By Paul DriessenBy Paul Driessen PDF
It’s unbelievable. The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War and created the United States. The 2015 Treaty of Paris could end what’s left of our increasingly less democratic USA- and complete the “"fundamental transformation” that the Obama Administration intends to impose by executive fiat.
President Obama says his definition of leadership is “leading on climate change.” But for once he should lead from behind - because the rest of the world is not about to sign any agreement that locks poor countries into binding carbon dioxide emission reductions and continued poverty, misery and premature death.
In fact, about the only thing developing countries are willing to agree to is that they want trillions of dollars for “climate justice”, in the form of climate change “adaptation, mitigation and reparation” payments.
Thank you for posting my article, quoting from it and forwarding it to your friends and colleagues. Hopefully, it will open more eyes to what’s really going to happen in Paris.
Best regards,
Paul
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Leading on Paris climate treaty?
We should lead from behind - instead of with brains in our behinds - on this new Treaty of Paris
What an unpalatable irony. The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War and created the United States. The 2015 Treaty of Paris could end what’s left of our democratic USA - and complete the “fundamental transformation” that the Obama Administration intends to impose by executive fiat.
Meanwhile, as a prelude to Paris, October 24 marked a full ten years since a category 3-5 hurricane last hit the United States. (Hurricane Wilma in 2005; Sandy hit as a Category 2.) That’s a record dating back at least to 1900. It’s also the first time since 1914 that no hurricanes formed anywhere in the Western Atlantic, Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico through September 22 of any calendar year.
Global temperatures haven’t risen in 18 years and are more out of sync with computer model predictions with every passing year. Seas are rising at barely seven inches a century. Droughts and other “extreme weather events” are less frequent, severe and long-lasting than during the twentieth century. “Vanishing” Arctic and Greenland ice is freezing at historical rates, and growing at a record pace in Antarctica.
But President Obama still insists that dangerous climate change is happening now, and it is a ‘dereliction of duty’ for military officers to deny that climate change “is an immediate risk to our national security.”
Meanwhile, the Washington Post intones: “Republicans’ most potent argument against acting on climate change - that other nations won’t cut emissions, so US efforts are useless is crumbling. The European Union has had overlapping climate policies in place for years. China, the world’s largest emitter, continues to fill in details about how it will meet the landmark climate targets it announced a year ago. World negotiators are set to convene in Paris in November to bundle commitments from dozens of nations into a single agreement that should set the world on a path toward lower emissions.”
Right. A path toward less plant fertilizing carbon dioxide, to prevent “unprecedented disasters” that aren’t happening (except in SimPlanet computer models), by stabilizing a perpetually changing climate that is driven by powerful natural forces over which humans have no control - under a 2015 Paris treaty that will inflict global governance by unelected activists and bureaucrats, bring lower living standards to billions, and initiate wealth redistribution of at least $100 billion a year to ruling elites in poor countries.
For once, President Obama wants America to play a leadership role, through a war on carbon-based energy that his own EPA admits will reduce hypothetical global warming by an undetectable 0.02 degrees 85 years from now. If we slash our fossil fuel use, he insists, the rest of the world will follow. It’s delusional.
For once, we should lead from behind - instead of with brains in our behinds. A brief recap of what other nations are actually doing underscores how absurd and deceitful the White House, EPA and Post are.
European nations and the European Union have long claimed bragging rights for “leading the world” on “climate stabilization,” by replacing hydrocarbon fuels with renewable energy. Their efforts have done little to persuade poor nations to follow suit - but have sent EU energy prices skyrocketing, cost millions of Euro jobs and made the EU increasingly uncompetitive globally. Now Europe says it will make an additional 40% emissions reduction by 2030, but only if a new Paris agreement is legally binding on all countries.
However, two months ago, China, India and Russia refused to sign a nonbinding US-sponsored statement calling for greater international cooperation to combat hypothetical warming and climate change. And virtually all developing countries oppose any agreement that calls for binding emission targets or even “obligatory review mechanisms” of their voluntary efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
What they do want is a treaty that guarantees $100 billion per year for climate change “mitigation, adaptation and compensation,” plus modern energy technologies given to them at no cost. And that appears to be only the opening ante. India environment minister Prakash Javadekar recently said “the bill for climate action for the world is not just $100 billion. It is in trillions of dollars per year.” Developed nations are “historically responsible” for climate change, he argues, and must ensure “justice” for developing countries by fully funding the Green Climate Fund. India alone must receive $2.5 trillion!
So far, pledges to the fund total just $700 million—and Prime Minister David Cameron has said Britain would provide a one-time contribution of only $9 million. He has called renewable energy “green crap” and plans to end all “green” subsidies by 2025, to reduce electricity prices that have sent millions of families into energy poverty and caused the loss of thousands of jobs in the UK steelmaking sector.
Germany’s reliance on coal continues to rise; it now generates 44% of its electricity from the black rock - more than any other EU nation. In Poland, Prime Minister Eva Kopacz says nuclear energy is no longer a priority, and her country’s energy security will instead focus increasingly on coal.
But it is in Asia where coal use and CO2 emissions will soar the most - underscoring how completely detached from reality the White House, EPA and Washington Post are.
China now gets some 75% of its electricity from coal. Its coal consumption declined slightly in 2014, as the Middle Kingdom turned slightly to natural gas and solar, for PR and to reduce serious air quality problems. However, it plans to build 363 new coal-fired power plants, with many plants likely outfitted or retrofitted with scrubbers and other equipment to reduce emissions of real, health-impairing pollution.
India will focus on “energy efficiency” and reduce its CO2 “emission intensity” (per unit of growth), but not its overall emissions. It will also boost its reliance on wind and solar power, mostly for remote areas that will not be connected to the subcontinent’s growing electrical grid anytime soon. However, it plans to open a new coal mine every month and double its coal production and use by 2020.
Pakistan is taking a similar path - as are Vietnam, the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations. Even Japan plans to build 41 new coal-fired units over the next decade. Overall, says the International Energy Agency, Southeast Asia’s energy demand will soar 80% by 2040, and fossil fuels will provide some 80% of the region’s total energy mix by that date.
Africa will pursue a similar route to lifting its people out of poverty. No more solar panels on huts. The continent has abundant oil, coal and natural gas – and it intends to utilize those fuels, while it demands its “fair share” of free technology, “capacity building,” and climate “reparation” money.
During the 2011 UN climate conference in Durban, all nations agreed that the next treaty would have legally binding emission targets and mandatory reviews of emission reduction progress. They also set up the Green Climate Fund wealth redistribution scheme. Now those CO2-reduction pledges are in history’s dustbin, because developing nations believe they have the upper hand in any climate negotiations.
They’re probably right. President Obama told 60 Minutes his definition of leadership is “leading on climate change,” and he desperately wants a legacy beyond his Iran, Iraq, Syria, Russia, Ukraine, Bowe Bergdahl and economic disasters. Moreover, Western nations have created a climate monster and Climate Crisis Industry, which must be appeased with perpetual sacrifices: expensive, unreliable energy, fewer jobs, lower living standards and more dead people. No wonder Asian and African countries expect to get trillions of dollars, free energy technology, and a free pass from any binding commitments.
Voters, consumers, elected officials and courts must wake up and take action. House Speaker Paul Ryan, members of Congress, governors, business leaders and presidential candidates need to learn the facts, communicate forcefully, repudiate destructive energy and climate policies - and let the world know the Senate will reject any Obama treaty that binds the USA to slashing emissions and transferring its wealth.
Above all, they must debunk, defund and demolish the mountains of anti-fossil fuel, anti-job, anti-growth, anti-family regulations that Obama & Co. have imposed - or plan to impose before they leave office - in the name of preventing a climate crisis that exists only in their minds and models.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.
The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time—Part VIII
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian
In a prior piece in this series (Part V), I reported back on June 7 on an article that had just come out in Science titled “Possible Artifacts Of Data Biases In The Recent Global Surface Warming Hiatus.” The article was written by a team of government scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), led by one Thomas R. Karl. Readers here will recognize the name of Mr. Karl as one of the foremost global warming zealots living on the taxpayer dime.
Although the Karl article itself is behind a paywall at Science, its issuance was accompanied by a lengthy press release from NOAA summarizing it and touting its conclusions. The idea behind the article was explicitly to refute the growing chorus pointing to a near-twenty-year “pause” or “hiatus” in the rise global temperatures as undermining the narrative of a coming catastrophic global warming. Mr. Karl stated that purpose in this quote in the press release:
“Adding in the last two years of global surface temperature data and other improvements in the quality of the observed record provide evidence that contradict the notion of a hiatus in recent global warming trends,"” said Thomas R. Karl, L.H.D., Director, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
But despite Mr. Karl arguing that the data in this article supported such a broad conclusion, many things about the article were literally bizarre. Most notably, neither the article nor the press release so much as mentioned the main source of the data that establish the “pause,” namely the NASA satellite data as processed by UAH and RSS. (Do they think we don’t know about that data? The UAH data are here.) Then there was the fact that the article dealt only with a tiny portion of the surface temperature record, namely sea surface temperatures in the Arctic. And then, within just a few days after the article came out on June 4, numerous critics had pointed out other gigantic flaws, like the facts that the “new” data included “homogenization” based on extraneous data that would clearly bias the results toward increasing any warming trend, such as using nearby land temperatures to fill in gaps in temperatures over the water at times when the water has ice on the surface. Read more about these flaws here. From a critique by Michaels, Lindzen and Knappenberger reproduced at that link:
The treatment of the buoy sea-surface temperature (SST) data was guaranteed to put a warming trend in recent data. They were adjusted upwards 0.12C to make them “homogeneous” with the longer-running temperature records taken from engine intake channels in marine vessels. As has been acknowledged by numerous scientists, the engine intake data are clearly contaminated by heat conduction from the structure, and they were never intended for scientific use. On the other hand, environmental monitoring is the specific purpose for the buoys. Adjusting good data upwards to match bad data seems questionable, and the fact that the buoy network becomes increasingly dense in the last two decades means that this adjustment must put a warming trend in the data. The extension of high-latitude arctic land data over the Arctic Ocean is also questionable. Much of the Arctic Ocean is ice-covered even in high summer, so that the surface temperature must remain near freezing. Extending land data out into the ocean will obviously induce substantially exaggerated temperatures.
Read that and lots more at the link, and you come away with the conclusion that this study was completely preposterous. On the other hand, it can well be explained by its timing: it came out just as EPA was getting ready to issue its so-called Clean Power Plan, otherwise known as the complete takeover of the energy sector of the economy and the forced closure of all power plants that burn coal; as well as a few months before the big planned climate meetings in Paris in December where our government would like to commit us to forced reductions in fossil fuel usage and a “skyrocketing” of the cost of our energy.
Anyway, now for the latest. It seems that the House Science Committee, chaired by Lamar Smith of Texas, subpoenaed NOAA for data and communications relating to the Karl article. Yesterday, the Hill reported that NOAA is refusing to comply with the subpoena, claiming some kind of “confidentiality” of scientific communications.
The federal government’s chief climate research agency is refusing to give House Republicans the detailed information they want on a controversial study on climate change. Citing confidentiality concerns and the integrity of the scientific process, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said it won’t give Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) the research documents he subpoenaed.
This is not any kind of “confidentiality” that I’ve ever heard of. Confidentiality as against Congress as to things funded by the taxpayers? Huh? At the Global Warming Policy Foundation they ask “Why is NOAA withholding climate documents from Congress?” and whether this is “the next Climategate?” The editorial at Investors Business Daily is headed “Did Federal Agency Commit Climate Fraud? Sure Looks Like It.” Excerpt:
“The American people have every right to be suspicious when NOAA alters data to get the politically correct results they want and then refuses to reveal how those decisions were made,” [Congressman] Smith said this week. We agree. For too long, global warming proponents, both inside and outside government, have tried to halt debate over their extreme conclusions and data manipulation, all in the name of “science.” Looks political to us. Taxpayers pay for this research, which is being used to justify massive new federal spending and regulation. They deserve to know what NOAA and other federal agencies are doing—and whether they’re being honest or serving an unspoken extreme political agenda.
As usual, the mainstream media are paying no attention whatsoever. How long are they going to be willing to cover for this fraud?
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The federal government’s chief climate research agency is refusing to give House Republicans the detailed information they want on a controversial study on climate change. Citing confidentiality concerns and the integrity of the scientific process, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said it won’t give Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) the research documents he subpoenaed. At the center of the controversy is a study that concluded there has not been a 15-year “pause” in global warming. Some NOAA scientists contributed to the report. Timothy Cama, The Hill 28 October 2015
Worried about climate fraud, Congress is investigating a federal agency for allegedly manipulating weather data to show recent global warming when there is none. So why is the agency refusing to cooperate? Taxpayers pay for this research, which is being used to justify massive new federal spending and regulation. They deserve to know what NOAA and other federal agencies are doing and whether they’re being honest or serving an unspoken extreme political agenda. Editorial, Investor’s Business Daily, 28 October 2015
It sounds like Climategate all over again, with climate scientists trying to cover up, obfuscate and frustrate all attempts by outsiders to get at the truth. What gives them the right to decide they are above the law? As a publically funded operation, why do they think they are entitled to pick and choose what information they release to Congress? And above all, what are they trying to hide? Paul Homewood, Not A Lot Of People Know That, 28 October 2015
The global warming debate on Capitol Hill is heating up. Government scientists refused to comply with lawmakers’ demands they turn over internal documents regarding a study that eliminated the “hiatus” in global warming from the temperature record. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officials argued such records are confidential and “essential to frank discourse among scientists.” The science agency said it has a history of protecting the “confidentiality of deliberative scientific discussions.” NOAA’s decision not to comply with a subpoena from House science committee lawmakers has only angered Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, who says Americans have a right to know what taxpayer-funded scientists were thinking when they altered the temperature record in June. Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller News Foundation, 28 October 2015
NOAA needs to come clean about why they altered the data to get the results they needed to advance this administration’s extreme climate change agenda. Congress cannot do its job when agencies openly defy Congress and refuse to turn over information. When an agency decides to alter the way it has analyzed historical temperature data for the past few decades, it’s crucial to understand on what basis those decisions were made. This action has broad national and policy implications. Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith, The Christian Science Monitor, 28 October 2015
See this earlier post on this with comments from Wil Happer and James Lovelock, who founded the Gaia Hypothesis.
By Steve Goreham (republished with permission from author)
Originally published in Communities Digital News.
Another year has passed and that stubborn Ozone Hole over Antarctica refuses to go away. Data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) shows that the Ozone Hole for the fall maximum season grew 22 percent from 2014 to 2015. World consumption of Ozone Depleting Substances has been reduced to zero over the last three decades, but the Ozone Hole is as large as ever. Did humans really save the ozone layer?
In 1974, Dr. Mario Molina and Dr. Sherwood Roland of the University of California published a paper asserting that chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) pollution from industry was destroying the ozone layer in Earth’s stratosphere. CFCs were gases used in hair spray, refrigerators, and insulating foams. The ozone layer is a layer of atmosphere located between 6 and 25 miles above the Earth’s surface.
The theory of Molina and Roland postulated that human-produced CFCs migrate upward through the atmosphere to the stratosphere, where ultraviolet radiation breaks down CFC molecules, releasing chlorine atoms. Chlorine then reacts as a catalyst to break down ozone molecules into oxygen, reducing the ozone concentration. The more CFCs used, the greater the destruction of the ozone layer, according to the theory.
In 1983, three researchers from the British Antarctic Survey discovered at thinning of the ozone layer over Antarctica, which became known as the Ozone Hole. Their observations appeared to confirm the theory of Molina and Roland. Molina and Roland were awarded a Noble Prize in chemistry in 1995 for their work.
The Ozone Layer is known to block ultraviolet rays, shielding the surface of Earth from high-energy radiation. Scientists were concerned that degradation of the ozone layer would increase rates of skin cancer and cataracts and cause immune system problems in humans. Former Vice President Al Gore’s 1992 book claimed that hunters reported finding blind rabbits in Patagonia and that fishermen were catching blind fish due to human destruction of the ozone layer, but this has not been confirmed.
In an effort to save the ozone layer, 29 nations and the European Community signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer in September of 1987. Over the next decade, the Protocol was universally signed by 197 nations, agreeing to ban the use of CFCs. Since 1986, world consumption of Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS) is down more than 99 percent, effectively reaching zero by 2010.
The Montreal Protocol has been hailed as an international success in resolving a major environmental issue. The Protocol has been praised as an example to follow for elimination of greenhouse gas emissions in the fight to halt global warming. But despite the elimination of CFCs, the Ozone Hole remains as large as ever.
During September to October, just after the Antarctic winter, the Ozone Hole is the largest for each year. NASA recently reported that from September 7 through October 13, 2015, the Ozone Hole reached a mean area of 25.6 million kilometers, the largest area since 2006 and the fourth largest since measurements began in 1979. The hole remains large, despite the fact that world ODS consumption all but disappeared about a decade ago.
Enlarged
Scientists are mixed on when the stubborn Ozone Hole will disappear. NASA recently announced that the hole will be half-closed by 2020. Others forecast that it will not begin to disappear until 2040 or later. But the longer the hole persists, the greater the likelihood that the ozone layer is dominated by natural factors, not human CFC emissions.
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
