by JAMES DELINGPOLE 24 Nov 2017415
In order to drain the swamp, President Trump must first destroy the Green Blob.
This is the only logical conclusion to be drawn from a series of data leaks and Freedom of Information (FOI) revelations exposing the relationship between left wing campaigners and the great climate change scam.
Global warming, it becomes clear, is primarily a left-wing political issue, not a scientific one. Green is the new red.
These leaks show how rich liberal backers - left-wing institutions like the Rockefeller Foundation, eco hedge-fund billionaires like Tom Steyer, and the various socialistic Geek Emperors of Silicon Valley - are funneling millions of dollars into sock-puppet environmental organizations both to undermine Trump’s economic agenda and to finance his political opponents both in the Democratic Party and the GOP.
U.S. Climate Alliance
This poses as “a bi-partisan coalition of states THAT is committed to the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement.” Or so the website says. But anyone can set up a website.
The truth, as the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has discovered through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)-requested email correspondence, is that U.S. Climate Alliance is just a front. Its real purpose is to enable the richly funded green lobby to buy up Democrat governors - and one, token, squishy Republican governor: Gov. Charlie Baker (MA) - by effectively bribing them with free office, research and staffing facilities which they can run off books.
There is nothing actually illegal in any of this. But to appreciate how ethically dubious it is, just consider how the liberal media would respond if the roles were reversed and it were conservative politicians being provided with all these off-books services by, say, the fossil fuel industry.
Chris Horner, who initiated the FOIA for the CEI, put it like this in the Washington Times:
Mr. Horner asked how the media would react if, for example, the Koch brothers provide staffing on behalf of a Republican governor.
“This would unleash a tsunami of Pulitzers and hysteria if the political parties or priorities were changed,” said Mr. Horner. “Here is a real test for ‘good government’ activists - is this all right if the ‘right’ politicians and donors pushing the approved agenda outsource government?”
What the emails show is the intimate relationship between the liberal donors, green sock puppet organizations and Democrat politics.
Energy in Depth Climate reports here on some of the details:
Climate activist groups, most notably Climate Nexus - a sponsored project of the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors -act as the press arm for these governors’ offices at no charge. They also operate as a “shadow staff” to support climate change communications efforts, and supplied research later promoted by these state governors as their own. This includes at least one for-profit contractor, raising the question who its actual paying client is.
The three main Democrat governors fronting the U.S. Climate Alliance are Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, California Gov. Jerry Brown and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
But the people actually running it are green lobbyists and activists, doing the bidding of their wealthy anonymous donors in liberal strongholds like Silicon Valley, as well as the usual liberal suspects such as the Rockefeller and Hewlett Foundations. One prominent figure is Jeff Nesbit, Executive Director of a green organization called Climate Nexus. In the emails he is revealed in close discussion with Sam Ricketts, director of Jay Inslee’s Washington DC office.
According to the Washington Times:
“How come governors aren’t even listed on the website?” Mr. Ricketts asked in a June 5 email.
Mr. Nesbit replied: “They will be! I promise. It’s controlled by WWF [apparently referring to the World Wildlife Fund]. They’re melting down over there. I’ll make sure the 9 governors are listed ASAP.”
Mr. Nesbit also wore the hat of press secretary, saying he needed to send a joint statement from Mr. Inslee, Mr. Brown and Mr. Cuomo to The New York Times.
“Do you have it? Is it approved? Is Inslee available to talk to the NYT and others today before Trump does his Rose Garden ceremony at the WH?” Mr. Nesbit asked in the June 1 email.
According to Mr. Nesbit, Climate Nexus, a sponsored project of the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, provided its services free of charge and without a contract.
What becomes clear from the emails is the extent of sock puppetry - which the Green Blob uses to give the impression of representing many disparate groups, when in fact they are all just a small group of the same people wearing different hats. There is no shortage of money to support this scam.
According to the Washington Times:
Even before Mr. Trump announced his intention in June to exit the 2015 Paris climate accord, state employees in California, New York and Washington had discussed enlisting the help of outside advocacy groups.
Aimee Barnes, senior adviser to Mr. Brown, proposed reaching out to the Georgetown Climate Center, Under2 Coalition and others, saying that “it can’t always be us staff running around trying to corral each other for sign on.”
“We are fortunate that at the moment there are many resources keen to be at our disposal to support us further, but in order to make the best use of them, we need to tell them what we need,” Ms. Barnes said in a May 5 email.
Mr. Ricketts responded in a May 9 email by noting, “There’s of course a plethora of advocate and funder interest,” adding, “We can approach the different groups (G-town, Rhodium, UNF, whomever) about which of them will play a roll.”
A week later, Georgetown Climate Center Deputy Director Kathryn Zyla provided an update in an email sent to state staffers and climate change advocates.
“We also wanted to let you know that we are working with the Georgetown IT department to develop a platform that can assist this group with communications and shared resources, and will keep you posted. (Please let us know if you have any thoughts on key features for that platform.),” Ms. Zyla said in a May 16 email.
GCC spokesman Chris Coil said the group had no contract with the states. “We support state engagement on climate change (as we have done on a bipartisan basis for many years) free of charge,” he said.
Inslee senior adviser Chris Davis put in a plug for Ann McCabe and her team at the Climate Registry, calling them in a June 5 email, “Great partners who’ve covered our costs for COPs and provided extraordinary on site services and support.”
Inevitably, there is a Clinton connection to all this skullduggery:
In another instance, the Alliance released a report about economic output and greenhouse gas emissions. Although branded as their own research, it turns out that the report relied almost exclusively on data compiled by the Rhodium Group - an organization headed by a former Hillary Clinton energy and climate advisor, Trevor Houser.
Indeed, given that the central focus of the emails obtained by CEI is tapping the “plethora of advocate and funder interest” in providing support functions which were beyond the ability of the governors’ offices, it seems far more likely this pricey gift was provided to the governors by the for-profit Rhodium Group. What isn’t yet clear is which clients paid for this glossy product of a high-priced consultancy.
It’s unsurprising that the Rockefellers have found a way to exert their influence inside state governors’ offices. Climate Nexus has also been heavily involved in promoting the #ExxonKnew campaign for the Rockefellers. When the RICO 20 - a group of professors who petitioned the Obama administration to bring racketeering charges against those who disagreed with the president’s climate agenda - faced enormous backlash for their efforts to silence dissent, Climate Nexus rushed in to clean up the mess. You see, the RICO 20 was suggesting that the government prosecute individual climate skeptics, which got in the way of the Rockefellers’ plans to have the government go after energy companies.
Climate Nexus also receives funding from the Energy Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, two other groups heavily involved in backing the #ExxonKnew campaign.
The Great Republican Carbon Tax Myth
Earlier this year I reported here and here for Breitbart News on the bizarre spectacle of various Republican elder statesmen - including Reagan-era Secretary of State George Shultz -campaigning to “combat climate change” by agitating for a carbon tax. Naturally the New York Times got very excited at the idea that conservatives were starting to see the light.
The truth: there is next to zero support, anywhere within the GOP, for something as stupid and frankly socialistic as a carbon tax.
- During the 2016 Presidential campaign, every major Republican candidate with the exception of Lindsay Graham opposed a carbon tax May 2016, prospective GOP nominee Donald
- Trump publicly tweeted his opposition to a carbon tax in response to a news story
- June 2016, House Republicans, led by Rep. Steve Scalise, passed a resolution opposing a carbon tax
- July of 2016, the RNC adopted changes to the Republican platform opposing a carbon tax
- 2016, state GOP parties began adopting resolutions in advance of the Cleveland Convention opposing a carbon tax
- August 2016, candidate Donald Trump responded in writing to a candidate questionnaire opposing both a carbon tax and the concept of social cost of carbon
So why does this zombie concept keep clawing its way out of the grave?
Because, yet again, we’re being played by the usual suspects: a handful of extremely well-funded lobbyists using their money and influence to give the impression of widespread, cross-party demand for what is in fact only the preoccupation of such paid-up Green Blob members as Elon Musk. They planned this far in advance.
This is clear from two leaked campaign documents dating back to 2015.
One is from the National Wildlife Federation. Its strategy explicitly states that its plan is to co-opt conservatives into its carbon tax scheme:
The Wind Energy Foundation, National Wildlife Federation (NWF), EDP Renewables North America (EDPR), Renewable Energy Systems Americas Inc. (RES), Pattern Energy, and Tesla Motors are working in a cross-sector coalition to enact a federal price on carbon pollution.
We believe that a carbon tax or similar price on carbon pollution is achievable in Congress within five years as part of a grand political bargain on tax and fiscal policy. The key to this success will be the effective deployment of business and conservation leaders and their networks, who will create a non-threatening, non-ideological space for conservative decision makers to engage on climate policy. We anticipate that this campaign will be complemented with efforts in the political sphere to hold accountable those who are unresponsive to our network members or to defend those who are responsive.
Note the presence of Tesla on this list: Mr President - Elon Musk is not your friend!
The other is another 2015 strategy document, floated among D.C. think tanks, created with the aim to “Engage Congress on Carbon Pricing.”
Again, the tactic used to achieve this was to reposition a carbon tax as an essentially free-market, pro-business solution in order to attract conservative support.
“Carbon Funded Tax Cuts” will stimulate GDP growth, create jobs, make U.S. companies more competitive in the global market place, make the tax system fairer, and result in dramatic climate change benefits.
Did you see what they just did there? These people are sneaky.
And the money for these campaigns - coordinated by think tanks and lobby groups like RStreet and RepublicEn - is in turn funneled via organizations like the Energy Foundation.
Here is the Energy Foundation giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to RStreet.
Here it is donating $200,000 to another lobby group Niskanen.
There’s nothing illegal about this. Just something very dishonest and deliberately misleading.
It’s called Astroturfing.
The Green Blob wants you to believe that, right now, there are a heap of disparate groups of sincere campaigners all of which just happen to share the same worthy and noble mission to combat climate change.
Except they’re really not. They’re just a bunch of liberal sock puppets, bankrolled by plutocrats on a mission to allay their rich-guilt by splashing money on “saving the planet” and green industry rent-seekers who want to rig the market in favor of their renewable energy interests.
This is not about saving the planet. This is about greed- and left-wing politics.
If President Trump is to drain the swamp he must destroy the climate industrial complex.
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Trump Vindicated: Now Even the UN Confirms That the Paris Climate Accord Was a Complete Waste
James Delingpole
The United Nations has officially confirmed what many of us, including President Trump, knew already: the Paris climate accord was a complete waste of space.
As UN Environment admits in its latest Emissions Shortfall report, even when you add up all the CO2 reduction pledges made by all the signatory nations at Paris, it still comes to only a third of what is supposedly necessary to stop the world warming by more than 2 degrees C by the end of this century.
According to UN Environment’s head Eric Solheim, the world is heading for disaster:
“One year after the Paris Agreement entered into force, we still find ourselves in a situation where we are not doing nearly enough to save hundreds of millions of people from a miserable future. Governments, the private sector and civil society must bridge this catastrophic climate gap.”
Another way of looking at it, though, is that President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris accord is now fully vindicated. Had the Agreement been ratified, the U.S. would have handed countries like China and India a huge competitive advantage over the American economy. But - as even the UN now admits - it would have made no discernible difference to the alleged problem of “global warming.” So what, exactly would have been the point?
Here is a pretty graph prepared by the BBC that gives an idea of this “catastrophic” emissions reduction shortfall:
The so-called ‘Paris gap’ is just a figment of the UN’s/BBC’s imagination. It gives the false impression that all those carbon reduction promises (known as INDCs: Intended Nationally Determined Contributions) made by the various signatory nations in Paris are going to make a difference.
In fact, as Skeptical Environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg calculated at the time, they dont amount to a hill of beans.
If - extremely unlikely though it is - the Paris signatories stick to their INDCs then it may reduce the world’s temperatures by the end of the century by 0.170 degrees C.
That, remember, is the optimistic scenario.
The pessimistic scenario is that will avert a mere 0.048 degrees C of warming.
Or not: let’s not forget that the margins of error in these calculations are significantly larger than these fractions of one degree.
A little understood point of the UN Paris agreement is that it left countries like India and China to increase their CO2 emissions even as the U.S. was forced to rein in its own emissions by adopting more expensive, inefficient, ‘bat-chomping, bird-slicing clean’ energy. That’s why India and China signed: they’re not stupid. It would have given them an enormous competitive advantage over the U.S.
This graph shows how toothless the Paris agreement was:
See: despite all the airy good intentions expressed in Paris, the countries of the world have no desire to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions just to appease a Green Goddess no serious person genuinely believes in.
But then, saving the planet was never the point of Paris. Rather it was, as Rupert Darwall describes in his excellent new book Green Tyranny, a scheme designed permanently to weaken the U.S. by forcing it to operate on the same constricting terms that the environmental left has imposed on Europe. Liberty-loving, free (-ish) market, democrat America is anathema to the eco-fascists and their many sympathizers within the European Union.
That’s why, had Hillary been elected and Obama’s dirty plan to sign up to Paris without Senate approval been fulfilled, it would have been game over for America’s status as the Land of the Free.
Enviro-activist billionaire Tom Steyer described Trump’s decision to pull out of Paris as “a traitorous act of war against the American people.”
Funny way of describing a decision which: lowered energy bills; created real jobs (as opposed to subsidized Potemkin jobs like the ones in the wind and solar industries); reduced the cost of living; boosted economic growth; freed Americans from the shackles of the kind of bureaucratic, technocratic, communitarian tyranny which now applies across the EU.
As Darwall notes:
The United States is now the world’s hydrocarbon superpower. Thanks to fracking it has surpassed Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s top energy producer. This abundance of hydrocarbon energy made the United States the biggest loser from the Paris Agreement. Quitting Paris turns the United States into the biggest winner from Paris. Access to cheap energy gives American businesses and workers a colossal competitive advantage in world markets as other nations increasingly burden themselves with high-cost, unreliable wind and solar energy.
We’ll come back to this. It’s important. Unless you’ve understood that global warming is - and always was - just a pretext for an economic takeover by the globalist left, you really haven’t understood the problem.
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Icecap Note: One of the 21 rebuttals to commonly heard claims is that “Renewables are becoming much more economically competitive, so the time has come to move away from fossil fuels”
Facts:
Not by a long shot. They are marginally competitive only because of huge subsidies and mandates - and the electricity they provide is still more expensive than coal, gas or nuclear power...and importantly, unpredictable and unreliable. It is often least available when it is most needed: on the coldest and hottest days of the year.
Fossil fuels provide the abundant, reliable, affordable energy that powers civilization...and makes our industries, livelihoods, healthcare, nutrition, living standards, leisure time and life spans possible.
Over 80% of all US and global energy still comes from fossil fuels. Most of the ‘renewable energy’ employed worldwide is wood, grass and animal dung - the fuels of poverty, misery, disease and early death. Another large portion is hydroelectric. Barely 1% is wind, solar and bio-gasoline.
There is no valid reason to subsidize and mandate renewable energy. The fracking revolution in the US has produced an abundance of oil and gas and has slain fears of “peak oil.” Nor is there any evidence that installation of renewables has the slightest effect on global temperatures. The only demonstrated effect of adoption of renewable energy is to raise energy prices to consumers and businesses.
According to the International Energy Agency, 25 years from now, total global energy demand will be 25% greater than it is today...and 75% of that world energy will still be fossil fuels.
Claims of dangerous manmade climate change is being used to drive anti-fossil fuel, pro-renewable energy agendas that cause skyrocketing energy prices in developed nations, which in turn bring lost jobs and lower living standards. Energy restrictions prevent people in poor countries from improving their living standards.
The more the move to renewable, the greater the cost to ratepayers and the more unreliable the power-supply because the wind does not always blow or sun shine.
Wind energy is also raising the electricity rates of US residents. According to data from the US Energy Information Administration, the US average retail electricity price increased only 4.8 percent from 2008 to 2016. But electricity price increases in nine of the twelve top wind states, California, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oregon, and Washington ranged from 13 percent to 37 percent over the eight-year period. Wind systems are typically located far from cities and towns, requiring construction of new electricity transmission facilities, boosting the retail price of electricity.
Sadly, imposed energy restrictions prevent people in poor countries from improving their living standards. Climate change and renewable energy claims are being used by politicians, activists and crony corporate interests who want to dictate energy use, economic growth and living standards… and get richer and richer in the process. Someday someone will invent real, working alternatives to fossil fuels. But that day has not come.
NRDC REPORT TO SHOW HUGE NUMBER OF AMERICANS ARE SUFFERING THROUGH TOLL OF EXTREME HEAT DAYS
Experts to Outline Major Toll on Health; Worst-Off States Include AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, HI, KS, MA, MT, NV, NH, NC, OR, RI, TN, UT, WA & WY
WASHINGTON, D.C. NEWS ADVISORY - Yes, it is getting hotter out there. A new analysis to be released by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Tuesday (October 24th) will show that a large share of Americans are now suffering due to more dangerous high heat days. NRDC’s interactive map analysis will show a greater-than-expected number of extremely hot summer days today than there were just a few decades ago, which can intensify a range of serious public health risks.
Some of the hardest-hit states include (in alphabetical order): Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Washington State and Wyoming. The report will detail the percentage of each state’s population which lives in areas experiencing more than nine additional extreme days of heat a year.
NRDC will release the new report during a telephone-based news conference on Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 2 p.m. ET/1 p.m. CT/11 a.m. PT.
Speakers will include:
* Dr. Kim Knowlton, senior scientist and deputy director, Science Center, Natural Resources Defense Council;
* Dr. Linda Rudolph, MPH, director, Center for Climate Change and Health, Public Health Institute; and
* Dr. Samantha Ahdoot, assistant professor of Pediatrics at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and pediatrician with Pediatric Associates of Alexandria, Virginia.
TO PARTICIPATE: Reporters can join this live, phone-based news conference (with full, two-way Q&A) at 2 p.m. ET/1 p.m. CT/11 a.m. PT on Tuesday, October 24, 2017, by dialing 1 (877) 418-4267. Ask for the “NRDC Extreme Heat Report” news event.
MEDIA CONTACTS: Max Karlin, (703) 276-3255 or mkarlin@hastingsgroup.com.
Please feel free to call and challenge. To help you, here are the true facts.
CLAIM: HEAT WAVES ARE INCREASING
UPDATE: See Tony Heller’s analysis here.
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There has been no increase in heat waves in the United States or elsewhere in the world, but you would never know it if you pay attention to environmental advocacy groups like NRDC and the full-time media which hypes every little hot spell for ratings and to support their ideological agenda.
Most all-time record highs here in the U.S. happened many years ago, long before man-kind was using much fossil fuel. The Environmental Protection Agency Heat Wave Index confirms the 1930s as the hottest decade. James Hansen while at NASA in 1999 said about the U.S. temperature record “In the U.S. the warmest decade was the 1930s and the warmest year was 1934”. Thirty-eight states set their all-time record highs before 1960. Here in the United States, the number of 100F, 95F and 90F days per year has been steadily declining since the 1930s.
Christy 2017 Enlarged
EPA Heat Wave Index (Kunkel 2016) Enlarged
Source: NOAA USHN Heller Enlarged
There has been no increase in heat waves in the United States or elsewhere in the world, but you would never know it if you pay attention to environmental advocacy groups like NRDC and the fulltime media which hypes every little hot spell for ratings and to support their ideological agenda.
Most all-time record highs here in the U.S. happened many years ago, long before man-kind was using much fossil fuel. The Environmental Protection Agency Heat Wave Index confirms the 1930s as the hottest decade. James Hansen while at NASA in 1999 said about the U.S. temperature record “In the U.S. the warmest decade was the 1930s and the warmest year was 1934”. Thirty-eight states set their all-time record highs before 1960. Here in the United States, the number of 100F, 95F and 90F days per year has been steadily declining since the 1930s.
Christy 2017 Enlarged
EPA Heat Wave Index (Kunkel 2016) Enlarged
Enlarged
Source: NOAA USHN Heller
Many major cities show cyclical patterns but with the warmth greatest in the 1930s to 1950s.
NOAA NCEI data show the average summer maximum temperatures in the Corn and Bean Belt peaked in the 1930s.
Iowa State University did a study of 90F days in the growing areas of the Midwest, comparing the three decades 1981 to 2010 to the prior three decades 1951 to 1980. They found in most areas of the heartland there was a decline, as many as 14 days.
The original USHCN annual temperature plot in 1999 showed a cyclical change in temperatures but with no warming trend. it had the 1930s as the warmest decade and 1934 the warmest year (in the words of James Hansen). The original reply was a disclaimer on the GISS site (US is just 2% of the world).
This was an Inconvenient truth when compared to global temperatures which looked like the desired hockey stick matching CO2.
The NOAA solution was to remove the UHI and make other adjustments like homogenization to play whack-a-mole with what Wigley and others referred to as the ‘bothersome warm blip’ around 1940.
Despite the lack of real heat, government agencies have made changes to the weather records in recent years to be able to declare months and years among the warmest in the record, which are not at all supported by the un-manipulated data. The government agencies who managed these changes were on a politically driven mission to further the climate change frenzy and funding.
When challenged on the declining heat records in the U.S, the old reply that the U.S. is just 2% of the world reappeared. However, perversely, all 8 continents recorded their all-time record highs before 1980. Believe it or not, when I was challenged with the US is 2% of the world w/r to warming, and I presented this global fact, i was accused of cherry picking. You can’t win an argument with zealots.
Interestingly while the media gives a great deal of coverage to even minor heat waves to support the case that man-made global warming is occurring, the media tends to ignore deadly cold waves. But in actual fact worldwide cold kills 20 times as many people as heat. This is documented in the “Excess Winter Mortality” which shows that the number of deaths in the 4 coldest winter months is much higher than the other 8 months of the year. The USA death rate in January and February is more than 1000 deaths per day greater than in it is July and August.
Clearly we don’t have a problem with increased Heat Waves because of Climate Change. We have an issue with a movement that has too much to lose to not perform in the media circus with models posing as data or corrupted data.
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Although well received and widely distributed, our recent press release and research paper hit a raw nerve with alarmists. The research sought to validate the current estimates of Global Average Surface Temperatures (GAST) using the best available relevant data. The conclusive findings were that the three GAST data sets are not a valid representation of reality. In fact, the magnitude of their historical data adjustments, which removed their cyclical temperature patterns, is totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data.
Thus, despite current claims of record setting warming, it is impossible to conclude from the NOAA, NASA and UK Hadley CRU GAST data sets that recent years have been the warmest ever.
Finally, since GAST data set validity is a necessary condition for EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding, it too is invalidated by these research findings. This means that EPA’s 2009 claim that CO2 is a pollutant has been decisively invalidated by this research.
We had shown in prior research reports here and here how even if you ignore the adjustments, the changes observed can be explained entirely by natural factors (ocean cycles, solar cycles and volcanism). If one considers the urban heat island contamination of surface date, the idea that temperatures may actually be declining since the 1930s in cyclical fashion, very much in line with record highs.
The media fact checkers, which serve often as enforcers of orthodoxy, could not meaningfully question the data or science presented but challenged the claim that it was ‘peer reviewed’ (in the sense the peer review process has been defined today by the ‘advocacy’ journals’ (really ‘pal review’
.
Our research reports were rigorously peer reviewed by top scientists. The reports follow the approach long used in industry often for their own internal use. The reports were prepared by author teams with the requisite skills at proper data collection, a deep understanding of the scientific factors involved and statistical skills to evaluate what best explains the observed changes.
To abide by the scientific method, the work must be capable of being replicated. Our highly qualified reviewers who endorsed it are capable of evaluating the work scientifically and or statistically. They approval includes a willingness, even eagerness to endorse the work. The data and the methodology is available for others to replicate.
Our approach follows the long accepted application of the scientific method in a world where science is too politicized.
PRESS RELEASE
October 17, 2017 @ 8:00 AM EDT
Electricity Consumers Fully Support a Scientists’ Letter to EPA Calling for Immediate Reopening of its GHG Endangerment Finding
Key Points:
1. This Letter from over 60 highly credentialed scientists states that: “We the undersigned are individuals who have technical skills and knowledge relevant to climate science and the GHG Endangerment Finding. We each are convinced that the 2009 GHG Endangerment Finding is fundamentally flawed and that an honest, unbiased reconsideration is in order.”
2. The letter states further that: “If such a reconsideration is granted, each of us will assist in a new Endangerment Finding assessment that is carried out in a fashion that is legally consistent with the relevant statute and case law. We see this as a very urgent matter. “
3. The Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council fully endorses the recommendations of these scientists because recent research has definitively validated that: once certain natural factor (i.e., solar, volcanic and oceanic/ENSO activity) impacts on temperature data are accounted for, there is no “natural factor adjusted” warming remaining to be attributed to rising atmospheric CO2 levels. That is, these natural factor impacts fully explain the trends in all relevant temperature data sets over the last 50 or more years. At this point, there is no statistically valid proof that past increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations have caused what have been officially reported as rising, or even record setting, global average surface temperatures (GAST.)
4. Moreover, additional all new, research findings demonstrate that adjustments by government agencies to the GAST record render that record totally inconsistent with published credible temperature data sets and useless for any policy purpose.
5. These new results conclusively invalidate the claims based on GAST data of “record warming” in recent years, and thereby also invalidate the so-called “lines of evidence” on which EPA claimed to base its 2009 CO2 Endangerment Finding.
6. If the Endangerment Finding is not vacated, whether the current administration likes it or not, it is certain that electric utility, automotive and many other industries will face ongoing EPA CO2 regulation.
7. This scientifically illiterate regulation will raise U.S. energy prices thereby reducing economic growth and jobs as well as our National Security.
8. The Electricity Consumers Council therefore, based on this new scientific evidence, must insist that the EPA grant the “very urgent” request of these scientists “that an honest, unbiased reconsideration is in order.”
October 16, 2017
The Honorable Scott Pruitt
Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20460
Dear Administrator Pruitt:
You have pending before you two science-based petitions for reconsideration of the 2009 Endangerment Finding for Greenhouse Gases, one filed by the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council, and one filed jointly by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Science and Environmental Policy Project.
We the undersigned are individuals who have technical skills and knowledge relevant to climate science and the GHG Endangerment Finding. We each are convinced that the 2009 GHG Endangerment Finding is fundamentally flawed and that an honest, unbiased reconsideration is in order.
If such a reconsideration is granted, each of us will assist in a new Endangerment Finding assessment that is carried out in a fashion that is legally consistent with the relevant statute and case law.
We see this as a very urgent matter and therefore, request that you send your response to one of the signers who is also associated with a petitioner, SEPP.
Thank you,
Kenneth Haapala, President
Science and Environmental Policy Project
P.O. Box 1126
Springfield, VA 22151
One of the Petitioners
See the Letter and the 64 signatories. Finally, we know that many more scientists would have been pleased to sign this letter if they had only known about it. Scientists may ask to have their name added by simply sending their info to THSResearch@aol.com.