Is this the new climate consensus? More than half of Americans say global warming is not a threat to their way of life, according to a CNN poll. Furthermore, nearly half of Americans say global warming is caused by natural forces or isn’t a proven fact.

CNN’s poll reveals that a “majority of those polled, at 57 percent, say global warming will not pose a serious threat to their way of life,” and that only 43 percent “expect global warming to threaten them.”

“Meanwhile, only 50 percent of Americans believe global warming is caused by man-made emissions, while 23 percent say it’s caused by natural changes and 26 percent say it isn’t a proven fact,” CNN notes.

CNN’s poll comes as Democratic lawmakers and environmentalists are trying to stop Congress from passing a bill that would approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline, bringing oil sands from Canada to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast. Opponents of the pipeline argue it will only make global warming worse.

“Unless we get our act together, the planet that we’re going to be leaving to our kids and grandchildren will be significantly less habitable than the planet we have right now,” Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders told MSNBC on Wednesday.

But it’s an argument that doesn’t seem to be resonating with the American people, as 57 percent of them don’t see global warming as a threat to their lives.

Democrats also have another problem: Fifty-seven percent of Americans also support building the Keystone XL pipeline while only 28 percent oppose it.

Some Democrats have recognized this and have changed their arguments from climate-focused ones to ones about the economics of the pipeline. Pipeline opponents have argued that low oil prices no longer make the project necessary, and that the oil sands will be exported and not benefit U.S. industry.

New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney said the pipeline would “help Canadian companies export their oil and it happens to be the filthiest energy form.”

“The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would transport Canadian tar sands oil - the dirtiest fuel on the planet - through America’s heartland to be refined and then shipped abroad,” said Danielle Droitsch, the Canadian director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Most energy experts disagree with the idea that oil sands will be shipped thousands of miles to the U.S. Gulf Coast - the area with the country’s largest concentrations of refining capacity - just to be sent overseas.

“It seems a stretch to believe that a crude oil marketing group would use the Keystone XL pipeline to take about 800,000 bpd of heavy crude to the world’s largest concentration of heavy coking capacity, and then bypass all that so it could put it on a ship and take it somewhere else for an additional $4 to $5,” Michael Wojciechowski, an energy analyst at Wood Mackenzie, told Reuters.

Most of the claims are based on UHI from bad sited stations. It was tht 9th warmest years according to the satellites and momostly because of a weak El Nino while the far eastern north Paciic was in a warm intradecadal cycle.

Oh BTW, the real motivation for alarmists is not a wory about people but another nefarious agenda.

Update:

The month to date:

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The typhoon Mekkhala is nearing the Philippines and about to recurve north. An old empirical rule is that a recurving typhoon leads to major trough amplification in the central and eastern United States about 10 days later.

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The models suggest January ends bitter cold with anomalies near 40F below normal (pink). This January will rivakl 2014 for US cold.

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It was a November to Remember for winter lovers. It was the 16th coldest in the record back to 1895 with 18 states in the east and south in the top ten coldest. California was the exception with continued warmth. It was more like December than November. Natural gas prices soared 50%.

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The lake effect machine was busy with oveer 6 feet of snow in places.

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There was a rare Thanksgiving snowstorm with 50% snow cover extent at the peak, higher than Christmas on an average year. For North America, the snow extent was the highest in the record.

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Then in December the cold gradually faded as westerly winds around a strengthening polar vortex in high latitudes ushered milder Pacific air into Canada and the United States. This helped bring rains and mountain snow to drought striken California but not much snow east and temperatures more like we might expect in November. With the mild temperature natural gas prices gave back all the gains from November.

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Here is the vortex in the high atmosphere (stratosphere) which usually means maritime air dominates instead of polar.

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In the most similar years to this one, this vortex broke down in late December and January and cold evolved. And indeed models suggest that happnes the next 10 days with an increased invasion of polar even Siberian air.

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The lower atmosphere adjusts accordingly with the vortex coming south.

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Look at the departures from normal of -36F in the east in this model. Please note the models are having great difficulty adjusting to the changes and are highly variable model to model and run to run.

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We have a high confidence this change will occur but lower confidence on the details and timing. Once the arctic patterns readjust to the changes and the pattern stabilize, we would expect cold and storminess to prevail for an extended period. We cover this daily on Weatherbell.com which also has the highest resolution modeliing available even at the hobbyiest level.

Letter from Allan MacRae

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David Socrates asks on December 16, 2014 at 7:57 am
“Will all the folks saying that ∆CO2 follows ∆T ([temperature]. explain why in the past 15/16/17 years, ∆T = zero and ∆CO2 is 30-34 ppm?”

Already answered in my posts on this page David:

“I suggest that at a practical level, atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.

In the modern data record, the rate of change dCO2/dt varies ~contemporaneously with temperature and CO2 lags temperature by about 9 months.

For verification, please see my 2008 paper.

CO2 also lags temperature by about 800 years in the ice core record on a longer time scale.

Therefore, CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales. CO2 does not drive temperature; temperature (among other factors) drives CO2.

It appears that CO2 lags T at all measured time scales. This still allows for other significant drivers of atmospheric CO2, such as fossil fuel combustion, land-use changes such as deforestation, ocean outgassing, etc.”

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The details of this issue have been ably argued on wattsup and other sites between Ferdinand Engelbeen and Richard S Courtney - one can search under “mass balance argument”.

The issue is one of magnitudes - how can we fully explain the current rise in atmospheric CO2 - your “∆CO2 is 30-34 ppm” - when the ∆CO2 magnitudes observed in both the modern data record and the ice core record in response to ∆T are allegedly too small to solely account for this 30-34 ppm CO2 - some parties allege that other drivers of this ∆CO2 such as fossil fuel combustion must also exist (and they may be right or wrong).

Many pages have been written and it is an interesting argument, which is of great scientific importance. However, for policy discussions I suggest all we really need to know is that global temperature T is clearly insensitive to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and the IPCC alarmists’ fear of catastrophic humanmade global warming is without scientific merit, and is highly counterproductive, wasteful and foolish.

As we clearly stated in our 2002 APEGA paper:

“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming - the alleged warming crisis does not exist.” Baliunas, Patterson and MacRae

Furthermore, increased atmospheric CO2 from whatever cause is clearly beneficial to humanity and the environment. Earth’s atmosphere is clearly CO2 deficient and continues to decline over geological time. In fact, atmospheric CO2 at this time is too low, dangerously low for the longer term survival of carbon-based life on Earth.

More Ice Ages, which are inevitable unless geo-engineering can prevent them, will cause atmospheric CO2 concentrations on Earth to decline to the point where photosynthesis slows and ultimately ceases. This would devastate the descendants of most current life on Earth, which is carbon-based and to which, I suggest, we have a significant moral obligation.

Atmospheric and dissolved oceanic CO2 is the feedstock for all carbon-based life on Earth. More CO2 is better. Within reasonable limits, a lot more CO2 is a lot better.

As a devoted fan of carbon-based life on Earth, I feel it is my duty to advocate on our behalf. To be clear, I am not prejudiced against non-carbon-based life forms, but I really do not know any of them well enough to form an opinion. They could be very nice.

Best, Allan

Icecap comment. This season beat out 2004 and 2009 for US crop yields with a global glut of produce. Ideal weather conditions combined with higher CO2 has improved productivity. CO2 is plant food. Even in drought ridden California, CO2 helped to limit losses by enhancing growth and reducing water needs. The losses would have been much greater with lower CO2 levels.

Why does the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory war against hydraulic fracturing look like the Natural Resources Defense Council’s 2007 agenda for eliminating domestic oil and natural gas development?

Because it is.

President Obama is coordinating with far-left environmental activists to wage an all-out assault on American oil and natural gas.

The NRDC’s unjustifiable access to such anti-fracking regulatory power and the diversion of $8.4 million in taxpayer dollars to its coffers is highlighted in an October report from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee minority staff titled, “Setting the Record Straight: Hydraulic Fracturing and America’s Energy Revolution.”

The 111-page committee report opens by citing the enormously positive impacts of America’s oil and natural gas renaissance, which has:

Created and sustained millions of jobs and revitalized our manufacturing sector; Provided greater energy security and geopolitical strength while reducing our trade deficit; Lowered domestic energy prices both in our homes and at the gasoline pump.

But the emphasis is on those who would obliterate that renaissance. The message to the public is a warning: President Obama is coordinating with far-left environmental activists such as the aggressive NRDC and the Sierra Club, along with their millionaire board members, their Hollywood celebrity boosters and their “philanthropic” funders, such as the rabidly anti-fracking Park Foundation, to wage an all-out assault to shut down domestic production of American oil and natural gas.

The report notes that “the price of energy is no object to them; they can afford to pay their energy bills at virtually any price.” They can dump hundreds of millions of dollars into a coordinated campaign against affordable energy, decrease the standard of living for middle-class America and devastate the poor without a qualm.

Specifically, NRDC and other groups are “initiating legal challenges to force regulatory action with sue-and-settle arrangements” the Sierra Club has received more than $19 million and the NRDC $252,004 in EPA-friendly settlements.

An anti-fracking agenda

The most insidious attack is “blurring the scientific literature with spurious studies.”

Since 1997, EPA regulation of oil and natural gas extraction grew by more than 145%.

The foremost example is a 2011 Cornell University report by two biologists and an engineer who “falsely concluded that the life-cycle emissions from natural gas development emit more greenhouse gases than coal,” which was touted by The New York Times as “settled science” useful to silence defenders of fracking. But it was, in fact, science made for hire.

Lead author Robert W. Howarth “was approached by the Park Foundation in 2010 and asked to write an academic article that would make a case that shale gas was a dangerous, polluting fuel. That same year, Park Foundation gave Cornell University $135,000 for Howarth’s study,” the report said.

Howarth’s “outdated and manipulated data” were so wrong that his study was refuted by his own Cornell colleagues, state regulators, some environmental groups and even Obama’s White House.

The Park Foundation’s IRS Form 990PF reports from recent years reveal anti-fracking grants totaling more than $3 million to media outlets, including the American Prospect, Earth Talk, Grist, Mother Jones, the Nation and Yes! Magazine, along with activist groups including Earthworks, Food and Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Media Matters for America and a network of about 50 others.

“This strategically organized alliance,” says the report, “has gone to great lengths to misconstrue facts, falsify science, and manufacture risks in order to vilify hydraulic fracturing” while ignoring the numerous failed “green” stimulus projects, including Solyndra.

Government regulation

The committee report was particularly concerned about Obama’s rhetoric that masks his intent, citing remarks that he gave to Northwestern University in October. According to the report, Obama bragged that “our 100-year supply of natural gas is a big factor in drawing jobs back to our shores. Many are in manufacturing, which produce the quintessential middle-class job.”

But at the same time, the report said, “over one dozen federal agencies [are] attempting to justify the federal usurpation of states’ rights to regulate hydraulic fracturing.”

Since 1997, EPA regulation of oil and natural gas extraction grew by more than 145 percent, and 13 federal agencies are trying to regulate fracking out of existence.

The overall picture of the president’s allies is one of heirs, investors and entrepreneurs who became vastly rich in the capitalist system and thus envision themselves as the best directors of everybody else’s life. They became a new ruling class, crony capitalists out to mold the public destiny by destroying all competing visions, using power purchased from politicians, activists and media shills.

The committee report connects some crony capitalist dots: John Bryson was a co-founder of NRDC in 1970 and later became the chairman and CEO of Edison International, “which obtained exclusive power purchase agreements for four solar projects that received [Department of Energy loans].”

In May 2011, Bryson was appointed to be Obama’s Secretary of Commerce and resigned in 2012 for health reasons. NRDC has numerous doorways to the corridors of power.

Conservatives puzzle over the socialist direction of Big Green’s crony capitalists. Anti-fracking activist Bill McKibben’s 350.org bluntly positioned itself as socialist when director Naomi Klein published her 2014 book, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate,” which sets the anti-fracking, anti-fossil fuel task as, “shredding free market capitalism.” Does her gang mean to shred America’s private enterprise by nationalization?

Crony capitalism

Why bother? If your crony capitalist money can buy the government regulations you want and reroute the federal treasury into your anti-fossil fuel agenda, you get to keep your taxpayer-fed crony capitalism and anybody who survives gets the socialist shreds.

We all owe a debt of thanks to Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, for having the courage and diligence to spearhead such investigations as this fracking report documents.

Looking beyond the waning days of the lame-duck session, he told The Daily Signal, “With a Republican majority in the Senate, committee reports which are based on honest research will have a more significant presence in terms of creating awareness and setting policy.

“These reports are crucial to understanding how aggressive the EPA and Obama administration are in broadening the scope of their authority to issue regulations that affect small businesses and individual families across the country. Plus, they could lead to oversight hearings and perhaps legislative reforms.”

Ron Arnold is a free-enterprise activist, author and commentator. He pioneered investigative methods to expose money and power links of the American left in nine books and hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles. He is a veteran consultant for non-profit organizations and businesses faced with crisis situations and governmental abuses.

Note Icecap has reached two milestones - 8700 posts and 60,500,000 page hits. Thank you!

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The California drought made the news in Live Science this week:

The drought now plaguing California is the worst to parch the central and southern parts of the state in the last 1,200 years, a new study finds. The 2012 to 2014 drought’s lack of rain isn’t remarkable on its own, according to tree-ring records reported in the study. There have been three-year periods when less rain and snow fell. But the current drought comes at a time of extreme heat. Record-high temperatures exacerbated the drought, creating the driest soil conditions since the 9th century, according to the study, published Dec. 3 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Based on precipitation alone, the tree-ring records confirmed the researchers’ gut instincts: There were past droughts that saw less rainfall. However, in terms of PDSI soil moisture, both 2014 alone and the cumulative three-year drought are the worst in 1,200 years, the study found.

California’s climate history is marked by much longer droughts, including megadroughts lasting 100 years, and several decades-long droughts. There were also 66 short-term dry periods that lasted between three and nine years during the 1,200 year study period, which makes the current drought just one of many minor dry spells, if only the lack of rain is considered.

There can be no doubting the drought has been statewide and serious.

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But as noted the last year was not as bad as 1923/24 or the two years 1975/76 -1976/77.

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Palmer Hyrological Drought Index 36 months ending October.

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In the Sierra, water year (October to September) precipitation in 2013/14 ranked behind 1923/24, 1976/77, 1938/39, 1930/31, 1975/76, 1986/87 and 1928/29 and in a virtual tie with 1993/94.

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You can see last year ranked well above 1923/24 and 1976/77. This year is running near normal.

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The 60 month temperature fell just behind the 2002-2004 peak. Recall the west coast had a cool summer and year a few years back when the water off the cost was very cold but now reflects the unusual warmth. Note the California trend reflects the urbanization no longer corrected for after USHCN v1 transitioned to USHCN v2 in 2008.

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The last 10 days has seen very wet weather in most of California but focused most the northern third.

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The 7 day forecast has more of the same again focused SFO north.

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It has been warm to date this month in the southwest.

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The constructed analog has it biased warm this winter in California. Ocean temperature anomalies support that.

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NOAA also reported yesterday:

Natural conditions, not human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases, are the driving force behind California’s three-year dry spell, scientists on a federal task force concluded Monday. But the report came under fire from some experts who said it downplayed other factors that have humanity’s fingerprints on them.

The evidence suggests a naturally induced “warm patch” of water in the western Pacific helped to create a high-pressure ridge that blocked precipitation from entering California, the experts said at a news conference to release the report.

“We have been able to identify this as a mode of ocean forcing of atmospheric circulation that causes West Coast drought,” said Richard Seager, a climate model specialist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The study notes that this ridge - which has resulted in decreased rain and snowfall since 2011 - is almost opposite to what computer models predict would result from human-caused climate change.

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