel was one of those. It takes vision, teamwork and full commitment.

The “Weather Channel Pioneers” book tells one such story from one man’s vision that became a shared vision of an incredible and dedicated team and then a full commitment and follow-through by the entire staff to achieve success. There are amusing anecdotes from the early days as we were breaking new ground the reader will enjoy.

We know John Coleman tragically passed away before this book was published. Can you briefly talk about his contributions to the book effort?

[When I last saw John in 2017], his health was declining, and I decided, after discussions with some of my closest Weather Channel pioneer friends, that we needed to do that book that captures our story now. We were pleased when John agreed.

John wrote his entire section and did some editing on the early versions before the combination of this season’s nasty flu and his emphysema sadly took him from us.

What is your impression of the Weather Channel as a network today? Do you watch it? Do you feel like it is fulfilling your early visions? What might you change about it to make it better?

I watch little television, keeping myself busy with seven-days-per-week forecasting for WeatherBELL Analytics, along with my compadre Joe Bastardi and our other great staff. The Weather Channel realized years ago that the Internet and mobile technology would cut into ratings and focused more of their energies on those areas. That was the right move.

I hope the network does as their new owners promise, recommit to being the full-time weather source on TV.

The Weather Channel’s first attempt at a live shot in 1983 was a total bust

The Weather Channel Pioneers - The Book

New website describes the book. With videos and excerpts. It features a spoof video by a Pioneer honoring the Pioneers here and gone.

The Weather Channel turns 36 years old May 2nd.

Millions of viewers have watched The Weather Channel over the years. You are probably one of them. Have you ever wondered how the channel came about and what it took to become one of the most successful and well-recognized names in cable. The Founders and doers of the early days have written a book called Weather Channel Pioneers, which answers those questions.

John Coleman first told me about his dream of a 24x 7 cable weather network when I was working as a vacation fill-in weather producer for his weather shows for Good Morning America in the hot summer of 1980.  Like a moth to a flame I was drawn to follow him. My family and I left my home in beautiful Vermont to work with John full-time on Good Morning America (GMA) out of the WLS studio in Chicago.

John was a veritable meteorological broadcaster rock star. He worked magic with chromakey green screen technology, pulling weather maps out of the air on WLS and GMA in a world mostly still using magnetic maps. He was winning awards for his on-air weather presentations.

I worked with him, 2 artists and two producers all night starting before midnight to produce 4 shows. As exciting as that was, John was frustrated by the fact the time allotted for each show was never guaranteed. If the news or sports segments ran over, weather took the hit on time.

He was convinced that what was needed was a 24x7 weather network like CNN was doing for news instead of the 15 to 18 minutes of weather/day on the networks and most local channels. We would always be there when they needed weather information - much like what the internet brings today

Over the year, he polished up the business plan and sometimes after his last morning show would fly off to a distant city to try and sell the idea, was rejected or even laughed at, flew home, changed his clothes and came to work. The other days after the last show, we’d go to the office and talk about his weather cable idea. What would we produce and present, how many forecasters and broadcasters and artists would we need, what companies would we team with for data and technology. What doesn’t exist we will need to create to do it right.

After a year of rejections though I was feeling a little like Sancho Panza following Don Quixote on his impossible dream quest.

But suddenly there was interest - Dow Jones then WGN - each time the interest and our excitement spiked then faded but then Landmark Communications entered the picture - with newspapers, radio and TV stations, cable systems, they had wanted to expand into cable programming to do news when the CEO developed cancer. While they waited, Ted Turner launched CNN. After the CEO recovered, they set up new venture groups to explore alternatives. One of the members was in a poker game with John Coleman and when John told him about his weather programming idea. He brought him to Landmark, they quickly worked out a deal and we were off and running.

That’s when it got crazy - we were off to Atlanta in October1981. John and I were very busy defining the product with the artists and producers. I hired two of my students to help me screen candidates for on and off camera positions.  Resumes and tapes poured in during December and January. We hired many over the phone. The Pioneers reported for orientation March 1, we started practicing in April and launched May 2, 1982.

At start-up, amazingly we had 58 full-time broadcasters and forecasters with a total of 66 degrees and 450 years of meteorological experience.

We were state of the art for the time, but the technology was changing at a breakneck pace.

It was just the start of the computer graphics revolution in broadcasting and we lead the way with more than half a dozen such graphics systems including the first in the lines of high resolution paint boxes. Our artists, who originally did some graphics or art on paper that was then captured by cameras, quickly transitioned to using pen and palette. All graphics were funneled through a unique frame storage system. 

The On Camera Meteorologists would load their shows and control the graphics display from the studio desk.  There were no directors.

In parallel our technical staff worked furiously to be able to deliver the local weather, local forecasts and all severe weather NWS messages.  We developed computer units that went into every cable system that knew its location and grabbed and displayed its information in formatted pages in the Local Weather and across the bottom of the screen. For it to work, we had to get the NWS to change how they formatted their local forecasts and warnings with address coding that allowed our systems to know what was important to them and where they get displayed. 

When the weather was serious and it usually was somewhere in the nation, we were very serious on-air and worked very hard behind the scenes. When it was quiet, we let our hair down a little (it was the 1980s) and had some fun while still communicating information. The network in the early days was described as the first TV reality show, one of its appeals.

It really was an amazing journey that can’t be told in 1000 words, which is why we wrote a book.

In the book, we attempted to capture more of that story, that journey from one man’s vision to a shared vision of a large team of wonderful, courageous and talented individuals that came to Atlanta from all corners of the country in many different disciplines to undertake something special and unprecedented, unique people we call the Weather Channel Pioneers.

During this incredibly dynamic period, everyone went straight out, never entertaining the thought that what we wanted to do was impossible. We pulled off everyday miracles, overcame all obstacles and changed the paradigms for technology, weather data and warning delivery, graphics and on-air weather presentations. It was a time and a team like no other.

In the book, the Pioneers tell that story.

http://Weatherchannepioneers.com is the web page that tells you more and links to the Amazon site where you can purchase the book. There are soft copy and e-book versions with over 120 pictures.  We dedicated it to john Coleman who sadly passed away late this winter. If you prefer the ebook, go here.

----------

Thanks to my friend Anthony for being one of the early reviewers and his kind words. Ironically the day the book was released, The Weather Channel was sold again.

The book has many amusing anecdotes and untold stories by the ‘Weather Channel Pioneers in their own words along with many photos. Those of you who enjoyed TWC years ago will see people you will remember. We invite you to step back in time and experience what it was like to make that dream a success and imagine sharing in that adventure.

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Anthony Watts / 3 days ago March 22, 2018

My friend Joe D’Aleo (co-founder of the Weather Channel with the late great John Coleman) have written a fantastic book. John made a lot of headway on the book just before he died, and Joe took it to completion. Joe writes:

“The Weather Channel was the realization of a dream of one incredible man that became a shared vision of a large team of wonderful, courageous and talented individuals that assembled from all corners of the country in many different disciplines to undertake something special and unprecedented.”

“We like to call these unique people the “Weather Channel Pioneers”. To pave that road to success in the early days, we pulled off everyday miracles, overcame many obstacles and changed the paradigms for technology, the delivery of life-saving information and on-air weather presentations all while informing and entertaining our viewers. It was a time and a team like no other. In this book, we immortalize that effort with their personal stories and memories of that incredible journey.”

TWC on-air staff, circa 1982

Current Weather Channel meteorologist, Jim Cantore, offered this review:

“Even though I didn’t start my TWC journey until 1986, I had no idea as a young man of 22 years what a wonderful opportunity I had been given to learn about life and meteorology from many of these TWC Pioneers. There are too many to name, but dozens of these men and women had a profound and lasting influence on the broadcaster I am today. What an incredible trip down memory lane revisiting the heart and soul of The Weather Channel as it was being born and as it became one of the most trusted brands in the world. These TWC pioneers didn’t just start a cable TV weather channel, they saved lives and created a mission of service which still resonates with millions of people to this day.”

I had a hand in the early TWC success. I’ll never forget the first time I saw TWC. It was at the county fair at the business pavilion, and a local company was selling “satellite TV”.

They had their display tuned to “The Weather Channel” and I must have stood there a full 30 minutes watching it. I was mesmerized. I knew then I wanted to be a part of it somehow, and later, my own dream came true when I provided equipment to initially get WSI satellite images into their Quantel still store (which handled the on-air sequences) and later via an IBM PC, which had the very first PC based computer frame-buffer graphics card with a Genlock capable (used to synchronize to the other TV devices) RGB to NTSC encoder to make composite video and keep it synchronized with the other video devices in the studio. It’s something that I was thrilled to design.

Note the “breadboarding area” on the top card. The reason was that some video switchers (like models from Grass Valley Group) had a specific requirement for horizontal blanking width, which sometimes differed based on the setup at the TV studio. In the digital to analog world, sometimes I’d have to design analog circuitry “on the fly” to compensate for these nuances so that when this device was switched to while in the chroma-key, there wasn’t a slight horizontal tick, but a seamless transition. Back then, making NTSC television work reliably was a bit of an art-form.

That story is in the book, as told by John Coleman. There’s many other stories where they had to improvise and create things that didn’t exist. Mind you, when TWC first started, the way National Weather Service disseminated weather information was by Teletype running at 58.65 baud (there’s a whole untold story behind that weird number too) and wide-format wet paper fax machines sold by Alden Corporation, which produced output that looked like this:

weatherfax.jpg

What TWC did back then and the demands they made, changed the way the NWS did business with the public - and for the better.

I was honored to be working with the TWC team back then, and while I would have loved to be on-air, circumstances at the time just didn’t mesh. But I did gain two life-long friends; Joe D’Aleo and John Coleman, who joined me in the fight against the often ridiculous climate change arguments we fight here daily.

Left, John Coleman Right, Joe D’Aleo

This book is dedicated to the pioneers. It’s a profile in vision, innovation, and courage. I highly recommend it.

Available on Amazon, HERE.

-------

Note: Buy Joe Bastardi’s The Climate Chronicles in the same order and get free shipping even if you are not on Amazon Premium. 

The Onerous Paris Climate Agreement

Pompeo, Trump and the Paris Climate Agreement
By John Stossel

Trump announces he will pull out of Paris Climate Accord. President blasts the agreement as ‘unfair at the very highest levels’.

President Trump’s pick to be the new secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is not a fan of the Paris climate agreement, the treaty that claims it will slow global warning by reducing the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Politicians from most of the world’s nations signed the deal, and President Obama said “we may see this as the moment that we finally decided to save our planet.“‘

That’s dubious.

Trump wisely said he will pull America out of the deal. He called it a “massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries.”

Unfortunately, Trump often reverses himself.

The climate change lobby has been trying to change Trump’s mind. Al Gore called his stance “reckless and indefensible.” Most of the media agree. So do most of my neighbors in New York.

That’s why it’s good that Pompeo opposes the Paris deal. Such treaties are State Department responsibilities. Pompeo is more likely to hold Trump to his word than his soon-to-be predecessor Rex Tillerson, who liked the agreement.

The Paris accord is a bad deal because even if greenhouse gases really are a huge threat, this treaty wouldn’t do much about them.

I’ll bet Al Gore and most of the media don’t even know what’s in the accord. I didn’t until I researched it for this week’s YouTube video.

Manhattan Institute senior fellow Oren Cass is the rare person who actually read the Paris accord.

Cass tells me it’s “somewhere between a farce and a fraud.” I interviewed him for a video project I am doing with City Journal, a smart policy magazine that often makes the case for smaller government. “You don’t even have to mention greenhouse gases in your commitment if you don’t want to. You send in any piece of paper you want.”

The Paris accord was just political theater, he says. “They stapled it together and held it up and said, “This is amazing!"”

The media announced that China and India made major commitments.

In truth, says Cass, “They either pledged to do exactly what they were already going to do anyway, or pledged even less. China, for instance said, ‘we pledge to reach peak emission by about 2030.’ Well, the United States government had already done a study to guess when Chinese emissions would peak, and their guess was about 2030.”

In other words, China simply promised to do what was going to happen anyway.

“China was actually one of the better pledges,” says Cass. “India made no pledge to limit emissions at all. They pledged only to become more efficient. But they proposed to become more efficient less quickly than they were already becoming more efficient. So their pledge was to slow down.”

It’s hard to see how that would help the planet.

“My favorite was Pakistan, whose pledge was to ‘Reach a peak at some point after which to begin reducing emissions,’” says Cass. “You can staple those together, and you can say we now have a global agreement, but what you have is an agreement to do nothing.”

However, Cass says one country did make a serious commitment. “The one country that showed up in Paris with a very costly, ambitious target was the United States. President Obama took all the zero commitments from everybody else but threw in a really expensive one for us.”

Obama pledged to reduce emissions by 26 percent. If that ever happened, it would squash America’s economy.

Nevertheless, when Trump said he was leaving the Paris accord, he was trashed by politicians around the world.

The UK’s Theresa May was “dismayed,” and Obama said, “This administration joins a handful of nations that reject the future.”

Cass counters that if “the future is worthless climate agreements… we should be proud to reject.”

Don’t get me wrong: The Earth has been warming, and humans probably contribute to it.

But the solution isn’t to waste billions by making emissions cuts in America while other countries do nothing.

Trump was right to repudiate this phony treaty. It’s good that Pompeo is around to remind him of that.

Climate Change Hoax Exposed

Apocalypse now?

By Cal Thomas

Tribune Content Agency

Since the beginning of recorded history there have been end of the world predictions. In recent years we have had radio preachers, politicians and scientists declare with certainty that the world would soon end, either because of our decadent lifestyle, or because of “global warming,” now known as “climate change.”

Responses to these Chicken Little declarations have ranged from people hiding in caves to the most recent announcement by Costco that it has a doomsday meal kit for sale. The cost is $6,000. The online listing says the kit contains 36,000 servings of food that will feed a family of four for one year.

Marc Morano’s new book “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change” (Regnery Publishing) is just in time to refute the argument that “climate change” will destroy all life on Earth. It is a mark of Morano’s dark humor that he features as an “endorsement” of the book a comment by the liberal Daily Kos, which calls Morano “evil personified.”

The book is a point-by-point takedown of the predictions of disaster made by the climate change movement, none of which have materialized, but when one is part of a cult, facts don’t matter.

In the book’s foreword, the late John Coleman, who was a meteorologist, TV weatherman and co-founder of The Weather Channel, writes: “We meteorologists are well aware of how limited our ability is to predict the weather. Our predictions become dramatically less reliable as they extend into the future. When we try to predict just a few weeks into the future our predictions become increasingly inaccurate. Yet the ‘climate change’ establishment that now dominates the UN bureaucracy and our own government science establishment claim that they can predict the temperature of the Earth decades into the future.”

Coleman then gets to the heart of the issue: ‘Their global warming scare is not driven by science; it is now being driven by politics. So today anybody who defies the prevailing ‘climate change’ scare puts his career and his reputation into extreme danger.”

Among the facts revealed in Morano’s book are these: The world spends $1 billion a day to “prevent” global warming; A UN scientist says the “97 percent consensus” on global warming was “pulled from thin air,” presumably hot air from many politicians; scientific organizations claim climate change ‘consensus,’ but have not polled their members; climate policies are not helping, but “crushing the world’s poor”; The Paris climate accord theoretically postpones global warming by just four years, but will cost $100 trillion if fully implemented; climate change has been blamed for prostitution, barroom brawls, airplane turbulence and war; one climate activist is quoted as saying we should “protect our kids by not having them”; recent “hottest year” claims are based on statistically meaningless year-to-year differences; Antarctica is actually gaining, not losing ice; carbon dioxide levels today are 10 times lower than in some past Ice Ages.

Morano argues that the debate over climate change is not settled, as many claim. Science is never settled and apparently neither is the politics of climate change, which is being advanced by people who want more control over every aspect of our lives.

Real scientists who specialize in climate and related fields are quoted in the book. These are voices we rarely, if ever, see mentioned in the mainstream media because the media are part of the collusion.

Read this book and you will become an informed climate change denier, armed with arguments and facts to counter the propaganda being pushed by climate change fanatics. It will also save you $6,000 the next time you visit Costco.

(Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.)

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