Climate change may rank dead last in nearly every US opinion poll, and be the #1 priority for only 1% of American adults. But it is at the very top of the list for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, AOC and other Democrat Party leaders. Indeed, it is the primary justification for the Green New Deal that they plan to implement and impose, to control and transform the entire US energy and economic system ... and much more. In fact, some of them plan to force us to spend some $100 trillion over the next decade on this great crusade.

In this article , David Wojick and I take a closer look at what they have in mind, and how it will affect virtually every aspect of our lives, livelihoods, living standards and liberties. As the DNC national convention wraps up, and the RNC convention gets underway, it’s a good time for every American to ponder this very carefully.

Thank you for posting our article, forwarding it to your friends and colleagues - and noting that David is my coauthor.

Best regards,

Paul

Green New Deal disruption and destruction

Not just energy, but every aspect of our lives, living standards, history, culture and freedoms

David Wojick and Paul Driessen

Kamala Harris co-sponsored the Senate resolution to support the Green New Deal. Now Joe Biden has endorsed the plan. Naturally, people want to know what the GND will cost - usually meaning in state and federal government spending. But that is the wrong question.

The real question is, how much do Green New Dealers expect to get out of it, at what total cost? Mr. Biden says he wants the feds to spend nearly $7 trillion over the next decade on healthcare, energy and housing transformation, climate change and other GND agenda items. But that is only part of the picture.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who has a degree in some socialist version of economics) and the folks who helped her write Biden’s so-called Climate Plan have a clear idea of how much money they want, and pretty much know where they expect the money to come from. Here it is in its clearest form, as stated by Rep. Ocasio-Cortezs then chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti:

World War II was a time of great sacrifice and hardship, as part of a dramatic and historic mobilization to win a horrific global war. However, that hard reality doesn’t matter to these folks. They say we are now waging a war to stop catastrophic climate change. So money, sacrifice and disruption are irrelevant

“The resolution describes the 10-year plan to transform every sector of our economy to remove GHG [greenhouse gases] and pollution. It says it does this through huge investments in renewables, at WW2 scales (which was 40-60% of America’s GDP).” [emphasis added].

Our nation’s GDP is around $20 trillion a year, or $200 trillion in ten years. 40-60% of that is $80-120 trillion. For simplicity, let’s call it an even $100 trillion to finance the Green New Deal utopian dream.

$100 trillion! The ways and means of raising this stupendous sum are also clear in their minds. It will be done the same way WW2 was financed, however that was. To them, it’s obvious that we can simply do this, because we did it before. The specifics don’t matter. Government elites will figure them out.

But even this arrogant, cavalier attitude is only part of the picture.

If you read what Green New Dealers say, confusion arises because people think the GND is an ordinary policy proposal: “Here’s what we want done, and this what it should cost.” It is nothing like that. The Green New Deal is more along the lines of, “Here’s the level of effort we require to transform our entire economy, and this is what we should be able to do with that much money.”

People tend to interpret Green New Dealer talk of a WW2-like mobilization as a simple metaphor. But these folks mean it as an actual measure of what they are determined to do. So far they have glossed over and ignored the extreme hardships of mobilization. Here’s just one example - not from front lines mayhem, but from the United States home front during World War II.

Gasoline, meat and clothing were tightly rationed. Most families were allocated three US gallons of gasoline a week, which sharply curtailed driving for any purpose. Production of most durable goods, like cars, new housing, vacuum cleaners and kitchen appliances, was banned until the war ended. In industrial areas housing was in short supply as people doubled up and lived in cramped quarters. Prices and wages were controlled. [Harold Vatter, The US Economy in World War II]

No doubt the Green New Deal mobilization would impose different hardships. But all mobilizations are oppressive. You can’t commandeer half of the GDP without disrupting or even destroying people’s lives.

The argument is sound in its way, provided there is a need for all-out war - which there is not. The minor to modest temperature, climate and extreme weather changes we’ve been seeing (in the real world outside computer models) explain why most Americans see no need for a painful war. So does the fact that China, India and other emerging economies are not about to give up fossil fuels anytime soon.

In fact, polls show that roughly half of Americans do not even believe in the idea of human caused global warming, much less that it is an “existential threat,” as Senator Harris claims it is. The latest Gallup poll found that only 1% of US adults consider “climate change/environment/pollution” to be “the most important problem facing this country today.” That’s down from a meager 2% in the May 28-June 4 poll.

Even more revealing, a 2019 AP-NORC poll found that 68% of adult Americans were unwilling to pay even an extra $10 on their monthly electricity bill to combat global warming. Indeed, 57% of them would not be willing to pay more than $1.00 in added electricity charges to fight climate change!

Just wait until they see what the Biden-Harris-AOC-Democrat Green New Deal would cost them.

And it’s not just that their costs would likely skyrocket from an average US 13.2 cents per kilowatt hour (11.4 cents or less in ten states) to well beyond the nearly 20 cents per kWh that families are already paying in California and New York, or the 30 cents that families are now paying in ultra-green Germany.  Or that factories, businesses, hospitals, schools and everyone else would also see their costs escalate - with blue collar families, the sick and elderly, poor and minority communities hammered hardest.

It’s that the GND would force every American to replace their gasoline and diesel cars and trucks with expensive short-haul electric vehicles; their gas furnaces and stoves with electric systems; their home, local and state electrical and transmission systems with expensive upgrades that can handle a totally electric economy. They’ll see their landscapes, coastlines and wildlife habitats blanketed with wind turbines, solar panels, transmission lines and warehouses filled with thousands of half-ton batteries. Virtually every component of this GND nation would be manufactured in China and other faraway places.

The cost of this massive, total transformation of our energy and economic system would easily reach $10 trillion: $30,000 per person or $120,000 per family - on top of those skyrocketing electricity prices. And that’s just the intermittent, unreliable energy component of this all-encompassing Green New Deal.

These are stupendous, outrageous costs and personal sacrifices. Every American, at every campaign event and town meeting, should ask Green New Deal supporters if they think America needs to - or can afford to - cough up $10 trillion or $100 trillion over the next ten years. And not let them get away with glib, evasive answers, or attempts to laugh these questions off as meritless or irrelevant.

The American people are not about to be mobilized into an all-out war against dubious climate change, with price tags like these coupled with repeated blackouts, huge personal sacrifices, and massive joblessness in every sector of the economy - except among enlightened government ruling classes.

They’ve already seen news stories about the latest rolling blackouts in California (here, here, here and here) - ?resulting from one-third of that state’s electricity coming from “renewable” sources, and with another third of the state’s electricity imported from other states that also get heat waves. They should ponder what their lives, livelihoods and living standards would be under 100% wind and solar power.

And yet, once again, even all this insanity is only a small part of the picture.

Remember, the Green New Deal is also about government run healthcare - and an economy and nation where “progressive” “woke” legislators, regulators, judges and activists tell companies what they can manufacture and sell...and tell us what we can buy, eat and drink; how and how much we can heat and cool our homes; and what we can read, hear, think and say, as they “transform” our culture and traditions.

The GND is being promoted by politicians, news and social media, “educators” and “reformers” who also want to eliminate free enterprise capitalism; have totally open borders, even for criminals and people who might have Covid and other diseases; and want to defund the police, put anarchists, looters and terrorists back on our streets, and take away our right and ability to defend ourselves, our homes and our families.

The time to think long and hard about all of this is NOW. Not sometime after the November 3 elections.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues. David Wojick is an independent analyst specializing in science, logic and human rights in public policy, and author of numerous articles on these topics.

My colleagues and I have given many lectures about the myths, misconceptions and outright lies in the global warming arena the last few decades. After an hour of graphs, charts and pictures detailing how a tiny trace gas, carbon dioxide, has no relationship to whatever warming and cooling or weather extremes has occurred we get the inevitable statement from someone in the audience.

“How can you deny that man made global warming and its effects are real when 97 percent of climate scientists agree that it is true?”

At that point we have to explain that the 97 percent figure is not what it appears to be. It is a convenient fiction to imply a consensus.

It is now the rule in the schools. Our students are not being taught the scientific method. In the classroom they are taught what to think and not how to think.

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND THE PHONEY CONSENSUS

The scientific method does not involve a poll or vote by scientists (that is in the realm of politics where you vote on a law or candidate), but validation of a theory with facts.

Michael Crichton, PhD, MD, famous author, producer, screenwriter and lecturer often talked about claims of a consensus.

“Historically the claim of consensus is the first refuge of scoundrel; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming the matter is already settled”. “Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus.  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… Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics.”

The fact that a VP and a failed presidential candidate who had a D in the only science class he ever took produced the movie An Inconvenient Truth seen by our children numerous times in schools even in gym class should raise eyebrows. It did in the UK where the courts ruled in order for the film to be shown that teachers must make clear that the film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument, and if teachers present the film without making this plain they may be in breach of the 1996 Education Act and guilty of political indoctrination. They required the eleven most egregious inaccuracies had to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.

WHAT DO SCIENTISTS REALLY THINK?

There have been many polls and declarations that demonstrate a large percentage of real scientists believe in climate change BUT that natural factors are the primary driver.

Climatology wasn’t a recognized specialty or profession even at colleges when I first taught weather and climate in the 1970s into the early 1980s. It was mostly a small part of introductory classes on weather or in geography or geology courses.  When climate change became part of an anti fossil fuel agenda and big money suddenly appeared, teachers never trained in climate suddenly became ‘climate scientists’. Environmental sciences emerged as a career path. 

The UN, politicians, industry and the mainstream and on-line media would want you to believe that all scientists have now seen the light, that there is a consensus.  That is not the case. Most honest scientist know so. Many are forced into silence or if they vocalize their dissent, find their careers endangered or even destroyed. Still many when past the stage of their career where they can speak the truth, do.

A Global Warming Petition was signed by 31,487 scientists including 9,029 with PHDs in their fields. The petition states that: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that the human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth”.

1100 Climate Realists signed ‘’The Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change” from 40 countries demanding an end to climate hysteria. 1000+ International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims to the U.S. Senate, 300+ Eminent Scientists Reject U.N. Climate Change Treaty (Paris Accord). A recent survey found 1350 peer review papers questioning global warming and 1000 papers believing cooling has begun. See my team’s effort to fact-check popular alarmist claims here. We have many other peer review papers disprove the theory.

Scientists are aware of the failures too and now have proposed 54 excuses and counting as to why their models have failed. See this interesting series on the Great Scientific Fraud here.

IGNORED OPINION POLLS

There are many well-educated people who do not agree with the survey and its 97% figure. In a 2011 Scientific American opinion poll on the state of climate science provided the eye-opening results cast by their “scientifically literate” readership. With a total of 5190 respondents, a consensus of 81.3% think the IPCC is “a corrupt organization, prone to group-think, with a political agenda” and 75% think climate change is caused by solar variation or natural processes vs. 21% who think it is due to greenhouse gases from human activity. 65% think we should do nothing about climate change since “we are powerless to stop it,” and the same percentage think science should stay out of politics. When asked, “How much would you be willing to pay to forestall the risk of catastrophic climate change?”.76.7% said “nothing.” Scientific American removed the poll when pressured by environmental groups.

In a 2013 Forbes article, it was reported only 36 percent of earth scientists 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 earth scientists and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists.

Even a global UN survey of the public, received over 9.7 million votes and found in prioritizing what should be focused on, action on climate change finished last.

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2020 Gallup Poll shows a similar result:

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SO WHERE DID 97% COME FROM?

The first quoted source was an online survey that was published in 2009 by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman from the University of Illinois. The survey was sent to 10,257 scientists to, which 3,146 scientists responded to.

There were two primary questions in the survey. The first “When compared to pre-1800 levels, do you think mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant? ”
History has recorded a prolonged global cold era know as “The Little Ice Age” that lasted from about 1400 to 1850 AD. Since that time the global average temperature has risen. I know of no meteorologist, climatologist or anyone involved in the study of the earth’s temperature, who would argue this point.

Question number two asked “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?”

BUT what constitutes “human activity”? The burning of fossil fuels to make energy is one. The changing of land surfaces to make cities, farmland and deforestation is “human activity” that can change temperature as well. Changing mean temperature can be accomplished by changing the environment around a climate recording station. This is also “human activity”. As rural stations are increasingly surrounded by urban sprawl, roads and buildings, the temperature of the site will warm due to the “Urban Heat Island (UHI)” effect. This has nothing to due with fossil fuel. The results from the survey do not address just what constitutes “human activity”. A “yes” response to question two implies the responder is referring to fossil fuels but that is not necessarily the case. It is however, what the survey likely wanted to convey.

Question number two also does not address what the word “significant” means to each individual respondent. What constitutes significant can be very different from person to person.

The 97% figure from the on-line survey comes from a whittling down of the accepted number of responses from 3,146 to 79. The 79 scientists are those that said they have recently published 50% of their papers in the area of climate change. Of these, 76 of 79 answered “risen” to questions one (96.2%). How this number is not 100% was a surprise. As to question two, 75 of 77 answered ‘yes” (97.4%).

An attempt at a more rigorous approach to confirm the 97% number followed and failed. Cook et al. (2013) attempted to categorize 11,944 abstracts [brief summaries] of papers (not entire papers) to their level of endorsement of AGW. They found 7930 (66%) held no position on AGW, while only 64 papers (0.5% of the total) explicitly endorsed humans are the primary (50%+) as the cause. This was 97% of those who explicitly identified a cause. A later analysis by Legates et al. (2013) found there to be only 41 papers (0.3%) that supported this definition.

Cook et al. (2013) was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters (ERL) which conveniently has multiple outspoken alarmist scientists on its editorial board (e.g. Peter Gleick and Stefan Rahmstorf) where the paper likely received substandard “pal-review” instead of the more rigorous peer-review. The paper has since been refuted five times in the scholarly literature by Legates et al. (2013), Tol (2014a), Tol (2014b), Dean (2015) and Tol (2016).

All the other “97% consensus” studies: e.g. Doran & Zimmerman (2009), Anderegg et al. (2010) and Oreskes (2004) have been refuted by peer-review.

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AN UPHILL BATTLE

Alarmists have the advantage of virtually all the massive funding for climate change research ($1.65Byear) and they have a huge ‘social support’ group of

(1) Agenda driven or ratings driven journalists, environmentalists and corporations that have realized green is their favorite color and see this as a way to keep green paper flowing into their coffers and pockets
(2) Farmers who are benefiting from the misplaced focus on alternative fuel from crops which has sent the cost for their crops to record levels
(3) Traders and major market firms licking their chops at the prospects of big time money from alternative energy companies that have realized this is the vector to bigger profits and
(4) Politicians and political activists who see it as a way to accomplish ulterior goals about changing society and increasing their powerbase.

Some Saw This Coming

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” And, “he urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.” H.L. Mencken

Well before the climate change scare started, we were warned in 1961:
“… [In] the technological revolution during recent decades...research has become central ... complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government ... the solitary inventor ... has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields ... the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”
- President Eisenhower in his Farewell address

His words have been proven remarkably prophetic. Look at the real motivations in their own words.

“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.”
- The Club of Rome Premier environmental think-tank and consultants to the United Nations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Green New Deal was not conceived as an effort to deal with climate change, but instead a “how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing” (nothing more than a thinly veiled socialist takeover of the U.S. economy) “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,”
-Saikat Chakrabarti, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff.

In part II, I will talk about how the universities, professional societies and even congress has taken serious and alarming steps to eliminate (punish) doubters and public opinion. They attack any of their own, who speak out.  That includes formerly outspoken environmentalists like Dr. Patrick Moore, co founder of Greenpeace and Michael Shellenberger formerly Time Magazine’s ‘Hero of the Environment’ whose apology for the false scare which was published by Forbes but then forced to be removed. They even have threatened to use RICO against any vocal doubters that remain. See why attention to this is important for our future here.

Facebook’s science censors label climate skepticism “false”

Stacey Abrams, who ran for governor of Georgia, and Tom Steyer, who ran for president of the United States, are now trying to run me out of town. Abrams, Steyer, and the leaders of 17 large environmental lobbies recently asked Facebook to ban a research group that I direct the CO2 Coalition, made up of 55 climate scientists and energy economists.

The annual budgets of these lobbies total over half a billion dollars, and Steyer alone is worth $1.6 billion. Their alarmist view of our supposedly impending environmental doom predominates in mainstream media, centering on the impact on the earth of emissions of carbon dioxide -a non-polluting, mild warming gas, and an important source of plant and plankton food.

By contrast, the CO2 Coalition’s annual budget is half a million dollars. Like all scientists and economists who ask for any proof of the looming apocalypse, we are excluded from mainstream-media discussion. You might wonder: how did the Steyer-Abrams crowd even notice us, let alone conclude that we posed a threat to their enforced consensus, which calls for an end to the affordable, reliable energy that powers over 80 percent of the world?

The answer is found in the work of a Silicon Valley computer entrepreneur named Eric Michelman, who became fabulously wealthy creating a modification of the computer mouse. For more than a decade now, Michelman has devoted his wealth to squelching media debate on climate change - a successful dry run for the cancel culture that we see engulfing many other issues today. 

In 2016, Michelman was the founding and lead funder of a group called Climate Feedback, whose purpose is to “fact-check” and label as “false” any and all deviant thoughts about fossil-fueled climate catastrophe. The group has been certified as an unbiased source on climate issues by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which was founded by the Tampa Bay Times and operates the left-leaning PolitiFact. At some point, Facebook turned its censorship oversight over to the Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network.

That’s when our organization’s problems started.

In September 2019, a “false” label appeared on Facebook when the Washington Examiner posted an article I had written there with Dr. Patrick Michaels, our senior fellow and a former president of the American Association of State Climatologists. The op-ed described the poor performance of climate models that had projected alarming increases in future temperatures. The “false” label triggered a wave of censorship from Facebook’s algorithms, blocking reposting and advertising.

The detailed, scientifically referenced letter we wrote to Facebook that soon got the label reversed is almost identical in form and argument to responses this summer to similar Climate Feedback censorship written by environmental writer Michael Shellenberger, Dr. Michaels (after a televised appearance on Fox’s Life, Liberty, and Levin), and climate statistician Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. All of us agree: Climate Feedback is biased, sloppy, and often just flat wrong. For example, in its “fact-checks,” the group blatantly contradicts the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s finding that there has been no statistically significant increase in rates of sea-level rise, hurricanes, droughts, and floods during the carbon emissions era that began with the dramatic industrialization after World War II.

Climate Feedback is Michelman’s third major attempt at promoting climate alarmism and silencing opposing views. First came the Climate Change Education Project, in 2008, followed by the More than Scientists campaign in 2015. When he set up that campaign, Michelman said:

It’s about showing the science is settled. Studies consistently show that 97 percent of scientists agree. We want the public to both hear from them that, yeah, this is settled, but also see scientists for who they are. They’re our neighbors, our fellow citizens, and community members. They’re people with kids, and they’re worried about the future. When they say, “I am concerned about climate change and I think we need to act on it,” you can understand they’re saying it because they have kids just like you do.

Since Michelman had decided that the science was settled in favor of a 97 percent consensus on catastrophe before he even founded Climate Feedback, his group should never have been let into a network of “unbiased” reviewers. And its performance shows why.

I’m all for debating with Climate Feedback. For 15 years as a professor at American University, I invited to my classes on climate statistics and mathematical modeling many of the groups whose leaders signed the recent letter to Facebook calling for us to be banned. But there was no response because the cancel culture doesn’t believe in debate. It believes in silencing its opponents by denying them a platform. We’ll hold on as long as we can. I believe that the truth will out-even against “fact-checkers.”

Dr. Caleb Rossiter is the executive director of the CO2 Coalition.

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Thank you Dr. Rossiter,

I think that it is very important to put names and faces to the ‘Cancel Culture’ that is trying to defeat us with censorship.  Note that none have any scientific background and therefore default to strong arm tactics.  They cannot afford to let the truth be heard.

Here in Portland, the worst of the worst have turned to rioting, because Race is the hottest topic of the moment, surpassing Climate and COVID-19.  And these mostly white folks are at their best when they are at their worst: rioting.  Their latest tactic is to scream racist remarks at black Portland policemen.  That goes over well!

But more generally, these folks have to be very unhappy about our climate.  It has been almost too perfect of late.  Due to a northerly flow, we have had trouble reaching normal highs, let alone exceeding them.  On July 13, 14, and 15, our record highs (101, 103, and 103 F) were set the very first year records were kept at the new Portland Airport.  That was 1941.  We were in the 80’s this year.  Then in 1942, we set record highs that still stand today of 102 and 105 F on July 1 and 2.  We reached 66 and 72 F this year on those dates.

I understand the frustration of the Cancel Culture.  Our destroyed downtown is a monument to their overwhelming stupidity.

Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA

London, 20 June: The Global Warming Policy Forum has criticised the Environment Agency for claiming that the UK is no longer a wet and rainy country.

A new report, The Great British Rain Paradox (1), has just been published, warning of potential water shortages in the UK in years to come.

It claims that the major factor for this is climate change. The foreword, written by the CEO of the Environment Agency Sir James Bevan, states:

“Climate change is causing long spells of dry weather that are putting our water resources under increased pressure. May 2020 has been the driest on record and exceptionally dry weather across the south east between 2017 and 2019 led to some of the lowest groundwater levels we have ever seen.”

These claims have no basis in fact.

Official Met Office data shows that the UK has actually been getting wetter in recent decades.

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What is particularly noticeable in England and Wales is the absence of severe drought years in recent decades.

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May 2020 certainly was not the driest on record either - in the UK as a whole, it was only the ninth driest since records started in 1862. The driest May was in 1896.

Analysis of regional rainfall data also fails to support Sir James’ claims.

Neither does the claim of exceptionally dry weather in the South East of England stand up to scrutiny. Met Office data proves that rainfall there between 2017 and 2019 was in fact close to average.

There are undoubtedly good reasons why water shortages may occur in future, such as population growth and increased demands. Spurious claims about climate change will simply serve to draw attention away from these very real issues and the failure to expand storage and deal with water leaks.

GWPF director Dr Benny Peiser said:

“This is not the first time Sir James has been caught playing fast and loose with the facts to support a political agenda (3). He should apologise and issue a correction.”

Notes for editors

1) The Great British Rain Paradox is available here.

2) Met Office rainfall data can be accessed here.

3) James Bevan’s speech not supported by scientific evidence - Environment Agency

Contact

Dr Benny Peiser
Director, Global Warming Policy Forum
e: peiser@thegwpf.com

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IPCC and Sceptics Agree: Climate Change Is Not Causing Extreme Weather

A new Global Warming Policy Foundation report from retired physicist Ralph Alexander, Ph.D. (Oxford University) supports the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s conclusion there is limited scientific evidence linking human-caused climate change to increases in extreme weather. Alexander’s conclusions are also confirmed by recent documents produced by Heartland Institute Senior Fellow and meteorologist Anthony Watts on the Climate at a Glance website.

Alexander’s paper begins by remarking, “"The purported link between extreme weather and global warming has captured the public imagination and attention of the mainstream media far more than any of the other claims made by the narrative of human-caused climate change.” This is odd because data and analyses from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N. body that climate alarmists in academic, political, and media circles continually cite as the authoritative source of information on climate change, confirm that “if there is any trend at all in extreme weather, it’s downward rather than upward. Our most extreme weather, be it heat wave, drought, flood, hurricane or tornado, occurred many years ago, long before the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere began to climb at its present rate,” writes Alexander.

“Recent atmospheric heat waves in western Europe,” writes Alexander, “pale in comparison with the soaring temperatures of the 1930s, a period when three of the seven continents and 32 of the 50 US states set all-time high temperature records, which still stand today.”

Nor has the IPCC discerned or identified any long-term trend in drought patterns, either in the United States or globally. And even though rainfall has modestly increased in recent years, there is no evidence floods are becoming more frequent or severe. Many recent flood events can be traced almost entirely to land-use changes such as channelization, deforestation, the destruction of wetlands, and the building of dams, Alexander notes.

Climate at a Glance: Floods, confirms Alexander’s assessment, citing data showing there has been no evidence of increasing flooding frequency or severity in the United States or elsewhere over the past century and a half. The IPCC states it has “low confidence” in any climate change impact regarding the frequency or severity of floods, going so far as to say it has “low confidence” in even the “sign” of any changes. In other words, the IPCC thinks it is just as likely that climate change is making floods less frequent and less severe.

On top of that, a 2017 study on the impact of climate change on flooding in the United States and Europe, published in the Journal of Hydrology, states, “The number of significant trends was about the number expected due to chance alone,” and “Changes in the frequency of major floods are dominated by multidecadal variability.”

Alexander notes hurricanes and tropical cyclones show a decreasing trend around the globe, with the frequency of landfalling hurricanes of any strength (Categories 1 through 5) remaining unchanged for at least 50 years. Although the frequency of major North Atlantic hurricanes, which are the most studied, has increased during the past 20 years, the current heightened activity level is merely comparable to the 1950s and 1960s, a period when the Earth was cooling, not warming.

Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes once again confirms Alexander’s hurricane conclusions, citing the IPCC and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who report there has been no increase in the number or severity of hurricanes as the planet has modestly warmed. The United States recently went through its longest period in recorded history without a major hurricane strike, experiencing its fewest total hurricanes in any eight-year period. The IPCC’s 2018 Interim Report observes there is “only low confidence for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences.”

“Likewise, there is no trend in the frequency of tornadoes in the United States since at least as far back as 1954,” writes Alexander about the absence of changes in tornado trends during the recent period of modest warming. “The frequency of strong (EF3 or greater) tornadoes has even diminished over that interval. The average number of strong tornadoes annually from 1986 to 2017 was 40 percent less than from 1954 to 1985.”

“But what about droughts?” alarmists ask. “We know droughts are increasing due to climate change!” Not so, says the data from the IPCC and other research bodies. The IPCC reports droughts are becoming less severe, with the United States benefiting from fewer and less extreme drought events as the climate modestly warms. In 2017 and 2019, NOAA reported the United States has undergone its longest period in recorded history with fewer than 40 percent of the country experiencing “very dry” conditions.

Similarly, the IPCC reports with “high confidence” precipitation has increased over mid-latitude land areas of the Northern Hemisphere (including the United States) during the past 70 years, and IPCC has “low confidence” about any negative trends globally.

Extreme weather events do occur, but they are the result of “natural patterns in the climate system, not global warming,” writes Alexander. He cites in particular the periodic but irregular shifts in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation which governs many extremes such as intense hurricanes in the North Atlantic basin and major floods in eastern North America and western Europe, and El Nino and La Nina cycles in the Pacific Ocean, which often cause catastrophic flooding in the western Americas and severe droughts in Australia. In Europe, recent heat waves have been driven by changes in the jet stream blocking normal weather patterns.

In short, the oft-repeated assertion that weather is getting more extreme is false, with drought, flooding, hurricane, and tornado numbers being well within their normal historic range of severity and frequency. The data show there is no basis for alarm.

--H. Sterling Burnett

SOURCES: Global Warming Policy Foundation; Climate at a Glance: Drought; Climate at a Glance: Floods; Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes

See also ICECAP’s Alarmist Claim Rebuttals here.

UPDATE: See John Constable’s GWPF The Brink of Darkness, UK’s Fragile Power Grid It is the preview of a Green New Deal.

It’s amazing how many people want to use climate change - and the Covid-19 lockdown - as a justification, blueprint or dress rehearsal for reducing global energy use and CO2 emissions, transforming the US and global economic systems, and redistributing the world’s wealth and resources. They’re now claiming the three-month lockdown’s “success” in slashing fossil fuel consumption proves we can do this on a permanent basis, by imposing a global Green New Deal that will be all gain with no pain. My article this week explores these claims, and finds them sorely wanting.

I hope you enjoy it and thank you for posting it, quoting from it, and forwarding it to your friends and colleagues.

Best regards,

Paul

The Green New Deal dress rehearsal

The Covid-19 lockdown as a blueprint for a permanent economic shutdown to ‘save the Earth’

Paul Driessen

More than 1.4 million cases of Wuhan Coronavirus and 106,000 deaths in the United States alone have accompanied stay-home lockdowns, businesses bankruptcies, over 40 million unemployed workers, plummeting tax revenues and unprecedented debt. Ongoing rioting, vandalism, arson and looting are compounding problems for many cities and minority communities.

But where many see disaster, others see opportunity. Some want to use the crises to enact laws and welfare programs they could never get otherwise. More ambitious activists see the lockdown as a blueprint or dress rehearsal for a total energy, economic and lifestyle transformation to “save the planet.” If three months of Covid lockdowns can reduce fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, they argue, permanent fossil fuel bans are possible, essential and should be undertaken immediately.

Five years ago, former UN official Christiana Figueres said the real goal of climate actions was to “intentionally transform the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years” - and replace it with socialist-environmentalist global governance. More recently, she said post-Corona economic stimulus packages should be used to “kick-start” investments “in low-carbon infrastructure projects that will create jobs and put the world on a safer, fairer, more resilient path.” Others want to use climate change as a pretext for dictating how global wealth and resources will be redistributed.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff is on the same page. The Green New Deal “wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” he said in May 2019. It was “a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.” Presidential candidate Joe Biden and other leading Democrats have endorsed the GND.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres believes “the pandemic could create an opportunity to rebuild the global economy along more sustainable lines.” His environment chief thinks COVID-19 presents “a chance to do capitalism differently.” The UN Green Climate Fund says it “offers an opportunity to direct finances towards bolstering climate action
and “re-launch[ing] economies on low-emission, climate-resilient trajectories,” to control climate and weather and prevent massive extinctions.

In short, echoing former Obama science advisor John Holdren, they want the United States and other modern societies to de-develop and de-industrialize, establish low-consumption life styles that ensure “more equitable distribution of wealth,” and tell poor countries how much “ecologically feasible” development they will be permitted to pursue.

Perhaps most important, these “visionary” ruling elites will be in charge. They will define what is clean, green, renewable, sustainable, ecologically feasible, safer, fairer, more resilient. They will demand less travel, trade and commerce - for the masses. They will live quite well, while telling today’s oilfield and factory workers their industries must disappear and they must be content with minimum-wage jobs installing, maintaining and dismantling wind turbines and solar panels made overseas.

Fans and implementers of Covid-19 lockdowns have been oblivious to the economic, societal and human devastation caused by the lockdowns: not just economic losses, depleted savings and ruined dreams, but millions of cases of depression, drug addiction, alcoholism, domestic violence, obesity, stroke, heart attack, thousands of deaths from these causes, and suicide and murder attributable to the lockdowns.

Add to that millions of future or still uncounted deaths and disabilities from missed biopsies, skipped cancer screenings and chemotherapy, missed early treatments for stroke and heart-attack patients, and organ transplants simply not performed - because “non-essential” medicine was closed down, people lost their health insurance, or patients were afraid to go to clinics and emergency rooms.

Many hospitals, clinics and practices lost so much money that they may have to close their doors. The cumulative long-term impact from that on healthcare, life spans, and death tolls among obese, diabetic, elderly and severely ill patients could be enormous. These human costs will take years to manifest themselves and be calculated. Indeed, the ultimate cost of the lockdown could be worse than the virus.

We still do not have reliable data on Covid infections, cases and deaths - and don’t know whether deaths were due to Corona, or merely associated with the virus and primarily due to age or serious underlying health problems. We don"t even know how many vulnerable elderly people died from Covid complications inflicted on them by decisions by New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and other officials to force nursing homes to accept recovering Corona patients and keep Covid-infected staff working in those facilities.

All this is from lockdowns lasting several months. Suggestions that we “transform” our economy with expensive, unreliable, weather dependent energy - and endure energy, employment, healthcare and other deprivations in perpetuity - border on homicidal insanity. They would postpone or eliminate any economic recovery, result in unimaginable misery and death in now-developed countries - and condemn tens of millions of people in still impoverished nations to horrible suffering, disease, starvation and death.

As to saving the planet and ensuring “ecologically feasible” development, GND energy systems would be vastly more devastating to scenic areas, habitats and wildlife - and to human health and welfare - than any likely effects from manmade portions of future climate changes or weather events.

As Michael Moore’s new film, “Planet of the Humans,” dramatically demonstrates, wind, solar, battery and biofuel technologies are the antithesis of clean, green, renewable and sustainable. Even worse, the ecological devastation it documents is happening in a world that is still 81% dependent on oil, natural gas and coal, 4% on nuclear and 7% on hydroelectric. The impacts and species losses would be orders of magnitude greater if we were 100% dependent on pseudo-renewable energy sources.

Adopting UN-AOC energy prescriptions would require literally millions of 800-foot-tall wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of half-ton batteries, thousands of biofuel plantations and clear-cut forests, billions of battery-powered vehicles, and thousands of new and expanded mines to provide tens of billions of tons more metals and minerals. The ecological impacts would reach every corner of every continent. Hundreds of bird, bat, reptile and mammalian species would disappear. Household, hospital, school, business and factory electricity costs would skyrocket. Jobs and industries would vanish.

Those prescriptions would also make the United States enormously dependent on China, not just for medical devices and pharmaceutical components - but for metals, raw materials and component parts needed in wind turbines, solar panels, backup power batteries, and defense, aerospace and high-technology applications. And all that mining and manufacturing, in Asia and other distant lands, would require fossil fuels, at levels far beyond anything seen in history, under minimal to nonexistent pollution, workplace safety and human rights laws, accompanied by prodigious emissions of carbon dioxide.

Fans and implementers of GND transformations are willfully oblivious of these realities. They refuse to discuss them or allow others to discuss them - because to do so would destroy their phony “saving the planet” narrative and quest for total control over our lives, livelihoods, living standards and liberties.

No wonder the UN-AOC-environmentalist crowd went ballistic over Moore’s film. YouTube yanked the movie from its viewing platform, and “mainstream” media, social media, search engines and information sites are now engaging in blatant censorship on climate, energy and environmental issues.

An increasingly activist, liberal media complex also wants to dictate and control what people see, hear, say and think on race relations, medicine and virtually every other political topic. From the NY Times and Washington Post, to Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube and Wikipedia, platforms that should be forums for robust debate instead are used to dictate what is true or false, permissible or banned.

US, EU and UN green new deals are just one component of the battle for our future. Corona lockdowns should serve as a bitter taste of what could come - not as a dress rehearsal or blueprint for it.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.