Marc Morano wrote a good summary: “President Obama is still parading his ignorance on climate science, linking bad weather to ‘global warming’, claiming a mythical 97% consensus, and implying that his executive actions can alter the globe’s temperature and lessen extreme weather events. The President has descended into the realm of medieval witchcraft by claiming he can combat global temperature rises and weather patterns through administrative action.”
Recently he underwelmed the media by shooting 2 out of 22 baskets on camera. He actually missed the mark even more with his’ low point in the history of science’ address,
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WASHINGTON, D.C., June 25, 2013 - President Obama’s climate agenda released today is being done without public or congressional support and is being pursued in this way because he knows the peoples’ elected representatives would never approve these plans, say experts at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
“Obama’s all-pain, no-gain agenda will cost jobs, drive up prices and have little effect on global emissions,” said Myron Ebell, director of CEI’s Center for Energy and Environment. “It is undemocratic, bordering on authoritarian.”
“It confirms the Obama administration’s all out war on coal, calls for more negotiations on a treaty the Senate will never ratify and displays an alarming lack of knowledge about the state of climate science. Congress should move immediately to defund as much of this as possible.”
The president also said his decision on whether to approve the Keystone pipeline project would depend largely on whether it increases total carbon emissions.
“President Obama should’ve announced his approval today of the Keystone pipeline,” Ebell said. “The fact he didn’t demonstrates that he’s still playing political games with this project, which has overwhelming public and congressional support.”
The president pledges to impose carbon dioxide emissions limits for existing as well as new power plants, strengthen efficiency standards for homes and appliances and encourage more development of renewable energy sources on public lands. Obama admits his plan calls mostly for actions he can take without congressional approval.
“He doesn’t want to go through elected officials because he knows if he put this plan in a bill and submitted it to Congress, it would be dead on arrival,” said Marlo Lewis, senior fellow in CEI’s Center for Energy and the Environment.
Lewis said all three elements of the president’s plan should be opposed. Renewable energy is costly, intermittent and unreliable,” Lewis said. “If it weren’t a bad buy for consumers, Congress would not need to subsidize it in perpetuity, and 30 states and the District of Columbia would not need to mandate its use.”
Sam Kazman, general counsel for CEI, said the appliance efficiency standards limit consumer choice and mean “consumers will be victims, not beneficiaries.”
“The current standards already have ruined such previously reliable appliances as top-loading washing machines and dishwashers. If these new higher-efficiency technologies promised by the White House are really so great, then why must they be mandated?”
But the administration’s proposed CO2 emission limits for existing power plants pose “the biggest risk to consumer welfare and the economy,” Lewis said.
Christopher C. Horner, senior fellow at CEI and author of the 2012 “The Liberal War on Transparency,” research for which turned up the secret “Richard Windsor” email address of former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, said the proposal which would drive a stake through coal-fired power plants nationwide should come as no surprise.
“It’s more of the same,” Horner said. “It’s what he has done since this agenda was rejected by the democratic process. But the Constitution still says you have to go through that process to rewrite laws.
He warned us in the now-famous YouTube video he would shutter all existing coal-fired power plants and “bankrupt” anyone who tried to build a new one even though they provide 40 percent of our electricity and much of our competitive advantage.”
President Obama touts these measures as necessary to address a growing threat from a warming planet. But even pro-warming scientists have begun to admit a substantial gap exists between observations and climate model projections that suggests the “consensus” may have been wrong about the key issue of climate sensitivity,” Lewis said.
“A slew of recent studies discredit the ‘planetary emergency’ narrative,” Lewis said. “For instance, sea-change over the next century probably will be measured in inches, rather than feet.”
By Dr. Larry Bell, Forbes
Representatives of Russia and other Eastern bloc countries at the recent climate talks in Bonn made it clear that they aren’t one bit happy about efforts within the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Conference of Parties (COP) to cap their free Soviet-era carbon credit trading green stamps previously gifted to them under the Kyoto Protocol. The original deal was that signatory nations that reduced carbon emissions by targeted amounts under their 1990 levels would be able to sell credits based upon tonnage improvements to countries that produced more than their allocations, thereby meeting quotas. In other words, a market was created to sell lots of hot air...something that the U.N. excels at.
The idea, at least as presented by the FCCC, was to save our planet from dreaded CO2-induced global warming. Incidentally, we might have credited that plan for great success were it not for the fact that while global temperatures have been flat now for about 17 years, those atmospheric CO2 levels have continued to rise.
Originally, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on December 2, 2003, that his country would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol because the rationale supporting it was “scientifically flawed”. He argued that even one hundred percent compliance with the agreement wouldn’t reverse climate change.
The Russian Academy of Sciences presented scientific arguments against signing in a statement issued on July 1, 2005, noting that the world’s temperatures do not follow CO2 levels. Instead, they observed a much closer correlation between world temperatures and solar activity. The Academy also determined that sea levels were not rising faster with warming; rather, they had been increasing steadily about 6 inches per century since the Little Ice Age ended in about 1850.
In addition, the Academy discounted one of the most significant danger claims about global warming - that tropical diseases would spread - noting that malaria is a disease that is encouraged by sunlit pools of water where mosquitoes can breed, not by climate warmth. They also pointed out the lack of correlation between global warming and extreme weather, which a British government scientific delegation had admitted it could find no evidence to support.
What ultimately caused Putin and the Russian duma to change their position and ratify the Protocol? It is widely speculated that Europeans were instrumental in getting Russia admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and thus categorized it as a developing country rather than a developed one in applying the Protocol regulations. This meant that Russia received an opportunity to sell to European countries billions of dollars’ worth of Soviet-era emission credits associated with former dirty industries that had been casualties of economic melt-down. This would also help Europe meet Kyoto’s first-phase requirements without actually cutting emissions or energy use.
Europe’s 1990 CO2 emissions of 4,245 million tons fell to 4,123 tons in 2002 due to reductions in burning coal in both Britain and East Germany. Yet Kyoto Protocol requirements stipulated further European Union cutbacks to 3,906 million before 2012. A December 2003 U.N. report predicted that the E.U. would miss that reduction target by even more than that amount, namely, by dropping an additional 311 million tons. Since Russia’s 1990 emissions were 2,405 million tons, and had fallen by 2001 to 1,614 million tons, they could sell up to 800 million tons of credits to the Europeans at an “auction” price. This would be cheaper for Europe than shutting down fossil-fired power plants or removing trucks from its vital transportation infrastructure by means of escalating already high diesel fuel taxes.
But Not Such a Great Deal for the U.S.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it wasn’t in the cards for the U.N. to offer the U.S. any breaks comparable to those accorded to the Europeans and Russians. First, unlike Europe and former Soviet countries that were treated as separate emission-credit-trading entities, the U.S. was treated as a single nation (allowing no credit exchanging between states to meet quotas). Second, the U.S. emissions in 1990 were not inflated to high target allowance levels as was the case in Germany, Britain, and Russia, making compliance much more difficult to achieve.
In response to these inequities and other issues, our Senate passed (95-0) a rare unanimous bipartisan Byrd-Hagel U.S. Senate Resolution (S Res 98) that made it clear that the United States would not be signatory to any agreement that “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States”. Then-President Clinton, no stranger to political pragmatism, got the message and never submitted a necessary U.S. Kyoto Protocol approval request for congressional ratification.
Heated Climate Negotiations Put On Ice
Reuters reported on June 6 that U.N. talks aimed at progress towards a new 2015 climate pact agreement have now been stalled by objections from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine regarding procedural violations purposefully intended to eliminate their free carbon food stamp lunch. The UNFCCC now wants to renege on a deal they made with Russia to get them into Kyoto in the first place.
Now that European carbon markets have recently collapsed with the price of carbon (hot air) hitting record lows, they are concerned that allowing Russia, Ukraine, Poland and other former Soviet bloc nations to retain the huge stockpile of carbon credits they picked up under Kyoto would further flood and depress the market.
Ironically, those credits were originally granted as a reward to former Eastern bloc nations for the Communism which depressed their economic development prior to 1990, essentially compensating them for the economic destruction wreaked by their own Communist regimes. Poland, which will host COP 19 in November, has approximately 500 metric tons of carbon credits it plans to continue to sell to other nations including Japan, Ireland and Spain to offset its emissions from heavy coal use.
Russia has since announced that it will not be part of a second Kyoto commitment period under these conditions, saying that they are committed to keep the credits and sell them to other countries regardless of a claimed COP “consensus” that would terminate them. They are still smarting over a snub during two-week-long U.N. Climate talks in Doha, Qatari last year when, during the final minutes, Vice Prime Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiya ended the eighteenth Conference of the Parties (COP18) before their delegation which wished to be recognized could speak. While Christiana Figueres, the U.N.’s climate chief, claimed that a consensus had been reached, Oleg Shamanov, the chief negotiator for Russia’s delegation called that an “absolutely obvious violation of this procedure.” Shamanov added, “This is a systemic issue. Unless we put our house back in order, we may not be able to guarantee that in 2015 we end up with something productive.”
Carbon credit cap-and-trade marketing is but one U.N. climate alarm-based profiteering scheme aimed at global wealth redistribution. Another important agenda item for the UNFCCC’s 2015 Paris treaty to address is a planned “loss and damage” mechanism to seek compensation from “Tier 1” developed nations by a lawyered-up group of small island governments, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), premised upon global warming hazards caused by industrialization. AOSIS leaders, including Tuvalu, Kirabati, St. Lucia, and the Maldives, claim that man-made global warming is causing super-hurricanes and rising sea levels.
And who is most to blame? Coincidentally, of course, those legions of lawyers have identified culprits with the deepest pockets...the U.S., Western Europe and Japan. Although China is now the world’s largest CO2 emitter, they got a pass. Still to be determined, is the problem of how such penalties should be assessed. For example, if a Category 4 hurricane hits an island, how can anyone know which portion of that hurricane was caused by each nation? Also, how much of it was caused by those coal plants and SUVs, versus at Mother Nature’s sole discretion?
The idea of penalizing the West for trumped-up past and future climate crimes is certainly not new. Prior to COP-15 (2009-Copenhagen), several Latin American nations, the Philippines and the African Union claimed that Western countries owed developing countries trillions of dollars.
U.S. and European delegation representatives attending the Copenhagen Climate Conference initially agreed to provide their “fair share”, pledging $10 billion in compensation per year from 2010 to 2012, The offer was rejected as an insult, discussions were temporarily interrupted as representatives of several undeveloped countries walked out of the meetings, and angry riots broke out in the streets over the injustice of such paltry penance.
Then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told the audience where to lay the blame for the world’s social, economic and climate problems:
“If the climate was a bank, [the West] would already have saved it”.
“The destructive model of capitalism is eradicating life”.
“Our revolution seeks to help all people...Socialism, is the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet; capitalism is the road to hell...Let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us”.
Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton then came to the rescue, offering to up the ante with a $100 billion annual contribution from the United States and our more prosperous friends to the “poorest and most vulnerable [nations] among us” by 2020. She said that the money would come from “a variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance”. Where it would actually come from no one knew, including Hillary and her boss. (Any guesses?)
Time to End the Climate of Insanity
It’s way past time to recognize that UNFCCC’s cap-and-trade, loss and damage compensation and other global wealth redistribution agendas have little or nothing to do with actually preventing a climate crisis, much less offering any benefits. Despite rising atmospheric CO2 levels, global temperatures have not only been flat for going on two decades, but are predicted by leading scientists to cool over many future years or decades to come.
Russia entered into the Kyoto Protocol realizing prior to that time that there was no convincing scientific climate-related basis for doing so. More recent determinations by researchers at their prestigious Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg project that the global average yearly temperature will soon begin to decline into a very cold and protracted climate phase.
Pulkovo Observatory head Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov, one of the world’s leading solar scientists, member of the Russian Academy of Science, and director of the Russian segment of the International Space Station, believes that the deep freeze will last until the end of this century. He predicts that: “after the maximum of solar Cycle-24, from approximately 2014, we can expect the start of the next bicentennial cycle of deep cooling with a Little Ice Age in 2055 plus or minus 11 years” (the 19th to occur in the past 7,500 years).
Dr. Abdussamatov points out that over the last 1,000 years deep cold periods have occurred five times. Each is correlated with declines in solar irradiance much like we are experiencing now with no human influence. “A global freeze will come about regardless of whether or not industrialized countries put a cap on their greenhouse gas emissions. The common view of Man’s industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect.”
Pulkovo Observatory: “Measure temporary variations of shape and diameter of the Sun, as well as fine structure and dynamics of the granulation on the Service module of the Russian segment of the International Space Station”.
Russian scientists Vladimir Bashkin and Raulf Galiullin from the Institute of Fundamental Problems of Biology of the Russian Academy of Science agree that climatic changes are characterized by natural cycles which have nothing to do with activities of man. As Bashkin observes: “A global warming that so many are talking about is not so much a scientific problem, rather it is much more a marketing trick...We do not have global warming ahead of us. Rather, we have global cooling.”
Yes, and that marketing trick is one that the UNFCCC, including the Russian’s, has learned to play very well.
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THEIR OWN WORDS SHOW IT’S NOT ABOUT SCIENCE
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, would fit the bill.” Club of Rome First Global Revolution
“Urgent and unprecedented environmental and social changes challenge scientists to define a new social contract...a commitment on the part of all scientists to devote their energies and talents to the most pressing problems of the day, in proportion to their importance, in exchange for public funding”. NOAA exiting Administrator for NOAA Dr. Lubchenko when she was president of AAAS in 1999 (explains NOAA’s obsession with ‘finding’ warming, extremes)
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony ... climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” Christine Stewart, Canadian Environment Minister
“We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.” Timothy Wirth, U.S. Senator, president of the United Nation’s Foundation
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.” Instead, climate change policy is about how “we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.” UN IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer 2010
In Eisenhower’s Farewell Address remembered for concerns about the military industrial complex, he was also concerned about science becoming corrupted for political and economic gain. “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.”
n a far-reaching plan that would reshape the coastline of the nation’s largest city, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the modern day King Canute, unveiled a $20-billion proposal Tuesday that he said will protect New Yorkers from disasters brought on by climate change including rising tides. Little Napoleon is delusional.
Fox News and the other media carried an AP story about the Bloomberg folly with forecasts that have a 0 (zero) percent chance of verifying.
“The projections paint an unsettling picture of New York’s future: a city where by the 2050s, 800,000 people could be living in a flood zone that would cover a quarter of the land, and there could be as many 90-degree days as is now normal for Birmingham, Ala.
Facing those new projections of the effects of global warming on the nation’s biggest city, Mayor Michael Bloomberg was scheduled to talk Tuesday about what to do about risks that Superstorm Sandy brought into stark relief.
“We have to look ahead and anticipate any and all future threats, not only from hurricanes and other coastal storms but also from droughts, heavy downpours and heat waves—many of which are likely to be longer and more intense in the years to come,” an excerpt from the mayor’s planned speech says.
Two top Bloomberg aides who oversaw the study underlying the speech, Seth Pinsky and Deputy Mayor Caswell Holloway, wouldn’t hint Monday at what the suggestions would be, what they might cost or how they might be financed. Many key decisions likely will come after Bloomberg’s third and final term ends this year.
Bloomberg said last winter the study would examine the pros and cons of building berms, dunes, levees and other coast-protection structures. But he has historically been cool to the idea of massive sea walls—and emphatic about not suggesting that people retreat from coastal communities.
The recommendations will draw from updated predictions from the New York City Panel on Climate Change, a scientists’ (???) group convened by the city.
The average day could be 4 degrees to nearly 7 degrees hotter by mid-century, the panel estimates in data Pinsky and Holloway discussed Monday. A once in a century storm would likely spur a surge 5 or more feet higher than did Sandy, which sent a record 14 foot storm tide gushing into lower Manhattan.
And with local waters a foot to 2 1/2 feet higher than they are today, 8 percent of the city’s coastline could see flooding just from high tides, the group estimates. Most of that coast is in a relatively undeveloped area near a bay.
City Hall, the state government and others have released warnings over the years about climate risks. The city has required some new developments in flood zones to be elevated and has restored wetlands as natural barriers, among other steps.
“Sandy, obviously, increased the urgency of dealing with this and the need to plan and start to take concrete steps,” Holloway said.
The new projections echo 2009 estimates from the climate change panel, but the timeframe for some upper-end possibilities has moved up from the 2080s to mid-century.
“The overall numbers are similar, but we have more compelling evidence now that (a more severe scenario from 2009) is looking like a more realistic possibility now,” due to improved computer models and more evidence that some ice sheets are melting, said Radley Horton, a climate scientist with Columbia University’s Earth Institute and a researcher with the city climate panel.
Scientists have reached a consensus on global warming but still debate how severe the effects will be.”
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How about zero?
New York temperatures reflect the change in population since 1870 (from less than 1 million to 8.2 million in the five boroughs) but have shown little change for 16 years like the rest of the world. The greatest warming took place during the time the population grew fastest from the 1880s to 1930s. Temperatures and population in recent years have been just like the 1950s.
And Sandy was only a CAT 1 storm. There were 8 storms that made landfall in the northeast from 1938 to 1960, many CAT3. Landfalls of hurricanes along the east coast are favored when the Atlantic is warm (+AMO) and the Pacific cold (-PDO), which is the current state.
If we create an index of the two ocean oscillations (+AMO,-PDO) and call it the Ocean Cycle Landfall Index (OCLI), we see good agreement.
A similar state existed in the early and late 1800s. Landfalling storms on New York CIty occurred in 1815, 1821 and 1893. the 1821 was the worst storm.
Could we see a storm worse than Sandy before the Atlantic cools in 5 to 10 years? YES! And with enhanced blocking in an era of low solar activity, a hit further west on the coast closer to NYC is enhanced just as we saw with Sandy.
Will the Sea level go up a foot by 2020? Doubtful. Recall Hansen in 1988 predicted sea levels would inundate the West Side Highway and be lapping at the Goddard Institute (an important component of the mayor’s scientific advisory panel) Building in 20 years (2008). Sea level has risen 1 inch since 1988. Oh, well.
The Battery , NY Station ID: 8518750
Station Information
Latitude: 40° 42.0′ N Mean Range: 4.53 ft.
Longitude: 74° 0.8′ W Diurnal Range: 5.06 ft.
Established: May 24 1920
NOAA Chart #: 12335
Time Meridian: 75 W
Mean Sea Level Difference:
for 8518750 The Battery, NY
1983-2001 1960-1978 Difference:
5.86 ft.-5.65 ft. = 0.21 ft.
Based on current NOAA data, it will take over 100 years to gain a foot of sea level rise.
See what our friend and associate Anthony Watts found about the sea level story.
And, it really is easy to get freaked out if you don’t pay attention to anything but hype.