By Dr. Roy Spencer
Just an update...as the following graph shows, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) along the equatorial Pacific ("Nino3.4" region, red lines) have been plunging, and global average SSTs have turned the corner, too. (Click here for the full-size, undistorted version. Note the global values have been multiplied by 10 for display purposes.)
The corresponding sea level pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin (SOI index, next graph enlarged here) shows a rapid transition toward La Nina conditions is developing.
Being a believer in natural, internal cycles in the climate system, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that global-average SSTs will plunge over the next couple of months. Based upon past experience, it will take a month or two for our (UAH) tropospheric temperatures to then follow suit.
See post here.
See ENSO model forecasts from May from IRI (enlarged here).
Here is the CFS model ensembles (enlarged here).
Leaked Document Shows Spain’s “Green” Policies Are An Economic Disaster
According to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Pajamas Media has received a leaked internal assessment produced by Spain’s Zapatero administration. This assessment confirms the catastrophic economic failure of Spain’s “green economy” initiatives. On eight occasions US President Obama has referred to these policies as being the model he envisions for America.
Pajamas Media has received a leaked internal assessment produced by Spain’s Zapatero administration. The assessment confirms the key charges previously made by non-governmental Spanish experts in a damning report exposing the catastrophic economic failure of Spain’s “green economy” initiatives.
On eight separate occasions, President Barack Obama has referred to the “green economy” policies enacted by Spain as being the model for what he envisioned for America.
Later came the revelation that Obama administration senior Energy Department official Cathy Zoi - someone with serious publicized conflict of interest issues - demanded an urgent U.S. response to the damaging report from the non-governmental Spanish experts so as to protect the Obama administration’s plans.
Most recently, U.S. senators have introduced the vehicle for replicating Spain’s unfolding economic meltdown here, in the form of the “American Power Act.” For reasons that are obvious upon scrutiny, it should instead be called the American Power Grab Act.
But today’s leaked document reveals that even the socialist Spanish government now acknowledges the ruinous effects of green economic policy.
Unsurprisingly for a governmental take on a flagship program, the report takes pains to minimize the extent of the economic harm. Yet despite the soft-pedaling, the document reveals exactly why electricity rates “necessarily skyrocketed” in Spain, as did the public debt needed to underwrite the disaster. This internal assessment preceded the Zapatero administration’s recent acknowledgement that the “green economy” stunt must be abandoned, lest the experiment risk Spain becoming Greece.
The government report does not expressly confirm the highest-profile finding of the non-governmental report: that Spain’s “green economy” program cost the country 2.2 jobs for every job “created” by the state. However, the figures published in the government document indicate they arrived at a job-loss number even worse than the 2.2 figure from the independent study.
This document is not a public report. Spanish media has referred to its existence in recent weeks though, while Bloomberg and the Washington Examiner have noted the impact: Spain is now forced to jettison its plans - Obama’s model - for a “green economy.”
Remarkably, these items have received virtually no media attention.
An item which has been covered widely, however, is that President Obama is now pressuring Spain to turn off its spigot of public debt in the name of averting a situation similar to that of Greece.
Also covered widely is Obama’s promotion of the American Power Act - the legislation which would replicate Spain’s current situation in the United States.
Put simply, Obama is currently promoting a policy in the U.S. which is based on a policy that he wishes to see Spain abandon. Welcome to Obamaland, the particulars of which are explained in a fashion grandly more illuminating than this Obama-Zapatero dance in Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America.
A translation of the leaked Zapatero government internal slide presentation: “Renewable Energy: Situation and Objectives April 2010”
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19 free market, conservative, limited government organizations endorse Murkowski resolution
In PDF here.
To Members of the United States Senate:
We urge you to support S. J. Res. 26, the bipartisan legislation sponsored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to overturn the legal force and effect of EPA’s endangerment finding with respect to greenhouse gases (GHGs).
If allowed to stand, the endangerment finding will trigger a regulatory cascade, making carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions “subject to regulationa” under several Clean Air Act (CAA) programs. America could end up with a regulatory regime more costly than any climate bill or treaty the Senate has declined to pass or ratify, yet without the people‟s representatives ever voting on it.
At a minimum, the endangerment finding will allow EPA to deal itself into a position to determine fuel economy standards for the auto industry, control CO2 emissions from stationary sources, and, more broadly, set climate policy for the nation - powers never delegated to the agency by Congress.
The endangerment finding leads to “absurd results,” as EPA itself admits. EPA and its state counterparts will have to process an estimated 41,000 Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permits annually (instead of 280), and 6.1 million Title V operating permits (instead of 14,700) - workloads far exceeding agencies’ administrative resources. The permitting programs will develop enormous, ever-growing backlogs, blocking new construction and forcing millions of firms to operate in legal limbo. The endangerment finding endangers an already uncertain economic recovery.
To avoid a debacle of its own making, EPA proposes to “tailor” the CAA so that firms emitting less than 50,000 tons per year (TPY) of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases are exempt from the permitting programs for six years. But the Act plainly prescribes 250 TPY and 100 TPY as the applicability thresholds for PSD and Title V. In effect, EPA proposes to amend the CAA - another breach of the separation of powers on top of EPA’s bid to “enact” fuel economy standards and climate policy. The Murkowski resolution would nip all this mischief in the bud.
Although the scientific basis of the endangerment finding is controversial, that is not what the Murkowski resolution is about. The resolution is a referendum not on climate science but on who should make the big decisions affecting America‟s economic future. Is climate policy to be made by the people’s representatives or by politically unaccountable bureaucrats, trial lawyers, and activist judges?
Only one answer to that question passes constitutional muster. EPA has no authority to do an end-run around the democratic process. Climate policy is too important to be made by an administrative agency without new and specific statutory guidance from Congress.
Sincerely,
Myron Ebell
Director
Freedom Action
Marlo Lewis
Senior Fellow
Competitive Enterprise Institute
David A. Keene
Chairman
American Conservative Union
Grover Norquist
President
Americans for Tax Reform
Tim Phillips
President
American for Prosperity
Duane Parde
President
National Taxpayers Union
Matt Kibbe
President
FreedomWorks
Jim Martin
Chairman
60 Plus
Thomas J. Pyle
President
American Energy Alliance
Thomas Schatz
President
Council for Citizens Against Government Waste
Ron Pearson
President
Council for America
Stanley R. Lewandowski, Jr.
General Manager Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA)
Jeff Keuter
President
George C. Marshall Institute
Mark Chmura
Executive Director
Americans for the Preservation of Liberty
Niger Innis
National Spokesman
CORE
Amy Ridenour
President
National Center for Public Policy Research
Phyllis Schafly
President and Founder
Eagle Forum
George Landrith
President
Frontiers of Freedom
Chuck Cushman
Executive Director
American Land Rights Association
By Brian McNeill
Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said Tuesday that his investigation into the research activities of a former University of Virginia climate change scientist is about rooting out possible fraud and does not infringe upon academic freedom.
“The same legal standards for fraud apply to the academic setting that apply elsewhere,” said Cuccinelli, who on Tuesday attended a fundraiser barbecue in Ivy for an abstinence-only education group. “The same rule of law, the same objective fact-finding process will take place.”
Cuccinelli sent a Civil Investigative Demand to UVa to obtain documents related to the work of Michael Mann, a leading researcher in climate change who was part of UVa’s faculty between 1999 and 2005.
UVa has hired a law firm to explore its options, possibly signaling that the university will fight Cuccinelli’s demand.
According to Cuccinelli’s CID - which is the equivalent of a subpoena - the attorney general is investigating the possibility that Mann violated the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act by presenting false or misleading data related to climate change when seeking state-funded research grants. Cuccinelli is a vocal skeptic of global warming and is challenging in court the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Cuccinelli’s investigation into Mann has drawn pointed criticism from the academic and scientific communities.
On Tuesday, 810 Virginia scientists and academics sent a letter to Cuccinelli urging him to back off his investigation of Mann. The letter, organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, includes signatures from some 300 faculty members of UVa.
“I signed the petition because I think that scientific debates should be played out in the academic arena. If Michael Mann’s conclusions are unsupported by his data, his scientific critics will eventually demonstrate this, said David Carr, a professor in UVa’s department of environmental sciences. “I do not have any special knowledge about Mr. Cuccinelli’s motives, but this CID seems to be an attempt to create noise for the purpose of drowning out a critical scientific debate.” Carr noted that he was speaking for himself, not the university or his department.
Amato Evan, another professor in the UVa’s department of environmental sciences, said in a Union of Concerned Scientists news release that he is worried about who might be targeted next.
“As long as Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is in office, in the back of my head I’ll be wondering if my work on global climate change is going to fall under the same senseless attacks as Dr. Mann’s has,” he said. “This feels like harassment, plain and simple, and is wasting the time of the other faculty and staff members in my department. I sincerely hope enough pressure is put on the Virginia attorney general to halt this absurd inquisition.”
The American Association for the Advancement of Science, meanwhile, announced Tuesday that its Board of Directors is asking Cuccinelli to justify his probe into Mann’s work or end it, saying Cuccinelli’s investigation is a political action that could have a chilling effect on cutting-edge scientific research.
“[Cuccinelli’s investigation] is making many, many scientists nervous,” said Alan Leshner, chief executive officer of the association. “The purpose of science is to tell us about the natural world, whether we like the answer or not.”
Cuccinelli said Tuesday that concerned scientists and others should have no fear.
“They need not worry, but I doubt anybody screaming about it will take that from me,” he said. “We’re going to work our way through the process in a professional way.”
Cuccinelli was the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for Worth Your Wait, an abstinence-based education group that offers its programming in the public school systems of Greene, Madison, Fluvanna, Louisa and elsewhere. Each year, organizers say, the group presents its message to an estimated 6,000 students in Central Virginia.
Worth Your Wait is seeking donations because its $500,000 in annual federal support will be ending in September. “All that money across the country has been zeroed out,” said Kristie Shifflett, the group’s community outreach official. Cuccinelli praised Worth Your Wait and said abstinence-based education teaches young people to respect themselves and make healthy choices about their sexuality. Pre-marital sex among young people, he said, is “not positive, it’s self destructive in many respects. It’s out of control.” See Daily Progress report here.