There is no more important year than 2017 since our inception 10 years ago in 2007 during which Icecap had 78 million page hits on the 7,234 blog entries. We and other courageous bloggers have been swimming upstream against the flood not from rising sea levels but from attacks by ideologues, globalists and leftists and others riding the gravy train of $1.5 trillion of government, radical environmental NGOs, large corporations largess that has corrupted our schools, media and many politicians. Part of the strategy from the start of the movement was to starve out or silence any opposition, claim a certainty and consensus (a sanctioned science) that can not and does not exist. This next 4 years is our best chance to expose the hype and where it exists the fraud. Globalists had thought they won and our country would be ceding control to a larger entity like the UN - Agenda 21. Big money extremists were planning for the day that bureaucrats outside instead of inside our government would control our energy, policies and eventually our lives including what you can drive, where you can live, how much you can make, etc.
Revealing Quotes From the Planners:
“Agenda 21 proposes an array of actions which are intended to be implemented by EVERY person on Earth...it calls for specific changes in the activities of ALL people… Effective execution of Agenda 21 will REQUIRE a profound reorientation of ALL humans, unlike anything the world has ever experienced...”
Agenda 21: The Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet (Earthpress, 1993). It was signed by George H.W. Bush.
We need to marshall our resources to fight this and the bad science that is supporting it. Help us fight this by studying Agenda 21 and reading about how the science has been corrupted or molded to fit their plans to scare us into compliance here, on WUWT and on Tony Heller’s blog, on Francis Menton’s blog and Alan Carlin’s blog and many others.
We have published the first volley with this analysis and plan much more.
Donate if you can to support all our efforts. Please speak up with your own posts, link to our stories and write your own letters to local media. We need to restore our science to what it once was.
Be safe this New Year’s eve and have a great and prosperous 2017.
Over the past three decades, the environmental movement has increasingly hitched its wagon to exactly one star as the overwhelming focus of the cause, namely “climate change.” Sure, issues of bona fide pollution like smog and untreated sewage are still out there a little, but they are largely under control and don’t really stir the emotions much any more. If you want fundraising in the billions rather than the thousands, you need a good end-of-days, sin-and-redemption scare. Human-caused global warming is your answer!
Even as this scare has advanced, a few lonely voices have warned that the radical environmentalists were taking the movement out onto a precarious limb. Isn’t there a problem that there’s no real evidence of impending climate disaster? But to no avail. Government funding to promote the warming scare has been lavish, and in the age of Obama has exploded. Backers of the alarm have controlled all of the relevant government bureaucracies, almost all of the scientific societies, and the access to funding and to publication for anyone who wants to have a career in the field. What could go wrong?
Now, enter President-elect Trump. During the campaign, as with many issues, it was hard to know definitively where Trump stood. Although combatting climate change with forced suppression of fossil fuels could be a multi-trillion dollar issue for the world economy, this issue was rarely mentioned by either candidate, and was only lightly touched on in the debates. Sure, Hillary had accused Trump of calling climate change a “hoax” in a November 2012 tweet. (Actual text: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make American manufacturing non-competitive.") But in an early 2016 interview, Trump walked that back to say that the statement was a joke, albeit with a kernel of truth, because “climate change is a very, very expensive form of tax” and “China does not do anything to help.” Trump had also stated that he intended to exit the recent Paris climate accord, and to end the War on Coal. So, was he proposing business-as-usual with a few tweaks, or would we see a thorough-going reversal of Obama’s extreme efforts to control the climate by fossil fuel restrictions?
With the recently announced appointments, this is starting to come very much into focus. In reverse order of the announcements:
Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, as Secretary of State. As of today, we still have as our chief diplomat the world leader of smugness who somehow thinks that “climate change” caused by use of fossil fuels is the greatest threat to global security. He is shortly to be replaced with the CEO of Exxon. Could there be a bigger poke in the eye to the world climate establishment? I’m trying to envision Tillerson at the next meeting of the UN climate “conference of parties” with thousands of world bureaucrats discussing how to put the fossil fuel companies out of business. Won’t he be laughing his gut out?
Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy. Not only was he the longest-serving governor of the biggest fossil fuel energy-producing state, but in his own 2012 presidential campaign he advocated for the elimination of the Department of Energy. This is the department that passes out tens of billions of dollars in crony-capitalist handouts for wind and solar energy (Solyndra!), let alone more tens of billions for funding some seventeen (seventeen!) research laboratories mostly dedicated to the hopeless task of figuring out how to make intermittent sources of energy competitive for any real purpose.
And then there’s Scott Pruitt for EPA. As Attorney General of Oklahoma, another of the big fossil fuel energy-producing states, he has been a leader in litigating against the Obama EPA to stop its overreaches, including the so-called Clean Power Plan that seeks to end the use of coal for electricity and to raise everyone’s cost of energy.
You might say that all of these are very controversial appointments, and will face opposition in the Senate. But then, Harry Reid did away with the filibuster for cabinet appointments. Oops! Barring a minimum of three Republican defections, these could all sail through. And even if one of these appointments founders, doesn’t the combination of them strongly signal where Trump would go with his next try?
So what can we predict about where the climate scare is going? Among members of the environmental movement, when their heads stop exploding, there are plenty of predictions that this will be terrible for the United States: international ostracism, loss (to China!) of “leadership” in international climate matters, and, domestically, endless litigation battles stalling attempts to rescind or roll back regulations. I see it differently. I predict a high likelihood of substantial collapse of the global warming movement, both domestically and internationally, over the course of the next couple of years.
Start with the EPA. To the extent that the global warming movement has anything to do with “science,” EPA is supposedly where that science is vetted and approved on behalf of the public before being turned into policy. In fact, under Obama, EPA’s principal role on the “science” has been to prevent and stifle any debate or challenge to global warming orthodoxy. For example, when a major new Research Report came out back in September claiming to completely invalidate all of the bases on which EPA claims that CO2 is a danger to human health and welfare, and thus to undermine EPA’s authority to regulate the gas under the Clean Air Act, EPA simply failed to respond. In the same vein, essentially all prominent global warming alarmists refuse to debate anyone who challenges any aspect of their orthodoxy. Well, that has worked as long as they and their allies have controlled all of the agencies and all of the money. Now, it will suddenly be put up or shut up. And in case you might think that the science on this issue is “settled,” so no problem, you might enjoy this recent round-up at Climate Depot from some of the actual top scientists. A couple of excerpts:
Renowned Princeton Physicist Freeman Dyson: ‘I’m 100% Democrat and I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on climate issue, and the Republicans took the right side.’....
Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Dr. Ivar Giaever: ‘Global warming is a non-problem’ - ‘I say this to Obama: Excuse me, Mr. President, but you’re wrong. Dead wrong.’
Now the backers of the global warming alarm will not only be called upon to debate, but will face the likelihood of being called before a highly skeptical if not hostile EPA to answer all of the hard questions that they have avoided answering for the last eight years. Questions like: Why are recorded temperatures, particularly from satellites and weather balloons, so much lower than the alarmist models had predicted? How do you explain an almost-20-year “pause” in increasing temperatures even as CO2 emissions have accelerated? What are the details of the adjustments to the surface temperature record that have somehow reduced recorded temperatures from the 1930s and 40s, and thereby enabled continued claims of “warmest year ever” when raw temperature data show warmer years 70 and 80 years ago? Suddenly, the usual hand-waving ("the science is settled") is not going to be good enough any more. What now?
And how will the United States fare on the international stage when it stops promising to cripple its economy with meaningless fossil fuel restrictions? As noted above, people like Isabel Hilton predict a combination of ostracism and “loss of leadership” of the issue, most likely to China. Here’s my prediction: As soon as the United States stops parroting the global warming line, the other countries will quickly start backing away from it as well. This is “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” with the U.S. in the role of the little kid who is the only one willing to say the obvious truth in the face of mass hysteria. Countries like Britain and Australia have already more or less quietly started the retreat from insanity. In Germany the obsession with wind and solar (solar—in the cloudiest country in the world!) has already gotten average consumer electric rates up to close to triple the cost in U.S. states that embrace fossil fuels. How long will they be willing to continue that self-destruction after the U.S. says it is not going along? And I love the business about ceding “leadership” to China. China’s so-called “commitment” in the recent Paris accord is not to reduce carbon emissions at all, but rather only to build as many coal plants as they want for the next fourteen years and then cease increasing emissions after 2030! At which point, of course, they reserve their right to change their mind. Who exactly is going to embrace that “leadership” and increase their consumers’ cost of electricity by triple or so starting right now? I mean, the Europeans are stupid, but are they that stupid?
And finally, there is the question of funding. Under Obama, attaching the words “global warming” or “climate change” to any proposal has been the sure-fire way to get the proposal whatever federal funding it might want. The Department of Energy has been the big factor here. Of its annual budget of about $28 billion, roughly half goes to running the facilities that provide nuclear material for the Defense Department, and the other half, broadly speaking, goes to the global warming cause: crony capitalist handouts for wind and solar energy providers, and billions per year for research at some seventeen (seventeen!) different energy research laboratories. During the eight Obama years, the energy sector of the U.S. economy has been substantially transformed by a technological revolution that has dramatically lowered the cost of energy and hugely benefited the American consumer. I’m referring, of course, to the fracking revolution. How much of the tens of billions of U.S. energy subsidies and research funding in that time went toward this revolution that actually produced cheaper energy that works? Answer: Not one single dollar! All of the money was completely wasted on things that are uneconomic and will disappear as soon as the government cuts off the funding spigot. All of this funding can and should be zeroed out in the next budget. Believe me, nobody will notice other than the parasites who have been wasting the money.
If the multi-tens-of-billions per year funding gusher for global warming alarmism quickly dries up, the large majority of the people living on these handouts will have no choice but to go and find something productive to do. Sure, some extreme zealots will find some way to soldier on. But it is not crazy at all to predict a very substantial collapse of the global warming scare over the course of the next couple of years.
The environmental movement has climbed itself way out onto the global warming limb. Now the Trump administration is about to start sawing off the limb behind them.
The Coastal Flood Risk report nonsense for NH refuted by real data in report that gets coverage in the Union Leader and NHPR. Michael shows how the university environmentalists continue to deliver self serving failing model based forecasts that will cost taxpayers billions. We should cut off funding for these programs and studies. As is usually the case the rebuttal was done pro bono.
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Manipulating Climate Data Right Before Our eyes
THE RECENT ELECTIONS have caused the climate alarmists’ heads to spin. Without a liberal President to force green policies on America, there is little chance their agenda will move forward. Regardless of policy preferences, what elected officials need to focus on is what is actually going on in our climate and what steps need to be taken to address them. It’s the data that count. The real data.
On this point, let’s all agree that the world is warming. It has been since the 1800s when the world started to emerge from the Little Ice Age. We have had periods of warming, periods of cooling and periods when global temperatures didn’t do much of anything.
The bigger question is “Are we seeing recent temperature trends that are out of the ordinary of what we have seen in the past?” Alarmists tend to scream that temperatures are rising out of control, in an unprecedented manner, and that we are reaching a tipping point beyond which we are doomed.
That is all a lie, but I am sure they believe it.
Let’s look at the data, and just as importantly what alarmists have been doing to the data.
If you look at raw global surface temperatures, you see the rate of increase in the early part of the 20th century is the same as what occurred from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. No one has argued the first rate of change was anything but natural. So why must the more recent warming be manmade? In addition, we saw a flat/downward trend in global temperatures from the 1940s to the 1970s and we saw, at least up until recently, another almost 20 year flat temperature period to start this century.
So if what we are seeing are trends that are no different than in the past, why should we think it is anything but natural? We shouldn’t. In fact, any scientist should assume that nature is driving global temperatures and prove otherwise before arguing that mankind is driving our climate. One of the dirty little secrets of the alarmists is that they haven’t been able to prove that. They like to point to the correlation of rising carbon dioxide levels and temperatures as “proof”, but even a third grader knows that isn’t proof. Their climate models certainly make it look warmer, but the model forecasts are terrible, only proving that the models don’t work.
So what is a climate alarmist to do? Well if you don’t want to fix the models, you fix the temperatures. And that is exactly what has been going on.
Anyone who has closely followed the climate debate is familiar with the “adjustments” to the raw temperature data. What most Average Joes don’t realize is that the adjustments are almost entirely done to accomplish one thing - cool the past and warm the present.
How did they do this? Scientists have “smoothed” regional temperatures to get better agreement between urban and rural data. But instead of adjusting city temperatures lower (because of urban heat effects) they raised rural temperatures. More recently, in order to get rid of the “pause” in temperatures, they adjusted the sea surface temperatures higher when they decided that mid-20th century temperatures taken in ship engine intakes are more accurate than the modern ocean buoys. That’s right, the technology of the 1950s with the ship engine heat influencing the data was determined to be better than the network of modern electronics uninfluenced by external heat sources. And these are only a few examples of what has been going on.
On a more local level, between 2011 and 2013, the NOAA data set lowered annual Maine temperatures between three to five degrees in the early 1900s....and made almost no changes to recent temperatures. That “adjustment” is more than three times the actual warming we have seen.
When you look at how temperatures have been manipulated you start to wonder if we have any idea what the global temperature is. Over the past decade or so, the keepers of the data have cooled temperatures in the pre-1910 period the equivalent of -0.52 degrees per century. They warmed temperatures from 1980 to the early part of this century by the equivalent of +0.11 degrees per century.
Those two changes represent half the warming since 1900! And this was before the “pause buster” sea surface temperature manipulation took place.
Keep this in mind when the alarmists start demanding more action. When every iteration of the global temperature data set incrementally warms the present and cools the past, it’s not science. It’s manipulation. Mother Nature is still driving the climate, no matter how much they fudge the data for their agenda.
Michael Sununu is a small businessman and selectman in Newfields.
As is frequently the case, the climate models can’t forecast even a month ahead. Similar models are run 100 years into the future. We are supposed to believe they are accurate. I could name a dozen reasons why they w 814temp ill not be. They tell us they will go to faster computers and higher resolution but that simply produces higher resolution noise.
The models show brutal cold the next 15 days - these are anomalies of near surface temperatures in degree celsius (they show anomalies of -40F or more in the core of the cold!)
Here is what we call a Meteogram for Chicago O’Hare from the US GFS model. It shows three sub zero day with lows near -10F. The usually more accurate European model takes them to -15F!
The many days of extreme cold crossing the warm Great Lakes will bring historic lake effect snows. Expect broadcasters and newspapers spouting the liberal lines and the AMS/GMU doctrine standing on the snowbanks and blaming it on global warming.
Here is a link to slides showing how the statistical models we use that includes factors the dynamical models ignore beat the dynamical models and official forecasts in recent years.
If you are in a weather sensitive industry, you should take a look at Weatherbell.com and follow our model, our (Joe Bastardi and I) daily blog posts and videos through this incredible stretch and winter.
As the memorable Ronald Reagan political ad announced, “It’s morning again in America.”
Hopefully, following the election of Donald Trump, a bright new day will dawn for environmental protection in the United States.
One federal agency that needs immediate attention after the swearing in of President Trump is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Founded in 1970 under Republican President Richard Nixon, this powerful agency had an admirable goal to clean up the mess overtaking the nation’s air, water and land at that time. Since 1970, tremendous progress has been made on all major environmental fronts. In particular our air quality has improved 70 percent from reduction of major contaminants.
Today’s EPA is a far cry from the agency of the ‘70s. As a candidate, Mr. Trump asserted the day before the historic election government should serve the nation, not the special interests. The EPA appears to be serving the environmentalists’ special interest. And arrogant activism apparently keeps rolling along at the highest levels of the EPA.
The head of the EPA, Gina McCarthy, seems to be on shaky ground when it comes to atmospheric science. Like many others, she must have faith in climatologists. Lucky for her, the largely academic and government-supported climate scientists bolster presuppositions about the climate. These presumptions are based on an ideology, which is apparently founded on an environmentalist universalism. Such religion is rooted in years of unrelenting indoctrination in the catechism that humans are destroying the planet by living comfortably off fossil fuels.
From what appears to be a superficial, faith-based knowledge of the climate change issue, the EPA’s Ms. McCarthy has recently said, “I’m not talking to climate deniers - that’s it.” Spoken like a true believer.
It is offensive to many of us secular, knowledgeable, practicing atmospheric scientists that the top EPA official spouts denigration and demands obeisance to ecological religion. With a Trump administration, perhaps we deplorable unbelievers will have some voice to provide perspective on the complex issue of climate change, its magnitude and reasonable mitigation.
Some climate facts are well established, such as the observation that man’s activity on the local and medium scales has affected climate. Cities that replaced vegetative areas with developments show measurable increases in temperature and other long-term changes to atmospheric dynamics when compared with the surrounding countryside. The latest issue of Physics Today focuses on some climate changes related to land-surface and land-management changes.
Weather patterns can change from humans’ untoward inputs to not only landscape changes but, to a minor extent, increased loading of particulate matter and volatile organic compounds into the atmosphere. However, since draconian measures to reduce “greenhouse gases” will lead to, at best, a small fraction of a degree decrease in global temperatures, it makes more sense to focus time and talent at the EPA on further reducing toxic pollutants that pose a real threat to public health. Healthful communities will result from the feds working diligently with job-growing industries to reasonably limit harmful emissions. Command-and-control strategies from the EPA do not enrich populations if the strategies drive out business and padlock factories.
People do have some substantial, limited impact on climate. But, how serious and to what extent are questions far from being answered in any “settled science” way.
Arrogant government elites, politicians and academic scientists must shut down quality challenges to their faith in themselves, and so the EPA must be more broad-minded, opening a big tent to legitimate, informed questions regarding the entrenched idea that the climate is controlled by paltry people pollution.
Anthony J. Sadar is a certified consulting meteorologist and author of “In Global Warming We Trust: Too Big to Fail” (Stairway Press, 2016). Susan T. Cammarata is a practicing environmental and family lawyer.
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Energy Independence
The Trump Administration will make America energy independent. Our energy policies will make full use of our domestic energy sources, including traditional and renewable energy sources. America will unleash an energy revolution that will transform us into a net energy exporter, leading to the creation of millions of new jobs, while protecting the country’s most valuable resources - our clean air, clean water, and natural habitats. America is sitting on a treasure trove of untapped energy. In fact, America possesses more combined coal, oil, and natural gas resources than any other nation on Earth. These resources represent trillions of dollars in economic output and countless American jobs, particularly for the poorest Americans.
Rather than continuing the current path to undermine and block America’s fossil fuel producers, the Trump Administration will encourage the production of these resources by opening onshore and offshore leasing on federal lands and waters. We will streamline the permitting process for all energy projects, including the billions of dollars in projects held up by President Obama, and rescind the job-destroying executive actions under his Administration. We will end the war on coal, and rescind the coal mining lease moratorium, the excessive Interior Department stream rule, and conduct a top-down review of all anti-coal regulations issued by the Obama Administration. We will eliminate the highly invasive “Waters of the US” rule, and scrap the $5 trillion dollar Obama-Clinton Climate Action Plan and the Clean Power Plan and prevent these unilateral plans from increasing monthly electric bills by double-digits without any measurable effect on Earth’s climate. Energy is the lifeblood of modern society. It is the industry that fuels all other industries. We will lift the restrictions on American energy, and allow this wealth to pour into our communities. It’s all upside: more jobs, more revenues, more wealth, higher wages, and lower energy prices.
The Trump Administration is firmly committed to conserving our wonderful natural resources and beautiful natural habitats. America’s environmental agenda will be guided by true specialists in conservation, not those with radical political agendas. We will refocus the EPA on its core mission of ensuring clean air, and clean, safe drinking water for all Americans. It will be a future of conservation, of prosperity, and of great success.
If you have never read President Dwight Eisenhower’s January 1961 farewell address, you should. It’s not long. He clearly foresaw the oncoming unchecked expansion of the federal government, and the associated dangers. The famous passage deals with the risks to science from the new-found gusher of federal grant spending:
A steadily increasing share [of scientific research] is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government. Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, 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.
Fast-forward 55 years, and we are deep in the dystopia that Eisenhower foresaw. In science today, government funding is everything, and control of it empowers orthodoxy enforcement and the banishment of skeptics and dissenters—the antithesis of science. Many examples can be cited of science gone completely off the rails through the perverse incentives of government monopoly funding (see, for example, my posts on the government-backed low fat diet, here and here). But really, nothing can top the hysteria—underwritten by tens of billions of dollars of annual federal spending—of the climate change machine.
Readers here are well aware that the scientific house of cards of anthropogenic global warming becomes more unstable with each passing day. As adverse information continues to pour forth—from the Climategate emails, to the near-twenty-year unexplained “pause” in world temperature rise, to repeated revelations of alterations of historical temperature records by government functionaries trying to support the failing warming narrative—nothing slows down the federally-funded juggernaut of political climate activism and fossil fuel restriction. The most recent body blow to the catastrophic warming narrative was the Research Report from Wallace, et al., reported here last month, showing no statistically significant warming in any major world temperature time series after controlling only for concededly-non-anthropogenic El Nino and La Nina effects.
So where do our major scientific societies stand on this issue? If you don’t already know, you will be demoralized to learn that, with one notable exception, the principal societies are on record as supporting the official government narrative of dangerous human-caused global warming. In June 2016, some 31 scientific societies sent a joint letter to Congress, supposedly to “remind [it] of the scientific consensus view of climate change,” and to urge further government action to restrict fossil fuel use. You can follow the link to get the complete list of subscribing societies, and if you do, see if you can spot the big one that is missing. It’s the American Physical Society, the association of physicists! But, you ask, isn’t the so-called “science” of “climate change” a matter specifically of atmospheric physics? Turns out that the APS commissioned a review of the science of climate change by a panel of its own members in 2014, and the panel’s report failed to support the consensus “science.” A battle continues to rage on the issue at the APS (you can read more about it here) but meanwhile, the key fact is that group of people who actually know the subject matter has so many dissenters and skeptics that it hasn’t joined the bandwagon.
So who has joined the bandwagon? Well, as an example, there’s the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. Do they know anything about climate physics? Probably not much. But they do know that if you want to study snakes and you want to go where the government money is, you will put something about global warming in your grant proposal. How about seeking a grant for “the effect of global warming on the range of the lesser eastern tree boa”? That should work!
Anyway, the issuance of the Wallace, et al., Research Report prompted me to join up with Alan Carlin, an MIT-trained economist and 40-year senior analyst and manager at EPA, to send letters last Friday to each of the 31 unscientific scientific societies demanding to know the alleged scientific basis for their position on climate change in light of the recent findings. The full text of our letter can be found here. A few key excerpts:
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. . . . However, as noted above, the authors of the [Wallace, et al.] 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. . . .
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.
Joseph D’Aleo (one of the co-authors of the Wallace, et al., Report) has posted the full text of our letter, along with commentary, on his excellent ICECAP website. Carlin’s treatment of the subject can be found at his CarlinEconomics website here. D’Aleo minces no words in his description of the corruption of the unscientific scientific societies:
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.
