Senate Democrats throw pajama party to warn of global warming impacts at the capitol even though there has been no warming for 18 years.

UN hides model failures
Posted By Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller On 2:38 PM 03/07/2014

The United Nations doesn’t want you to know the facts about global warming, according to a new report out of Europe.

Over the years climate scientists have been reducing their estimates of how much global warming will occur over the next 70 to 100 years if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were doubled - an estimate called “climate sensitivity.”

But readers of the most recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment would be ignorant of this, according to a report by the UK’s Global Warming Policy Foundation.

The IPCC’s fourth climate assessment in 2007 estimated that the Earth would warm 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century - this estimate was in a range of warming from 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius. But as the 2000s wore on and little warming occurred, climate scientists began to lower their climate sensitivity estimates from 3 to 2 degrees Celsius in a century and only 1.5 degrees of warming in the next 70 years.

But this revelation was only hinted at in the IPCC’s 2013 climate assessment. Instead of lowering their central climate sensitivity measure down from 3 degrees Celsius, the IPCC simply did not give a central estimate and just reduced its lower-bound warming estimate from 2 to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Now the IPCC’s warming range for the next hundred years is 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius.

“Good empirical evidence of both long-term warming and that over a seventy year period now imply very different expectations of future warming than do climate models - some 40% to 50% lower to 2081-2100,” according to the study by independent UK climate scientist Nic Lewis and Dutch science writer Marcel Crok.

“This is almost certainly the most important finding of climate science in recent years, particularly since there are good reasons to doubt the reliability of climate model forecasts,” the authors continue.

“However, in its report the IPCC only alludes to this issue in an oblique fashion,” the authors add. “Moreover, rather than reducing its best estimate of climate sensitivity in the light of the new empirical estimates, it simply reduced the lower bound of the uncertainty range and omitted to give a best estimate, without adequately explaining why it had been necessary to do so.”

The IPCC only added a paragraph on why they did not give central climate sensitivity estimate in the technical summary of its final report - published in January 2014, four months after the report’s initial release.

Climate sensitivity is used by policymakers to predict global temperature increases and economic costs, and therefore is a crucial estimate to nail down. In the U.S., the Obama administration is using the UN’s climate sensitivity measures to come up with its “social cost of carbon” (SCC) estimate, which applies monetary damages to each ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere.

Last year, the Obama administration raised the SCC from from $21 per ton to $37 per ton before the president went public with his plans to cut U.S. emissions 17 percent by 2020. Raising the SCC inflates the benefits of policies that reduce carbon emissions, therefore, giving more justification to Obama’s fight against global warming.

“The shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way,” Obama said in his 2014 State of the Union Address. “But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say, ‘Yes, we did.’”

But the recent GWPF report casts doubt on Obama’s justification for raising the SCC to $37 per ton, as it was based on the UN’s misleading climate assessment. If the IPCC can no longer give a central climate sensitivity estimate, can the Obama administration credibly peg a price to carbon dioxide emissions?

“It should be obvious that no SCC estimates should be published until a credible climate sensitivity probability distribution is developed,” wrote attorney Francis Menton in his comments to the White House on the SCC changes. “This multi- agency effort has relied on the IPCC work, but IPCC’s own results imply that the U.S. government should stop publishing any estimates of SCC until such a credible distribution exists.”

The Obama administration, however, has showed no indication that it intends to scale back its SCC estimate or scrap it altogether.

Watch for the movie “blue” coming soon that will recolor green, painting that radical agenda in its true color - red.

See Former Governor John Sununu on the Politics of Global Warming...It Ain’t Pretty and read more here.
February 24, 2014 by Anthony Watts

WUWT has been granted exclusive first access to this new legal document challenging the EPA’s proposed use of calculations on SCC.

While this submission to OMB from Attorney Menton may look forbiddingly legalistic document to many WUWT readers, a number of you may well have signed one or more of the Amicus Briefs and other materials cited in it.It is important to read this because it provides a window into the future of a potential carbon tax in the USA.

I consider it a “must read” for those of you who are very concerned about the EPA’s current and proposed CO2 –related regulations. EPA uses its Social Cost of Carbon estimates to justify all such regulations. And, these estimates are also being used as recommended starting points for future carbon taxes. Enough said as to why it makes sense to read and think about the submission?

If not, you will note it begins by showing that using IPCC’s own words, its estimates of Climate Sensitivity must be treated using what the mathematics of decision theory would call under “Complete Ignorance Uncertainty.” Therefore, EPA’s reliance on IPCC is hardly justified.

Next, it argues that, in the court room, EPA’s own Endangerment Finding was predicated on three easy to understand “Lines of Evidence,” where each has now been shown to be invalid.

The three lines of evidence used by the EPA are A. B. and C.

The hot spot has not appeared, surface temperatures are stalled, and climate models aren’t modeling reality, yet, in the arcane world of the court system, EPA presses on as if these problems don’t exist.

Finally, it points out that the methodology now being used to calculate the SCC estimates is total nonsense for EPA’s purposed use, yet they are being considered “good to go” at this stage of the game.

Attorney Francis J. Menton, Jr. wrote a long letter in this issue to the OMB which can be sen in the long full post on WUWT here.

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Will Supreme Court permit EPA deceit and tyranny?

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in what could be the most important energy, economic and environmental case to come before it in decades. Here at CFACT, we have been following this case (Utility Air Regulatory Group vs. EPA) for some time now.

In fact, CFACT submitted two amicus (friend of the court) briefs for it: the first arguing that the Supreme Court should hear the case; the second presenting a more detailed analysis of what is at stake and how the Court should decide the case.

Environmentalist groups and the Obama Administration say the issue is whether the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to require that power plants and other industrial facilities get EPA permits to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Questions by the justices during oral arguments suggest that some are very skeptical about EPA’s assertions of authority, while the Court’s liberal wing seems inclined to give the agency the broadest possible authority to interpret the law, decide the science and regulate as it wishes.

If the Court sides with EPA, there will be virtually no limitations on how far Executive Branch agencies can go, in twisting science, laws and our Constitution to advance their agendas – while ignoring facts, genuine science, and the impacts of regulations on our lives, livelihoods and liberties.

CFACT’s analyses, amicus briefs and articles demonstrate that the issues are far more fundamental and important. The real issues before the Court are these:

How far can the EPA and Obama Administration extend their regulatory overreach, by rewriting the Clean Air Act, ignoring the Constitution’s “separation of powers” doctrine, and disregarding federal laws that require them to consider both the costs and benefits of their regulatory actions?

May the EPA and Obama Administration ignore the fact that, between 1989 and 2010, Congress considered and rejected almost 700 bills addressing various aspects of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change and simply impose their radical anti-hydrocarbon agenda by executive fiat?

May the Executive Branch continue to ignore the enormous benefits of using hydrocarbon energy and emitting carbon dioxide including affordable heat and electricity, better crop growth and nutrition, more jobs, and improved living standards, health and welfare and focus solely on the alleged and exaggerated “costs” of carbon and carbon dioxide?

Should EPA be permitted to impose these job-killing greenhouse gas regulations even though full compliance with them would achieve zero benefits, because emissions from rapidly developing countries will continue increasing total atmospheric CO2 levels, and because climate change is driven not by carbon dioxide, but by natural forces over which we have no control?

In short, should the EPA and Obama Administration be permitted to continue regulating in a manner that can properly be described as deceitful, fraudulent, illegal and unconstitutional?

Let’s hope the Supreme Court agrees the answer is a firm “No.”

For nature and people too,

Craig Rucker
Executive Director CFACT

Charles Battig

Perhaps given the chance to avert public eyes from his lackluster results with containing the deteriorating situation in Syria, nuclear talks with Iran, and the Middle East peace process, Secretary of State Kerry has chosen to flaunt his lack of scientific understanding as a needed diversion.

Kerry described those who do not accept that human activity causes global warming as “shoddy scientists” and “extreme ideologues,” and said big companies and special interests should not be allowed to “hijack” the climate debate. “Climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.”

These sound-bite alarmism utterances from an ideologue lacking scientific training himself, shoddy or otherwise, are consistent with a special-interest politician always alert to the political climate. By unilaterally labeling a fundamental, natural feature of Earth itself a “weapon of mass destruction,” Kerry has now redefined “original sin” as being the result of excess man-made carbon dioxide. He has removed the path of redemption from the hands of traditional religion and proclaimed salvation in government-imposed “global warming pollution reduction.” The failed 2010 Kerry/Lieberman “American Power Act” apparently lives on in Kerry’s psyche.

Let Kerry produce the impartial evidence that would quantify how much human activity has caused how much global warming (or cooling). The inherently chaotic nature of climate has defied attempts of climate modelers to accurately predict the future climate. What is “normal climate” is heavily dependent on the time period and geographic place chosen. The scientific record shows no global warming for the past 16 years, even as atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased about 9 percent. True “weapons of mass destruction” have reliable on-off switches, well-calculated destructive impacts, and specific targets.

“Climate change” has been coopted by the progressive/liberal movement as something akin to the “universal solvent.” It is the term used to explain any untoward event anywhere, and direct blame to all of mankind...but with the exception of the ruling class. It is the term that brings visions of guaranteed profits to the corporate cronyist, endless government research grants to compliant scientists, and elitist political control of the populace, whose function is reduced to paying for the scam.

Charles Battig, M.D., Piedmont Chapter president, VA-Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment (VA-SEEE). His website is www.climateis.wordpress.com