He said changes to sea ice levels could have implications for the entire Antarctic ecosystem.

“So the sea ice is a very important habitat for krill in particular and for the reproduction of krill and that forms one of the absolute staples of the diet for many species in the Antarctic.”

While the Antarctic ecosystem braces for change, the world’s Antarctic research vessels will also have to contend with treacherous conditions in the months ahead.

From Spencer Adkins:
New National Science Foundation Grant Supports (SUBVERTS) The Nation’s TV Weathercasters As Local Climate Educators

PRINCETON, N.J.  The nation’s television weathercasters will have better tools to keep their viewers informed about the local consequences of climate change, thanks to a $3 million National Science Foundation grant awarded to George Mason University and Climate Central, a non-profit science and journalism organization.

The three-year grant Taking to Scale a Proven Climate Education Method by TV Weathercasters: Climate Matters will expand Climate Central’s current efforts to produce and deliver localized TV-ready climate science content and professional development opportunities to TV meteorologists around the country.

“We found in our prior NSF-funded research that TV weathercasters can be highly effective climate educators” said the lead investigator for the project, Dr. Edward Maibach of George Mason University. “We also found that there are many TV weathercasters around the country who are eager to inform their viewers about the local weather impacts of climate change.”

More than 150 weathercasters are participating in the program, called Climate Matters. The goal of the current grant is to add an additional 200 weathercasters to the project, although all of the nation’s approximately 1,300 weathercasters will be invited to participate.

We will make every effort to make sure they do not succeed. Maibach is no scientist but was recruited by the AMS which was frustrated that the TV mets who are the connection the science has to the public tended to be skeptical because they knew that a lot of the warming is in the cities and have ben around long enough to have seen cycles and extremes in weather. The AMS/GMU/CC/TWC climate mafia is working hard to convert the non-believers. The AMS has required all seal holders and CBMs to take special climate workshops where they are schooled on the greenhouse scam. The tests they take have climate questions. They have to parrot back the falsehoods they are taught. The young people have been brainwashed/greenwashed in the universities. Why??  The $165B since 1995 has bought a lot of compliance. Universities have been ‘purified’ by eliminating or silencing skeptics. AS one former TV met said you need only to look at the definition of bribery: Bribery is an act of giving money or gift giving that alters the behavior of the recipient, where the gift is of a dishonest nature. Bribery constitutes a crime and is defined by Black’s Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or other person in charge of a public or legal duty. AMS represents the Academic community, which gets the lion’s share of the government and enviro booty.  They have a lot to lose if the movement were to fail. It will fail and we with your support will take back our science.

Globally August Was Coldest In Five Years, Second Coldest In Ten Years
By Steve Goddard

Contrary to the spectacular “hottest August ever” lies being propagated by NASA GISS and NOAA ahead of Obama’s climate conference - August was the coldest in five years and the second coldest in 10 years, according to far more accurate NASA satellite data.

Enlarged

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Joe D’Aleo, CCM Hudson Litchfield News

Summer passed quietly. Concord had just three 90F days this year (one 90F, one 91F and one 92F, all in July) and the average for June to August was half a degree below normal. Concord had as many as 29 days at or above 90F (1955) and as few as zero (5 times, the most recent 1996).  For the central and eastern U.S., it was the cool summer we at WeatherBELL.com had forecast back in January.  It followed a brutal winter and cold spring.

Enlarged

We warned as early as June 2013, that last winter would be an historic one and it was for the Great Lakes region (Chicago had its coldest December to March in its entire record back to 1872 and Detroit its snowiest winter since 1880). Ice on the Great Lakes was the greatest since they have been tracking it and was still seen in June on Lake Superior. For Concord, the winter averaged 3.1 F below normal, the 29th coldest in 146 years. March in Concord was 7.4 below normal, the fourth coldest March on record. All the colder March years were in the 1800s.

Enlarged

With all the climate factors aligning, next winter in the east and southeast should be even colder than last year. Plan accordingly. Come join us at Weatherbell.com to see the details.

Meanwhile The National Climate Data Center (NCDC) and the media has ignored the cold and headlined how the months have globally been the warmest ever. What gives? What if I told you NCDC (which supplies all the global data centers with the data they do their analysis with) has been ‘tinkering’ with the data to fit the politically correct story (budgets depend on it you know). 

Back in 1990, NCDC introduced a data set for US (US Historical Climate Network USHCN), that was regarded by all to be the best in the world.  It showed the warming in the 1920s and 1930s that peaked around 1940, a cooling trend that went through to the late 1970s followed by a rise similar to the early century that continued until the late 1990s. NASA’s James Hansen who first publicly proclaimed global warming in 1988, admitted in 1999 on the NASA GISS temperature site “The U.S. has warmed during the past century, but the warming hardly exceeds year-to-year variability. Indeed in the U.S., the warmest decade was the 1930s and the warmest year was 1934.”

Enlarged

This US data set was a problem for the politicians and NCDC. The U.S. temperature record was at odds with the reported Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) trend, which showed the second 60 year cycle peak considerably higher (0.5C) than the one near 1940, and a much weaker cooling trend mid century. The reason was the US had an correction for the urban heat island effect designed by NCDC’s own Tom Karl. The global data had no such adjustment. Most of the global stations were cities and this urban warming, we are all familiar with contaminated the data in a big way.

This inconvenient fact did not delight the politicians, hoping to use global warming to impose taxes, gain control over our energy sector and build support for more global governance under the UN. In 2008, NCDC resolved the discrepancy by removing the urban heat island adjustment in the US data and suddenly 1934 instead of being 1.1F warmer than 1998 was 0.1F colder. Though the 60 year cycle, tied to the ocean multidecadal cycles was still evident, the new trend was more like the global.

They also added a new step where they blend (homogenize) stations together which has the effect of taking some of that urban warming and having it appear in the rural stations. Most striking in the new data sets is a major cooling of the early part of the record - not easily explained by either the urban or homogenization steps - which makes it appear that there has been an increasing temperature trend.

It seems other meteorological services around the world are playing the same games.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has been accused of manipulating historic temperature records to fit a predetermined view of global warming. Researcher Jennifer Marohasy claims the adjusted records resemble “propaganda” rather than science. Dr Marohasy analyzed raw data from dozens of locations across Australia and matched it against the new data used by the BOM showing that temperatures were progressively warming. In many cases, Dr Marohasy said, temperature trends had changed from slight cooling to dramatic warming over 100 years.

I could show you literally hundreds of examples of this reversal of trends in the data in the US and throughout the world (see this for Iceland). 

Meanwhile, this tampering has now made its way down from the national to the state level. NCDC made yet another change this spring to how it calculates past state wide average temperatures. If you downloaded from NCDC the Maine state average annual temperature plot in March, you would have seen no real long-term trend for annual temperatures (-0.03C/decade) since 1895. 1913 was the warmest year - almost 46F for the annual average. The annual mean was 41.2F. 2012 was second warmest year, just short of 45F.

Enlarged

This spring after NCDC announced a new and better version of their state data. I downloaded the new Maine annual temperatures and found a remarkably different story. 1913 was cooled to 41F (almost 5F lower) and the average cooled to 40F. 2012 was now the warmest year, over 3F warmer than 1913. The long-term trend jumped to +0.23F/decade, the highest of any state.

Enlarged

Michael Crichton, MD, PhD and author of State of Fear warned, in 2003

“I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.”

When you hear NOAA (not your trustworthy local office but the Climate Data Group in Asheville) and the media and political campaign ads make claims about August and seasons globally being the warmest ever and how big oil is to blame, please keep this in mind. It is not big oil, it is big money that feeds the ideological monster that continues to turn some of our universities into centers of mediocrity and threatens our nation’s energy security and (as a consequence) our lives.

...or 19 years, according to a key statistical paper.

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley |

The Great Pause has now persisted for 17 years 11 months. Indeed, to three decimal places on a per-decade basis, there has been no global warming for 18 full years. Professor Ross McKitrick, however, has upped the ante with a new statistical paper to say there has been no global warming for 19 years.

Whichever value one adopts, it is becoming harder and harder to maintain that we face a “climate crisis” caused by our past and present sins of emission.

Taking the least-squares linear-regression trend on Remote Sensing Systems’ satellite-based monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature dataset, there has been no global warming - none at all - for at least 215 months.

This is the longest continuous period without any warming in the global instrumental temperature record since the satellites first watched in 1979. It has endured for half the satellite temperature record. Yet the Great Pause coincides with a continuing, rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.

Figure 1. Enlarged. The monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies (dark blue) and trend (thick bright blue line), October 1996 to August 2014, showing no trend for 17 years 11 months.

The hiatus period of 17 years 11 months, or 215 months, is the farthest back one can go in the RSS satellite temperature record and still show a sub-zero trend.

Yet the length of the Great Pause in global warming, significant though it now is, is of less importance than the ever-growing discrepancy between the temperature trends predicted by models and the far less exciting real-world temperature change that has been observed.

The First Assessment Report predicted that global temperature would rise by 1.0 [0.7, 1.5] C to 2025, equivalent to 2.8 [1.9, 4.2] C per century. The executive summary asked, “How much confidence do we have in our predictions” IPCC pointed out some uncertainties (clouds, oceans, etc.), but concluded:

“Nevertheless, ...we have substantial confidence that models can predict at least the broad-scale features of climate change… There are similarities between results from the coupled models using simple representations of the ocean and those using more sophisticated descriptions, and our understanding of such differences as do occur gives us some confidence in the results.”

That “substantial confidence” was substantial over-confidence. A quarter-century after 1990, the outturn to date expressed as the least-squares linear-regression trend on the mean of the RSS and UAH monthly global mean surface temperature anomalies is 0.34 C, equivalent to just 1.4 C/century, or exactly half of the central estimate in IPCC (1990) and well below even the least estimate (Fig. 2).

Figure 2. Enlarged. 

Near-term projections of warming at a rate equivalent to 2.8 [1.9, 4.2] K/century , made with “substantial confidence” in IPCC (1990), January 1990 to August 2014 (orange region and red trend line), vs. observed anomalies (dark blue) and trend (bright blue) at less than 1.4 K/century equivalent, taken as the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite monthly mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.

The Great Pause is a growing embarrassment to those who had told us with “substantial confidence” that the science was settled and the debate over. Nature had other ideas. Though more than two dozen more or less implausible excuses for the Pause are appearing in nervous reviewed journals, the possibility that the Pause is occurring because the computer models are simply wrong about the sensitivity of temperature to manmade greenhouse gases can no longer be dismissed.

Remarkably, even the IPCC’s latest and much reduced near-term global-warming projections are also excessive (Fig. 3).

Figure 3. Enlarged.

Predicted temperature change, January 2005 to August 2014, at a rate equivalent to 1.7 [1.0, 2.3] C/century (orange zone with thick red best-estimate trend line), compared with the observed anomalies (dark blue) and zero real-world trend (bright blue), taken as the average of the RSS and UAH satellite lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.

In 1990, the IPCC’s central estimate of near-term warming was higher by two-thirds than it is today. Then it was 2.8 C/century equivalent. Now it is just 1.7 C equivalent and, as Fig. 3 shows, even that is proving to be a substantial exaggeration.

On the RSS satellite data, there has been no global warming statistically distinguishable from zero for more than 26 years. None of the models predicted that, in effect, there would be no global warming for a quarter of a century.

The Great Pause may well come to an end by this winter. An El Nino event is underway and would normally peak during the northern-hemisphere winter. There is too little information to say how much temporary warming it will cause, but a new wave of warm water has emerged in recent days, so one should not yet write off this El Nino as a non-event. The temperature spikes caused by the El Ninos of 1998, 2007, and 2010 are clearly visible in Figs. 1-3.

El Ninos occur about every three or four years, though no one is entirely sure what triggers them. They cause a temporary spike in temperature, often followed by a sharp drop during the la Nina phase, as can be seen in 1999, 2008, and 2011-2012, where there was a “double-dip” La Nina that is one of the excuses for the Pause.

The ratio of El Ninos to La Ninas tends to fall during the 30-year negative or cooling phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the latest of which began in late 2001. So, though the Pause may pause or even shorten for a few months at the turn of the year, it may well resume late in 2015 . Either way, it is ever clearer that global warming has not been happening at anything like the rate predicted by the climate models, and is not at all likely to occur even at the much-reduced rate now predicted. There could be as little as 1C global warming this century, not the 3-4 C predicted by the IPCC.

Key facts about global temperature

The RSS satellite dataset shows no global warming at all for 215 months from October 1996 to August 2014. That is more than half the 428-month satellite record.

The fastest measured centennial warming rate was in Central England from 1663-1762, at 0.9 C/century before the industrial revolution. It was not our fault.

The global warming trend since 1900 is equivalent to 0.8 C per century. This is well within natural variability and may not have much to do with us.

The fastest measured warming trend lasting ten years or more occurred over the 40 years from 1694-1733 in Central England. It was equivalent to 4.3 C per century.

Since 1950, when a human influence on global temperature first became theoretically possible, the global warming trend has been equivalent to below 1.2 C per century.

The fastest warming rate lasting ten years or more since 1950 occurred over the 33 years from 1974 to 2006. It was equivalent to 2.0 C per century.

In 1990, the IPCC’s mid-range prediction of near-term warming was equivalent to 2.8 C per century, higher by two-thirds than its current prediction of 1.7 /century.

The global warming trend since 1990, when the IPCC wrote its first report, is equivalent to below 1.4 C per century half of what the IPCC had then predicted. Though the IPCC has cut its near-term warming prediction, it has not cut its high-end business as usual centennial warming prediction of 4.8 C warming to 2100. The IPCC;s predicted 4.8 C warming by 2100 is well over twice the greatest rate of warming lasting more than ten years that has been measured since 1950.

The IPCC’s 4.8 C by 2100 prediction is almost four times the observed real-world warming trend since we might in theory have begun influencing it in 1950. From 1 April 2001 to 1 July 2014, the warming trend on the mean of the 5 global-temperature datasets is nil. No warming for 13 years 4 months. Recent extreme weather cannot be blamed on global warming, because there has not been any global warming. It is as simple as that.

Technical note

Our latest topical graph shows the RSS dataset for the 214 months October 1996 to August 2014 - just over half the 428-month satellite record.

Terrestrial temperatures are measured by thermometers. Thermometers correctly sited in rural areas away from manmade heat sources show warming rates appreciably below those that are published. The satellite datasets are based on measurements made by the most accurate thermometers available platinum resistance thermometers, which not only measure temperature at various altitudes above the Earth’s surface via microwave sounding units but also constantly calibrate themselves by measuring via spaceward mirrors the known temperature of the cosmic background radiation, which is 1% of the freezing point of water, or just 2.73 degrees above absolute zero. It was by measuring minuscule variations in the cosmic background radiation that the NASA anisotropy probe determined the age of the Universe: 13.82 billion years.

The graph is accurate. The data are lifted monthly straight from the RSS website. A computer algorithm reads them down from the text file, takes their mean and plots them automatically using an advanced routine that automatically adjusts the aspect ratio of the data window at both axes so as to show the data at maximum scale, for clarity.

The latest monthly data point is visually inspected to ensure that it has been correctly positioned. The light blue trend line plotted across the dark blue spline-curve that shows the actual data is determined by the method of least-squares linear regression, which calculates the y-intercept and slope of the line via two well-established and functionally identical equations that are compared with one another to ensure no discrepancy between them. The IPCC and most other agencies use linear regression to determine global temperature trends. Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia recommends it in one of the Climategate emails. The method is appropriate because global temperature records exhibit little auto-regression.

Dr Stephen Farish, Professor of Epidemiological Statistics at the University of Melbourne, kindly verified the reliability of the algorithm that determines the trend on the graph and the correlation coefficient, which is very low because, though the data are highly variable, the trend is flat.

Other statistical methods might be used. A paper by Professor Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph, Canada, published at the end of August 2014, estimated that at that date there had been 19 years without any global warming. 

Anthony Watts, WUWT

Yesterday we posted on BoM’s bomb on station temperature trend fiddling. where BoM claimed the trend difference was a result of a station move. Apparently, BoM can’t even keep track of their own station histories! Today, Dr. Jennifer Marohasy writes: Who’s going to be sacked for making-up global warming at Rutherglen?

She writes: HEADS need to start rolling at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The senior management have tried to cover-up serious tampering that has occurred with the temperatures at an experimental farm near Rutherglen in Victoria. Retired scientist Dr Bill Johnston used to run experiments there. He, and many others, can vouch for the fact that the weather station at Rutherglen, providing data to the Bureau of Meteorology since November 1912, has never been moved. Senior management at the Bureau are claiming the weather station could have been moved in 1966 and/or 1974 and that this could be a justification for artificially dropping the temperatures by 1.8 degree Celsius back in 1913.

rutherglen_station_plot_raw_homogenized enlarged

The temperature record at Rutherglen has been corrupted by managers at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Surely its time for heads to roll!

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The unhomogenized/raw mean annual minimum temperature trend for Rutherglen for the 100-year period from January 1913 through to December 2013 shows a slight cooling trend of 0.35 degree C per 100 years. After homogenization there is a warming trend of 1.73 degree C per 100 years. This warming trend is essentially achieved by progressively dropping down the temperatures from 1973 back through to 1913. For the year of 1913 the difference between the raw temperature and the ACORN-SAT temperature is a massive 1.8 degree C.

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In the case of Rutherglen the Bureau has just let the algorithms keep jumping down the temperatures from 1973. To repeat the biggest change between the raw and the new values is in 1913 when the temperature has been jumped down a massive 1.8 degree C.In doing this homogenization a warming trend is created when none previously existed.

The Bureau has tried to justify all of this to Graham Lloyd at The Australian newspaper by stating that there must have been a site move, its flagging the years 1966 and 1974. But the biggest adjustment was made in 1913! In fact as Bill Johnston explains in today’s newspaper, the site never has moved.

Surely someone should be sacked for this blatant corruption of what was a perfectly good temperature record.

More here.

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Icecap Note:

Maine state annual temperatures up until 2013 after latest adjustment this spring to USHCN data enlarged

Obama and EPA are determined to destroy US coal, people’s lives and welfare be damned
By Paul Driessen

Between 1989 and 2010, Congress rejected nearly 700 cap-tax-and-trade and similar bills that their proponents claimed would control Earth’s perpetually fickle climate and weather. So even as real world crises erupt, President Obama is using executive fiats and regulations to impose his anti-hydrocarbon agenda, slash America’s fossil fuel use, bankrupt coal and utility companies, make electricity prices skyrocket, and “fundamentally transform” our economic, social, legal and constitutional system.

Citing climate concerns, he has refused to permit construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and blocked or delayed Alaskan, western state and offshore oil and gas leasing and drilling. He’s proud that US oil production has climbed 58% and natural gas output has risen 21% since 2008. But he doesn’t mention that this is due to hydraulic fracturing on state and private lands; production has actually fallen in areas controlled by the federal government, and radical environmentalists oppose fracking all over the USA.

Above all, the President’s war on hydrocarbons is a war on Coal Country families. For 21 states that still rely on coal to produce 40-96% of their electricity, it is a war on people’s livelihoods and living standards on the very survival of small businesses and entire communities. The price of electricity has already risen 1-2 cents per kilowatt-hour in those states, from as little as 5.6 cents/kWh in 2009. If it soars to the 14.6 to 15.7 cents/kWh paid in “job-mecca states” like California and New York which rely on coal for less than 3% of their electricity, the impacts will churn through coal-dependant states like a tsunami.

Yet that is where rates are headed, as the Obama EPA’s carbon dioxide and other restrictions kick in. Hundreds of baseload coal-fired power plants (some 180 gigawatts of electric generation capacity) will be forced into premature retirement between 2010 and 2020. That’s more than 15% of the United States’ total installed capacity, enough electricity to power nearly 90 million average homes or small businesses. EPA assumes it can be replaced by expensive, unreliable, habitat-gobbling wind and solar power. It can’t.

EPA rules mean the price of everything people do will skyrocket: heating and air conditioning, lights and refrigeration, televisions, computers, medical equipment, machinery and every other gizmo that runs on electricity. Poor, minority and blue-collar families will have to find hundreds of dollars a year somewhere in their already stretched budgets. Shops and other small businesses will have to discover thousands of dollars, by delaying other purchases or laying people off. Factories, malls, school districts, hospitals and cities will have to send out search parties to locate millions a year at the end of rainbows.

Millions will get laid off in coal mines, power plants, factories, shops and other businesses. Entire families and communities will be pounded and impoverished. Real people’s hopes, dreams, pride and work ethic will be replaced by despair and dependency. Bread winners will be forced to work multiple jobs, commute longer distances, and suffer severe sleep deprivation, if they can find work.

Families will have to cope with more stress, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, spousal and child abuse. Nutrition and medical care will suffer. More people will turn to crime. More will have strokes and heart attacks. More will die prematurely or commit suicide. For no measurable benefits.

EPA cites mercury, soot, asthma, climate change, hurricanes, seas rising seven inches a century, and even ocean acidification to justify the draconian rules. But the scientific basis is bogus. The agency cherry-picks data and studies that support its agenda, ignores libraries of contradictory research, rejects experts whose analyses question EPA conclusions, pays advisors and activists millions of dollars annually to rubberstamp and promote its regulations, and hides its work from those it decrees “are not qualified to analyze it.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change operates in much the same fashion.

Moreover, unhealthy US emissions plunged nearly 90% since 1970, even as coal use for electricity generation increased 170% and the newest coal fired power plants reduce pollution by almost this amount, using “supercritical” technologies, while also reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 20% or more, according the EPA and US Energy Information Administration reports.

Meanwhile, China, India, Germany, Poland and other countries are building some 1,200 new coal-fired power plants, and numerous gas plants, to spur economic growth, preserve jobs and lift people out of poverty. So the sacrifices Mr. Obama is imposing will do nothing to reduce global CO2 levels, which the evidence increasingly shows plays only a minor to trivial role in climate and weather fluctuations.

Its true that Detroit temperatures didn’t dip below freezing in January and February in ‘79 followed by a frost in June. But that was 1879! When he was a boy, “snows were frequent and deep in every winter,” Thomas Jefferson recalled in December 1809. “The Greenland seas, hitherto covered [in ice], have in the last two years entirely disappeared,” Britain’s Royal Society reported ...in 1817. “We were astonished by the total absence of ice in Barrow Strait. [Six years ago the area was] still frozen up, and doubts were entertained as to the possibility of escape,” Captain Francis McClintock wrote in his ship’s log in 1860.

And don’t forget the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, and the five frigid epochs that buried North America, Europe and Asia under glaciers a mile thick. Or the 4,000-year-old trees that recently emerged as modern glaciers melted back proving that a forest grew in the now icy Alps just four millennia ago.

On and on it has gone, throughout Earth and human history: wild weather and climate swings on a recurring basis. But now, climate chaos cultists want us to believe such events began only recently, and we could stop today’s climate and weather aberrations if we would just eliminate fossil fuels, destroy our economies, and condemn Third World families to permanent poverty and disease.

The truth is, only once in all of human history was a government able to control Earth’s climate, to make it “perfect all year,” and it is highly unlikely that we will ever return to those wondrous days.

So how do the EPA, IPCC, Michael Mann, Al Gore and other Climate Armageddonites deal with all these inconvenient truths, questions and skeptical researchers?

They hide their data and computer codes. Complain that they are being picked on. Refuse to debate “dangerous manmade global warming” skeptics. Harass and vilify contrarian experts, and boot them off university committees. Refuse to attend conferences where they might have to defend their manipulated data, junk science and absurd assertions. Al Gore won’t even take questions that he has not preapproved.

They have no cojones. They hide behind their sinecures the way Hamas terrorists hide behind children.

EPA won’t even hold hearings in Coal Country or states that will be hardest hit by soaring electricity costs. It hosts dog-and-pony shows and “listening sessions” in big cities like Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, DC and Pittsburgh where it knows passionate lefty students and eco-activists will dominate. People who will be grievously impacted by the draconian job-killing regulations must travel long distances and pay for expensive hotels and meals… or remain silent and ignored.

That stacks the deck the same way the “public comment” process is tilted in favor of ultra-rich Big Green agitators who have the funding and organization to generate thousands or millions of comments.

We taxpayers pay for these studies, payoffs and propaganda. And we will get stuck with the regulations, soaring prices and lost jobs that result. We have a right to review and analyze the data and claims. We have a right to be heard, in a fair and honest process that truly takes our concerns into account.

The House of Representatives should hold hearings, forcing callous bureaucrats, slick scientists and computer modeling charlatans to present their data, codes and findings under oath. States should sue EPA for violating the Information Quality Act. And voters must vote Republican in November to change the Senate majority, and restore at least a modicum of constitutional checks and balances to a system which has vested far too much power in an unaccountable Executive Branch that shows total disdain for honesty, transparency and working families.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (http://www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

Cornwall Alliance
August 13, 2014

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims that its new rule restricting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants will improve Americans’ health.

Yet carbon dioxide (CO2) isn’t poisonous at levels more than 20 times what they now are - levels we wouldn’t likely reach for a thousand years or more even without restrictions on emissions, and even if we didn’t run out of or find better replacements for fossil fuels first.

So why does EPA claim reducing its emissions will improve Americans’ health?

Not because of its impact on global temperature, which EPA admits would be undetectable (under 0.02C in a century) and would have no measurable health benefits.

Why, then?

Because, EPA claims, reducing CO2 emissions will have the side effect of reducing emissions of conventional pollutants.

But medical doctors who are Members of Congress repudiate that notion. In a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, they say:

Conventional emissions from coal-fired utilities measured on a per-kilowatt hour basis, have declined by almost 90 percent over the last several decades. Should the EPA choose to make additional claims, it is worth noting that the Agency has already attempted to justify a vast array of other regulations on addressing precisely the same concerns - from the air toxics rule to regional haze to ambient air quality standards… The American public should not tolerate perpetual re-claiming of the same health benefits in order to justify more substantial expansions of EPA regulations.

The doctors also point out that “if the EPA were to succeed in forcing coal out of the marketplace by confiscatory regulations - certainly the objective of some in the activist community demanding stronger action - the result would be the loss of some 600,000 jobs, loss of manufacturing base, aggregated loss of some $2.23 trillion in gross domestic product, and a loss of family income of some $1,200 per household per year.”

Higher prices for energy and all other goods and services, coupled with lower incomes and job losses, all driven by the new regulation, would themselves harm Americans’ health.

“Our colleague, Senator John Barrasso, also a medical doctor, published a recent report based on a literature search and specific testimony taken before the US Congress that demonstrated that extraordinary costs due to EPA regulation have profound negative impacts on public health. The report found that unemployment due to EPA regulation:

“Increases the likelihood of hospital visits, illnesses, and premature deaths in communities due to joblessness.

“Raises healthcare costs, raising questions about the claimed health savings of EPA’s regulations.

“Hurts children’s health and family well-being.”

The Congressmen/medical doctors also point out that reduced reliability of the electrical grid, caused by the unpredictable intermittency of wind and solar energy, would also threaten public health through more frequent, widespread, and intense brownouts and blackouts, like the Great Northeast Blackout of 2003 (set off by a computer failure), which killed at least 11 people, interrupted water supply, transportation, communication, and industry, and cost between $7 and $10 billion.

For the sake of Americans’ health, EPA’s proposed new carbon dioxide regulation should be scrapped!

The US-Africa Leaders Summit is ending, with many interesting observations about the continent’s future, the most memorable of which might be Secretary of State John Kerry’s suggestion that African nations should practice “climate-smart” agriculture...to accompany the Obama Administration’s determination that they also practice “climate-smart” electricity generation. In the real world, this would translate into “Develop and modernize, but not too much and only in line with our Deep Ecology policies” ... “generate electricity, but only what you can get from wind and solar power”...and “Increase food production, but only to the extent that you can do so without relying on biotechnology, chemical fertilizers or tractors.”

Africans would be crazy to buy into this scheme, even to secure foreign aid money being dangled in front of them. Indeed, their guiding principle should be this: Africans should not do what the United States is doing now that it is rich. It should do what the United States did to become rich.

Obama-Kerry policies would perpetuate energy poverty, malnutrition, disease and death

Paul Driessen

The 2014 US-Africa Leaders Summit hosted by President Obama this past week brought together the largest-ever gathering of African government officials in Washington, DC. They discussed ways to bolster trade and investment by American companies on a continent where a billion people including 200 million aged 15 to 24 are becoming wealthier and better educated.

They have steadily rising expectations and recognize the pressing need to create jobs, improve security, reduce corruption, and control diseases like Ebola, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. They also understand that better roads and air transportation, improved agriculture and nutrition, and far more energy especially electricity are the sine qua non to achieving their aspirations. Indeed, nearly 700 million Africans still do not have electricity or get it only sporadically, a few hours a day or week.

“The bottom line is, the United States is making a major and long-term investment in Africa’s progress,” Mr. Obama stated. One has to wonder whether his rhetoric matches his policy agenda and whether Africans would do well to remember the president’s assurances that Americans could keep their doctors, hospitals and insurance, when they hear his fine words and lofty promises for Africa.

The fact is, no modern economies, healthcare systems or wealth-building technologies can function in the absence of abundant, reliable, affordable electricity and motor fuels. They require far more than can possibly come from “climate-smart” wind, solar and biofuel sources. Adequate food and nutrition require modern agriculture. Eradicating malaria requires chemical insecticides, DDT and ACT drugs.

Obama Administration policies on all these matters are likely to hold Africa back for decades.

For President Obama, everything revolves around fears of “dangerous manmade climate change” and a determination to slash or end fossil fuel use. He has said electricity rates must “necessarily skyrocket.” His former Energy Secretary wanted gasoline prices to reach European levels: $8-10 per gallon. His EPA is waging a war on coal. And his own requirements would prevent Africa from modernizing.

In 2009, the president told Africans they should focus on their “bountiful” wind, solar, geothermal and biofuel resources, and refrain from using “dirty” fossil fuels.  He signed an executive order, directing the Overseas Private Investment Corporation to ensure that any projects it finances reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2020. He launched a number of domestic and international climate initiatives.

Afterward, when Ghana asked OPIC to support a $185 million gas-fired electrical generator (that would utilize natural gas being flared and wasted at its oil production operations), OPIC refused to help. When South Africa sought a World Bank loan for its state-of-the-art Medupi coal-fired power plant (which will reduce dangerous pollutants 90% below what 1970s-era plants emitted), the White House “abstained” from supporting the loan. Thankfully, approval squeaked by anyway, and Medupi will soon be a reality.

Even more absurd and unethical, the White House announced last October that it will now oppose any public financing for coal-based power projects, except in the world’s poorest nations, unless they meet the draconian carbon dioxide emission standards now imposed on new coal-fired generators in the USA.

These policies prolong reliance on open fires fueled by wood and dung. They mean families are denied lights, refrigeration and other benefits of electricity, and millions die every year from lung and intestinal diseases, and other effects of rampant poverty. With hydrocarbons still providing 82% of the world’s energy and China, India and other rapidly developing countries building numerous coal-fired generating plants retarding Africa’s development in the name of preventing climate chaos is useless and immoral.

Meanwhile, President Obama is still guided by science advisor John Holdren, a fervent opponent of fossil fuels who infamously said the United States should support only the “ecologically feasible” development of poor countries, in line with his perceived “realities” of ecology and rapid energy resource depletion. How that translates into official policy can be seen from Mr. Obama’s 2013 remark: “Here in Africa, if everybody is raising living standards to the point where everybody has got a car, and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will boil over.”

Secretary of State John Kerry’s inane recent statements are equally problematical for Africa. His fixation on “climate-smart” energy and agriculture suggests that he lives on another planet and cannot imagine life outside a $5-million mansion and certainly not life for destitute families in sub-Saharan Africa.

For proof of manmade climate change, Kerry told US Africa Summit attendees, one need only look at the “hotter temperatures, longer droughts and unpredictable rainfall patterns” that farmers must now deal with. Not only are global temperature trends flat for the past 18 years; actual records show clearly that drought and rainfall fluctuations are no different from what North American, African and other farmers have had to deal with for centuries. Moreover, increasing evidence suggests that the sun’s ongoing “quiet” period may portend several decades of markedly colder global temperatures.

Even more absurd, Kerry told attendees that “carbon pollution” is making food “less nutritious.” First, it’s not carbon (soot). It’s carbon dioxide, which makes food crops, trees and other plants grow faster and better, and survive better under adverse conditions like droughts. Second, hothouses routinely increase their CO2 levels to two or more times what is in Earth’s atmosphere, to spur crop growth. Are these German, Israeli and American tomatoes and cucumbers less nutritious than field-grown varieties? In fact, recent studies have found increased nutrient concentrations in food crops, thanks to higher CO2.

To the extent that “research” supports any of these ridiculous claims, it merely underscores what scientists will concoct when tempted by billions in government grants or intimidated by activists and colleagues who attack them as climate change “deniers” if they do not play the Climate Armageddon game.

Secretary Kerry did suggest that the best way to help farmers is through “climate-smart agriculture” and “creative solutions that increase food production.” But it’s a virtual certainty he did not mean any of the things that really would help: biotechnology, modern mechanized farming and chemical fertilizers.

Genetically engineered Golden Rice and bananas are rich in beta-carotene, which humans can convert to Vitamin A, to prevent childhood blindness and save lives. New Bt corn varieties both kill insect pests, dramatically reducing the need for pesticides, and enable corn (maize) plants to survive droughts. New rice varieties can survive prolonged submergence during monsoons and floods. These crops, modern hybrid seeds and chemical fertilizers multiply traditional yields many times over. Other developments let farmers practice no-till farming, which protects vital soil organisms and nutrients and reduces erosion.

These solutions won’t just improve adaptation to whatever climates might confront us in the future. They will also enable us to feed billions of people including some 250 million malnourished Africans without having to plow under millions of acres of wildlife habitat. However, Big Green activists in and out of government oppose GMO crops, fossil fuels and modern farming, whatever their benefits to humanity and regardless of the death and destruction that result when people are denied access to them.

Africa is blessed with abundant oil, gas and coal. Turning food into fuel would squander those resources and divert land, water, fertilizers and energy from feeding people to produce expensive fuels and leave people malnourished. This is not “climate-smart” energy or agriculture. It’s just plain stupid.

Wind and solar will let people in remote areas have light bulbs, tiny refrigerators and cell phone chargers, until they can be connected to an electrical grid. They cannot support modern economies, factories, shops, schools, hospitals or families. Coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydro-based electricity are essential.

Here is the real bottom line: Africans should not do what the United States is doing now that it is rich. It should do what the United States did to become rich.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (http://www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

What if the “green” movement isn’t saving the earth, but instead is enslaving humanity?
Prof. Matt Malkin, UCLA

BLUE is more than a film, it’s an idea. Ideas have the power to change the way we think, begin movements, and even change the world. One of the most prominent idea of our time today is the Green Movement, which says that the Earth is threatened by the activity, even the existence, of mankind, and that the noble response is to restrict our freedom in order to save the planet. The movie BLUE challenges that idea. BLUE is an independently funded and filmed documentary by director, JD King.

“In BLUE, filmmaker JD King takes you into some of the most spectacular forest lands in North America, and introduces you to many of the real people who have made their lives there for generations. They are now in a desperate battle to save everything they value, their land, their jobs, their families, their way of life. You may be shocked to discover that their worst enemy has become the ‘environmental’ movement. Do our new environmental governors really know what is best for these rich precious lands? To the contrary, JD King explores the reality underneath the rhetoric, and shows that this movement is no longer about humans’ proper conservancy of nature, but is all about seizing the new ‘green’ - of money, power and dictatorial control. Can rational rules for these lands--based on the human values of rights and freedom prevail? Some of the true stories you will see in this movie may outrage you, some of them will move and inspire you, but you will never take the claims and demands of ‘environmental leaders’ at face value again after experiencing BLUE.”

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Who’s really waging the ‘war on science?

Global warming alarmists constantly claim they are being “harassed” by climate chaos skeptics. The Climate Armageddon-istas proclaim they are victims, and the American Geophysical Union has even created a “Climate Science Legal Defense Fund,” to pay mounting legal bills that alarmist scientists like Michael Mann have incurred. But the real war on honest science and scientists is being waged by those who have garnered billions of taxpayer, foundation and corporate dollars for alarmist research, and thus have the most to lose when the public finally figures out what’s been going on. No wonder they are in a tizzy.

My article this week explores these issues - primarily by reviewing two cases where scientists really have been singled out, vilified and persecuted: Dr. Patrick Michaels from the University of Virginia, and Dr. David Legates at the University of Delaware.

Paul Driessen

Left-leaning environmentalists, media and academics have long railed against the alleged conservative “war on science.” They augment this vitriol with substantial money, books, documentaries and conference sessions devoted to “protecting” global warming alarmists from supposed “harassment” by climate chaos skeptics, whom they accuse of wanting to conduct “fishing expeditions” of alarmist emails and “rifle” their file cabinets in search of juicy material (which might expose collusion or manipulated science).

A primary target of this “unjustified harassment” has been Penn State University professor Dr. Michael Mann, creator of the infamous “hockey stick” temperature graph that purported to show a sudden spike in average planetary temperatures in recent decades, following centuries of supposedly stable climate. But at a recent AGU meeting a number of other “persecuted” scientists were trotted out to tell their story of how they have been “attacked” or had their research, policy demands or integrity questioned. 

To fight back against this “harassment,” the American Geophysical Union actually created a “Climate Science Legal Defense Fund,” to pay mounting legal bills that these scientists have incurred. The AGU does not want any “prying eyes” to gain access to their emails or other information.  These scientists and the AGU see themselves as “Freedom Fighters” in this “war on science.” It’s a bizarre war.

While proclaiming victimhood, they detest and vilify any experts who express doubts that we face an imminent climate Armageddon. They refuse to debate any such skeptics, or permit “nonbelievers” to participate in conferences where endless panels insist that every imaginable and imagined ecological problem is due to fossil fuels. They use hysteria and hyperbole to advance claims that slashing fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions will enable us to control Earth’s climate - and that references to computer model predictions and “extreme weather events” justify skyrocketing energy costs, millions of lost jobs, and severe damage to people’s livelihoods, living standards, health and welfare.

Reality is vastly different from what these alarmist, environmentalist, academic, media and political elites attempt to convey.

In 2009, before Mann’s problems began, Greenpeace started attacking scientists it calls “climate deniers,” focusing its venom on seven scientists at four institutions, including the University of Virginia and University of Delaware. This anti-humanity group claimed its effort would “bring greater transparency to the climate science discussion” through “educational and other charitable public interest activities.” (If you believe that, send your bank account number to those Nigerians with millions in unclaimed cash.)

UVA administrators quickly agreed to turn over all archived records belonging to Dr. Patrick Michaels, a prominent climate chaos skeptic who had recently retired from the university. They did not seem to mind that no press coverage ensued, and certainly none that was critical of these Spanish Inquisition tactics.

However, when the American Tradition Institute later filed a similar FOIA request for Dr. Mann’s records, UVA marshaled the troops and launched a media circus, saying conservatives were harassing a leading climate scientist. The AGU, American Meteorological Society and American Association of University Professors (the nation’s college faculty union) rushed forward to lend their support. All the while, in a remarkable display of hypocrisy and double standards, UVA and these organizations continued to insist it was proper and ethical to turn all of Dr. Michaels’ material over to Greenpeace.

Meanwhile, although it had started out similarly, the scenario played out quite differently at the University of Delaware. Greenpeace targeted Dr. David Legates, demanding access to records related to his role as the Delaware State Climatologist. The University not only agreed to this. It went further, and demanded that Legates produce all his records = regardless of whether they pertained to his role as State Climatologist, his position on the university faculty, or his outside speaking and writing activities, even though he had received no state money for any of this work. Everything was fair game.

But when the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a FOIA request for documents belonging to several U of Delaware faculty members who had contributed to the IPCC, the university told CEI the state’s FOIA Law did not apply. (The hypocrisy and double standards disease is contagious.) Although one faculty contributor clearly had received state money for his climate change work, University Vice-President and General Counsel Lawrence White claimed none of the individuals had received state funds.

When Legates approached White to inquire about the disparate treatment, White said Legates did not understand the law. State law did not require that White produce anything, White insisted, but also did not preclude him from doing so. Under threat of termination for failure to respond to the demands of a senior university official, Legates was required to allow White to inspect his emails and hardcopy files.

Legates subsequently sought outside legal advice. At this, his academic dean told him he had now gone too far. “This puts you at odds with the University,” she told him, “and the College will no longer support anything you do.” This remarkable threat was promptly implemented. Legates was terminated as the State Climatologist, removed from a state weather network he had been instrumental in organizing and operating, and banished from serving on any faculty committees.

Legates appealed to the AAUP - the same union that had staunchly supported Mann at UVA.  Although the local AAUP president had written extensively on the need to protect academic freedom, she told Legates that FOIA issues and actions taken by the University of Delaware’s vice-president and dean “would not fall within the scope of the AAUP.”

What about the precedent of the AAUP and other professional organizations supporting Dr. Mann so quickly and vigorously? Where was the legal defense fund to pay Legates’ legal bills? Fuggedaboutit.

In the end, it was shown that nothing White examined in Legates’ files originated from state funds. The State Climate Office had received no money while Legates was there, and the university funded none of Legates’ climate change research though state funds. This is important because, unlike in Virginia, Delaware’s FOIA law says that regarding university faculty, only state-funded work is subject to FOIA.

That means White used his position to bully and attack Legates for his scientific views pure and simple.  Moreover, a 1991 federal arbitration case had ruled that the University of Delaware had violated another faculty member’s academic freedom when it examined the content of her research. But now, more than twenty years later, U Del was at it again.

Obviously, academic freedom means nothing when one’s views differ from the liberal faculty majority or when they contrast with views and “science” that garners the university millions of dollars a year from government, foundation, corporate and other sources, to advance the alarmist climate change agenda. All these institutions are intolerant of research by scientists like Legates, because they fear losing grant money if they permit contrarian views, discussions, debates or anything that questions the climate chaos “consensus.” At this point, academic freedom and free speech obviously apply only to advance selected political agendas, and campus “diversity” exists in everything but opinions.

Climate alarmists have been implicated in the ClimateGate scandal, for conspiring to prevent their adversaries from receiving grants, publishing scientific papers, and advancing their careers. Yet they are staunchly supported by their universities, professional organizations, union and groups like Greenpeace.

Meanwhile, climate disaster skeptics are vilified and harassed by these same groups, who pretend they are fighting to “let scientists conduct research without the threat of politically motivated attacks.” Far worse, we taxpayers are paying the tab for the junk science and then getting stuck with regulations, soaring energy bills, lost jobs and reduced living standards… based on that bogus science.

Right now, the climate alarmists appear to be winning their war on honest science. But storm clouds are gathering, and a powerful counteroffensive is heading their way.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (http://www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power Black death.

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