Benjamin Santer, a long-time climate scientist who has worked at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for nearly 30 years, has begun briefing federal judges on climate attribution science to help them understand how experts can trace greenhouse gases from their source and determine how they exacerbate adverse events.
Such identification of potential liability is crucial as state and local governments and other parties pursue various nuisance cases against large oil companies over their contributions to climate change.
Santer participated in a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) workshop in February that involved a handful of scientists and federal judges, “and the purpose was to address how attribution science would be best used in a court of law.
See ‘A history of Dr. Ben Santer and his IPCC “trick” by Dr, Timothy Ball here.
Santer was appointed the convening Lead-author of Chapter 8 of the 1995 IPCC Report titled “Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes.” In that position, Santer created the first clear example of the IPCC manipulation of science for a political agenda. He used his position to establish the headline that humans were a factor in global warming by altering the meaning of what was agreed by the committee as a whole at the draft meeting in Madrid.
Agreed comments
1. “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in Greenhouse gases.”
2. “While some of the pattern-base discussed here have claimed detection of a significant climate change, no study to date has positively attributed all or part of climate change observed to man-made causes.”
3. “Any claims of positive detection and attribution of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced.”
4. “While none of these studies has specifically considered the attribution issue, they often draw some attribution conclusions, for which there is little justification.”
Santer’s replacements
1. “There is evidence of an emerging pattern of climate response to forcing by greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol… from the geographical, seasonal and vertical patterns of temperature change… These results point toward a human influence on global climate.”
2. “The body of statistical evidence in chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points to a discernible human influence on the global climate.”
As Avery and Singer noted in 2006,
“Santer single-handedly reversed the ‘climate science’ of the whole IPCC report and with it the global warming political process! The ‘discernible human influence’ supposedly revealed by the IPCC has been cited thousands of times since in media around the world and has been the ‘stopper’ in millions of debates among nonscientists.”
See how the report cherry picked the period that temperatures were displayed to provide an illusion of warming when the data really showed cooling.
See also ‘Prejudiced Authors, Prejudiced Findings’ by John McLean here
See the UK experience that Santer and his partners in crime in the media and universities and IPCC won’t tell you about Wind Power Economics - Rhetoric and Reality by Gordon Hughes, Professor of Economics with the School of Economics, University of Edinburgh at the Renewable Energy Foundation in a webinar.
See how data shows the GHS models are failing with most of the warming natural and any human influence UHI related.
Comparisons with ocean observed temperatures show the model bias is significant.
Chip Ford’s CLT Commentary
To everyone’s surprise and to the delight of many, yesterday Gov. Baker dropped his obsession with his multi-state Transportation & Climate Initiative (TCI) vanity project. We who have been vehemently opposing it for over two years couldn’t help but high-five each other long-distance and celebrate an unexpected early victory.
We’d just submitted to town clerks around the state all the signatures sheets our volunteers had collected since September for a ballot question to block TCI by the deadline on Wednesday, only the day before. That was the day after the governor of Connecticut, Ned Lamont, dropped his support for TCI. Gov. Baker followed the day after our delivery.
Whether or not the petition had any influence on their decisions, we’re still looking to go ahead with the ballot question if we’ve qualified with enough signatures to move forward. Just because a politician says something today doesn’t mean he’ll say the same thing tomorrow. And there’s no telling what a new governor and administration will do.
From the beginning of the early opposition to TCI over two years ago, Paul Craney’s strategy and that of Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance was to invite and recruit other aligned opposition groups (such as CLT) and public policy think tanks from the effected 14 states to coordinate and work together, build our own “multi-state” opposition coalition to take on Gov. Baker’s “multi-state compact.” The goal was to delay and prevent reaching the critical mass of states that Gov. Baker deemed necessary for TCI to succeed. Though the governor’s goal line shifted as more states rejected TCI, in the end there was only Massachusetts and tiny Rhode Island left standing, alone. Gov. Charlie Baker finally pulled the plug on the Bay State’s lonely participation in “Baker’s Boondoggle” yesterday.
Our opposition coalition ally in Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity, issued a news release today:
Providence, RI - On Thursday, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker followed the surrender to reality by Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont earlier this week by publicly divorcing themselves from the Transportation & Climate Initiative (TCI) gas tax. The rejection of TCI by the powerful two New England Governors leaves Rhode Island as the only state among the original 14 states that is still considering imposing a crushing fuel tax on motorists.
Despite the rejection by Baker, a founding member and primary driver of this plan to systematically restrict the supply of gasoline, Ocean State Governor Dan McKee and Speaker of the House Joseph Shekarchi are still on record as supporting the TCI gasoline cap-and-trade scheme.
“It’s time for the Governor and Speaker to throw in the towel and admit defeat. In no reality-based scenario could any politician support a unilateral major gas tax hike in the coming election year, especially given the historically high gas prices that we are already seeing due to misguided energy policies advanced by climate alarmists,” suggested Mike Stenhouse, CEO for the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity. “The defeat of TCI is a tremendous victory for the 14-state #NoTCItax coalition we are part of, which has been fighting against this job-killing initiative for many years.”
Again thank you to all those who collected signatures to hopefully put stopping TCI on the 2022 ballot. If its threat alone didn’t change minds of its former backers, it still might provide a backstop if the situation changes.
The Beacon Hill Institute had analyzed the TCI here:
THE NORTHEAST PETRI-DISH - MASSACHUSETTS CASE STUDY
Massachusetts lawmakers have been aggressive in enacting policies they believe to combat climate change. Policymakers passed the Global Warming Solutions Act and joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative intending to reduce the state’s GHG emissions. As a result you can see Massachusetts ranks all the other lower 48 states in the cost of electricity according to the EIA (176.6% of the average of the lower 48 states). Right up there with Massachusetts are all the other northeast RGGI states and not surprisingly California. Connecticut is #1 now with 187.6%.
For Massachusetts this is before the introduction of the Transportation Climate Initiative or TCI, the next big over the cliff proposed effort to kill fossil fuels
The Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy Research produced a very detailed report Transportation Climate Initiative: Its Economic Impacts on Massachusetts
They write “The Transportation and Climate Initiative of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States (TCI) describes itself as “a regional collaboration of 12 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states and the District of Columbia that seeks to improve transportation, develop the clean energy economy and reduce carbon emissions from the transportation sector.” Massachusetts is a participating state.
The founding document for the TCI is a “Declaration of Intent,” issued in 2010 and signed by transportation and environmental officials in 11 states. The declaration states that the purpose of the TCI is “to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, minimize our transportation system’s reliance on high-carbon fuels, promote sustainable growth, address the challenges of vehicle-miles traveled and help build the green energy economy.”
The Initiative is “facilitated” by the Georgetown Climate Center, which worked closely with the Obama administration in its to design and implement climate change (fossil fuel elimination) policies.
BHI examined three scenarios - plans for 20%, 22% and 25% reductions of CO2 emissions from gasoline and diesel vehicles.
The midpoint TCI analysis for the period 2022-2026 for a 22% reduction of gasoline and diesel emissions would lead to a total loss of 36,533 jobs with increased energy cost per household of $3,037 in Massachusetts.
The Green New Deal presented the ideal radical left desires to change life as we know it. It is more likely change will continue to be incremental. And these studies show, the actions are not supported by real data and honest science, and the pain will be significant.
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“If you don’t know where you are going, you might end up somewhere else.” Yogi Berra
UPDATE: Before you read and trust any of the government, AMS, research center or environmental advocacy organization “state of the climate” nonsense see one that can be trusted by Professor Ole Humulm here.
See Buddy Menton’s Biden’s Presidency: The Dopes Have Taken Full Control.
Also Dr. Charles Battig in American Thinker on A Winning Trifecta for Climate Science and rationality here.
Also Bjorn Lomborg’s well resourced book False Alarm (How Climate Change Panic Cost Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.
We should note a 1 degree F change since 1979 is in the noise compared to a normal 30F range in an average day, seasonal variations of 50F from coldest to warmest month, and extremes in temperatures that range from coldest to warmest ever for all states except Hawaii that exceeds 100F with 31 states over 150F (as high as 187F in Montana).
See how as CO2 has increased the number of 90F days has declined.
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Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
Government agencies, energy companies, auto and major corporations are increasing their support of decarbonization programs and policies (including taxes, mandated reduction of our use of fossil fuels, pushing not ready for prime time alternatives). This has proved to be a disaster where this unwise radical agenda has been imposed.
CO2 - NOT A POLLUTANT BUT THE GAS OF LIFE
CO2 is a beneficial trace gas (0.04% of our atmosphere). With every breath we emit out 100 times more CO2 than we breathe in so it is not harmful. The increase in CO2 has caused a significant greening of the earth, with increased crop yields feeding more people at lower cost.
Dr. Craig Idso of CO2 Science noted recently “Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and it is most certainly not causing dangerous global warming. Rather, its increase in the atmosphere is invigorating the biosphere, producing a multitude of benefits for humanity and the natural world, notwithstanding the prognostications of the uninformed.”
Dr. Will Happer, Princeton Physicist talks about the great benefits of CO2 to the biosphere and to all of humanity.says we are coming out of a CO2 drought and humanity would benefit from CO2 being 2 to 3 times higher.
Dr Patrick Moore, ecologist and co-founder of Greenpeace says we are coming out of a CO2 drought and humanity would benefit from CO2 being 2 to 3 times higher.
It’s not the first time we were told we faced an existential threat due to ‘climate change’. In 1970, Stanford’s Paul Ehrlich warned that because of population growth, climate stress (then cold) and dwindling energy that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off” which was too late to stop. Even as each subsequent dire forecast failed (see how the alarmist/media record is perfect (100% wrong) in the 50 major claims made since 1950 here), the alarms continued, each pushing the date forward - 2000, 2020, and now 2030. Last summer, at Glacier National Park signs “Warning: glaciers will be gone by 2020” were quietly removed as ice and snow has increased.
The greenhouse climate models used to predict the future have all failed miserably.
Enlarged
That is because they have used failed assumptions and models tuned to manipulated (fraudulent) data. Dr. Mototaka here exposes that:"The supposed measuring of global average temperatures from 1890 has been based on thermometer readouts barely covering 5 per cent of the globe until the satellite era began 40-50 years ago. We do not know how global climate has changed in the past century, all we know is some limited regional climate changes, such as in Europe, North America and parts of Asia.”
See detailed peer reviewed studies on this here.
I have spent 50 years focusing on attribution science - starting with my Master’s thesis on what caused bomb east coast snowstorms in winter. I have spent the decades doing correlations of weather patterns and extremes with natural factors. The last few years, I worked with a team of scientific experts evaluated today today’s 12 most commonly reported claims and found them all either unfounded and explainable by natural factors - see here.
Tony Heller has a kick butt video that exposed the fraud using a unique data tool that exposed their tricks and the real story.
Heat records have declined since the 1930s, which holds 22 of the 50 state hottest ever temperature records. The 2010’s was the second quietest decade for landfalling hurricanes and major hurricanes since 1850. It was the quietest decade for tornadoes since tracking began in the 1950s. Sea level rises have slowed to 4 inches/century globally. Arctic ice has tracked with the 60-year ocean cycles and is similar to where it was in the 1920s to 1950s. NOAA could find no evidence of increased frequency of floods and droughts (last spring had the smallest % of US in drought on record).
Snow which the university scientists here predicted would disappear, actually has set new records (fall and winter) for the hemisphere and North America, and both Boston and NYC have had more snow in the 10 years ending 2018 than any other 10 year period back to the late 1800s.
Wildfires cause havoc but were far more prevalent before the forest management, fire suppression and grazing of the 1900s. They are problems now because more have left the failing cities to move out of state or to the beauty of the foothills. The power lines to service them can spark new fires when the cold air rushes through the mountain passes this time of years downing trees onto the power lines.
In the U.S., with low cost energy, low taxes and elimination of stifling regulations, we had the lowest unemployment for the nation in decades or history and for the first time in a long time significant wage increases! Here in NH, we had the lowest unemployment in the nation. The U.S. is energy independent, a long time thought unachievable goal. Our air and water is cleanest in our lifetimes well below the tough standards we put in place decades ago.
The real existential threat comes would come from radical environmentalism and their prescribed remedies. The climate scare is politically driven, all about big government and control over every aspect of our lives. AOC’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti in May admitted that the Green New Deal was not conceived as an effort to deal with climate change, but instead a “how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing” - nothing more than a thinly veiled socialist takeover of the U.S. economy. He was echoing what the climate change head of the UN climate chief and the UN IPCC Lead Author said - that is was our best chance to change the economic system (to centralized control) and redistribute wealth (socialism).
The economy in every country that has moved down an extreme green path have seen skyrocketing energy costs - some 3 times our levels.
Renewables are unreliable as the wind doesn’t always blow nor the sun shine. And don’t believe the claims millions of green jobs would result. In Spain, every green job created cost Spain $774,000 in subsidies and resulted in a loss of 2.2 real jobs. Only 1 in 10 green jobs were permanent. Industry left and in Spain unemployment rose to 27.5%.
Many households in the countries that have gone green are said to be in “energy poverty” (25% UK, 15% Germany). The elderly are said in winter to be forced to “choose between heating and eating”. Extreme cold already kills 20 times more than heat according to a study of 74 million deaths in 13 countries.
Politicians in the northeast states are bragging that they stopped the natural gas pipeline, shut down nuclear and coal plants and blocked the northern Pass which would have delivered low cost hydropower from Canada. In Concord, they are now scurrying to try and explain why electricity prices are 50 to 60% higher than the national average here and are speculating they have not moved fast enough with wind and solar. Several states have even established zero carbon emissions. This will lead to soaring energy prices and life-threatening blackouts. For a family of 4 in a modest house with 3 cars, the energy costs could increase well over $10,000/year
(based on a sample of households and their energy costs multiplied by 3 as has occurred in countries with a onerous green agenda). And by the way like in Europe where this plan was enacted or planned, many will lose their jobs. They are being told what (if) they can drive and what they can eat. Prosperity always delivers a better life AND environment than poverty.
REALITY CHECKS LARGELY GETTING NO MEDIA ATTENTION
There are a few recent important reports that show what the impact of these plans are likely to be. The radical environmentalists and globalists believe that people are stupid and can be counted on to believe what government leaders, progressive think tanks and the well paid scientific cabal say. There are a few recent reports that show what the real impact of some of these plans now on the drawing board are likely to be and they are very scary.
U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE’S GLOBAL ENERGY INSTITUTE’S ENERGY ACCOUNTABILITY SERIES 2020
Candidates for elected office have pledged to ban the very technology that has enabled the boom (and the never thought possible energy independence) - fracking. This raises an important question: what would happen to American jobs and the economy if fracturing was banned? In this report, the Chamber’s Global Energy Institute has undertaken the modeling and analysis to answer that question.
Simply put, a ban on fracking in the United States would be catastrophic for our economy.
Our analysis shows that if such a ban were imposed in 2021, by 2025 it would eliminate 19 million jobs and reduce U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by $7.1 trillion. Job losses in major energy producing states would be immediate and severe; in Texas alone, more than three million jobs would be lost. Tax revenue at the local, state, and federal levels would decline by nearly a combined $1.9 trillion, as the ban cuts off a critical source of funding for schools, first responders, infrastructure, and other critical public services.
Energy prices would also skyrocket under a fracking ban. Natural gas prices would leap by 324 percent, causing household energy bills to more than quadruple. By 2025, motorists would pay twice as much at the pump ($5/gallon +)
THE NORTHEAST PETRI-DISH - MASSACHUSETTS CASE STUDY
Massachusetts lawmakers have been aggressive in enacting policies they believe to combat climate change. Policymakers passed the Global Warming Solutions Act and joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative intending to reduce the state’s GHG emissions. As a result you can see Massachusetts ranks all the other lower 48 states in the cost of electricity according to the EIA (176.6% of the average of the lower 48 states). Right up there with Massachusetts are all the other northeast RGGI states and not surprisingly California. Connecticut is #1 now with 187.6%.
For Massachusetts this is before the introduction of the Transportation Climate Initiative or TCI, the next big over the cliff proposed effort to kill fossil fuels
The Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy Research produced a very detailed report Transportation Climate Initiative: Its Economic Impacts on Massachusetts
They write “The Transportation and Climate Initiative of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States (TCI) describes itself as “a regional collaboration of 12 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states and the District of Columbia that seeks to improve transportation, develop the clean energy economy and reduce carbon emissions from the transportation sector.” Massachusetts is a participating state.
The founding document for the TCI is a “Declaration of Intent,” issued in 2010 and signed by transportation and environmental officials in 11 states. The declaration states that the purpose of the TCI is “to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, minimize our transportation system’s reliance on high-carbon fuels, promote sustainable growth, address the challenges of vehicle-miles traveled and help build the green energy economy.”
The Initiative is “facilitated” by the Georgetown Climate Center, which worked closely with the Obama administration in its to design and implement climate change (fossil fuel elimination) policies.
BHI examined three scenarios - plans for 20%, 22% and 25% reductions of CO2 emissions from gasoline and diesel vehicles.
The midpoint TCI analysis for the period 2022-2026 for a 22% reduction of gasoline and diesel emissions would lead to a total loss of 36,533 jobs with increased energy cost per household of $3,037 in Massachusetts.
The Green New Deal presented the ideal radical left desires to change life as we know it. It is more likely change will continue to be incremental. And these studies show, the actions are not supported by real data and honest science, and the pain will be significant.
“If you don’t know where you are going, you might end up somewhere else.” Yogi Berra
Right now COVID-19 has taken up all the country’s (world’s) attention and coverage. After the country goes back to work and before the election we need to work hard to increase awareness of the fraud behind the scare and the extreme damage that could result from the ideologically driven policies. It is an uphill battle for those of us fighting it and one with little or no support.