ICECAP UPDATE:

Everyone accepts the fact that El Ninos lead to warming and La Ninas cooling globally. Unlike what many believe El Ninos and La Ninas don’t alternate is any predictable way but cluster with the stages of the PDO. So....

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From 1947 to 1976, 14 years had La Ninas, just 6 had El Ninos (global temperatures cooled). After the Great Pacific Climate Shift in 1976 up to 1998, 10 El Ninas occurred with just 3 La Ninas (global temperatures warmed). Since 1998, the Pacific Ocean temperature patterns have been more evenly distributed and 7 El Ninos and 7 La Ninas occurred (and temperatures flatlined). In the graph above MEI is NOAA’s Multivariate ENSO Index.

See how the ocean temperature associated with El Ninos and La Ninas and volcanoes alters the annual percent change in CO2. Warmer water emits more CO2, colder absorbs. Volcanoes produce cooling and cut back on insolation thus photosynthesis.  Temperatures drive CO2 not the other way around.

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Roger Pielke Jr. shows this Munich re Global Weather-Related Disaster Losses:

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Students Learn Climate Change Advocacy, Not Climate Science
By David Legates

For almost thirty years, I have taught climate science at three different universities. What I have observed is that students are increasingly being fed climate change advocacy as a surrogate for becoming climate science literate. This makes them easy targets for the climate alarmism that pervades America today.

Earth’s climate probably is the most complicated non-living system one can study because it naturally is an integration of chemistry, physics, biology, geology, hydrology, oceanography, and cryology and also includes human behavior by responding to and affecting human activities. Current concerns over climate change have further pushed climate science to the forefront of scientific inquiry.

What should we be teaching college students about it?

At the very least, a student should be able to identify and describe the basic processes that cause the climate of the Earth to vary from Pole to Equator, from the coast to the center of the continent, and from the Dead Sea Depression to the top of Mount Everest. A still more literate student would understand how the oceans, the biosphere, the cryosphere, the atmosphere, and the hydrosphere all integrate to produce our very complicated climate…

Making matters worse, consider Senate Bill 3074, which was introduced into the U.S. Senate on June 16 of this year. It authorizes the establishment of a national climate change education program. Once again, the emphasis lies on teaching advocacy rather than teaching science and increasing scientific knowledge and comprehension.

The director of the National Center for Science Education commented that the bill was designed to “[equip] students with the knowledge and knowhow required for them to flourish in a warming world.” Unfortunately, it will do little to educate them regarding climate science.

I fear that our education of climate science has been co-opted to satisfy the climate change fearmongering agenda that pervades our society today. Instead of teaching the science behind the Earth’s climate, advocates have taken the initiative to convert it to a social agenda of environmental activism.

Climatology, unfortunately, has been transformed into a social science. While there is nothing wrong with the social sciences, the flaws underpinning climate science advocacy are masked by the ‘concern for the environment’ when climate is no longer treated as a physical science.

Climate science must return to being a real science and not simply a vehicle to promote advocacy talking points. When that happens, students will find that scientific facts are the real “inconvenient truth.”

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Russian President says Climate Change is Fraud
October 2015

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

h/t DailyCaller - Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that he thinks the Western climate scare is a fraud, designed to restrain industrial development in countries like Russia.

According to the New York Times;

While Western media have examined the role of rising temperatures and drought in this year’s record wildfires in North America, Russian media continue to pay little attention to an issue that animates so much of the world.

The president believes that “there is no global warming, that this is a fraud to restrain the industrial development of several countries including Russia,” says Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst and critic of Putin. “That is why this subject is not topical for the majority of the Russian mass media and society in general.”

...

Putin’s scepticism dates from the early 2000s, when his staff “did very, very extensive work trying to understand all sides of the climate debate”, said Andrey Illarionov, Putin’s senior economic adviser at the time and now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington.

“We found that, while climate change does exist, it is cyclical, and the anthropogenic role is very limited,” he said. “It became clear that the climate is a complicated system and that, so far, the evidence presented for the need to ‘fight’ global warming was rather unfounded.”

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ANALYSIS/OPINION:

In ancient times, when an infallible proclamation went forth from the head of the church, it was deemed “ex cathedra,” or literally “from the chair,” the highest ruling authority at the time.

Nowadays, it seems that the marrying of political ideology to climate science is being officiated by the Christian church ex cathedra.

Whether from the pope or leading Protestant theologians, the blessings of the church have been conferred on climate prophesy via the uncritical faith of ecclesiastic heavyweights. Yet, our guess is that neither the pope nor high-level theologians have an intimate knowledge - or even an otherworldly revelation - of the science behind climate change. They must rely on their earthly advisers, fellow academicians or personal research of popular conjectures.

With all due respect, perhaps influential leaders of the faithful should consider the focus of Holy Scripture more closely and not just Christianize secular ideas. Christianity is a solid base upon which to build, not simply a part of the mix of construction materials for another’s foundation.

Christian ministry builds an edifice of people. Jesus came to preach good news (the gospel) to the poor. Quoting Isaiah early in his ministry, Jesus proclaimed, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives .” (Luke 4:18).

The focus of scripture, from Genesis 1:1 through Revelation 22:21, is on people - their well-being and freedom. Incorporated in the purview of the Bible is all that is required for the life and happiness of people, including the entire biosphere.

Conversely, it seems that Western governments, largely driven by pompous elitism, are focusing their most concerted, united efforts not on protecting their populations from terrorism, economic disaster and enslavement, but rather on convincing the masses that a climate catastrophe awaits them if they don’t stop living comfortably. The December climate change conference held in Paris just days after the Islamic terrorist slaughter in that city succinctly demonstrates the wayward thinking of sanctimonious seculars.

Innocents around the globe continue to be butchered and brutalized in the here-and-now. In the face of imminent peril, most likely they couldn’t care less about government and environmentalist promises of a sweet bye-and-bye if they would simply reduce their carbon footprint.

So, with plenty of real-world mayhem to address, does the Christian church need to endorse the dangerous naivete displayed in the profane union of politics and climatology?

A compassionately different approach to “saving the planet” would be to focus on serving people, putting their needs first. If people are put first, and the earth’s ample resources are diligently extracted, we may find that caring for the world’s precious population will naturally necessitate caring for the global environment. In other words, responsibly caring for the world’s people will require good stewardship of the earth’s bounty.

As far as concern for the climate by the pope, church hierarchy and parishioners, the Bible assures us that “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:2).

Now there’s a long-range global climate projection worth trusting.

Anthony J. Sadar is a certified consulting meteorologist and author of “In Global Warming We Trust” (Stairway Press, 2016). JoAnn Truchan is a professional engineer specializing in chemical engineering and air pollution control.

As reported by Michael Bastasch in The Daily Caller, Democratic operatives responsible for creating their party’s platform are calling for the Department of Justice to investigate companies who have misled shareholders and the public about global warming science.

The draft will be submitted to the full platform committee for approval later this month.

The platform position follows legal actions against ExxonMobil by attorneys general from California, Massachusetts, New York, and the Virgin Islands which demand that the company turn over decades of correspondence with a lengthy fishing trip listing of other suspected climate crisis skeptics including various conservative think tanks.

Some Republican lawmakers and attorney generals are pushing back, warning in writing that “If it is possible to minimize the risks of climate change, then the same goes for exaggeration"..."If minimization is fraud, exaggeration is fraud.”

So yes, what about Al Gore? According to Bloomberg his net worth of about $1.7 million after leaving Congress now likely exceeds $200 million, a fortune gained by manufacturing and cashing in on man-made climate fright.

Ten years ago, the Goracle told an AP reporter during the 2006 premier of his “An Inconvenient Truth” science fiction horror movie, “unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next ten years, the world will reach a point of no return.”

Yet despite “record high” atmospheric CO2 concentrations, other than entirely natural 1998 and 2015 El Nino ocean spikes, satellites have recorded no statistically significant global warming in nearly two decades.

Gore’s 2012 predictions that “dirty fossil fuel” is causing “dirty weather” that “is happening all over the world with increasing frequency” is inconveniently false as well.

No category 3-5 hurricanes have struck the U.S. coast since 2005, setting a record lull since 1900. And both NOAA and even the U.N.’s alarmist IPCC have admitted that there has been no increase in the severity or frequency of droughts, floods, thunderstorms, or tornadoes in decades.

Al repeatedly predicted during the mid-to-late 2000s that Arctic Ocean would be ice-free by around 2013. Yet by 2014 that ice was even thicker and covered a larger area than when he originated that prophesy. Meanwhile, the Antarctic ice mass has been steadily growing since first recorded by NASA satellites in 1979, and 2013-2014 expanses exceeded all previous measurements.

In 2007, British high court Judge Michael Burton ruled that Gore’s film could only be shown to students on the condition that the presentations included guidance notes pointing out errors “in the context of alarmism and exaggeration.”

The judge entered several examples on the record to illustrate why the movie’s “apocalyptic vision” was political, and did not represent an impartial scientific analysis of climate change.

Regarding alarm about disastrous flooding due to melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland, the judge observed: “The Armageddon scenario he [Gore] predicts, insofar as it suggests that sea level rises of seven meters might occur in the immediate future, is not in line with the scientific consensus.”

As for the “documentary” warning that global warming would shut down the “ocean conveyor” process by which the Gulf Stream is carried over the North Atlantic to Western Europe, the judge cited an IPCC assessment finding that this scenario is “very unlikely”.

While there was general scientific agreement that there is “some connection” between rises in CO2 and temperatures over a period of 650,000 years, this did not establish “an exact fit” asserted by Gore.

The judge found direct attributions of a disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro, the drying up of Lake Chad, or Hurricane Katrina devastation of New Orleans to human-induced climate change have not been scientifically established.

These events are more likely tied to natural regional climate variability and other factors.

Photographs of polar bears drowning from “swimming long distances - up to 60 miles - to find ice,” were subsequently determined to be results of a severe storm, “but it plainly does not support Mr. Gore’s description.”

Yes, this is the same very wealthy former Senator and Vice President Al Gore who has lobbied Congress for carbon cap-and-trade legislation which would have provided huge windfall benefits to his London-based hedge fund called Generation Investment Management (GIM) that he co-founded with former chief of Goldman Sachs Asset Management David Blood.

GIM, in turn, was a large shareholder in the Chicago Climate Exchange, another company poised to make enormous profits selling CO2 offsets if cap-and-trade passed.

Both organizations worked hard to persuade governments to block new fossil-fueled power plants.

Gore exuberantly testified at a March 2007 Joint House hearing of the Energy and Science Committee, “as soon as carbon has a price, you’re going to see a wave [of investment] in it… There will be unchained investment.”

Oh, so you seriously imagined this was all about science and saving the planet?

Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is the author of “Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom"(2015) and “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax” (2012).

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), a potential running-mate choice for presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, joined other Democratic Senators yesterday on the Senate floor to attack the Cornwall Alliance, and a few other Virginia-based organizations, in a poor attempt to defend climate alarmism against its critics.

As usual, Kaine’s was an argument rife with logical fallacies - appeals to emotion, straw men, ridicule, oversimplification, and misrepresentation.

The one thing the good Senator forgot to include in his speech was any sound science!

According to Kaine, The Cornwall Alliance is part of a “web of denial,” a “shadow organization,” “bizzaro” and “greedy.”

Senator Kaine quoted a tiny piece of our Open Letter to Pope Francis on Climate Change (which he didn’t mention was signed by hundreds of scientists, including over 20 climate scientists), in which we had quoted Psalm 19, and then said,

“So somebody is really using Scripture to argue that making our energy production cleaner, safer, cheaper, violates the Christian tenet of caring for the poor?”

No, Senator Kaine, if you read the full Open Letter you will discover that the argument, which includes both science and economics, shows that pushing technologies that are not currently better for the environment or cheaper (such as wind, solar, and biofuels) hurts those in poverty.

Since Senators Kaine, Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and others are banding together to reveal the “web of denial” that appears to be made up only of conservative organizations they claim are funded by ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel corporations that they consider immoral (despite the fact that the energy they provide has been indispensable to lifting and keeping billions of people out of poverty, as Kathleen Hartnett White brilliantly demonstrates in her booklet Fossil Fuels: The Moral Case), what about the “web of denial” created by alarmist organizations - which are funded by renewable energy corporations and governments that stand to gain from climate alarm, and which have been caught exaggerating, fabricating, and falsifying data to support their views, suppressing contrary data, intimidating scientists who disagree, and corrupting the scientific peer-review process?

Senator Kaine claims that 70% of Virginians agree with the “scientific consensus” that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is real and that “it is urgent that we do something about it.”

What “scientific consensus”?

The “97% of scientists” that is the go-to statistic for alarmists has been debunked so thoroughly that it takes serious chutzpah to use it.

That’s denial.

Then there is the fact (observable fact mind you, not computer model) that shows there has been no statistically significant long-term global warming for about the last 19 years.

Yet they deny this too.

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) has increased drastically during that time, so where is the correlation between increased temperature and CO2?

There is none.

No one argues that humans have absolutely no effect on the environment or on potential warming.

What is in question is whether human emissions of CO2 will create temperature increases so drastic as to cause a catastrophe so great as to justify spending trillions of dollars to mitigate it that could be spent instead to lift billions of people out of poverty and the high rates of disease and premature death that invariably accompany it. And right now the only proof alarmists have is computer model projections that are wildly inaccurate, and a hockey stick graph so derided by the scientific community for its inaccuracies as to be utterly worthless.

That’s some serious denial.

To watch the full speech click here. The Cornwall Alliance is mentioned in the second part of the video.

For more information on the dangers of environmental alarmism to people in poverty, go to here. The Cornwall Alliance is mentioned in the second part of the video.

For more information on the dangers of environmental alarmism to people in poverty, go to our website, www.cornwallalliance.org” title="our website">our website.

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“Social Cost of Carbon” - Going, Going, Gone?
June 13, 2016 By E. Calvin Beisner

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency forecasts the “social cost of carbon” (SCC) in the year 2020 to run anywhere from $13 to $137 per metric ton. That’s EPA’s measure of the harm each ton of “carbon” (really carbon dioxide, but who cares with our ill-educated public that doesn’t know the difference between an element and a compound -especially when the shorthand serves the purpose of scaring people needlessly?) emitted into the atmosphere.

Its estimates are based on a combination of computer climate models (that fail accurately to depict past global average temperature) and computer models of how ecosystems and economies will respond to rising temperatures.

But now three scholars have published a paper challenging those (and many other) estimates of the SCC based on empirically driven estimates of climate sensitivity (warming to ensue from doubled atmospheric CO2 concentration after all climate feedbacks have had their effect, i.e., in around two centuries). Kevin Dayaratna, David Kreutzer, and Ross McKitrick’s ”Empirically-Constrained Climate Sensitivity and the Social Cost of Carbon” finds, on the basis of empirical studies, that he computer climate models exaggerate CO2-induced warming, and consequently all the models about any harms attributable to the CO2 also exaggerate.

How badly? Enough that after correction, one widely used estimate falls by 30% to 50%, and another by 80%.

And, indeed, it could even turn out that the SCC is negative - that is, that CO2 added to the atmosphere brings more benefits than harms.

Which means that we wicked Americans, who have higher CO2 emissions per capita than most people, may well by doing so be doing more good for the world than most, too.

The study’s worth careful reading.

America has centuries of fossil fuels, but hydrocarbon deniers want to strangle our future

Fool me once, the adage says, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

The reality-based fossil fuel version states: Fuel me for 150 years, fuel me forever - or at least until creative, entrepreneurial spirits can devise reliable, affordable alternatives. The 2016 Democratic Party would change this adage to read: Fuel me for 150 years, fuel me never again.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton want to regulate drilling and fracking into oblivion, or ban them outright. Clinton also says she is “going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

The draft Democratic Party platform supports a “phase down” of fossil fuel production on public lands, turning those lands into “engines of the clean energy economy,” getting 50% of US electricity from “clean sources” by 2027, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% below 2005 levels by 2050.

This Big Green, Bigger Government, Democratic ideology represents destructive madness.

1) Oil, natural gas and coal replaced human and animal muscle, wood, waterwheels and whale oil. They provided the energy that lifted billions from abject poverty, disease, malnutrition and early death, to the amazing living standards and longevity we enjoy today. They still provide over 80% of America’s and the world’s energy, and the vast majority of nations are burning them in ever-increasing amounts to power their own health and economic transformations. Even wealthy developed countries are reexamining punitive climate and “renewable” energy policies, to embrace fossil fuels anew.

2) Fears that we will run out of oil and gas are unfounded. In 1945, the Institute for Energy Research (IER) reports, the USA had 20 billion barrels of oil reserves. Between 1945 and 2014 we consumed 177 billion barrels and still had 40 billion barrels of proven reserves left in the ground. It’s the same story with iron, copper, aluminum, titanium and other vital raw materials. The more we use, the more we have, thanks to constantly improving exploration, production and other technologies, driven by rising demand and prices, conceived and built by mankind’s increasingly creative genius, our Ultimate Resource.

3) In fact, we are still blessed with centuries of fossil fuels. Oslo-based Rystad Energy consulting calculates that the United States has 264 billion barrels of technologically and economically recoverable oil: 8 billion more than Russia and 52 billion more than Saudi Arabia.

Based on current consumption rates, IER and EIA (Energy Information Administration) data show that US “proven reserves” (recoverable at today’s prices) total 5 years of oil, 13 years of natural gas and 319 years of coal. As prices rise and technologies improve, “technically recoverable” figures soar to 206 years for oil, 83 years for gas and 597 years for coal. “In-place total resource” estimates send these calculations to an astronomical 536, 510 and 12,849 years respectively!

4) According to the IER and economist Steve Moore, this amazing abundance could translate into 6 million new jobs and $1 trillion a year in energy exports. America’s non-environmentally sensitive western public lands could hold $50 trillion in energy resources, which new pipelines, refineries and liquefied natural gas terminals could bring to the world, unleashing incredible job and economic growth. However, Mrs. Clinton and Democrats oppose these facilities and want the resources locked up.

Those policies would be disastrous, especially for western states that would be turned into playgrounds for rich and famous elites, and for our manufacturing heartland. A University of Colorado Leeds School of Business study projects that eliminating 75-80% of hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas in the Centennial State would cost it $11 billion per year and 62,000 jobs by 2030.

5) In the absence of government diktats, we will gradually and voluntarily make a transition to new energy sources that we cannot even imagine today, long before we run out of these fossil fuel bounties. We would do it without destroying jobs and economiesjust as we did over these past 150 years. Who among us, just 100 years ago, could have predicted the coal, gas, hydroelectric and nuclear power plants that generate 93% of today’s electricity ... or the cell phone, internet, medical, entertainment, manufacturing and other incredible technologies that are made possible by electricity?

Any coerced transition will destroy millions of jobs and send families, communities, states and nations into social and economic chaos - for no environmental or climate benefit.

6) Widespread wind and solar facilities would have monumental impacts. Industry data reveal that getting 50% of US electricity from wind would require some 465,000 turbines and 48,000 miles of new transmission lines, across croplands and wildlife habitats equal to North Dakota (45,000,000 acres) - and 675,000,000 tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and rare earth metals. They would impair human health and kill millions of birds and bats annually. This is unconscionable and unsustainable.

And to top it off, we would still need backup coal or gas generators - unless we are willing to have to only minimal, expensive, constantly interrupted electricity, when it is available, rather than sufficient, affordable, dependable power, when we need it for modern lives, livelihoods and living standards.

Ruling elites may be happy to impose that on “commoners.” They will never tolerate it for themselves.

7) Every one of these “clean,” “green,” “sustainable,” “renewable” energy edicts and fantasies is based on assertions that fossil fuels emit greenhouse gases that are causing “dangerous manmade climate change.”

However, as my Climate Hype Exposed book, my numerous articles, and studies and books by hundreds of climate scientists reveal, there is no convincing evidence that carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions have replaced the powerful, interconnected natural forces that have always driven climate change. Climate alarmists cannot show that recent or ongoing climate and weather fluctuations, cycles and events are significantly different from those of the last 50, 150 or 1,500 years.

Climate alarmists cannot separate human influences from natural causes for any recent changes. They do not know how much Earth will warm by 2100. They cannot say at what point further warming will be “dangerous” [ or for which plant, wildlife or human populations. They admit that slashing America’s fossil fuel use will reduce global warming by only a few hundredths of one degree (assuming CO2 drives climate change), especially if most countries continue burning coal, oil and natural gas.

8) If we truly want to Make America great again, Help working class Americans, and Care about the poor - we will not “Keep it in the ground.” We will not squander our bounteous fossil fuel inheritance on the pagan altar of climate chaos. We will not sacrifice our children’s future for illusory ecological benefits.

The draft Democratic Party platform essentially says we must safeguard the assumed needs of future generations, even if it means ignoring or compromising the real needs of current generations including the needs, aspirations and welfare of America’s and the world’s poorest people.

It says we must protect poor and working classes from alleged, exaggerated and imagined climate disasters decades from now by imposing very real energy policy disasters that will adversely affect their jobs, living standards, health, wellbeing and life spans today.

That’s why the Obama EPA alone has issued more than 3,900 new tiny-print rules and regulations, totaling nearly 76,000 pages in the Federal Register, and costing us tens of billions of dollars a year.

Big Green Democrats think they can fool Americans again and again, and continue asserting their moral superiority, condescension and contempt for anyone who does not accept their ideologies and agendas. They believe it’s good policy to send America deeper into energy and economic decline.

Are they right? Or are voters finally waking up? The coming months will tell.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, Heartland Institute and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.