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By Jeff Jacoby GLOBE COLUMNIST MARCH 14, 2017
“DO YOU believe,” CNBC’s Joe Kernen asked Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency’s new director, in an interview last Thursday, “that it’s been proven that CO2 is the primary control knob for climate?”
Replied Pruitt: “No. I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact. So no - I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. But we don’t know that yet. We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”
It was an accurate and judicious answer, so naturally it sent climate alarmists into paroxysms of condemnation. The Washington Post slammed Pruitt as a “denier” driven by “unreason.” Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii called Pruitt’s views “extreme” and “irresponsible” - proof of his unfitness to head the EPA. Gina McCarthy, who ran the agency under President Obama, bewailed the danger global warming poses “to all of us who call Earth home,” and said she couldn’t “imagine what additional information [Pruitt] might want from scientists” in order to understand that.
Yet for all the hyperventilating, Pruitt’s answer to the question he was asked - whether carbon dioxide is the climate’s “primary control knob"- was entirely sound. “We don’t know that yet,” he said. We don’t. CO2 is certainly a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, but hardly the primary one: Water vapor accounts for about 95 percent of greenhouse gases. By contrast, carbon dioxide is only a trace component in the atmosphere: about 400 ppm (parts per million), or 0.04 percent. Moreover, its warming impact decreases sharply after the first 20 or 30 ppm. Adding more CO2 molecules to the atmosphere is like painting over a red wall with white paint - the first coat does most of the work of concealing the red. A second coat of paint has much less of an effect, while adding a third or fourth coat has almost no impact at all.
There is a popular theory that atmospheric CO2 amplifies the creation of water vapor, thereby increasing warming through a “positive feedback loop.” But that theory so far is mostly speculative; climate projections using models based on it have consistently failed, nearly always predicting far more warming than has occurred. It should go without saying that if scientists cannot yet make accurate predictions about future climate change, then their understanding of climate science remains highly incomplete.
Earth’s climate system is unfathomably complex. It is affected by innumerable interacting variables, atmospheric CO2 levels being just one. The more variables there are in any system or train of events, the lower the probability of all of them coming to pass. Your odds of correctly guessing the outcome of a flipped coin are 1 in 2, but your odds of guessing correctly twice in a row are only 1 in 4 - i.e., 1/2 x 1/2 Extending your winning streak to a third guess is even less probable: just 1 in 8.
Apply that approach to climate change, and it becomes clear why the best response to the alarmists’ frantic predictions is a healthy skepticism.
The list of variables that shape climate includes cloud formation, topography, altitude, proximity to the equator, plate tectonics, sunspot cycles, volcanic activity, expansion or contraction of sea ice, conversion of land to agriculture, deforestation, reforestation, direction of winds, soil quality, El Nino and La Nina ocean cycles, prevalence of aerosols (airborne soot, dust, and salt) - and, of course, atmospheric greenhouse gases, both natural and manmade. A comprehensive list would run to hundreds, if not thousands, of elements, none of which scientists would claim to understand with absolute precision.
But for the sake of argument, say there are merely 15 variables involved in predicting global climate change, and assume that climatologists have mastered each one to a near-perfect accuracy of 95 percent. What are the odds that a climate model built on a system that simple would be reliable? Less than 50/50. (Multiplying .95 by itself 15 times yields 46.3 percent.) Is it any surprise that climate-change predictions in the real world - where the complexities are exponentially greater and the exactitude of knowledge much less - have such a poor track record?
Pruitt got it right: Measuring human impacts on climate is indeed “very challenging.” The science is far from settled. That is why calls to radically reduce carbon emissions are so irresponsible - and why dire warnings of what will happen if we don’t are little better than reckless fearmongering.
The Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences has blamed “biological extinction” on global warming, which results from ‘rich countries’ use of fossil fuels.”
The Chancellor, Argentinian bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo (pictured), told a press conference Thursday that poor countries have been “forced to sell their forests to survive and to use an agriculture that does not employ modern technologies.”
In presenting the conclusions of a Vatican workshop on biological extinction, Bishop Sanchez Sorondo said that solutions to the problem lie in “changing to the use of clean energy, new farming techniques and new urban configurations: small, smart cities.”
“For this to happen, poverty must be eradicated,” he said.”
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which boasts of being “multi-racial in composition and non-sectarian in its choice of members” released its conclusions Thursday. The declaration makes the astonishing claim that the “current rate of loss of species is approximately 1,000 times the historical rate,” while also warning that “perhaps a quarter of all species” are presently in danger of extinction and “as many as half of them may be gone by the end of the present century.”
Among its illustrious guests, the Pontifical Academy invited renowned population hoaxer Paul Ehrlich, who gained celebrity status through the publication of his 1968 doomsday bestseller, The Population Bomb.
The book ignited mass hysteria over the future of the world and the earth’s ability to sustain human life. Ehrlich launched a series of frightening predictions that turned out to be spectacularly wrong, creating the myth of unsustainable population growth.
Among his predictions, Ehrlich prophesied that hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 1970s, that already-overpopulated India was doomed, and that odds were fair that “England will not exist in the year 2000.”
To allow women to have as many children as they want, Ehrlich has said, is like letting people “throw as much of their garbage into their neighbor’s backyard as they want.”
In his book, Ehrlich concluded that “sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come,” meaning “an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.”
While falling into disrepute in serious academia, Ehrlich - who has defended mass sterilization, sex-selective abortion and infanticide - has found a new lease on life thanks to his invitation from the Vatican.
Noting that the world GDP has grown at five times the rate of the global population, the Vatican declaration also alleges that “millions of species” have been threatened with extinction by this “enormous increase in economic activity based on profit and on the use of fossil fuels.”
Such unprecedented economic growth is also “putting huge strains on the earth’s capacity to function sustainably,” the document proposes. “The most obvious associated signs include global climate change and the concomitant damages to the earth’s system that it brings in its wake.”
The declaration does not, of course, prove any causality between human activity and climate variability, but it does take for granted that such causality exists. “Just as human activities are responsible for these negative effects, today we need positive human action for the sustainable development of biodiversity,” the text reads.
Blame for such ecological variability does not fall equally on all of humanity, but predominantly belongs to the wealthy nations.
“The wealthy,” the text states, are “substantially responsible for the increase in global warming and, consequently, the decrease in biodiversity.”
“The poorest people,” the text observes, “do not enjoy the benefits of fossil fuels” and presumably should not be permitted to make us of them, lest they, too, be denounced as enemies of biodiversity.
Not all the news is bad, however.
The declaration states that it would cost only “about $175 billion” to eliminate extreme poverty in the world. One can only assume that the estimated price tag is based on the use of inexpensive fossil fuels in the process rather than wind and solar power.
Ending global poverty would have the added benefit of “protecting our global environment and saving as much biodiversity as possible for the future,” the text reads.
Fortunately for humanity, if the workshop’s predictions are as laughably far off the mark as Paul Ehrlich’s, vast biodiversity may well be with us for the foreseeable.
It’s like formulating public safety policies using models based on dinosaur DNA from amber
Paul Driessen
Things are never quiet on the climate front.
After calling dangerous manmade climate change a hoax and vowing to withdraw the USA from the Paris agreement, President Trump has apparently removed language criticizing the Paris deal from a pending executive order initiating a rollback of anti-fossil-fuel regulations, to help jumpstart job creation.
Meanwhile, EPA Administration Scott Pruitt says he expects quick action to rescind the Clean Power Plan, a central component of the Obama Era’s war on coal and hydrocarbons. The US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology is reopening its investigation into NOAA’s mishandling or tampering with global temperature data, for a report designed to promote action in Paris in 2015.
Hundreds of scientists signed a letter urging President Trump to withdraw from the UN climate agency. They warn that efforts to curtail carbon dioxide emissions are not scientifically justified and will kill jobs and exacerbate US and international poverty without improving the environment or stabilizing climate.
Hundreds of other scientists told Mr. Trump he must not waver on climate stabilization efforts or make any moves to defund government or university climate research. Hundreds of businessmen and investors told the President failure to build a low-carbon economy puts American prosperity at risk.
Over in Britain, Members of Parliament say efforts to build a low-carbon economy have led to a 58% rise in electricity prices since 2006, sending manufacturing and jobs overseas, to countries that are under no obligation to reduce fossil fuel use or CO2 emissions. MPs are also angry that carefully hidden “green subsidies” will account for nearly one-fourth of sky-high residential electricity bills by 2020.
All of this is a valuable reminder that the Climate Crisis & Renewable Energy Industry is now a $1.5-trillion-a-year business! And that’s just for its private sector components, the corporate rent-seekers.
This monstrous price tag does not include the Big Green environmentalism industry, the salaries and pensions of armies of federal, state, local, foreign country and UN bureaucrats who create and coordinate climate and renewable energy programs, or the far higher electricity and motor fuel costs that businesses and families must pay, to cover the costs of “saving people and planet from climate ravages.”
Earth’s climate is likely changing somewhere, as it has throughout planetary and human history. Our fuel use and countless other human activities may play a role, at least locally - but their role is dwarfed to near irrelevance by powerful solar, oceanic, cosmic ray and other natural forces. Moreover, real-world ice, sea level, temperature, hurricane, drought and other observations show nothing outside historic fluctuations. Unprecedented disasters exist only in the realm of hypotheses, press releases and computer models.
So there is no reason to cede control over our livelihoods and living standards to politicians, activists and bureaucrats; replace reliable, affordable fossil fuel energy with expensive, unreliable renewables; destroy millions of jobs in the process; and tell billions of impoverished people they must be content with solar ovens, solar panels, wind turbines, and health, nutrition and living standards little better than today’s.
There is no reason to honor the document that President Obama unilaterally signed in Paris. As Dr. Steve Allen observed in a masterful analysis: “The decisive action promised in the treaty that is not a treaty consists of governments, most of them run by dictators and thieves, promising, on an honor system, to take steps of their own choosing, to change future weather patterns, and then coming up with ways by which they can measure their own progress and hold themselves accountable by their own standards for the promises they have made, on penalty of no punishment if they break their word.”
Mainly, Allen continues, the Paris con is about “taking money from taxpayers and consumers and businesspeople and electricity ratepayers, and giving it to crony capitalists; and taking money from people in relatively successful countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries, to benefit governing elites.”
India alone wants hundreds of billions of dollars in climate “adaptation and reparation” money from industrialized nations that are supposed to slash their fossil fuel use, CO2 emissions and economic growth, while pouring trillions into the Green Climate Fund. Meanwhile, India, China and other rapidly developing nations are firing up hundreds of coal-fueled power plants, burning more oil and gas, and emitting more CO2, to industrialize their countries and lift their people out of abject poverty - as well they should.
So just follow the money - and power-grabbing. That is the real source of the religious fervor, the Catechism of Climate Cataclysm, behind the vehement denunciations of President Trump for having the gall to threaten the global high priests who drive and profit from climate change fear mongering.
Those forces are desperate and determined to keep their power and money train on track. They’re ramping up indignation and cranking out “research” to justify their demands. For example:
Expert Market (whose core expertise is helping companies compare prices for postage meters, coffee machines and other B2B products) has just released a study purporting to show which US states will suffer most “from Trump’s climate change denial” and America’s “climate change inaction.”
The total cost will be $506 billion by 2050, just for hurricane and other real estate damages, extra energy costs, and more frequent and severe droughts. “Vermont emerged as the state worst equipped to handle the cost,” the study contends, while Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas are also “severely at risk.” California and New York are among those best able to endure the imminent chaos.
It sounds horrific - and it’s intended to be, the better to pressure the White House and Congress to codify and enforce the nonbinding provisions of the Paris non-treaty, and retain Obama-era anti-hydrocarbon energy policies. But the entire exercise is a classic example of Garbage In/Garbage Out (GIGO) black box computer modeling, carefully crafted to ensure the justifications required for a predetermined political outcome, especially the monumental “nationwide green initiatives” that Expert Market supports.
Thus, carbon dioxide will drive rapidly rising global temperatures that will warm the planet enough to increase sea surface temperatures dramatically - spawning more frequent, more damaging hurricanes, and melting polar ice caps enough to raise sea levels 23 inches by 2050, the Expert Market experts assert.
Global warming measured in hundredths of a degree over the past 19 years will suddenly be replaced by runaway heat waves. Seas now rising at 7 inches per century will suddenly climb at ten times that rate over the next three decades, sending storm surges far inland. Major US land-falling hurricanes that have been absent now for eleven years will suddenly proliferate to unprecedented levels.
How Vermont and the other top-five “worst equipped” states - all of them inland - will be affected by any of this is anyone’s guess. But the model says they’re at risk, so we must take drastic action now.
Soaring temperatures will increase demand for air conditioning, and thus raise household energy costs, says Expert Market. CA, NY and other “green” state electricity costs are already twice as high as those in coal and gas-reliant states. Imposing wind and solar initiatives on fossil fuel states would likely double their family and business energy costs, but that factor is not included in its calculations.
Droughts “will become more frequent and severe” in states already afflicted by arid conditions - assuming all the dire CO2 depredations, and ignoring both those states’ long experience with drought cycles and how California’s years-long drought has once again given way to abundant rainfall.
The Expert Market study is symptomatic of the politicized assumptions and data manipulation that have driven climate models and disaster scenarios since the IPCC began studying manmade climate chaos.
Indeed, the entire climate chaos exercise is akin to basing public safety policies on computer models that assume dinosaur DNA extracted from fossilized amber will soon result in hordes of TRexes running rampant across our land. We deserve a more honest, rational basis for policies that govern our lives.
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.
Driessen_-_GIGO-based_energy_and_climate_policies.pdf
See new: Lawrence Solomon: Finally it’s safe for the whistleblowers of corrupted climate science to speak out in the Financial Post.
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From Judith Curry’s Climate etc. website the Whistleblow, Dr. John Bates spoke:
Climate scientists versus climate data
Posted on February 4, 2017 by John Bates
A look behind the curtain at NOAA’s climate data center.
I read with great irony recently that scientists are “frantically copying U.S. Climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump” (e.g., Washington Post 13 December 2016). As a climate scientist formerly responsible for NOAA’s climate archive, the most critical issue in archival of climate data is actually scientists who are unwilling to formally archive and document their data. I spent the last decade cajoling climate scientists to archive their data and fully document the datasets. I established a climate data records program that was awarded a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal in 2014 for visionary work in the acquisition, production, and preservation of climate data records (CDRs), which accurately describe the Earth’s changing environment.
The most serious example of a climate scientist not archiving or documenting a critical climate dataset was the study of Tom Karl et al. 2015 (hereafter referred to as the Karl study or K15), purporting to show no ‘hiatus’ in global warming in the 2000s (Federal scientists say there never was any global warming “pause"). The study drew criticism from other climate scientists, who disagreed with K15’s conclusion about the ‘hiatus.’ (Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown). The paper also drew the attention of the Chairman of the House Science Committee, Representative Lamar Smith, who questioned the timing of the report, which was issued just prior to the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan submission to the Paris Climate Conference in 2015. See here for more and his biosketch.
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David Rose in the UK Daily Mail has a detailed expose of the data manipulation:
Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data
The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organization that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.
A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.
The report claimed that the ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in global warming in the period since 1998 - revealed by UN scientists in 2013 - never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world’s media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.
But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data.
It was never subjected to NOAA’s rigorous internal evaluation process - which Dr Bates devised.
His vehement objections to the publication of the faulty data were overridden by his NOAA superiors in what he describes as a ‘blatant attempt to intensify the impact’ of what became known as the Pausebuster paper.
His disclosures are likely to stiffen President Trump’s determination to enact his pledges to reverse his predecessor’s ‘green’ policies, and to withdraw from the Paris deal - so triggering an intense political row.
Read much more detail here
See Tallbloke’s coverage here
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Also the same line,
Bryan Leyland: Things you know that ain’t so - 2016 was the warmest year
“Things you know that ain’t so - 2016 was the warmest recorded year: global warming is real and dangerous”.
Or so they tell you. But you when you examine the facts, you come to the opposite conclusion. It is a classic example of using half-truths to mislead.
They don’t tell you how much warmer it actually was. If they did, the myth would be exposed immediately.
The amount of warming depends on which of the five recognized temperature records you use.
If you believe the satellite records - that NASA says are the most accurate - the warming since 1998 is between 0.02 and 0.04C or 0.1 to 0.2C per century. Statistically, it provides no evidence of warming of any sort.
The other measurements are the surface temperature records that have very poor surface coverage - virtually nothing over the ocean and huge areas of the earth - and have been systematically “adjusted” over the years to exaggerate the warming over the last hundred years or so. For instance, according to the GISS 2008 temperature record, the world warmed by 0.45C between 1910 and 2000. By January 2017, the GISS records showed that the warming for the same period had increased to 0.75C. Remarkable!
According to the satellites, the 2016 El Nino was not much hotter than that of 1998 but the surface temperature records indicate a more rapid rate of warming. But there is a big problem with this. El Nino events are natural and unpredictable and, because they are isolated events, they are unrelated to increasing carbon dioxide concentrations that would lead to a steady temperature rise. Measuring from the 1998 peak temperature to 2016 peak temperature gives a much more rapid rate of warming than measuring the average temperature trend over the period. So they use the temperature peaks. Putting it another way, if the 2016 El Nino had been cooler than that of 1998, would they have told us that it heralds global cooling? I think not.
The plain fact is that although the computer models predicted 0.5C temperature rise during the last 18 years the records show that world has not warmed in any statistically significant sense. Even the surface temperature records show a warming of 0.2C over that period. According to the IPCC, half of this warming will be man-made. Nothing to get excited about.
Once again, the global warming fraternity have used half-truths to mislead the public into believing that dangerous man-made global warming is really happening when the information they quote from shows the opposite.
I saw a lovely young woman on TV tonight at NYU, New York University. She was in a riot that was designed to silence someone, to keep them from speaking on campus. She was screaming “We will not sit back and allow Nazis to have a platform to feel comfortable and organize and mobilize!"…
I wanted to reach through the TV and shake her and say “Nazis are people who use violence to silence others from speaking, and that’s you!” But unfortunately, this bizarre inversion is all the rage these days. I saw an email to a Republican electoral voter that said “You are a hateful bigot, and I hope you die!”
Clearly the writer had not heard of irony.
Now, I was a student at the University of California in Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement of 1964-65. I was just a foot soldier, I went to rallies and speeches. It was a movement designed to force the University to use the same rules on campus that apply off campus - the usual American First Amendment rules. The movement was driven by the liberal side of the political spectrum. We sat in and had peaceful demonstrations to demand that the University stop censoring speakers and stop preventing them from speaking on campus. Back then, liberals were all about free speech and non-violence. And we succeeded, the University started letting all speakers have equal access.
So I nearly wept last night to see the University of California once again conspiring to silence a speaker, and the irony was, it was being driven to do so by violence from the very same liberals that once prized free speech and non-violence. When did that change happen? How did I miss it? When did the Democrats become the party of riots, beatings, and intimidation?
The Berkeley speaker in question was Milo Yiannopoulos. He is the ultimate liberal nightmare, because he is a funny gay Jewish Republican. He breaks all the boundaries at once, their minds can’t handle it.
Now, the University played an underhanded game. First they said OK, the campus Republican Club can invite you to speak. Then, not long before the event, they said the Republican Club had to pay for the security.
Note that this is not security to protect people from the Republican club. This is security to protect people from liberal rioters.. explain to me why the organizers need to pay for that?
Now, imagine for a minute that you run such a University. If you know that people may riot against a speaker, the obvious response is that you get your campus cops together with the city police. You plan on how you are going to control the crowd. You consider what you will do if various scenarios occur. You design, barricade, and enforce a pathway for people who wish to hear the speaker have safe access. You deploy your women and men to minimize and prevent violence from happening.
However, Janet Napolitano, the head of the University, along with the Mayor of Berkeley, acted in a most cowardly manner. Rather than do any of that planning and coordination and action, they stood idly by while a hundred thousand dollars worth of damage was being done by rioters. I couldn’t find a single report of anyone arrested.
And of course, a predictable riot occurred as an inescapable result of the pusillanimous actions of the authorities. Then the University cravenly used that riot as an excuse to cancel the event, preventing Milo from speaking. Not only that, but another University of California campus followed up by canceling Milo’s speaking engagement there. Gutless University cowards. UNIVERSITIES ARE SUPPOSED TO PRESENT AND PROTECT OPPOSING VIEWS!
So we have the irony of the University and the Berkeley Police force, those very institutions who are supposed to promote and protect free speech, standing by on a miniature modern Kristallnacht and watching as the windows of UC Berkeley, my alma mater, where liberals once demanded, promoted, and protected freedom of speech, get shattered to the ground by liberal rioters.
Then we have the irony of the name of the group who led the rioting and broke the windows to stop someone from exercising their Free Speech rights. They call themselves the “AntiFa”. This is short for “Anti-fascists”.
Who knew? Curiously, at least on my planet, “fascists” are people who riot and break windows to stop someone from speaking, and “anti-fascists” are the people who oppose that violence...in other words, anti-fascists are what the police and University are supposed to be.
Finally, we have the irony of the media. The Bloomberg headline about the UC Berkeley riots says “Milo Yiannopoulos Sparks Riots”. The Wrap says “Milo Yiannopoulos Speech at UC Berkeley Sparks Fiery Protest”.
Milo sparked the riots? Get real. THE ANTIFA SPARKED THE RIOTS! Milo is a smart, funny conservative comic who terrifies the liberals. The liberals are afraid someone might actually enjoy him and learn something from him. He didn’t “spark” anything. He was the victim of the riots, and as is far too common these days when the victim is a conservative, the media is blaming the victim.
So just to make sure I have this straight: white is black, up is down, people exercising their free speech rights are Nazis, a gay Jew is a homophobic anti-Semite, the victim of the riot caused it, and anti-fascists are people who riot and burn things ... OK, got it…
Like the song says, “I fought the irony and the irony won”....
Best to all, liberals and conservatives alike. I do wish the Democrats would get it together. Not one word from the Democratic leadership.
It is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus.
Dont look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.
The survey results show geoscientists (also known as earth scientists) and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized one here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.
According to the newly published survey of geoscientists and engineers, merely 36 percent of respondents fit the “Comply with Kyoto” model. The scientists in this group “express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause”.
The authors of the survey report, however, note that the overwhelming majority of scientists fall within four other models, each of which is skeptical of alarmist global warming claims.
The survey finds that 24 percent of the scientist respondents fit the “Nature Is Overwhelming” model. “In their diagnostic framing, they believe that changes to the climate are natural, normal cycles of the Earth.” Moreover, “they strongly disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal lives.”
Another group of scientists fit the “Fatalists” model. These scientists, comprising 17 percent of the respondents, “diagnose climate change as both human and naturally caused. ‘Fatalists’ consider climate change to be a smaller public risk with little impact on their personal life. They are skeptical that the scientific debate is settled regarding the IPCC modeling.” These scientists are likely to ask, “How can anyone take action if research is biased?”
The next largest group of scientists, comprising 10 percent of respondents, fit the “Economic Responsibility” model. These scientists “diagnose climate change as being natural or human caused. More than any other group, they underscore that the ‘real’ cause of climate change is unknown as nature is forever changing and uncontrollable. Similar to the ‘nature is overwhelming’ adherents, they disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal life. They are also less likely to believe that the scientific debate is settled and that the IPCC modeling is accurate. In their prognostic framing, they point to the harm the Kyoto Protocol and all regulation will do to the economy.”
The final group of scientists, comprising 5 percent of the respondents, fit the “Regulation Activists” model. These scientists “diagnose climate change as being both human- and naturally caused, posing a moderate public risk, with only slight impact on their personal life.” Moreover, “They are also skeptical with regard to the scientific debate being settled and are the most indecisive whether IPCC modeling is accurate.”
Taken together, these four skeptical groups numerically blow away the 36 percent of scientists who believe global warming is human caused and a serious concern.
One interesting aspect of this new survey is the unmistakably alarmist bent of the survey takers. They frequently use terms such as “denier” to describe scientists who are skeptical of an asserted global warming crisis, and they refer to skeptical scientists as “speaking against climate science” rather than “speaking against asserted climate projections.” Accordingly, alarmists will have a hard time arguing the survey is biased or somehow connected to the ‘vast right-wing climate denial machine.’
Another interesting aspect of this new survey is that it reports on the beliefs of scientists themselves rather than bureaucrats who often publish alarmist statements without polling their member scientists. We now have meteorologists, geoscientists and engineers all reporting that they are skeptics of an asserted global warming crisis, yet the bureaucrats of these organizations frequently suck up to the media and suck up to government grant providers by trying to tell us the opposite of what their scientist members actually believe.
People who look behind the self-serving statements by global warming alarmists about an alleged “consensus” have always known that no such alarmist consensus exists among scientists. Now that we have access to hard surveys of scientists themselves, it is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus.
By Francis Menton
Scott Adams—known, among other things, as the cartoonist behind the Dilbert series—has an excellent blog on which he posts something thoughtful nearly every day. His particular interest is in the arts of persuasion. Recently he has dipped his toe into the subject of “climate science,” with a focus on the apparent inability of partisans on either side of the debate ever to convince a single person to come over from the other side. Now, suppose you come to this debate with no scientific expertise and no ax to grind for either side. The debate has very significant public policy implications, and understanding it is important to being an informed voter. How are you to supposed to evaluate the arguments and come to a view? Adams comments:
My bottom-line belief about climate science is that non-scientists such as myself have no reliable way to evaluate any of this stuff. Our brains and experience are not up to the task. When I apply my tiny brain to sniffing out the truth about climate science I see rock-solid arguments on both sides of the debate.
I’m going to respectfully disagree with Adams on this one. If you are a reasonably intelligent person, and you are willing to spend a few hours on an issue, there is a very workable method to discern which side of a debate is not playing straight with you. This method is the same method generally used by judges and juries in deciding which side is going to win a trial. The method is this: look to which side has and provides the best answers to the hard questions posed by the other side. If one side refuses to answer hard questions, or is evasive, or refuses to provide the underlying methodology by which it came up with its answers, then that side has a problem. And rightfully so.
I’ll give just a few examples of this phenomenon relevant to the climate change issue.
(1) The Hockey Stick graph. The so-called Hockey Stick graph first appeared in a paper by Mann, Bradley and Hughes that was published in Nature magazine in 1998. It purported to show a reconstruction of worldwide temperatures from the year 1000 to present, in which the temperatures had remained almost completely stable for the first 900 years (the “shaft” of the Hockey Stick), and then suddenly shot up in the twentieth century in the time of human CO2 emissions (the “blade"). This reconstruction effectively repealed the prior accepted version of climate history, in which temperatures had been warmer than the present at least in the so-called Medieval Warm Period of about 1000 - 1300, and probably also in the Roman Warm Period around the year 0. When the UN’s climate-evaluation body, the IPCC, issued its next Assessment Report in 2001, the Hockey Stick graph had suddenly become the icon of the whole endeavor, appearing multiple times in the Report. The Hockey Stick seemed like the perfect proof of the proposition that global warming must be caused by humans, because anyone could see from the graph that the warming had all occurred in the era of human use of fossil fuels. Here is a version of the Hockey Stick graph from the IPCC Third Assessment Report:
Unfortunately for Mann et al. and the IPCC, numerous people—those nefarious “skeptics” --promptly began to ask questions about the source of the information behind the “shaft” of the stick. Thus these skeptics were questioning the ideas that temperatures had remained essentially stable for a millennium and that there had been no Medieval Warm Period. The most famous of the skeptical researchers was a Canadian named Stephen McIntyre. McIntyre began a blog called Climate Audit, and started writing many long posts about his efforts, all unsuccessful, to replicate the Mann et al. work. Requests to Mann et al. for their data and methodologies were met with hostility and evasion. Over time, McIntyre gradually established that Mann et al. had adopted a complex methodology that selectively emphasized certain temperature proxies over others in order to reverse-engineer the “shaft” of the stick to get a pre-determined desired outcome.
The coup de grace for the Hockey Stick graph came with the so-called Climategate emails, released in 2009. These were emails between and among many of the main promoters of the climate scare (dubbed by McIntyre the “Hockey Team"). Included in the Climategate releases were emails relating specifically to the methodology of how the graph was created. From the emails, skeptical researchers were then able to identify some of the precise data series that had been used by Mann et al. Astoundingly, they discovered that the graph’s creators had truncated inconvenient data in order to get the desired depiction. A website called Just the Facts has a detailed recounting of how this was uncovered. As a key example, consider this graph:
The bright pink represents data that was deleted from the Mann et al. reconstruction because, obviously, it would have thrown off the nice, flat “shaft” of the stick, while also revealing that this particular “proxy” had totally failed at predicting the twentieth century rise in temperatures. Most would call this kind of data truncation “scientific fraud.”
Note that the revelations that came out of the Hockey Stick controversy do not prove that the human-caused global warming hypothesis is wrong. However, those revelations did show beyond doubt that the leading promoters of the hypothesis had resorted to fraud in the effort to get the public to accept their position. Once that was established, why would you believe anything else they say?
Even today, the Wikipedia write-up of the Hockey Stick controversy takes a position favorable to Mann et al. If you are willing to devote some time to this issue, read that article next to the write-up at Just the Facts linked above. I would call the Wikipedia article evasive in the face of highly credible allegations of fraud. See if you agree.
(2) Adjustments to the instrumental temperature record. World temperature records based on ground-based thermometers date back to about the late 19th century in most cases. These records are far more accurate than what we have from earlier times (which are mostly “proxies,” like tree rings and ice cores); but the ground thermometer records still have plenty of problems. As examples, the location of a ground station could have been moved over time, sometimes multiple times in over 100 years; the physical surroundings of a station could have changed (trees could have grown up, or an adjacent parking lot could have been built); the type of instrument could have changed; and so forth. Most would agree that some sorts of adjustments to the record, known as “homogenization,” are appropriate to make the earlier data comparable to the more recent data. However, here the adjustments are in the hands of small numbers of people who are committed to the global warming cause. Most of the adjusters are government employees working for weather agencies like NASA and NOAA in the U.S., and comparable agencies in other countries.
As with the Hockey Stick graph, independent researchers interested in the topic have gone to work at their own expense to try to understand the government’s adjustments and evaluate if they are appropriate. Notable among these researchers are Tony Heller at the website Real Climate Science and Paul Homewood at Not a Lot of People Know That. What these researchers find is that, in literally every case, earlier temperatures have been adjusted downward, and to a lesser extent, later temperatures adjusted upward. Obviously, such adjustments can create warming trends where they do not exist in the raw data, and enhance what otherwise might be small warming trends to make them look significant and even scary. Here at Manhattan Contrarian, I have covered this issue in a now ten part series called The Greatest Scientific Fraud of All Time. All ten articles are collected, along with others, here.
And literally every time anyone looks at raw temperature data, and compares it to current “final” version temperature data, the same phenomenon is found. Just this week at Watts Up With That, an Australian meteorologist named Brendan Godwin reports that Australia is subject to the same pervasive corruption as other places:
The Australian Climate Observations Reference Network - Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT) Technical Advisory Forum released a report in 2015 confirming that the Surface Air Temperatures were being adjusted, confirming the process is called Homogenization, confirming that other weather monitoring institutions around the world are making these same adjustments and purporting to justify why the adjustments are being made. Observing practices change, thermometers change, stations move from one location to another and new weather stations are installed. They refused to release their complex mathematical formula used to make the adjustments.
Go to the link to see how a slightly declining temperature trend at Rotherglen, Australia, has been turned into a more-than-one-degree-C-per-century increasing trend through supposed “homogenization” adjustments. Huh?
But the most important part of this story is not the suspicious nature of the adjustments themselves, but rather the flat refusal of the adjusters to reveal the methodology by which the adjustments have been made. Real, honest scientists would gladly provide the full, unedited computer code that made the adjustments, and would answer any questions that would help an independent researcher to replicate the results. Yet read through posts of people reporting on the adjustments, and you will universally find that they have been rebuffed in their attempts to find out what is going on. For example, as I reported in this post in July 2015, a heating consultant in Maine named Michael Brakey, who was just trying to get accurate temperature data to inform his business, stumbled on major recent downward adjustments of earlier temperatures in that state. Attempting to get the details of the adjustments, the best that NOAA would give him was this vague and preposterous statement:
“...improvements in the dataset, and brings our value much more in line with what was observed at the time. The new method used stations in neighboring Canada to inform estimates for data-sparse areas within Maine (a great improvement).”
All you need to do is read my series of posts on this topic, and/or some of the many links found in those posts, and you will know that what is going on is not remotely honest. You don’t need any specialized scientific training to figure this out.
(3) Hottest [week/month/year] ever. Readers of my series on The Greatest Scientific Fraud of All Time are aware that our government bureaucrats at NASA and NOAA regularly put out breathless press releases announcing that some given month, or series of months, or year, was the hottest such period on record. For example, in this post from August 2015, I reported on government press releases as to March, May and July 2015, declaring them each to be the “hottest ever” on some or another criterion. That post also reports on how the press releases are then picked up and repeated, more or less word for word, by every news source going under the banner of “mainstream”: CNN, Bloomberg, Washington Post, USA Today, BBC, AP, LA Times, CBS News, and many, many more.
But does any one of these press releases, or any one of these news sources, so much as mention that these so-called “records” are based on temperature records that have been “adjusted” to enhance warming trends? Given how widespread is the information on unexplained warming-enhancing “adjustments,” it is almost incomprehensible that not one of these news sources would even ask the question, “How much of the warming is in the raw data and how much is in the adjustments?” But if such a thing exists, I can’t find it.
I could give many more examples, but undoubtedly you are getting the picture. A reasonably intelligent person who investigates the situation will quickly find that the promoters of the global warming scare refuse to reveal their detailed methodology, refuse to allow independent researchers to try to replicate their work, and refuse to answer any and all hard questions. (By contrast, when, for example, skeptical scientists a few months ago released a major Research Report claiming to invalidate all the bases for the EPA’s Endangerment Finding, all data and methods were released simultaneously.) This is all you need to know to make up your mind.
Now we are down to FOX News and Faux News (all the other television networks and major metro newspapers and most magazines). The lies go on and on not just about politics but everything elitists progressives want you to believe.
By Tony Heller
The fake news Huffington Post says sea level at New York will rise six feet this century and they will have more heat waves.
New York City Could See Up To Six Feet Of Sea Level Rise This Century: Report | The Huffington Post
Apparently this panel of scientific experts didn’t look at any actual data. Over the past six years, sea level at both New York and Boston has fallen about two inches.
There has been no increase in the number of hot days in New York, which peaked in 1955.
Away from the urban heat island effect of Manhattan, New York State has seen a sharp decline in the number of hot days.
Enlarged
Nationally, the percent of hot days has also plummeted.
Everything they said was fake news, but to be fair to this team of climate experts morons, NASA’s top climate expert believes Lower Manhattan is already underwater.
-------
Note from Willie Soon:
Dear friends in New England…
This is truly a very stupid game they keep playing...they could not make themselves to show the NH resident the proper map of their own state...but blow up the tiny part where you are connected to the sea… See the latest laughable report.
See the local Climate Commission reportplanning to spend (and benefit greatly from billions
Tom Wysmuller is our local expert on sea level here.. I believe that I opted out to be on this NH sea level committee some years ago and told Tom about this and he may have attended some of the “meetings"…
Joe D’Aleo is of course our top meteorologist that can tell you all you need to know about the weather forecasting business using his analogy-based pattern
recognition method…
for a little cure on sea level scare ... here is one of my earlier insights:
Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow
This winter has started in December with some frigid cold, especially the central. Here is the last 7 days and the forecast the next 5 days (maps courtesy of Weatherbell.com).
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Though many have argued the so called ‘pause’ was clearly over, it appears not. The pop in 2015/16 was related to El Nino.
NCDC (now NCEI) has the Climate at a Glance tool I frequently use for temperature and precipitation trend. I have used it in recent years to examine trends in winters the last 18 to 20 years. It was argued a few years back the cooling it showed was biased by the significant El Nino of 1997/98. Even after the (1) new NOAA methodology (removal of UHI adjustment, TOBS. homogenization) that made 1997/98 less warm and (2) the 2011/12 and 2015/16 warm spikes (perhaps slightly enhanced by the changes), what was called the pause (really a cooling trend) is still there in the last 20 year period for December to March.
For the nation, we have seen a cooling rate of -1.63F/century.
The NCEI CAAG site allows you to look at regional changes. I looked first at U.S. Climate Regions (Upper Midwest/Great Lakes, Ohio Valley and Northeast.
The cooling was greatest in the Upper Midwest (an amazing rate of -11.9F/century).
The Ohio Valley has cooled at a rate of - 9.1F/century.
The northeast has cooled at a rate of - 7.4F/century for December to March periods
Then I looked at larger NWS regions (administrative):
The large 14 state central region shows a cooling rate of -5.9F/century.
The large 16 state Eastern Region a cooling of -7.1F/century even with the 2011/12 and 2015/16 spikes.
Despite some ups and downs, we expect this year will be colder than last winter and keep the trend going.
To see how far back I could go and get a negative trend, I went to 1995 for the CONUS and found no warming trend (a not statistically significant cooling of 0.25F/century) the last 22 years.
Though the jump in major snows in the east was attributed in the media to global warming and resulting more moisture. I would argue the land cooling is responsible. Sellers back in the middle 1900’s speculated snow would increase after warm periods and the increased snowcover would initiate or enhance any cooling that followed.
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” Mark Twain
By Bradford Richardson The Washington Times - Thursday, September 1, 2016
Pope Francis is imploring Catholics to confess their sins against the environment, calling the degradation of the climate a “sin against God.”
In his message marking the World day of Prayer for the Care of Creation on Thursday, the pontiff said climate change is caused in part by human activity, leads to extreme weather and disproportionately affects the least advantaged around the world.
“Global warming continues, due in part to human activity: 2015 was the warmest year on record, and 2016 will likely be warmer still,” Francis said. “This is leading to ever more severe droughts, floods, fires and extreme weather events.” “The world’s poor, though least responsible for climate change, are most vulnerable and already suffering its impact,” he said.
Citing last year’s controversial encyclical on the environment, “Laudato Si,” the pontiff said “for human beings to contaminate the earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life - these are sins.”
He added that “to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin against ourselves and a sin against God.”
Francis urged Catholics to repent of their sins against the environment and listed several ways to become more conscientious consumers, including “avoiding the use of plastic and paper,” “using public transportation or car-pooling” and “planting trees.”
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Pope warns Trump: Do not back away from UN climate pact - Pope declares ‘crisis of climatic change’
By: Marc Morano Climate Depot November 29, 2016 11:49 AM
Pope Francis has issued a climate change challenge directly to President Elect Trump. The Pope, in thinly veiled speech, urged Trump not to withdraw the U.S. from the United Nations Paris agreement reached in 2015. The UN treaty has been said by critics to be “history’s most expensive treaty’,” with a “cost of between $1 trillion and $2 trillion annually.”
Pope Francis warned of the “crisis of climate change.” “The ‘distraction’ or delay in implementing global agreements on the environment shows that politics has become submissive to a technology and economy which seek profit above all else,” Francis said, in what Reuters described as “a message that looked to be squarely aimed at” Trump.
Trump pledged to pull the U.S. out of the UN Paris climate agreement and defund and withdraw from the UN climate process. See: Trump wins U.S. Presidency! Climate Skeptics Rejoice! Set to dismantle & Defund UN/EPA climate agenda!
Speaking to a group of scientists, including physicist Stephen Hawking, the pope said in his speech that scientists should ‘work free of political, economic or ideological interests, to develop a cultural model which can face the crisis of climatic change and its social consequences”.
(Pope Francis greets Stephen Hawking (R), theoretical physicist and cosmologist, during a meeting with the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Vatican, November 28, 2016. Osservatore Romano/Handout via Reuters)
Pope Francis also called for “an ecological conversion capable of supporting and promoting sustainable development.” In 2015, the Pope issued an encyclical on climate and the environment titled “Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home.” In a 2015 Climate Depot Special Report revealed the Pope’s inner climate circle were. See: ’Unholy Alliance’ - Exposing The Radicals Advising Pope Francis on Climate‘
The report noted: “The Vatican relied on advisors who are the most extreme elements in the global warming debate. These climate advisors are so far out of the mainstream they even make some of their fellow climate activists cringe...The Vatican advisors can only be described as a brew of anti-capitalist, pro-population control advocates who allow no dissent and are way out of the mainstream of even the global warming establishment.”
Matt Briggs wrote: As long as Pope Francis hangs onto his Argentine crony Marcelo Sanchez-Sorondo, we will continue to hear nonsense from the Vatican. Recall that Sorondo said during 2015 that climate change was as important an issue as abortion—something that made every faithful Catholic in the world gag. Sorondo got stars in his eyes from being allowed to hang out with Ban Ki-Moon, Jeffrey Sachs, and other UN dignitaries. He ignored the entire UN-approved practice of forced abortions, sex-selection abortions, etc. etc, and latched onto the standard climate change orthodoxy. Subsequently, Sorondo stuck that into “Laudato Si,’ an otherwise splendid document which will forever be degraded by that climate claptrap. Probably it was Sorondo who got the Pope to criticize Trump lately. Sorondo hasn’t let up at all on the climate-change gas pedal since his UN exuberance of 2015.
WUWT Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
A while back I discussed the UN Global Poll regarding what people around the world think is important to them. At that point there were about six million respondents. The people taking the pole are asked to choose (just choose, but not rank) the six issues that matter most to them from the following list:
BETTER JOB OPPORTUNITIES
FREEDOM FROM DISCRIMINATION AND PERSECUTION
ACTION TAKEN ON CLIMATE CHANGE
SUPPORT FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN’T WORK
ACCESS TO CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION
PROTECTING FORESTS, RIVERS AND OCEANS
RELIABLE ENERGY AT HOME
AFFORDABLE AND NUTRITIOUS FOOD
AN HONEST AND RESPONSIVE GOVERNMENT
A GOOD EDUCATION
EQUALITY BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN
PHONE AND INTERNET ACCESS
POLITICAL FREEDOMS
BETTER TRANSPORT AND ROADS
PROTECTION AGAINST CRIME AND VIOLENCE
BETTER HEALTHCARE
When I wrote my last post, climate change was running dead last. I went back yesterday to check on the poll. The poll is ongoing, you can go there and vote if you wish. There are now over nine million respondents ... and yes, climate change is still running dead last, and well behind its nearest neighbor:
Figure 1. UN Poll results, all groups.
So I decided to drill down into the data a bit. I started by taking a look at the difference between men and women on the issues listed above:
Figure 2. Differences between men and women.
Values are the percentage of respondents who listed that item among their choices for the top six. Lines connect men’s and women’s percentage of responses regarding the same issue, and are labeled only at the upper end. Blue labels and lines show items which women considered more important than men, while red items are those that men found more important. Ends of colored lines show the percentage values for women (left ends) and men (right ends).
The top three results are interesting because they are common to most groups. You can see that men put more weight on jobs and women put more weight on healthcare and education, but as Figure 1 shows, those three far out poll all the rest.
Women also put much more weight than men on affordable good food, protection against violence, and sexual equality (steep blue lines). Men on the other hand put much more weight than women on political freedom, better roads, and phone access (steep red lines).
And action on climate change is at the very bottom for both men and women.
While that was quite interesting, I actually had set out to look at the differences between the poor and rich countries on these matters. The UN divides countries into four levels, from poor to rich, or in their terms, from “Low HDI” (Human Development Index) to “Very High HDI” countries. To simplify and clarify the changes, I’ve just used the first and last categories, the poorest and the wealthiest countries. Here are those results:
Figure 3. As in Figure 2, but showing the difference between priorities of the poor and the rich.
There are some interesting things going on here. First, education is number one for men, for women, for the richest countries, and for the poorest countries. In my opinion, this shows the good judgement of the human race worldwide. Or perhaps it just means that I agree with the rest of the world… education roolz.
Next, the steepness of all the lines shows that the differences between what is important to people in rich and in poor countries are much, much greater than the differences between men and women on the same issues.
Next, the top three issues of all groups combined (Figure 1), as well as of both men and women separately (Figure 2), are education, healthcare, and jobs. All of those are far less important to the rich than the poor. Also, many other things like phones, reliable energy, good roads, and political freedoms are not very important to the rich. The people in rich countries don’t find those things important for a simple reason - generally they already have those things, so they have the luxury of worrying about other items.
Next, it’s clear how environmental concerns are something that only the rich can afford. “Protecting forests, rivers, and oceans” ranks high among the wealthiest countries, well above job opportunities… but it is second from the bottom for poor countries, just above climate and a ways below the next issue above it.
Finally, climate change. The people favoring action on climate change, almost to a man or woman, claim that they are doing this for the poor… but it appears that the poor didn’t get the memo. For them, as for the world in general, climate change is dead last. And in the poor countries, only 13% of the people mentioned it, a very small percentage. As far as the poor are concerned, they’d rather people spend money on any other of their many problems before putting it into climate change.
Moving on to the claimed beliefs of the rich countries, the following are samples of what has been the narrative for some time now. First from the US:
Saying that climate change ranks among the world’s most serious problems - such as disease outbreaks, poverty, terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called on all nations to respond to “the greatest challenge of our generation.”
Next, from among our Cousins across the pond, the artist currently known as “Prince” favored us with his views on the matter, viz:
Tackling global warming is the biggest challenge facing the world today, Prince Charles has said, urging governments to act on climate change before it is too late.
Finally, from Obama’s Press Spokesman Josh Earnest we have:
1. “The point the president is making is that there are many more people on an annual basis who have to confront the impact, the direct impact on their lives, of climate change, or on the spread of a disease, than on terrorism.”
2. “The point that the president is making is that when you are talking about the direct daily impact of these kinds of challenges on the daily lives of Americans, particularly Americans living in this country, that the direct impact, that more people are affected by those things than by terrorism.”
3. “I think even the Department of Defense has spoken to the significant threat that climate change poses to our national security interests, principally because of the impact it can have on countries with less well-developed infrastructure than we have.”
So the folks in the rich countries are supposed to believe that climate change is a greater danger than terrorism. However, according to the responses of nine million people, it’s the folks in the rich countries who didn’t get the memo. Rather than thinking that action on climate change is more important than terrorism and that it’s the biggest challenge facing the world, in reality action taken on climate change is less important to the folks in rich countries than sexual equality or affordable food. And action on climate change is far less important in the wealthiest countries than clean water and sanitation ... this is good news. It shows that there still is some sanity on the planet. Not everyone is chanting the alarmist mantra, “The sky is falling! A couple degrees of warming will kill us all!”
Short version? If someone thinks they are helping the poor by fighting the dread CO2, according to the UN the poor would beg to differ. The people in the poor countries have shown clearly that they would prefer it if people who want to help would instead put their valuable skills and their hard-earned money and their precious time into any of the other fifteen items on the UN list before tackling climate change. Climate is not only number sixteen at the bottom of their list, it’s way below the rest in the opinion of the poor. The only reason it is not number seventeen is that there were only sixteen choices on the list…
And even the people in the richest of countries don’t buy the claim that climate change is the biggest problem facing us, nowhere near it. Heck, climate change doesn’t even make it into the top half of the issues that people in the wealthiest countries think are important.
So. While the US is often claimed to be an outlier because so many folks here (including the President-Elect) think climate change is not a significant issue, it turns out that most folks on the planet agree with the President-Elect that climate is down at or near the bottom of the issues that matter. The existence of some fabled large constituency in favor of action on climate issues seems to be a creation of the media ... dang, a fabled constituency that is actually just a creation of the media, where else have I heard that lately? But I digress ...
Given that we have a limited amount of time, money, and resources with which to work on these issues, it seems to me that we should focus our effort on the real problems that people have identified as making a real difference in their lives. In order, the top ten issues worldwide are education, jobs, healthcare, good government, food, protection against violence, clean water, unemployment insurance, roads, and sexual equality. If people truly care about the poor, pick one of those issues and go to work. It’s what I did for a good chunk of my life.
Once we’ve solved those challenges, we might think about spending billions on CO2 mitigation ...or not.
But until then? Not so much.
October 21, 2016
The once professional societies continued their slide into unprecedented advocacy in recent years as they boarded the politically-driven grant gravy train and recruited to their memberships a whole generation of eco fanatics indoctrinated in our failing schools at all levels. Their advocacy with congress is not at all scientific. They claim ‘consensus’ in their letter. The late great Michael Crichton, author of State of Fear on this topic, said “Historically, the claim of consensus is the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming the matter is already settled.” “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). He concluded: “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.”
The following letter has been written by a lawyer that was part of the science and legal team responding to the EPA’s regulatory assault in amici briefs to the SCOTUS and DC circuit (circus) courts and the former, long-time top economist and analyst for the EPA. The letter responds to the 31 ‘former’ scientific societies that have degraded into advocacy, special interest (keep the money coming) and lobbyist groups. It was sent personally to each of the 31 signatories of the June 28, 2016 Consensus Scientific View of Climate Change letter to the congress. The refer to the research report which has been thoroughly reviewed by 11 highly credentialed reviewers. The 3 authors of the report have given full support to the letter.
Dear ------:
This letter is written with respect to the June 28 Letter, subscribed by your organization and some thirty other U.S.-based scientific societies. I attach a copy of that June 28 Letter for your reference. Besides this letter to you, we are addressing letters similar to this one to each of those other societies.
On September 21, 2016 a major new Research Report was published on the ICECAP website and at other locations. The Research Report was undertaken by its authors because they were unable to find anywhere in the literature of climate change a mathematically rigorous validation of a statistically significant, quantitative relationship between rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and surface as well as tropospheric temperatures.
The Research Report provides the methodology and findings of a definitive study designed to validate or invalidate the principal scientific hypotheses underlying the EPA’s December 2009 Endangerment Finding with respect to so-called “greenhouse gases,” including the hypothesis that rising greenhouse gas concentrations are likely to be associated with harmful or dangerous increases in surface temperatures. The results of the Research Report apply equally well to the Physical Science reports issued by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change over the last few decades. In accordance with the scientific method, the Research Report used the best available temperature data from multiple sources, each of them structurally independent from the others, for the validation/invalidation exercise. The data used in the Research Report are fully available via links in the Report itself, and came from sources including satellites, weather balloons, ocean buoys, and also surface thermometer records.
The principal conclusions of the Research Report are as follows:
* “These analysis results would appear to leave very, very little doubt but that EPA’s claim of a Tropical Hot Spot (THS), caused by rising atmospheric CO2 levels, simply does not exist in the real world.”
* “Once EPA’s THS assumption is invalidated, then EPA’s climate models that rely upon the THS assumption are also invalid.
* “[T]his analysis failed to find that the steadily rising Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations have had a statistically significant impact on any of the 13 critically important temperature time series data analyzed.”
* “[T]hese results clearly demonstrate - 13 times in fact - that once just the ENSO [El Nino/La Nina] impacts on temperature data are accounted for, there is no “record setting” warming to be concerned about. In fact, there is no ENSO-Adjusted Warming at all.”
The June 28 Letter to which you subscribed contains statements strongly implying that there had previously been some sort of empirical validation of a quantitative causal relationship between increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and increasing global average surface temperatures. For example, you state: “Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research concludes that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.” Later in the June 28 Letter, you state: “There is strong evidence that ongoing climate change is having broad negative impacts on society, including the global economy, natural resources, and human health.”
However, as noted above, the authors of the Research Report have been unable to find in any scientific study a rigorous empirical validation of a statistically significant quantitative relationship between rising greenhouse gas concentrations and tropical, contiguous U.S. or global temperatures. Indeed we can find no paper that actually provides mathematically rigorous empirical proof that the effect of increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations on world temperatures is different from zero with statistical significance.
As you might realize, we are concerned that prestigious scientific societies, including your own, have subscribed to a letter to Members of Congress purporting to convey scientific propositions as having been definitively established, when in fact there has never been a mathematically rigorous empirical validation of the propositions stated, and indeed there now appears to be a definitive scientific invalidation of those propositions.
Obviously, the June 28 Letter preceded the September 21 Research Report. We therefore ask you to reconsider your June 28 Letter in light of the Research Report. Alternatively, could you kindly:
* Refer us to the research study or studies that, in a mathematically proper and rigorous fashion, empirically validate a quantitative relationship between rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and global temperatures as reflected in all thirteen major data sets as used in the Research Report. Such a study must be very clear as to the analysis process and data utilized and must be able to be replicated.
* Refer us to the research study or studies that definitively empirically validate the so-called Tropical Hot Spot that is a critical underpinning of the “lines of evidence” on which EPA says it relies for its Endangerment Finding. (The term “Tropical Hot Spot” refers to the hypothesized warming pattern whereby increasing greenhouse gas concentrations cause the tropical mid-troposphere to warm more rapidly than the lower troposphere, which in turn warms more rapidly than the surface.)
* Refer us to the research study or studies that definitively empirically demonstrates that there is statistically significant warming to account for in the global troposphere after controlling for ENSO [El Nino/La Nina] effects.
In closing, we wish to remind you of the well-known quote from noted physicist Richard Feynman:
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”
As a leader of a major scientific society, you of course realize that Feynman’s aphorism captures the essence of the scientific method that underlies the entire project of science, including all of the work of your organization and its members. If you as a scientific society are going to use your authority to advocate for a government policy agenda, the American people are entitled to know the specific empirical work that validates your scientific hypothesis that greenhouse gases are warming the planet. Also, if there is apparently definitive empirical research, such as the Research Report, that would seem to invalidate the principal hypotheses that underlie your policy advocacy, the American people are entitled to your definitive refutation of that work before you continue your policy advocacy.
In short, if you have mathematically rigorous empirical validation of the hypotheses that underlie your advocacy, kindly provide it. If you do not, kindly say so.
Very truly yours,
Francis Menton
Law Office of Francis Menton
85 Broad Street, 18th Floor
New York, New York 10004
fmenton@manhattancontrarian.com
Alan Carlin
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Mr. Menton is a lawyer in New York. He has represented numerous scientists, among them the authors and many of the reviewers of the Research Report cited in this letter, in making submissions as amici curiae to courts including the D.C. Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court on issues related to energy and climate matters. Mr. Menton has a JD from Harvard Law School and a BA in Mathematics and Economics from Yale.
Dr. Carlin is a retired senior analyst and manager at the US Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, 1971-2010; previously he was an economist at the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA. He is the author of Environmentalism Gone Mad, Stairway Press, and the author or coauthor of about 40 other professional publications including many on climate science and economics. He has a PhD in economics from MIT and a BS in physics from Caltech.
See Alan’s post on this letter to the societies here.
Climate change ranked dead last in a recent survey of 16 issues Americans care about.
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See Nicolas’s Debunking Leonardo DiCaprio’s Climate Change Documentary
By Nicholas Loris
To the dismay of some pundits, celebrities, and environmental activists, three presidential debates produced zero questions on global warming. Simply wishing an issue to be a priority won’t make it one.
Americans and people around the world are apathetic to taking action on climate change. And for good reason. Chicken Littles have incorrectly predicted doomsday scenarios and, even in the event of climate catastrophe, costly policies offer a nonsolution.
Both domestic and international polls demonstrate how little individuals want to take action on global warming and even more important, how little they’re willing to pay for it.
Take, for instance, the United Nations’ “My World” survey that asked individuals to choose six issues that “are most important for you and your family.” Nearly 10 million people have responded, and out of a list of 16 issues, “action taken on climate change” ranked dead last. Education, health care, and better job opportunities came in as the top three.
Even climate polling data spun as encouraging isn’t all that impressive. A March Gallup poll reports that concerns over climate change are at an eight-year high. But that headline alone doesn’t provide the full context.
While the percent of Americans who worry about global warming a great or fair deal is up to 64 percent (compared to 55 percent from a year ago, but still lower than the 66 percent reported in 2008), the percentage of Americans who perceive global warming as a serious threat is the lowest (57 percent) since Gallup asked the question in 1998.
Another allegedly encouraging poll comes from a recent survey conducted by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and the AP-NORC Center. The New York Times heralded the results as “Americans Appear Willing to Pay for a Carbon Tax Policy.”
But just how much are Americans willing to pay? A measly buck a month. Fifty-seven percent of respondents were willing to pay an additional dollar per month on their electricity bill to combat climate change. Forty-two percent weren’t even willing to pay that much. For proponents of an aggressive carbon tax, that’s not very encouraging.
At $20 a month, the public is more than 2-to-1 against paying to combat climate change, which is more telling that there’s no real appetite for this. Importantly, the poll fails to include how much abated warming Americans would receive from paying an additional $1, $20, or $50 per month. In every scenario, the answer is next to nothing.
Even if the U.S. cut 100 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions (which would cost Americans a lot more than $50 per month), it would not make any meaningful impact on projected warming.
Using the same estimated climate impact from a doubling of carbon dioxide emissions that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assumes in its modeling (which is arguably higher than reality), the world would only be 0.137 degrees Celsius cooler by 2100 if the U.S. shut down its entire economy.
The entire industrialized world could cut carbon dioxide emissions by 100 percent and the result would be a whopping 0.278 degrees Celsius cooler by the turn of the century. Let’s see how our grandchildren feel about that sacrifice.
Polling data alone certainly isn’t a reason to ignore an issue. But the reality that we’re not headed toward catastrophic warming and that costly policies that ripple through the economy won’t mitigate global temperatures most certainly are.
Research Report Executive Summary
Background
On December 15, 2009, EPA issued its Green House Gas (GHG) Endangerment Finding, which has driven very significant and costly regulations beginning with CO2. Focusing primarily on the time period since 1950, EPA’s Endangerment Finding predicated on Three Lines of Evidence, claims that Higher CO2 Emissions have led to dangerously Higher Global Average Surface Temperatures.
Relevance of this Research
The assumption of the existence of a “Tropical Hot Spot (THS)” is critical to all Three Lines of Evidence in EPA’s GHG/CO2 Endangerment Finding.
Stated simply, first, the THS is claimed to be a fingerprint or signature of atmospheric and Global Average Surface Temperatures (GAST) warming caused by increasing GHG/CO2 concentrations[1]. The proper test for the existence of the THS in the real world is very simple. Are the slopes of the three temperature trend lines (upper & lower troposphere and surface) all positive, statistically significant and do they have the proper top down rank order?
Second, higher atmospheric CO2 and other GHGs concentrations are claimed to have been the primary cause of the claimed record setting GAST over the past 50 plus years.
Third, the THS assumption is imbedded in all of the climate models that EPA still relies upon in its policy analysis supporting, for example, its Clean Power Plan - recently put on hold by a Supreme Court Stay. These climate models are also critical to EPA’s Social Cost of Carbon estimates used to justify a multitude of regulations across many U.S. Government agencies.
Objectives of the Research
The objective of this research was to determine whether or not a straightforward application of the proper mathematical methods would support EPA’s basic claim that CO2 is a pollutant. Stated simply, their claim is that GAST is primarily a function of four explanatory variables: Atmospheric CO2 Levels, Solar Activity, Volcanic Activity, and a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon called the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO.)
The first objective of this research was to determine, based on the very considerable relevant and credible tropical temperature data evidence, whether or not the assumed THS actually exists in the real world.
The second related objective was to determine whether, adjusting ONLY for ENSO impacts, anything at all unusual with the Earth’s temperatures seemed to be occurring in the Tropics, Contiguous U.S. or Globally. It is a well-known meteorological fact that, other things equal, El Ninos lead to a global scale warming and La Ninas a global scale cooling, whose magnitudes are related to their ENSO strengths.
The third objective was to determine whether the rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations alone can be shown to have had a statistically significant impact on the trend slopes of often -publically-quoted temperature data.
It should be noted that in carrying out this research project, every effort was made to minimize complaints that this analysis was performed on so-called “cherry picked temperature data”. To avoid even the appearance of such activity, the authors divided up responsibilities, where Dr. Christy was tasked to provide temperature data sets that he felt were most appropriate and credible for testing the THS as well as the two other EPA Endangerment Finding hypotheses. All told, thirteen temperature time series (9 Tropics, 1 Contiguous U.S. and 3 Global) were analyzed in this research. The econometric analysis was done by Jim Wallace & Associates, LLC, and when completed, cross checked by the two other authors as well as seven reviewers.
Findings of the Research
These analysis results would appear to leave very, very little doubt but that EPA’s claim of a Tropical Hot Spot (THS), caused by rising atmospheric CO2 levels, simply does not exist in the real world. Also critically important, even on an all-other-things-equal basis, this analysis failed to find that the steadily rising Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations have had a statistically significant impact on any of the 13 critically important temperature time series data analyzed.
Thus, the analysis results invalidate each of the Three Lines of Evidence in its CO2 Endangerment Finding. Once EPA’s THS assumption is invalidated, it is obvious why the climate models they claim can be relied upon, are also invalid. And, these results clearly demonstrate - 13 times in fact - that once just the ENSO impacts on temperature data are accounted for, there is no “record setting” warming to be concerned about. In fact, there is no ENSO-Adjusted Warming at all. These natural ENSO impacts are shown in this research to involve both changes in solar activity and the well-known 1977 Pacific Climate Shift.
Moreover, on an all-other-things-equal basis, the research strongly implies that there is no statistically valid proof that past increases in Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations have caused the officially reported rising, even claimed record setting temperatures.
Finally, regarding the credibility of these research findings, the temperature data measurements that were analyzed were taken by many different entities using balloons, satellites, buoys and various land based techniques. Needless to say, if regardless of data source, the results are the same, the analysis findings should be considered highly credible.
PDF of this Executive Summary here.
See full abridged 68 page report here. The authors and reviewers all highly recommend that you read the PREFACE which explains the methodology and will help you better understand the detailed temperature analyses.
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Study Authors & Reviewers
Authors
Dr. James P. Wallace III
Jim Wallace & Associates, LLC
50 Years Mathematical Modelling Team Management
Ph.D., Economics, Minor in Engineering, Brown University
M.S., Mechanical Engineering, Brown University
B.S., Aeronautical Engineering, Brown University
Dr. John R. Christy
Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Alabama State Climatologist and Director of the Earth Science System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Lead Author, Contributing Author and Reviewer of United Nations IPCC assessments.
Awarded NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.
Elected a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society in 2002
Joseph S. D’Aleo
Certified Consulting Meteorologist
Elected AMS Fellow
BS, MS Meteorology University of Wisconsin
ABD NYU Air Resources, Honorary Doctorate VSC
45 years operational and research meteorology
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Reviewers
Dr. Alan Carlin
Retired Senior Analyst and manager, US Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC.
Author, Environmentalism Gone Mad, Stairway Press, 2015.
Ph.D., Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
BS, Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.
Dr. Harold H. Doiron
Retired VP-Engineering Analysis and Test Division, InDyne, Inc.
Ex-NASA JSC, Aerospace Consultant
B.S. Physics, University of Louisiana - Lafayette
M.S., Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston
Dr. Theodore R. Eck
Ph.D., Economics, Michigan State University
M.A, Economics, University of Michigan
Fulbright Professor of International Economics
Former Chief Economist of Amoco Corp. and Exxon Venezuela
Advisory Board of the Gas Technology Institute and Energy Intelligence Group
Dr. Craig D. Idso
Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
Ph.D., Geography, Arizona State University
M.S., Agronomy, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
B.S., Geography, Arizona State University
Dr. Richard A. Keen
Instructor Emeritus of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado
Ph.D., Geography/Climatology, University of Colorado
M.S., Astro-Geophysics, University of Colorado
B.A., Astronomy, Northwestern University
Dr. Anthony R. Lupo
IPCC Expert Reviewer
Professor, Atmospheric Science, University of Missouri
Ph.D., Atmospheric Science, Purdue University
M.S., Atmospheric Science, Purdue University
Dr. Thomas P. Sheahen
Ph.D., Physics, M.I.T.
B.S., Physics, M.I.T.
Dr. George T. Wolff
Former Chair EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee
Ph.D., Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University
M.S., Meteorology, New York University
B.S., Chemical Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology
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Research Report Endorsement
The authors of this research are very much interested in knowing the names and credentials of individuals who would like to add their names to the list of scientists whose names already appear in the report under the following statement:
“The Undersigned Agree with the Conclusions of this Report.”
After reading and thinking about this research report, if you would like to have your name added to such a list, please send your name and credentials in a fashion similar to those listed in the report.
Please send this information to the following dedicated email address: frostdoc@aol.com
[1] See U.S. Climate Change Science Program, Synthesis and Assessment Product 1.1, Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere - Understanding and Reconciling Differences, Chapter 1, p. 18-19, PDF
The individuals asking to their names added that have very substantial relevant credentials are listed below:
Dr. Alan Carlin
Retired Senior Analyst and manager, US Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC.
Author, Environmentalism Gone Mad, Stairway Press, 2015.
Ph.D., Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
BS, Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.
David Bennett Laing, Earth systems scientist
Asst. Prof. of Geology, Eastern New Mexico University and University of Maine system, retired
Author, “The Earth System,” 1991. Wm C Brown, 590 pp.
University of Arizona, Tree-Ring Laboratory, 3 yrs, ABD
Harvard University, MA; Dartmouth College, BA
Dr. Ruth F. Weiner
Adjunct Professor of Nuclear Engineering, University of Michigan
Member, USNRC Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste
Member EPA National Air Pollution Control Techniques Advisory
Ph. D (chemistry) The Johns Hopkins University
B.S., M.S. (physics) University of Illinois
By Anthony Watts, WattsUpWith That
Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore campaign together at the Miami Dade College on Tuesday in Miami. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Hillary Clinton later made the statement on Twitter:
Our next president will either step up our efforts to address climate change or drag us backward and put our whole future at risk.
We’ve always had destructive hurricanes, but Hurricane Matthew was likely more destructive because of climate change.
Followed by Al Gore saying:
“from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in just 36 hours, that’s extremely unusual”
.IMHO, HillaryClinton is the right choice in this election if we care about solving the climate crisis
What crisis? The worst hurricane ever to hit the USA was The Great Galveston Hurricane in 1900, which killed up to 6000 people, long before CO2 ever became an issue.
Today, we have an 11 year hurricane drought of Cat3 or greater failing to make landfall on the USA. The previous drought record was 8 years set in the 1860s!
We have hurricane damage losses which are down:
We have hurricane and tropical storm frequency which is flat to slightly down.
Figure from Dr. Ryan Maue: Last 4-decades of Global Tropical Storm and Hurricane frequency - 12-month running sums. The top time series is the number of TCs that reach at least tropical storm strength (maximum lifetime wind speed exceeds 34-knots). The bottom time series is the number of hurricane strength (64-knots+) TCs.
And Tornado deaths are down too
Pardon my french, but WHAT CLIMATE CRISIS as they view it in weather terms? Their pitch of a load of bollocks!
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Lets also remember in the words of Christopher Booker:
Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth went much further, talking of 20 feet, and showing computer graphics of cities such as Shanghai and San Francisco half under water.
But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Morner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Morner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.
Indeed instead of the dramatic use of a lift to show the 20 foot rise, Gore could have instead used the Manhattan Yellow pages to demonstrate the rise coming. Recall also in the UK, a court ruled if Al Gore’s science fiction horror movie was shown in the schools, the teacher would have to read the 9 major errors (just the tip of the iceberg). Gore and Clinton make a perfect pair.
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See Patrick Micheals USATODAY post Today’s Weather is Hardly Unusual! here.
Perspective on Matthew in the Rear-View Mirror Now
Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
Matthew first became a storm on September 28 east of the islands in the Atlantic. It moved into the Caribbean where it intensified to a major hurricane. After sparing Jamaica, Matthew turned north pounding eastern Cuba and Haiti. Haiti was hardest hit with 145 mph winds and torrential flooding rains that resulted in an estimated 1000 deaths.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas with a population of 10 million. Matthew is the latest devastating event to affect Haiti with rainfall of 15 to 20 inches and as much as 40 inches in the mountains and a storm surge on the south coast of up to 10 feet.
Haiti is especially vulnerable to hurricane disasters given its location, topography and poverty. In 1963, Hurricane Flora struck the coast of Haiti causing a 12-foot storm surge that killed an estimated 7,000. In 2004, heavy rains sparked flooding that killed more than 1,000. Just four months later, Hurricane Jeanne struck the northern coast causing flooding that killed around 3000. In 1994, Hurricane Gordon caused in 1,790 deaths from mudslides and flooding. In 2008, three hurricanes and a tropical storm targeted Haiti in less than four weeks in August and September causing 800 deaths and devastating crops.
Matthew after leaving Haiti rolled through the Bahamas and then teased the Florida east coast. The storm weakened as it neared Florida to a Category 2 storm and tracked just off the east coast, sparing the population from the worst possible outcome. The storm’s eyewall passed over Cape Canaveral with a report of a wind gust to 107 mph. The strongest official station wind gust in Florida was 68 mph at Daytona Beach. However, tropical storm force winds, heavy rains and the storm surge caused property damage, lengthy power outages and what has been described as extensive beach erosion.
Matthew’s rains increased as it moved north dumping 12 to over 18 inches of rainfall from Savannah, Georgia and Hilton Head Island to Charleston in South Carolina. 96 mph wind gusts were reported near Tybee Island, Georgia and 88 mph at Hilton Head Island Airport. Matthew made landfall as a Category 1 near McClellanville, South Carolina Saturday and soon after was downgraded but still rains fell in North Carolina to the Tidewater area in Virginia, recently flooded by rains from Julia.
Matthew hooked up on a cold front that was dropping through the northeast and brought some much needed rainfall (about 0.6 inches here in southern New Hampshire) and near the coast, locally damaging winds. The peak wind was 58 mph in Aquinnah, Massachusetts.
Though the storm was a major hurricane out at sea in the Caribbean, when it eventually made landfall on the mainland, it was a category 1 storm. This continues the record of almost 11 years (short now by about a week) without a major hurricane landfall on the mainland. The last major hurricane was Hurricane Wilma in late October 2005. The old record of 8 years was set in the 1860s.
MIT’s Dr. Kerry Emanuel called Hurricane Matthew a ‘run-of-the-mill’ hurricane. Indeed in the history of the hurricane giants, it was not extraordinary though like with most hurricanes affecting the islands and mainland in any way, there was certainly angst, pain and suffering. That is and always was a part of our weather and climate. Here is a compilation of 30 peer reviewed studies show no connection between climate change and hurricanes.