Obama Pushes ‘Serious Threat’ of Global Warming Days After Fall of Ramadi; Networks Yawn
The “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC showed no interest in covering on Wednesday night the optics of President Obama touting global warming as a “serious threat,” in a speech to graduates of the Coast Guard Academy, days after the Iraqi city of Ramadi fell to ISIS. While the networks avoided this story, the Fox News Channel (FNC) program Special Report offered a full segment on the President’s remarks and their timing in relation to the continued rise of ISIS.
Also the Washington Times writes Crying wolf to the Coast Guard.
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By Lord Christopher Monckton on WUWT.
Mr. Obama’s remarks at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s Commencement May 20 demonstrate the extent to which his advisors are keeping him divorced from the facts.
During his comments, Obama discussed the impact of climate change on national security.
The bulk of his speech was devoted to what is now becoming more and more obviously a non-problem: “the challenge....that, perhaps more than any other, will shape your entire careers and that’s the urgent need to combat and adapt to climate change.”
Some facts. In the 11 years 2004-2014, the rate of global warming taken as the mean of the three terrestrial datasets was one-twentieth of a degree. The ARGO ocean dataset shows warming of one-fortieth of a degree. The mean of the two satellite datasets shows no warming at all. Subject to formidable uncertainties, the ARGO database gives perhaps the best guide to the underlying warming rate. None of these real-world measurements is the stuff of what Mr Obama called “a peril that can affect generations”.
Next: “Our scientists at NASA just reported that some of the sea ice around Antarctica is breaking up even faster than expected.” Not exactly surprising, given that at present it has reached the greatest extent for the time of year observed in the 35-year satellite era. Why did Mr Obama not mention that (or any) fact, by way of balance?
See much more here and here.
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Craig Rucker at CFACT writes:
When you think of national security threats, words like ISIS, North Korea, and Al Qaeda probably come to mind.
For President Obama, however, you can add another sinister term: “Climate denier.”
“Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country,” Obama told new Coast Guard officers at the Academy’s New London, Connecticut, campus yesterday.
“Denying it, or refusing to deal with it, endangers our national security and undermines the readiness of our forces,” he added.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that this President, whose lackluster foreign policy has come under much criticism, would seek to deflect that criticism by casting the public’s eye on a new villain - even one of his own creation. But choosing to go after climate scientists and others who simply disagree with Al Gore’s alarmism seems to be just a bit of a stretch...even for him.
Leave alone the fact that there’s been no increase in hurricanes, tornados, wildfires or other extreme weather events (not to mention no increase in global temperatures in over 18 years), the evidence that a warmer world leads to more conflict is not supported by either factual or historical evidence.
As CFACT’s Marc Morano has chronicled regarding this issue at ClimateDepot.com:
War-related casualties have fallen over the last half-century, even as temperatures have slightly risen.
Since the dawn of civilization, warmer eras have meant fewer wars.
Peer-reviewed studies show the primary causes of civil war are political, not environmental.
A chapter of the Fifth Assessment Report of the UN’s own IPCC published last year notes that “collectively the research does not conclude that there is a strong positive relationship between warming and armed conflicts.”
To be sure, the world is still awaiting its first climate refugee resulting from a conflict generated by alleged man-made global warming. This despite shrill warnings of impending doom going back years, one issued by the UN itself which said there would be 50 million such refugees by 2010. Of course, we saw none.
So it appears the President is not looking at the facts, but simply shilling for his friends in the Green movement.
Demonizing your political opponents does not make America stronger. It may be shrewd politically, but it’s doubtful to do much in the way of improving national security.
Let’s hope this effort to put climate skeptics in the camp of national security threats backfires.
It doesn’t deserve to be given any serious attention.
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Never to be caught understating anything, Obama declares:
“I am here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security.”
Oh really Mr. President, what could that possibly be?
Is the lack of warming, perhaps even a little global cooling since 1998, despite a slow steady increase in CO2, frying your plans for a carbon tax?
Are you concerned about the lack of big hurricanes for many years, because that sort of climate change might disrupt your climate plans?
Are you worried that another winter like this last one could completely freeze out your support along the East Coast? Has the snow finally melted in Boston?
Isn’t the greatest threat to our national security a President who will not listen to the thousands of scientists who have objected to the climate nonsense? Instead, you continue to listen a tiny vocal minority that is telling you what you want to hear.
Who is guilty of Dereliction of Duty, Mr President??
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA
Obama At U.S. Coast Guard Academy Commencement: Denying Climate Change “Dereliction Of Duty”
UPDATE
Report: Foreign Countries Altering Weather Data to Show Warming
By Jason Devaney, May 19, 2015
Three foreign countries may be changing their historical weather data to show warming trends, according to a scientist in the field.
Dr. H. Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute claims in a story that Australia, Paraguay, and Switzerland have altered their data in an effort to prove global warming is real.
“Switzerland joins a growing list of countries whose temperature measurements have been adjusted to show greater warming than actually measured by its temperature instruments,” Burnett writes. “In previous editions of Climate Change Weekly, I reported weather bureaus in Australia and Paraguay were caught adjusting datasets from their temperature gauges. After the adjustment, the temperatures reported were consistently higher than those actually recorded.”
Citing a report from Swiss Science journalist Markus Schar, Burnett writes that Switzerland altered its weather data and now it shows a “doubling of the temperature trend.”
“For example, in Sion and Zurich, [the Swiss Meteorological Service] adjustments resulted in a doubling of the temperature trend,” Burnett writes. “Schar notes there has been an 18-year-pause in rising temperatures, even with data-tampering. As a result, Schar calls the adjustments a ‘propaganda trick, and not a valid trend.’”
In March, it was reported that U.S. government scientists often change weather data - a practice that is neither new nor a secret. Scientists say the data is changed to correct for inaccuracies in testing. Critics say it is a way to show a warming trend, which it has done.
“(The National Climatic Data Center, or NCDC) pulls every trick in the book to turn the U.S. cooling trend into warming. The raw data shows cooling since the 1920s,” a science blogger said.
“NCDC does a hockey stick of adjustments to reverse the trend. This includes cooling the past for ‘time of observation bias’ in filling missing rural data with urban temperatures, and doing almost nothing to compensate for urban heat island effects.”
Global warming skeptics say it is a man-made scam, but defenders of the phenomenon point to evidence in weather data - which is apparently being changed in countries across the world.
Bill Nye, who hosted a popular children’s show in the 1990s, told Rutgers University graduates over the weekend global warming is real. “So, hey deniers - cut it out, and let’s get to work,” Nye said.
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Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com
UPDATE: @ForecastFacts: FYI: You Just Lived Through The Earth’s Hottest January-April Since We Started Keeping Records via @climateprogress
Once again as shown in the raw data that goes into the models (6 warmer in the last 11 years) and satellites (8 warmer in just the last 20 years), Forecast the Facts, Thinkprogress and NASA caught in another lie.
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By John Hindraker in Powerline Blog
POSTED ON MAY 5, 2015
We have written a number of times about how government agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration here in the U.S., have systematically adjusted temperature history to make the past look colder. They apparently do this, usually surreptitiously and without explanation, in order to stoke global warming hysteria. See, for example, He Who Controls the Present Controls the Past and Inside the Global Warming Scandal.
Now Mike Brakey, an engineering physicist and heat transfer specialist, has caught NOAA revising historic temperature data for Maine as always, to make the past look cooler and the present warmer by comparison:
Over the last months I have discovered that between 2013 and 2015 some government bureaucrats have rewritten Maine climate history… (and New England’s and of the U.S.). This statement is not based on my opinion, but on facts drawn from NOAA 2013 climate data vs. NOAA 2015 climate data after they re-wrote it.
We need only compare the data. They cooked their own books (see numbers below).
Click to enlarge: Brakey_1
This graph presents the data visually. The black line shows average annual temperatures for Maine from 1895 to the present as they were recorded at the time, and as NOAA published them in 2013. Thermometers have recorded no net warming since 1895. The blue line represents NOAA rewritten history as it appears in 2015. Note how NOAA reduces earlier temperatures more than recent ones to give the graph a plausibly warming trend. The green line shows average annual temperatures for a single location, Lewiston-Auburn, showing a steep decline since 2000.
Click to enlarge: Brakey_2
NOAA has made similar adjustments to past temperatures around the United States. Brakey writes:
It appears NOAA panicked and did a massive rewrite of Maine temperature history (they used the same algorithm for U.S. in general). The new official temperatures from Maine between 1895 and present were LOWERED by an accumulated 151.2F between 1895 and 2012.
In my opinion, this is out-and-out fraud. Why did they corrupt national climate data? Global warming is a $27 billion business on an annual basis in the U.S alone.
Now NOAA data revised in 2015 indicate that 1904, 1919 and 1925 in Maine were much colder than anything we experience today. (See the scorecard above comparing the NOAA data that are 18 months apart). Note how for 1913 the NOAA lowered the annual temperature a whole 4F!
For the balance of the years, as they get closer to the present, the NOAA tweaks less and less. They have corrupted Maine climate data between 1895 and present by a whopping accumulated 151.2F.
David Archibald writes:
Their cooling of the past to keep the global warming meme alive reminds me of the old Soviet joke - the future is known, it is the past that keeps changing.
Would someone please try to explain why this isn’t the biggest scandal in the history of science?
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Dr. Gordon Fulks presents yet another example of temperature record cheating by NOAA
Posted on May 8, 2015
Here’s a fascinating item, provided to Gordon by a U of Washington climate scientists.
The way this works is you screw with the old temps to make them lower, then you get a Michael Mann temp record that shows warming.
Date: Thu, 7 May 2015
Subject: [GWR] Fwd: Washington State mean temperature in 1897: 45.3 or 49.5?
These figures for Washington State mean temperature come from NCDC’s “climate at a glance” web page:
Washington, Average Temperature, January-December
Units: Degrees Fahrenheit
Base Period: 1895-2015
Date,Value,Anomaly
1895, 45.2, -1.0
1896, 45.4, -0.8
1897, 45.3, -0.9
1898, 45.7, -0.5
1899, 45.1, -1.1
1900, 47.0, 0.8
But when I go to the Washington climate summary published at the end of 1897 the Washington State mean temperature is given as 49.5 F, which is +4.2 F warmer than the 45.3 degrees found at NCDC’s Climate at a Glance web site for Washington State in 1897.
Here is the quote from the 1897 annual summary for Washington State:
The mean temperature of the state for 1897, obtained from 20 stations in the western section and 17 stations in the eastern section from which complete records were received, was 49.5 degrees, which is slightly in excess of the eight-year normal, the amount being about half a degree. The mean for the western Section, meaning that portion of the State between the Pacific Ocean and the Cascade Mountains, was 50.1 degrees; while the mean of the eastern section, meaning all that portion of the State east of the Cascade Range, was 48.9 degrees.
The 1897 annual climate summary for Washington can be found here.
Of the 37 stations reporting in 1897 only 3 sites (less than 10%) reported an annual mean temperature lower than the 2015 version of the 1897 Washington State mean temperature of 45.3 degrees.
Does anyone have an idea why there is a large discrepancy of +4.2 degrees between the 1897 version (49.5) and the 2015 version (45.3) of our state’s annual mean temperature?
I suspect that we know the answer. The Obama Administration is now blatantly cheating with the historical climate records.
Does that surprise anyone?
Gordon
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA
See this story entitled “Catholic Churchmen Dance to Enviro-Pagan Puppet Masters” in Catholic Family News.
Columbia University professor and former World Bank official Jeffrey Sachs spread his global warming alarmism and pro-population control message at the “summit” on global warming and sustainable development hosted in Rome last week. This week he lashed out at global warming “deniers” on Project Syndicate (ironically appropriate for the global climate mafia) and Heartland in particular, so Heartland’s Joseph Bast replies.
The Heartland and the Cornwall Alliance and Climate Depot were in rome to bring some truth to the papal party. See Dr. Calvin Beisner’s address
See more on the Open Letter to Pope Francis and all the presentations here.
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Congressional Democrats and Vatican join White House and Leftist assaults on basic rights
Our scientific method and traditions of free speech and open debate are under assault as never before, by intolerant inquisitors in our media, universities, government agencies, and even Congress and the Vatican.
They threaten our most basic rights and freedoms, our political and scientific processes and ultimately our continued innovation and invention, energy reliability and affordability, job creation and economic growth, and modern living standards, health and welfare.
Congressman Grijalva and Senators Markey, Boxer and Whitehouse sent letters to universities, think tanks and companies, demanding detailed information on skeptics’ funding and activities in an attempt to destroy their funding, reputations and careers, while advancing “crony climate alarm science.” Equally intolerable, Democrats and the White House are blocking efforts to ensure that environmental regulations are based on honest, unbiased, transparent, replicable science that accurately reflects real-world evidence.
The Secret Science Reform Act (S. 544) and its House counterpart would require that the Environmental Protection Agency develop its regulations and the science behind them in the open, and allow experts and other interested parties to examine data, evidence and studies that supposedly support EPA standards and mandates that could cost billions of dollars and millions of jobs. This should not be controversial.
But Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee wanted Chairman James Inhofe to drop the bill from a planned markup. He refused, the bill passed on a party-line vote, and a Senate vote will be set soon. President Obama says he will veto the legislation. Why this opposition?
Obama said his would be the most transparent administration in history. But transparency quickly took a back seat to his radical climate change, renewable energy and other plans to “fundamentally transform” the United States. EPA practices epitomize what goes on throughout his Executive Branch, why our economy is growing at 0.2% and what congressional Democrats are apparently determined to perpetuate.
The problem is not only EPA’s private email accounts and deleted emails, a la Hillary Clinton. It’s illegal experiments on humans with test results ignored when they don’t support EPA’s agenda of removing the last vestige of soot from coal-fired power plants. It’s rules for 0.5% of the mercury in U.S. air, justified with claims that they would bring a 0.00209 point improvement in IQ scores; economy and job-killing climate regulations that would reduce warming by 0.03 degrees by 2100, assuming carbon dioxide actually does drive climate change; and equally bogus health and environmental benefits of every description that ignore adverse human health and welfare impacts of the EPA regulations themselves.
The President and Democrats claim the “secret science” bill would “unduly burden” regulators. Baloney. The rules would simply require that promulgators of government edicts live according to the same rules they impose on us: Be honest and transparent. Show us your data, calculations and analyses. Demonstrate that you have examined all relevant studies, not just what supports your agenda, while you ignore everything else. Back up your analyses and decisions with actual evidence. Answer our questions. Recognize that collusion, deceit and fraud have no place in public policy, and will no longer be tolerated.
What can possibly be wrong with those guidelines - unless the regulators have a lot to hide?
And now the Vatican is adopting the same secretive, agenda-driven, inquisition tactics.
Its Pontifical Academy of Sciences recently held a workshop on climate change and sustainability. But only religious leaders, scientists, bureaucrats and regulators who support alarmist perspectives on these issues were invited. Those with contrary views were neither invited, welcomed nor tolerated.
However, a dozen climate, health and theological experts skeptical of “dangerous manmade climate change” allegations hosted a press event the day before the workshop. Three of them managed to get into the Vatican event. But when Climate Depot director Marc Morano tried to ask the UN Secretary General to advise Pope Francis that many Catholics and other Christians believe the papal position on global warming is ill-advised, a security guard took Morano’s microphone away and told him, “control yourself, or you will be escorted out of here.” Apostates have no rights at climate confabs, Vatican or otherwise.
Apparently, in the Vatican’s view, there is nothing to discuss - only anti-fossil fuel laws and treaties to implement. Computer model predictions and other assertions of looming disaster are all the Pope and workshop attendees seem to need to support this agenda - even though they are consistently and completely contradicted by real-world observations. Instead of protecting Earth’s poorest people from energy deprivation, disease, poverty and death imposed in the name of preventing global warming, Pope Francis seems more devoted to newly green Liberation Theology concepts of “fairness” and “justice.”
As IPCC leaders have explained, the climate change agenda is no longer about the environment. It is now about “intentionally transforming” the global economy and negotiating the redistribution of the world’s wealth and natural resources, in the name of “social justice” and equal distribution of misery.
These developments are far too typical. Left-Liberal thought police refuse to debate their failed ideas and policies, because they have no answers to inconvenient questions and cannot stomach dissenting views.
On campuses, free expression is limited to boxing-ring-sized “free speech zones.” Conservative speakers are banned from university events, or shouted down if they do appear. The Universities of Michigan and Maryland tried to ban “American Sniper” because a couple hundred students out of 27,000 objected. Oberlin and Georgetown students railed that Christina Hoff Sommers’ mere presence required “trigger warnings,” caused them “distress” and “discomfort,” and “constituted violence” against women.
Brandeis disinvited Ayan Hirsi Ali, because her views on women’s rights might offend some Muslim men. Scripps revoked its invitation to conservative political analyst George Will, who later observed:
“Free speech has never been… more comprehensively, aggressively and dangerously threatened than it is now. Today’s attack is ... an attack on the theory of freedom of speech ... on the desirability of free speech and indeed ... on the very possibility of free speech.
The Democratic Party’s leading and prohibitively favored frontrunner candidate for the presidential nomination… said she wants to change the First Amendment in order to further empower the political class to regulate the quantity, content and timing of political speech about the political class - and so far as I can tell there’s not a ripple of commentary about this on the stagnant waters of the American journalistic community.”
Meanwhile, NYU happily hosted delegates from Iran, which hangs people for the crime of being gay. President Obama’s Internal Revenue Service harasses conservative donors and organizations, keeps groups out of the political process, stonewalls investigators and lies with impunity. His Federal Communications Commission plans to micromanage internet access, content and operations. At the behest of hyper-partisan Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm, police swat teams burst into homes belonging to Governor Scott Walker supporters, ransacked them, took computers, and told families “Don’t call a lawyer - or else.”
The abuses and intolerance are becoming broader, deeper, more frightening by the day: from Christendom to Islam and Climate Orthodoxy; from universities to the Congress, Vatican, EU and United Nations.
Good people everywhere need to rise up, speak out and fight back, if they still believe in individual rights, freedom of thought and expression, and honest, transparent, trustworthy, accountable government and religious institutions. Otherwise, these fundamental values will disappear and with them will go modern society and living standards, and efforts to improve the lives of billions of people who still lack the lifesaving energy and technologies so many of us take for granted.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death, and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: Saving the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.