By: Ian Cameron TABLE OF CONTENTS
2014-12-31
UN Climate Chief: Democracy a Poor Political System for Fighting Global Warming
More Arctic Sea Ice in Canada than in the Early 1970s
Ethics, Science and Public Policy
Naomi Klein Calls Skeptics White Supremacists
Will a Return of Rising Temperatures Validate the Climate Models?
Lessons from Germany 's Energy Transformation : Unsustainable Subsidies and an Unstable System
Future of UN 's Clean Development Mechanism in Doubt
UN 's Green Climate Fund Seeks Immunity from Prosecution
97 Articles Refuting the 97% Consensus on Global Warming
Berkshire Energy Fined $2.5 Million for Eagle Deaths at Wyoming Wind Farms
2014-12-15
More Publicity for FoS from the Warmists
Fight Looms over $3 billion US Commitment to Green Climate Fund
Marc Morano and Walt Cunningham on UN Climate TV at the Lima Summit
Lima Talks Set Record for Carbon Footprint
Greenpeace Stunt in Peru Drives Home the Global Climate Divide
UN Takes Aim at Canada on Climate Change
Climate Change Who Cares?
Spinning the Warmest Year
Even Climate Change Experts and Activists Are in Denial about Climate Change
2014-12-06
Sierra Club Wants FoS Billboards Taken Down
GWPF 's Benny Peiser Testimony to US Senate Committee
Obama Wants Kids to Toe the Line on Global Warming
Overheated Media Reporting
When Emissions Disappear, So Do Jobs
World Health Organization Faulted for Deliberate Exaggeration
The Legacy of Climategate Five Years Later
2014-11-30
FoS ' Latest Ad Campaign Getting Noticed in Montreal
FoS Tackles Tax Status of Alberta Wilderness Association
Decision on Landmark Wind Turbine Appeal Expected in January
Ill Winds Blow from Wind Turbines
Obama 's Climate Fiasco Down Under
Germany Lobby 's Sweden to Rescue Coal Mines
Top Google Engineers: Renewable Energy Won 't Work
Is Global Warming Causing More Snowstorms?
Groups and Herds: Implications for the IPCC
The Global Little Ice Age
2014-11-19
The US-China Climate Deal
India: Obama 's Pledge to the Green Climate Fund is Just a peanut
Climategate Anniversary
Germany Plans to Withdraw from Binding 2020 Targets
Climate Change and the Left
Interview with Will Happer on Climate Change
New Science Scandal: Polar Bear Researchers Hide the Increase
2014-11-11
Powerful Green Lobby Defeated in US Midterm Elections
World 's Largest Solar Plan Applying for Federal Grant to Pay Off Federal Loan
Health Canada Wind Turbine Study Released
IPCC Bias in Action
Eastern European Nations Reject IPCC Target of Zero Emissions by 2100
BBC: Interview with Benny Peiser - Why are there so many climate skeptics?
2014-11-02
Political Battle over IPCC 's Synthesis Report
What Goes Up Ontario 's Soaring Electricity Prices and How to Get Them Down
A New Dark Age: Renewables Threaten Europe 's Energy Security this Winter
Billionaires ' Club Funds Green Blob ClimateWorks
2014-10-26
EU Agrees on Conditional, Non-binding Climate Deal, Open to Review
UN Climate Talks End in Deadlock
Big Wind (TVO Preview)
John Coleman on Man-made Global Warming
New Paper Refutes Walrus-Climate Scare
Judith Curry: My WSJ op-ed: Global warming statistical meltdown
Root Cause Analysis of the Modern Warming
Green Fascism: Shooting Santa to Save the World
Big Sunspot Jump Harbinger of Coming Cooling?
What Will Happen during a New Maunder Minimum?
2014-10-17
International Lawsuits: The Next Battleground?
Poland to Veto EU 's 40% CO2 Reduction Proposal
Indian Government Report: Renewable Energy May Slow Economy, Cost Jobs
BASIC Nations Lay Out Climate Deal Demands
UN Sets Six-month Deadline for Delivery of a Draft Climate Agreement
Robert Kennedy Jr: About Climate Deniers
Keeping the Lights On
A Personal Reflection on Crisis-Driven Science
Why Don 't More People Care about Global Warming?
Two German Scientists Call for Climate Modelling Moratorium
Antarctic Ice at Record High: Scientists Baffled
2014-10-10
Happy Anniversary: October 1 Marks 18 Years Without a Global Warming Trend
Six EU States Cast Doubt on Proposed 2030 Climate Goals
African Countries Demand $7 Billion for Green Climate Fund by December
Ross McKitrick: A Response to My Critics
Nature Study: Ditch the 2 °C Warming Goal
UK Doctors: Climate Change May Kill More than Ebola
Naomi Klein 's Revolutionary Dreamland
Scientists to Fast Track Extreme Weather Events
The Scientific Method in 61 Seconds
2014-09-28
Obama Delays Climate Plan, Casting Shadow over UN Climate Summit
A week before the September 23 UN climate summit, President Obama applied the brakes to the most critical component of his climate change plan on Tuesday, slowing the process of setting new rules cutting CO2 emissions from power plants. The proposed power plant rules were meant to be the signature environmental accomplishment of the president 's second term. In a conference call with reporters, the Environmental Protection Agency said it was extending the public comment period on the power plant rules for an additional 45 days, until 1 December. This delay follows heavy lobbying by Republicans and industry to delay the rule, or withdraw it outright.
What Cuts? Emissions from India Will Increase, Environment Minister Says
In a blow to American hopes of reaching an international deal to fight global warming, India 's new environment minister said on September 24 that his country would not offer a plan to cut its greenhouse gas emissions ahead of a climate summit next year in Paris. What cuts? the minister said. That 's for more developed countries. The moral principle of historic responsibility cannot be washed away. He added: Twenty percent of our population doesn 't have access to electricity, and that 's our top priority. We will grow faster, and our emissions will rise.
Debate Continues over Wind Energy
This four-minute video from CHCH in Hamilton, Ontario describes people 's reaction to the first five of 80 wind turbines that are going up in West Lincoln. People living near them complain of the low-frequency noise. Farmers who own the land they 're on get $50,000/year for 20 years. A spokesman from the Ontario Power Authority claims with a straight face that, wind actually is a key piece of keeping prices lower in the entire portfolio.
Emails Reveal Collusion with Green Activist Groups over EPA 's Climate Agenda
A report by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute pieced together emails revealing the Environmental Protection Agency 's collusion with senior activists of environmental pressure groups and proving the real thinking about the intent behind and impact of EPA 's climate regulations. The report details many instances of lobbyists for green special interest groups helping steer EPA regulations and permitting decisions, and providing advocacy materials for use by former colleagues now inside the EPA who then dutifully circulate the advocacy materials to colleagues.
In multiple instances, green lobbyists who provided EPA with their polling on the shared priorities were directly involved in deciding where EPA would hold public hearings, and ensuring supportive crowds. Further, EPA repeatedly gave green groups a leg up in preparing comments intended for the administrative record on important regulations.
US Governor Blasts Obama Energy Team as Science Deniers
Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a potential presidential candidate in 2016, was in Washington to unveil his national energy plan called America 's Next Energy Plan-Organizing for Abundance. One of the quotes from his remarks: The reality is right now we 've got an administration in the Obama administration that are science deniers when it comes to harnessing America 's energy resources and potential to create good-paying jobs for our economy and for our future. By referring to the Obama administration as science deniers Mr. Jindal has sought to turn the language, and the relative positions of the two parties, around.
Scientists Turn to Pope Francis and World 's Religions to Save the Planet
Forget past arguments over Darwin or Galileo scientists set sights on unlikely alliance with the world 's religious leaders to combat climate change. In an essay in the journal Science, a group of scientists are pinning their hopes for the salvation of the planet, in the face of climate change and habitat destruction - on religion. The article singles out Pope Francis and the Roman Catholic Church, with its 1.2 billion-strong network of followers, as the key but calls for religious leaders of every stripe to be recruited.
It argues that religion can provide a unique combination of moral leadership and global organizational structures required to bring about practical changes which could have an immediate effect, such as providing millions of the world 's poorest people with cleaner forms of fuel.
On the other hand, a group of 150 Catholic, evangelical and Jewish figures signed a two-page declaration that calls on political leaders to abandon fruitless and harmful policies to control global temperature. Instead, governments should adopt policies that reflect responsible environmental stewardship and make energy and all its benefits more affordable for the world 's poor, says the document titled Protect the Poor: Ten Reasons to Oppose Harmful Climate Change Policies and published by the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, an evangelical environmental organization.
Obama 's Former Science Official: Climate Science Is Not Settled
Steven Koonin was was undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Obama's first term and is currently director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. He begins by attacking the science is settled mantra that runs through today 's popular and policy discussions. What is settled is that climate has always changed and always will, and that humans are influencing the climate. The real question for policy is: "How will the climate change over the next century under both natural and human influences?
Mr. Koonin lists the uncertainties in climate science and points out the deficiencies in the computer models used to predict future climate. He concludes by recommending that any serious discussion of the changing climate must acknowledge both the scientific certainties and uncertainties.
Google: The Bird-killing, Green Rent Seekers
The Chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, recently said: And the people who oppose it (climate change) are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people they 're just, they 're just literally lying. Meanwhile, Google uses mostly non-renewable fuel to power its operations, but has pledged $1.5billion to fund renewables. It has invested millions into solar panel plants that are bird-fryers literally roasting birds in the sky. These investments mostly occur in states with renewable-mandates, would not survive without taxpayer funding, qualify for tax credits, and require infrastructure (like transmission lines) that electricity consumers or governments have to fund.
Most of Google 's renewable investments qualify for a federal investment tax credit that covers 30% of the cost. Its $450 million investment in rooftop solar-systems also benefits from state incentives such as net-metering laws. This hidden subsidy compensates ratepayers for power they remit to the grid at the retail rate, which can be three times as much as the wholesale price of electricity. Net-metering allows solar companies to charge higher rates to homeowners who lease their panels, and thus for investors like Google to reap larger profits.
The Mann with No Friends
September 16 was the deadline for filing amici briefs in the Mann vs. Steyn trial [FoS Extracts - 2014-03-02]. The American Civil Liberties Union, The Washington Post, NBC News,The Los Angeles Times and others filed amici briefs opposed to Dr. Mann 's assault on free speech. However, Dr. Mann, who insists that he is taking a stand for science, attracted not a single amicus brief.
2014-09-14
Whatever Happened to Global Warming?
On Sept. 23 the United Nations will host a party for world leaders in New York to pledge urgent action against climate change. Yet leaders from China, India and Germany have already announced that they won 't attend the summit and others are likely to follow, leaving President Obama looking a bit lonely. Could it be that they no longer regard it as an urgent threat that some time later in this century the air may get a bit warmer?
In its first report in 1990 the IPCC claimed that there would be dangerous or rapid climate change over the next two decades. Last September in AR5 it quietly downgraded the expected warming in the 30 years after 1995 to 0.5 °C, and even that is likely to be too high.
The UN 's Propaganda Campaign
In the run-up to the climate summit on September 23, the UN 's World Meteorological Organization is running a campaign using 14 television weather presenters and national broadcasters to paint a compelling picture of what life could be like on a warmer planet. The UN also announced a recovery in the ozone layer implying that the Montreal Protocol on banning ozone-depleting chemicals (a template for the Kyoto Protcol) was responsible. Two years ago the UN claimed that the ozone layer would take 40 years to recover.
Fake EU Climate Aid to the Third World
The EU announced that it is giving ‚ 499 million in aid to one of Africa 's poorest countries, the Republic of Benin. With 40% of the population living below the poverty line, 65% lacking access to clean drinking water, and one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, there are few countries more deserving of help. Yet, of the ‚ 499 million, ‚ 450 million will be spent on promoting renewable energies and energy efficiency over the next seven years. Despite the staggeringly short supply of clean drinking water in Benin, a mere ‚ 19 million is being spent on improving drinking water.
Clearly the bureaucrats of Brussels are more concerned with fighting climate change than in ending poverty.
Green Lobby Accuses New EU Leader of Shutting Down Environmental Policymaking
Jean-Claude Juncker is the president-elect of the European Commission, and he has been restructuring the incoming EC from a group of 28 commissioners reporting to the president into teams serving under seven vice-presidents. For example, energy and climate will be the responsibility of one commissioner who, with the environmental commissioner, will report to a vice-president.
An alliance of ten European environmental groups sent a letter to Mr. Juncker saying that his restructuring suggests a de-facto shutting down of EU environmental policymaking. However, business groups welcomed the new structure that, they say, will eliminate inefficiencies that were causing confusing and inconsistent policy indications. For example, in the previous EC, the commissioners for energy and climate frequently clashed. With one person responsible for both, that won 't happen any more.
Germany 's Offshore Wind Park Morphs into an Engineering and Cost Nightmare
The country 's first ambitious offshore wind project (BARD Offshore 1), which aims to be a model for the world in providing clean, green energy on a large scale, is turning out to be the wrong kind of model. It officially opened in August 2013, but had to shut down almost immediately because of technical faults. Last March the engineers tried again, and were met with failure as wild current fried filters in an offshore electrical converter station. The engineers are still scrambling to sort out the problems in bringing power from 80 5-MW turbines located 100 km offshore through a converter station (see picture in second link below.)
With an estimated ‚ 340 million in lost power generation, and billions of investment at stake, nervous banks and investors have called in the lawyers. The problems at BARD 1 are so serious that no one is sure that Germany 's second major offshore wind project, Trianel Windpark Borkum (scheduled to come online this month) will operate successfully.
If you 're interested in technical issues behind BARD 1, there 's an informative discussion after the No Tricks Zone article.
Is Germany 's Green Zeal Turning Brown?
For all Angela Merkel 's headline-grabbing green revolution , Germany 's image as a world leader on environmental policies is in danger of falling under the shadow of the smoke stack and a cloud of exhaust fumes. Increasing dependence on brown coal has raised doubts about whether Berlin will hit its medium-term CO2 emission goals. And though EU regulations have helped bring down vehicle emissions, critics denounce the political reluctance to confront Germans ' passion for big, fast cars.
Much concern is focused on Germany 's reliance on brown coal, which harms the environment more than other types of coal, for a secure and affordable power supply. Last year lignite was the single biggest source of German power, generating 25.8%, and it has risen every year since 2010.
Under Pressure, Australian Met Office Confirms Data Manipulation
Jennifer Marohasy 's fight with the Met Office over manipulation of temperature records to fit its view of global warming [FoS Extracts - 2014-08-24] has brought an admission that the office does change temperatures at most, if not all, the weather stations that make up the official national temperature trends. Ms. Marohasy includes a graph showing how the Met Office 's homogenization at one station over 100 years changed a slight negative trend into a strong positive one.
Joanne Nova is also pursuing the story, characterizing the office 's justifications for the temperature adjustments: We need large mysterious transformations of data to make Australian trends look like international trends.
How Global Warming Policies Have Led to Global Insecurity
According to Lawrence Solomon, global warming policies abet terrorism and global insecurity. Without the activists ' success in slowing down development of the oil sands, blocking major pipeline projects, phasing out coal plants and banning shale gas and oil projects, the Western world would have years ago not only become self-sufficient in fossil fuels, it would have become an exporter. In a world of low-cost, plentiful energy, a group like ISIS could never have emerged as a major threat.
Without their oil and gas revenues, countries like Iran and Russia would be sapped of their strength to threaten neighbours. Today, most Western governments are reining in their global warming policies, slashing their ruinously expensive subsidies to renewables and aggressively developing fossil fuels.
Antarctic Ice Sets New Record for August and September
Antarctic sea ice extent continued to set new records in August, finishing the month at 19.154 million km2, beating the record set last year by 87,000 km2. It is worth noting that the climatological maximum, using a 1981-2010 baseline, is 18.581 km2, set on average on September 22. No year prior to 1998 set a maximum extent greater than the current level, and only seven years have had maximums higher than 19.154 million km2.
On September 12 the sea ice reached 19.62 million km2.
2014-09-04
Obama Pursuing Climate Accord in Lieu of Treaty
The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement next year in Paris to compel nations to cut their fossil fuel emissions, but without ratification from Congress. To do this, US negotiators are devising what they call a politically binding deal that would name and shame countries into cutting their emissions. Countries would be legally required to enact domestic climate change policies but would voluntarily pledge to specific levels of emissions cuts and to channel money to poor countries to help them adapt to climate change. Countries might then be legally obligated to report their progress toward meeting those pledges at meetings held to identify those nations that did not meet their cuts.
After the above story came out in the The New York Times, The Hill reported a denial by the State Department. However, Democratic candidates in the November elections are spooked by the story. The Washington Examiner 's story on the denial quotes the State Department spokeswoman, and her denial is not quite categorical. The US News report may explain how the Obama administration will deal with its dilemma: there won 't be a treaty, but a non-binding international accord. The Washington Times points to a legal brief arguing that the US did ratify a 1992 UN climate treaty laying out broad goals, even though the US did not ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
Germany 's Flagship Green Energy Policy In Tatters
A report by consultancy firm McKinsey says that Germany is so far behind its key commitment to cut CO2 emissions that it is no longer realistically achievable. The country had promised to cut emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2020, which implies a cut of 3.5%/year. However, they have fallen at a rate of only 0.7%/year. A major factor in the failure to achieve targeted cuts has been the increased use of brown coal to make up the shortfall in power generation caused by phasing out Germany 's nuclear plants by 2022. Solar and wind haven 't been able to plug the gap, and German householders are paying 46% more than the European average for their electricity.
UN Warns: Most Nations Have Failed to Ratify Kyoto Protocol Extension
At the Doha climate talks in December 2012, the 144 parties to the Kyoto Protocol agreed to extend the deal to 2020. However, only 11 countries have formally ratified the extension (called the Doha Amendment.) In a letter dated August 20, the UN says it intends to call governments that have not officially accepted the new deal and obtain information on the nature and timing of such steps. until all 144 parties deliver their instruments of acceptance to New York, the amendment will not enter into law.
None of the EU countries are among the 11 ratifiers. EU sources says efforts to get all 28 states to sign up are being held up by Poland, which is still negotiating hard on the region 's 2030 climate targets, and is using Kyoto as leverage.
New Mr. Europe: A Game Changer for Europe 's Climate & Energy Agenda
Polish PM Donald Tusk has been nominated at the next president of the European Council (a body made up of the heads of state or government of EU members that defines the general political direction and priorities of the EU). This is not a happy prospect for the pro-AGW EurActiv, which notes Mr. Tusk 's track record as someone who is not eager to find compromise while vetoing the EU 's renewable energy and climate roadmaps and protecting his country 's coal industry.
Montreal Gazette Prints Opinion Piece by FoS President
In this article, FoS President Len Maier rebuts two items published in the Gazette by physics professor Shaun Lovejoy claiming that the current slowdown in global warming is just a pause. Mr. Maier 's article covers a variety of issues, including Svante Arrhenius 's 1896 prediction of warming, criticism of Prof. Lovejoy 's use of denier to describe scientists with dissenting views on climate change, calling Friends of Science 's name Orwellian, the 97% scientific consensus, IPCC statements regarding modelling uncertainties and forecasts of catastrophe, and expensive green energy.
Myth of Arctic Meltdown: Satellite Images Show Ice Cap Thicker and Growing Back
Seven years after Al Gore 's warning (in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech) that the Arctic ice cap could be gone by now, the cap has expanded for a second year in a row. An area twice the size of Alaska that was open water two years ago is now covered by ice. Measurements from daily satellite readings issued by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center show 5.62 million km2 of ice cap for August 25, 2014, compared to 3.91 million km2 two years earlier. Moreover, the ice is also thicker.
Australia 's Green Lobby Fears End is Nigh
In a report that the nation 's renewable energy industry has been dreading for months, an Australian government-commissioned review of the renewable energy target recommends either: closing the large-scale component to new investors like wind farm operators, or, setting targets based on electricity demand. The green energy industry has railed against both ideas, warning it would gut future investment in renewables.
How Long Is the Pause?
Judith Curry reflects on two recent papers, by Ross McKitrick and Sean Lovejoy, that help set us on a path to understanding the global temperature pause. Dr. McKitrick 's paper applies a method to show a trendless interval of 19 years at the surface and 16-26 years for the lower troposphere. Dr. Lovejoy went back to 1880, looking at event return times to identify the magnitude of natural fluctuations of about 0.4 °C, with the pause being no more than natural variability. He argues against use of general circulation climate models to quantify this variability.
In the Global Warming Policy Forum 's blog, Lorne Gunter uses Dr. McKitrick 's paper to argue that, despite continued propaganda from environmentalists and politicians who insist that we 're approaching a climate-change tipping point, there 's no evidence for it.
Big Wind 's Latest Deceitful Ad Campaign
The European subsidies for Siemens ' wind generation are drying up, and the company 's energy business took a ‚ 48 million hit in the second quarter due to bearings issues with its offshore turbines. So, the company is gearing its efforts towards wind 's tax sheltering schemes in the US. This includes an ad campaign as part of a pitch to Congress to extend the hefty wind Production Tax Credit, which Warren Buffet describes as: We get tax credits if we build lots of wind farms. The increasingly politicized IRS relaxed its definition of commence construction so that developers can game the system to the point that projects built years in the future could still meet eligibility requirements for commence now.
Siemens ' ads extolling the environmental benefits of wind power and the jobs building the turbines don 't mention the 430-foot towers with their 11-ton bird chopping blades only hundreds of feet away from people 's homes.
2014-08-25
Germany 's Green Energy Policy Beginning to Strangle Economy
In recent weeks, the economy that proud German politicians have taken to describing as a growth locomotive and stability anchor for Europe, has been hit by a barrage of bad news that has surprised even the most ardent Germany sceptics. The big shocker came on August 14, when the Federal Statistics Office revealed that GDP had contracted by 0.2% in the second quarter. The reasons for the downturn ave little to do with the spike in geopolitical tensions in eastern Europe or the Middle East, but rather and abrupt exit from nuclear energy after the Fukushima disaster in Japan and aggressive push into renewables that has unnerved German industry. Energy intensive industries in particular have lost confidence in the future of Germany as a business location.
Prospects of Negative Governmental Action in Ontario 's Energy Sector
This is an opinion piece published by the Toronto law firm Gowlings that examines the legal implications of future governmental action to cancel Ontario 's feed-in tariffs. There are examples from the 1930s and 1990s when the Ontario and federal governments passed legislation abrogating contracts with private sector parties. Under international trade agreements like NAFTA, US or Mexican companies whose assets were expropriated could seek compensation for loss of those assets, but not for future lost profits. However, Canadian nationals would be out of luck.
India Deal Blow to Climate Negotiations
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the world 's third-largest greenhouse gas-emitting nation, won 't join his U.S. and Chinese counterparts at a United Nations climate summit next month in New York. Instead, he will skip the September 23 event, thwarting a potential meeting between the heads of government for the three largest greenhouse gas emitters arguably the nations that will drive international negotiations next year in Paris.
Why an Effective Climate Agreement Is Not Likely
In FoS Extracts 2004-08-15, Walter Russell Mead 's article said that a showdown between developing and developed countries means that a new global climate treaty is doomed. Here, a group of Norwegian researchers has has examined the issue in depth, identifying three perquisites for such a treaty: (1) It must include all major GHG emitters; (2) Each member country must cut its emissions substantially; (3) Member countries must comply with their commitments. Because substantial emissions cuts are expensive, national authorities are inclined to take decisions that make them free riders, of which there are five types. Preventing free riding means strict enforcement, which the researchers say is not politically possible. While the US might support an international system of enforcement, other countries such as China, would not.
Spanish Solar Revolution
Solar power is so heavily subsidized in Spain, at six times the market value, that some enterprising solar operators run their systems at night, with the help of diesel generators. This is just the tip of the iceberg, said one industry expert to the newspaper El Mundo, which brought the scandal to light. If solar systems apparently produce current in the dark, it will be noticed sooner or later. However, if electricity generators were connected during daytime, the swindle would hardly be noticed.
A book, Spain 's Photovoltaic Revolution, covers the development of the Spanish solar PV industry from its boom years after 2006 to the bust in 2008 and is mostly devoted to an analysis of the economics of PV in that country. The heart of the story is a detailed analysis of energy return on investment (EROI), a measure of how much energy you get out for each unit of energy you put in. Agriculture requires an EROI of 5 to sustain itself, an education system 10 and fripperies like culture 14. However solar power delivers an EROI of only 2.45. One quote from the book: Modern renewable energies, supposedly born to support a sustainable world, became one jewel of the most unsustainable of human activities, financial greed.
Australian Met Office Accused of Manipulating Temperature Records
Researcher Jennifer Marohasy claims that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has been manipulating historic temperature records to fit a pre-determined view of global warming. The bureau homogenizes its data to correct of anomalies, but Dr. Marohasy says that she had found examples where there had been no change in instrumentation or siting and no inconsistency with nearby stations but there had been a dramatic change in temperature trend towards warming after homogenization. In the second story Dr. Marohasy says homogenization changed a cooling trend of 0.35 °C over 100 years to a warming trend of 1.73 °C.
China 's Carbon Market Plans: Secrecy and Oversupply Darken Outlook
As China lays down plans for a national carbon trading scheme, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases risks repeating mistakes made in carbon trading in Europe by flooding its pilot markets with free permits. Regional governments have been operating pilot schemes, but are secretive about how many permits they they have given out. Lacking information the markets are assuming overallocation, and prices are falling.
The UK Floods: Population Growth, Not Global Warming
When parts of the UK were hit by floods last January, there were predictable claims, promoted by the BBC and others, of a link between the rain in recent days and global warming. Instead, new research, Trends in reported flooding in the UK: 1884-2013, points to urban expansion and population growth.
Hundred Year Period of Solar Activity Coming to an End
According to researchers in Finland, the solar climate is currently undergoing an extremely interesting phase, indicating the end of a century heightened activity. A paper co-authored by scientists from Finland, France, Switzerland and Russia, states that the Sun oscillates between periods of higher and lower output and points to correlation between solar activity and Earth 's temperatures. Researchers at Sweden 's Lund University have reconstructed solar activity since the end of the last ice age, showing an unexpected link between solar activity and climate change.
Alarming Rate of Bird Deaths as New Solar Plants Scorch Them in Mid-Air
A new $2.2 billion, state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert began operating last February and is reported by federal wildlife investigators to kill one bird every two minutes. The BrightSource Energy plant uses 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, to reflect light on to three boiler towers, each looming up to 40 storeys high. Sun News 's Ezra Levant reports on this in a 5:39 video titled When Green Energy Kills.
Updated List of Excuses for the Global Warming Pause
As the blog Hockey Schtick puts it: If you can 't explain the pause, you can 't explain the cause. So far the warmers have identified 39 reasons for the 18-year pause, which the blog lists, including recent scientific papers, media quotes, and related debunkings.
2014-08-15
Achtung, Ontario! Renewables Are a Money Pit
Germany is the country Ontario used as a model for its renewable energy development, and Germany has a $412 billion lesson for Ontario. That 's how much the country has spent on subsidies for solar and wind energy over the past 20 years. Germany 's decision to support renewable energy at all costs has led to a doubling of household electricity bills over the past decade, from ‚ 0.14/kWh to ‚ 0.29/kWh second in the EU only to Denmark, the world leader in wind turbines. Households have been particularly hit because export industries in energy-intensive sectors have been spared from paying the renewable subsidies.
Prices for wind and solar power have no relationship with the market, and the producers dump the power on the grid, leading to grid instability and sometimes driving the wholesale price below zero (i.e., customers are paid to take the unwanted electricity.) And so, Germany has to offer thermal power producers balancing payments to keep them producing power when the renewables can 't.
US Anti-coal Dominoes Hit BRICS Wall, Other Skeptics
A year ago, President Obama sought to mobilize the nation behind a grand plan: fight climate change by slashing emissions at home, while prodding other countries to follow. A key part of the plan was that the US would stop financing construction of coal-fired power plants abroad, with a global domino effect that would choke off financing of coal projects by other public lending institutions. However, Japan, Germany and the BRICS countries, all needing access to cheap, coal-fired energy, are not playing along. Even lending institutions like the World Bank and Germany 's state development bank are facing reality and lending money for coal plants.
Awash in Coal, the US Imports Even More
Coal imports to the US are rising sharply even as coal mines close throughout Central Appalachia. A big reason: price. It costs $26 a ton to ship coal from Central Appalachia to power plants in Florida compared with $15 a ton to get coal from a mine in Colombia. Total U.S. coal consumption is expected to increase 3% to 862 million tons this year.
European Manufacturers: EU Must Shield Industry from Future CO2 Costs
The industry lobby group, IFIEC Europe, wants clear assurances that manufacturers will be insulated from costs of complying with emissions regulations before lawmakers agree to reforms to the bloc 's carbon market. The European Commission admits that the EU Emissions Trading System is failing to drive low carbon investment and wants to reform it with a reserve to set aside surplus permits. This reserve could add ‚ 11/tonne to permits that are currently trading around ‚ 6/tonne.
Heavy industries such as chemical companies, steelmakers and cement producers represented by IFIEC receive the vast majority of their permits for free to prevent carbon leakage. The International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), representing a mostly different group of companies regulated and participating in the ETS, also want assurances over carbon leakage but without hampering the reserve's passage into law.
Why the Global Climate Treaty is Doomed
Walter Russell Mead opines why the movement to push through a binding climate treaty, after failing at conference after conference and summit after summit, still won 't succeed. The reason for the futility: the developed and developing world are in a showdown.
The Ignorance of Climate Alarmism
In a lecture to African leaders attending a summit in Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry told them that, while Africa has hunger, creating more farms causes too much carbon pollution. The Obama administration released a video linking California wild fires to climate change. Another piece of deception is the pronouncement is that last May and June were the hottest on record, which may be true for California, but not according to global satellite data.
Report: US Green Groups Are Too White and Too Male
A survey of 300 environmental groups by a U. of Michigan professor found that they have a lower percentage of jobs held by ethnic minorities than in science and engineering. More than 70% had presidents or board chairs that were male, and 90% for the organizations with budgets over $1 million. Just 12% of the jobs at the ENGOs were held by ethnic minorities.
Tim Ball: CO2 Data Might Fit IPCC Hypothesis, But It Doesn 't Fit Reality
The IPCC makes the bizarre claim, based on computer models, that until 1950 human addition of CO2 was a minor driver of global temperature, but after that was the cause of over 90% of the temperature increase. To estimate future temperatures, the IPCC uses economic models to generate emissions scenarios called Representative Concentration Pathways, and these are given labels such as RCP 8.5, which means a radiation forcing plateau of 8.5 W/m2 by 2100. To get there requires an increase in atmospheric CO2 from today 's ~400 ppm to 2120 ppm. This straw-man scenario results in a 3 °C temperature rise according to the IPCC models, and a scary headline for the media.
However, annual anthropogenic emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels are only 5 Gt (net) to 9.5 Gt (gross), compared with 196-225 Gt emitted from all sources.
National Review Gives Michael Mann the Stick
Critics of Dr. Mann 's hockey-stick graph paper cite four serious flaws: it is based on unreliable data, uses flawed statistical techniques, splices two different types of data and omits data showing a decline in temperatures. All of this and more formed part of the National Review 's brief to the DC Court of Appeals in its appeal of a lower court judgement denying the NR 's motion to dismiss Dr. Mann 's lawsuit against the NR. The brief goes into the history and controversy surrounding the hockey-stick graph.
The American Civil Liberties Union and a who 's who of news organizations have sided with the NR.
Wind Farm Needs 700 Times the Land as a Fracking Site to Produce the Same Energy
According to the UK government 's former chief scientific advisor on energy, shale gas creates the least visual intrusion compared with solar or wind farms for the same energy. Prof. David MacKay 's intervention was welcomed by fracking groups, who are battling to win public support amid claims from green groups and other critics that shale gas extraction will require the industrialization of the countryside. He rated each technology 's footprint against six criteria covering aspects of land use, height, visual impact and truck movements to and from the site.
Why Deniers Are Always Wrongï¼The Models Can 't Be Falsified
If the temperature goes up, this is just what the models predicted. If it goes down, then the deep ocean must be swallowing the heat, because that 's what the models tell usï¼and soon it will get a lot worse. These are just two examples of, no matter what the observation, no matter how the world changes, we can never falsify alarmist climate theories. Any possible change, any possible observation, can always be explained by anthropogenic global warming.
A Few PR Giants Won 't Help Deniers of Climate Change
The Guardian ran a story with the gleeful headline, World 's top PR companies rule out working with climate deniers. As Joanne Nova points out, climate change is PR-spin for man-made catastrophic weather. Only 10 of 25 PR firms contacted for the survey responded, and of these only seven saw climate change as a threat. A smaller number ruled out taking on clients that deny that climate change is occurring or work to block policies to deal with it.
Ms. Nova notes that in the first quarter of 2015, countries are supposed to announce their contributions to global reductions of GHGs, to come into force in 2020. The timing of this was chosen so that the US decision won 't get tangled up in the congressional elections for this autumn.
Recent Paper Finds 1950-2009 Solar Grand Maximum a rare or even unique event in 3,000 Years
A new paper, A 3,000-Year Record of Solar Activity, presents a sunspot graph showing several Grand Minima and Maxima of solar activity. Among the latter, the Grand Maximum of 1950-2009 was a rare and unique event over the past thee millennia. While implications for future climate were beyond the scope of the paper, it does indicate that the Sun 's influence on climate is stronger than the radiative power of rising CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
2014-07-31
Greenpeace in Disarray as Staff Revolt
More than 40 staff members and campaign leaders from Greenpeace Netherlands are still demanding that international program director Pascal Husting be dismissed. Mr. Husting came under fire for his choice to fly between his home in Luxembourg and his workplace in Amsterdam [FoS Extracts - 2014-06-30]. The staff members wrote a letter to Greenpeace director Kumi Naidoo and Mr. Husting, stating that Mr. Naidoo should consider his position , adding that the damage they have caused to the environmental organization can only be remedied by their departure.
Obama Administration 's (and Germany 's) Hypocrisy Gets to Greenpeace
Greenpeace USA has released a report about a little-discussed part of President Obama 's Climate Action Plan. While the EPA has announced new restrictions on coal-fired power plants, the Bureau of Land Management has been quietly leasing huge swaths of public land, containing 2.2 billion tons of coal, to mining companies. This serves as a major endorsement of continued coal production and sales to overseas markets, with companies looking to double their exports. Much of this coal is going to Germany, which was supposed to be the epicentre of the global green energy revolution, but is experiencing a resurgence in coal-fired power.
Greenpeace obviously has missed the cynical win-win aspect of this for the administration: it can claim credit in future climate negotiations for reducing domestic power-plant emissions while appeasing the coal-producing states.
German Utilities Bail Out the Grid
Twenty coal and gas electricity companies are being paid up to 400 times the wholesale rate, in return for helping to stabilize the grid, which is becoming unstable with drops and surges from wind and solar power. Last year balancing-power payments totalled ‚ 800 million. Germany 's second-biggest grid operator told power plant operators to adjust output 1,009 times last year to keep the grid stable. Lignite plants, usually inflexible base-load generators, are being converted to be as flexible as gas plants.
EPA 's Gina McCarthy: CO2 Reduction Is Not About Pollutionï¼It 's an Investment Opportunity
In testimony to the US Senate 's Environment and Public Works Committee, the EPA administrator said: And the great thing about this proposal [the EPA 's sweeping CO2-regulation plan] is it really is an investment opportunity. This is not about pollution control. It 's about increased efficiency at our plants It 's about investments in renewables and clean energy. It 's about investments in people 's ability to lower their electricity bills by getting good, clean, efficient appliances, homes, rental units.
US Senate Report Details Environmentalists ' Inner Workings
A new report by minority staff of the Senate 's Committee on Environment and Public Works, The Chain of Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama 's EPA (also known as the Billionaire Report), meticulously details how the Billionaires ' Club funds nearly all of the major environmental non-government organizations (NGO), many media outlets, and supposed grassroots activists. A group of foundations, with billions in assets, meet and coordinate under the framework of the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA). EGA members doled out $1.13 billion to environmental causes in 2011.
Often EGA members will indirectly fund organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club by contributing to pass-through charities like the Energy Foundation and Green Tech Action Fund that shield the funders from responsibility.
The Economist: Wind and Solar Energy Are More Expensive than Thought
Governments and consumers have given billions in subsidies for renewable energy in the hope that they will one day undercut fossil fuels and cut CO2 emissions. However, a cost-benefit study ranking the various forms of electric energy takes into account the building and running power plants, balancing the electricity system when wind and solar plants go offline, the fuel saved if gas or coal-fired plants had produced the electricity generated by renewables and the CO2 emissions avoided. Because of intermittency (solar and wind generators operate at 15% and 25% of capacity, respectively) they are the most expensive way of reducing CO2 emissions.
Bj ¸rn Lomborg 's Senate Testimony
Mr. Lomborg testified before the US Senate 's Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety, which convened a hearing on Examining the Threats Posed by Climate Change. From a summary of his testimony: Global warming is real, but a problem, not the end of the world. Claims of catastrophic ' costs are ill founded. Inaction has costs, but so does action. It is likely that climate action will lead to higher total costs in this century. Climate action through increased energy costs will likely harm the poor the most, both in rich and poor countries.
The Law of Unintended Consequences: Study Says 23% of Warming in Europe Since 1980 Due to Clean Air Laws
A paper published in Geophysical Research Letters finds that clean air laws which greatly reduced sulfur dioxide emissions explain 81% of the brightening of sunshine and 23% of the surface warming in Europe since 1980. However, the authors note this phenomenon is however hardly reproduced by global and regional climate models. Global brightening is a well-known phenomenon, which may partially be due to clean air laws reducing sulphate and black carbon aerosols, was well as natural changes in cloud cover.
India: Don 't Force Developing Nations to Review their Voluntary Emissions Cuts
India, China and other countries in the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) group on Tuesday took the position formally that the new climate agreement, to be signed in 2015, must not force developing countries to review their volunteered emission reduction targets. Setting themselves up in a direct confrontation with the developed countries, the LMDC made it clear that it was not in favour of doing away with the current differentiation between developing and developed countries when it came to taking responsibility for climate action.
Who 's Really Waging the War on Science ?
Global warming alarmists constantly claim they are being harassed by climate skeptics. For example the American Geophysical Union has set up a Climate Science Legal Defense Fund to pay mounting legal bills that alarmist scientists like Michael Mann have incurred. But the real war on honest science and scientists is being waged by those who have garnered billions of taxpayer, foundation and corporate dollars for alarmist research, and thus have the most to lose when the public finally figures out what 's been going on.
In this essay Paul Driessen cites two examples where climate alarmists enjoy full support from universities and professional organizations when outsiders make FOI requests, but their skeptical colleagues are left on their own when harassed by groups like Greenpeace.
2014-07-23
US Supreme Court to Obama: You cannot rewrite laws to achieve your political agenda
In Utility Air Regulatory Group vs EPA, the Court came down against the president 's authority to rewrite laws. In this case it was about the Tailoring Rule, a provision of the Clean Air Act designed to regulate traditional pollutants. The Court found that the authority claimed by the EPA under this rule would be a severe blow to the Constitution 's separation of powers. If the EPA used the Tailoring Ruel for CO2, it could have regulated hundreds of thousands to new sources of CO2 besides major industrial sources already regulated by the EPA due their emissions of traditional pollutants.
Australia First Developed Nation to Repeal Carbon Tax
In a vote that could highlight the difficulty in implementing additional measures to reduce carbon emissions ahead of global climate talks next year in Paris, Australia's Senate on Thursday voted 39-32 to repeal a politically divisive carbon emissions price that contributed to the fall from power of three Australian leaders since it was first suggested in 2007. Prime Minister Tony Abbot, who campaigned on the repeal, said the A$9 billion/year tax was a brake on the country 's economy. Green opponents claimed the repeal would make Australia an international pariah.
Walter Russell Mead writes that the aborted Australian experiment (taxing bad but efficient energy sources to subsidize good but inefficient and expensive ones) will cast a political shadow over the green agenda worldwide.
Sacked UK Environment Minister: I 'm proud of standing up to the green lobby
Owen Patterson was the UK 's secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs until he was sacked in a recent cabinet shuffle. In this piece he writes about what he calls the Green Blobï¼the mutually supportive network of environmental pressure groups, renewable energy companies and some public officials who keep each other well supplied with lavish funds, scare stories and green tape. When Mr. Patterson first arrived at the department he found it had become a milch cow for the Green Blob, and he soon became vilified for standing up to them.
Heartland Conference Shows the Growing Power of Climate Realism
The Heartland Institute 's 9th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC9), July 7-9, featured 64 speakers from 12 countries and 650 attendees. The author of the CFACT article, Ron Arnold, gave a presentation Who Benefits from Alarmism? This documents activist foundation donors that set the environmental agenda by selecting who gets the money and explores the dynamics of the cash flow.
Roy Spencer 's Keynote Speech at ICCC9
The title of Dr. Spencer 's 24-minute talk at ICCC9 is What Do We Really Know About Global Warming? The answer turns out to be almost nothing (its strength, cause, when it will end, etc.) Dr. Spencer presents charts of tornadoes, hurricanes, snowfall and finds no increasing trends with global temperature. However, grain productivity has increased, as has global greening. Even if AGW is real, cutting fossil fuel is impossible, due to its human impact. Dr. Spencer 's concluding statement: the driving force behind the global warming debate isn 't science.
Wind Turbines Generate Troubles for Ontario Airport
Transport Canada recently issued an order forcing the removal or lowering of eight turbines built by GDF Suez Canada near Chatham-Kent 's airport. In 2013 the agency asked the developer to voluntarily comply with its request, but GDF refused and has now been served with a notice to comply by December 31, 2014. Transport Canada says the 125-m turbines exceed the 45-m height limit within a 4-km radius of the airport. GDF intends to appeal the order.
Quiet Sun Baffles Scientists
A few weeks ago the Sun was bursting with sunspots during the maximum of the current solar cycle (No. 24), but now it seems to be going days without developing a single dark spot. Solar physicist Tony Philips noted that the maximum seems to be the weakest of past century. Even the pro-AGW Los Angeles Times picked up the story.
2014-07-09
Money to Burn: Canada 's Biofuels Blunder
Since 2000, production of biofuelsï¼chiefly ethanolï¼in the US and Canada has soared more than eight-fold, driven by generous government support programs. Using maximally favourable assumptions regarding greenhouse gas reductions for producing and using gasoline-ethanol motor fuel, economists Douglas Auld and Ross McKitrick calculate that the cost of CO2 reduction was $400 to $3,300 per tonne. Put another way, the government 's biofuel initiative cost Canadians between $3.00 and $3.50 for every dollar of social and environmental benefits achieved.
How Green Activists Were Allowed to Draft Obama 's White House Energy Policy
In 2010, a trio of activists from the Natural Resources Defense Council wrote a 110-page draft that became President Obama 's latest global-warming plan. The activists were two lawyers and a graduate of a Berkeley program advocating a sustainable environment and a just society. The NRDC, which spent $41 million of its $210 million nest egg last year pushing for changes in energy policy, circulated the draft in 2012 before it was adopted for the administration 's new Climate Action Plan.
The NRDC's proposal departed from the green movement's previous one-size-fits-all approaches, by allowing states to determine how to meet stringent carbon-emission targets while drawing them all toward the central goal of squeezing coal-generated electricity to the margins of the US national power picture.
The KGB's Successors And The Greening Of Europe
According to NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen, Russia 's myriad intelligence agencies, which now include the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the Military Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), and the Federal Protective Service (FSO) are working directly with European environmental groups to fund anti-fracking campaigns. With 52% of the Russian state budget coming from oil and gas exports, President Vladimir Putin wants to slow the spread of US-style shale revolution so Russia can hold on to its monopoly in the European gas market.
Paris Climate Pact Hinges on Successful $100 Billion Green Climate Fund
In the run-up to the 2015 summit of world leaders in Paris, where a new climate agreement is to be signed, India is signalling that its success depends on capitalizing a $100 billion/year Green Climate Fund. This is the message that India 's environment, forests and climate change minister has delivered to the visiting French foreign minister. The GCF would be collected from rich countries and distributed to poor ones to compensate them for climate change.
According to a Reuters story, the fund has collected $55 million so far, largely for its own administration and to help countries plan. The GCF is holding a first pledging conference in the second half of November, with poor nations seeking $15 billion.
UN Climate Proposal Paves Way for Rich-Poor Discord
The two co-chairs of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change 's Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) have posted a 22-page non-paper (UN-speak) that sets out possible language to include in next year 's hoped-for climate treaty. It 's not an official negotiating text, but rather the ADP 's co-chairs ' elements of a negotiating text. The co-chairs come from Trinidad and Tobago and from the EU, so in many places a spectrum of views on a particular issue is presented.
For example, under the section titled Guiding Principles, one proposal would maintain the rich-poor divisions enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol. Another states that a binary approach is not consistent with the current and evolving situation of the world and cannot be used as the basis for the 2015 agreement. In other words the UN is setting up an option for maintaining a divide between developed and developing nations.
Obama 's Plea to India, China to Forego Use of Coal Falls on Deaf Ears
Coal may have played an integral role in turning the US into the world 's top economic superpower, but President Obama is actively pushing China, India and other emerging economies to ignore the fuel that powered the Industrial Revolution and instead embrace renewable sources favoured by those on the political left. So far, however, there 's little evidence those countries intend to listen to Mr. Obama, with China 's coal consumption, for example, skyrocketing and projected to keep growing for the foreseeable future. That country now accounts for nearly 50% of all global coal consumption, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Some energy analysts say that expecting the president 's sermonï¼in which he urges nations to now do as we say, not as we did for more than a centuryï¼to dramatically alter the worldwide energy landscape is a glaring example of the dream world that Mr. Obama and his backers in the environmental movement call home.
The BBC Has Lost Its Balance over Climate Change
Committed by its charter to balanced reporting, the BBC has now decided formally that it was wrong to allow balance in a debate between Nigel Lawson, founder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Sir Brian Hoskins of the Grantham Institute of Climate Change. After receiving complaints about giving Lord Lawson 's views uncritical airtime, the BBC issued an apology to one of the complainants containing the gem: Lord Lawson 's views are not supported by the evidence from computer modelling and scientific research. The BBC also rebuked itself for allowing an earth scientist with dissenting views (Bob Carter).
Green Madness: Britain To Subsidize Coal And Gas Power Plants To Keep The Lights On
The UK government 's policy of promoting wind and solar while closing coal-fired plants has resulted in threatened blackouts. Building new gas plants to keep the lights on is unattractive because they may run for only short periods of time when the wind isn 't blowing. So the government has announced a capacity market to encourage building 53 GW of power stations, enough to meet 80% of Britain 's peak demand, to ensure they can fire up when needed. This plan will be financed by levies on household bills, though the amount per household is unclear.
US Fracking Has Cut Carbon More than the Whole World 's Wind and Solar
At a meeting of the Council of Europe the CEO of Breitling Energy Corporation said that fracking in the US has succeeded where Kyoto and carbon taxes has failed reducing CO2 emissions by about 300 Mt. All the world 's wind turbines and solar panels have achieved a reduction of 275 Mt. Annual wind and solar subsidies cost $60 billion, whereas the US is saving $100 billion from cheaper energy.
2014-06-30
Greenpeace: Chaos, Incompetence and Hypocrisy
Greenpeace has been having a bad few weeks. The Guardian reports that the handling of the Greenpeace International 's £58 million budget has been in disarray for years. Its financial team is beset by personnel problems and a lack of rigorous processes, leading to errors, substandard work and a souring of relationships between its Amsterdam headquarters and offices around the world. This came to light after the NGO admitted that a staffer lost £3 million on the foreign exchange market by betting mistakenly on a weak euro.
The Guardian also learned that one of the group 's most senior executives works in Amsterdam, but flies between between that city and his home in Luxembourg several times a month. The Telegraph story points out that, while Greenpeace campaigns to curb the growth in aviation, its executive 's airline commuting over the past two years may have generated 7.4 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of 17 barrels of oil.
Spiegel International blames Greenpeace International 's Executive Director for his efforts to shift the NGO 's focus from industrialized countries to emerging economies. His restructuring efforts, while jetting around the world, left a leadership vacuum in the head office. In No Frakking Consensus, Donna Laframboise writes that organizations like Greenpeace, the WWF and Environmental Defense Fund are not shoestring operationsï¼they 're now the establishment.
Washington Post: Verifying the Global Warming Pause
In the normally pro-AGW WaPo, Capital Weather Gang meteorologist/forecaster Matt Rogers takes issue with the US government 's recently-released National Climate Assessment that raises the alarm about global warming, but downplays the decelerating temperature trend of the 2000s. He quotes papers in Nature and Nature Climate Change, shows graphs of the temperature trends and addresses five common warmist objections to any mention of the pause or hiatus.
How a Coal Baron Fooled Al Gore and the Greens
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot has had the votes to abolish that country 's carbon tax in the House, but not the Senate. After a recent election, the three-member Palmer United Party now holds the balance of power in the upper house. The PUP is led by coal magnate Clive Palmer, who initially said his party would vote to repeal the carbon tax, contingent on bringing in an emissions trading systemï¼but later dropped this condition and wanted a legal requirement that power companies pass on savings from remove of the tax.
As Mr. Palmer revealed his party 's position at a press conference on June 25, he was flanked by Al Gore, who was surprised by Mr. Palmer 's dropping of the ETS. The Sydney Morning Herald featured a story on Mr. Abbot 's Liberals celebrating the House 's repeal of the carbon tax.
New Report: Alarm over Climate Turns People Off
A team of senior scientists from a range of disciplines was commissioned by University College London to find better ways of informing the public about climate change. Their report, Time for Change? Climate Science Reconsidered, found that trying to make people reduce emissions by frightening them has harmful consequences because they often respond suspiciously or decide the issue is too scary to think about. Other findings include a sharp fall in public interest in climate change in the past few years and undermining of confidence in climate science. The report concludes with the obvious: Alarmist messages that fail to materialize contribute to the loss of trust in the science community.
Terrence Corcoran writes that President Obama and his activist billionaire buddies like Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg are destroying their own campaigns, as in their fear-inducing document Risky Business: The Economic Risks of Climate Change in the United States.
Swapping Climate Models for a Roll of the Dice
The general circulation models used to predict future climate work by dividing the Earth 's atmosphere into a 3-D grid of boxes, roughly 100 km square by 1 km high, and then using physical laws to calculate how the variables in each box (pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed) influence matching variable in adjacent boxes. Many processesï¼clouds, rainfall, stormsï¼operate at smaller scales than the grid, but reducing the grid size requires an order-of-magnitude increase in computing power, something not possible with today 's technology. Thus, the models ' performance has been dismal, as shown by the graph in the The Resilient Earth article.
Now some model researchers are suggesting replacing the above, deterministic process with models based on stochastic methods to generate a range of possible outcomes and the probability that each will occur. However, this approach may fail just like the current GCMs, due to lack of detailed climate data.
Judith Curry 's blog discusses both GCMs and stochastic models, as well as two others, called dominant mode analysis and network based models. She concludes that too much resources are being spent on traditional GCMs to leave enough for alternate approaches.
2014-06-18
Greenpeace Boosts Friends of Science Profile
Two years ago Greenpeace tried to put up a dull black-on-orange billboard saying, When there 's a huge solar spill. It 's just called a nice day. Green jobs, not more oil spills, but Pattison Outdoor Advertising, rejected it. Then a Greenpeace member noticed a current Pattison billboard with Friends of Science 's colourful graphics and the text: The sun is the main driver of climate change. Not you. Not CO2.
Greenpeace complained about Pattison 's double standard, and the media picked up the story. The CBC, the Vancouver Observer, the Montreal Gazette, the Calgary Herald and 660 News ran the story, all of them featuring the FoS billboard. Friends of Science issued its own press release though PR Web challenging Greenpeace 's double standard complaint.
India Goes After Greenpeace
The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs served a show cause notice to Greenpeace and at least ten other NGOs asking them to explain their funding and spending patterns, particularly their foreign funding. The Indian Intelligence Bureau report on foreign-funded NGOS negatively impacting economic development in India has called Greenpeace a threat to national economic security , citing activities ranging from protests against nuclear and coal plants and funding of sympathetic research.
On June 19 the Home Ministry announced that it has directed the Reserve Bank of India that all foreign contributions originating from Greenpeace International and Climate Works Foundation two principal international contributors to Greenpeace India Society must be kept on hold until individual clearances are obtained from the Ministry for each transaction. In effect the NGO will be barred from accepting foreign money.
How Climate Change Policies Are Hurting the World 's Poor
The Global Warming Policy Foundation has released a report, Climate Policy and the Poor, that concludes that measures currently being taken to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuels in the developing and developed world are directly harming the poor. The author, the late Anthony Kelly, points out: that with global warming we are discussing the possibility that there will be a problem in the future, and considering to what extent observed changes to the climate are due to mankind and the extent to which climate scientists or the IPCC 's interpretation of their findings are correct.
The UK 's Climate Change Act raises the cost of both energy and food, the latter resulting from the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (in the US, it 's the Renewable Fuel Standard.) Most renewable transport fuel comes from ethanol, which is the US comes from corn. The UN Food Agency asked the US government to suspend its production of biofuel ethanol because it could contribute to a global food crisis.
Wrong Again: UK Climate Scientist Debunk 's Obama 's Science Advisor on Climate Change
James Screen of Exeter University has been studying the Arctic ice sheet for years published in Nature Climate Change a paper refuting White House science advisor John Holdren 's assertion that cold spells like the past winter are a feature of global warming. Dr. Screen concludes: Climate change is unlikely to lead to more days of extreme cold, similar to those that gripped the USA in a deep freeze last winter [Recent changes in the Arctic climate have] actually reduced the risk of cold extremes across large swathes of the Northern Hemisphere.
Greens Lose Another Battle as Europe Removes Oil Sands Hurdle
The EU appears to be backing away from a contentious fuel regulation that would hit oil sands producers, as governments there worry increasingly about their dependence on Russian energy imports. In a much-needed win for Canada 's oil sands sector, the European Commission removed a contentious part of its fuel quality directive that would require refiners to report emissions on their feedstock, regardless of the source of the crude.
What Obama Could Learn from Germany 's Green Energy Experiment
As US ambassador to Germany for 2001-2005, Senator Dan Coats watched that country 's transition away from fossil fuels, something that most Germans now regret. The plan was that renewables would supply 80% of Germany 's electricity and 60% of its total energy. According to the German government, 6.9 million families are in energy poverty. Sen. Coats argues for a sound energy policy grounded on proven science and tested by the open market.
Canadian and Australian PMs Declare They Won 't Let Climate Policies Kill Jobs
A visit by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot to Ottawa resulted in a joint declaration with Stephen Harper that they won 't take any action on climate change that harms their national economies or threatens jobs.
Ross McKitrick on Obama 's Carbon Crackdown and the Global Warming Hiatus
Since his talk at Friends of Science 's luncheon on May 13, Dr. McKitrick has been getting notices. An 8:30 video begins with President Obama 's claim that, in the first year of his new emissions regulations, 100,000 asthma and 2100 heart attacks will be avoided. Dr. McKitrick notes that the US has long regulated carbon emissions in the form of soot and particulates, but now the administration is deliberately confusing that with CO2.
In the National Post, and also the GWPF, Dr. McKitrick compares climate models to reality. Up to the year 2000 the models were tuned to match history, but thereafter they are run prospectively, and then began to fail, and the gap widens each year.
Richard Lindzen and Donna Laframboise Present at EIKE in Germany
The European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) recently held the 7th International Climate and Energy Conference in Mannheim, Germany. Two of the speakers were Richard Lindzen and Donna Laframboise, and videos of their presentations are embedded in the No Tricks Zone article. Dr. Lindzen begins his talk by noting how global warming politics abuses language to confuse the public, particularly in the use of climate models by the IPCC.
Ms. Laframboise, a journalist, summarizes her five-year examination of the work of the IPCC, contrasting Chairman Pachauri 's public statements with the facts and showing how eco-activists from the WWF are embedded in the IPCC. While the IPCC calls itself a scientific organization, it is in fact a political one, making judgement calls and writing reports. Recently the IPCC issued a brochure called Hope for Our Earth, including one paragraph headed Saving the Planet for Future Generations (~15 minutes into the video.)
Opinion: Global Warming Claims Are Primarily and Deliberately a Product of Bureaucratic Political Activity
This essay by Tim Ball examines use of the bureaucracy by the Obama Administration to impose its political ambitions and how Maurice Strong used the weather bureaucrats to control politicians on climate matters. He then goes into more detail on Environment Canada (EC) bureaucrat Gordon McBean, who chaired the first meeting of the IPCC in 1985. Due to his influence, EC shut down weather stations, cut research on real problems, to spend billions on useless computers and climate change. After retiring Mr. McBean used a $61 million grant of taxpayer money to set up the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, which funds people who agree with CFCAS and EC 's political position.
The Claim of a 97% Consensus on Global Warming Does Not Stand Up
Surprisingly, this story appeared in The Guardian, which reports University of Sussex economics professor Richard Tol 's analysis of a paper claiming support for the 97% consensus. That paper selected 12,000 scientific papers and tested whether they supported the AGW hypothesis. Most of the papers were not about climate change and its causes, and others assumed that CO2emissions caused global warming. Attempts to get and verify the data used have been in vain.
2014-06-06
Pause in Global Warming Upsets Religious Believers
Calgary Herald columnist Licia Corbella comments on Ross McKitrick 's talk at the Friends of Science lunch on May 13, focusing on the growing gap between the climate models and observed temperatures. There are social and policy implications is the models that that have predicted catastrophe are proven wrong. In addition, AGW religionists have a lot at stake in the models.
Watts Up With That has posted a video of Dr. McKitrick 's talk, along with his slides.
Obama 's Climate Plan
On June 2, under its Clean Power Plan, the Obama Administration announced proposed new rules governing CO2 emissions from existing coal and natural gas power plants by up to 30% from 2005 levels by 2030. The Environmental Protection Agency 's own regulatory analysis says the plan will hike electricity by as much as 6.5% by 2020, while forcing 19% of coal-fired capacity to shut down and decreasing coal production by up to 28%.
This action is expected to affect mid-term elections in energy-producing states, and some of the loudest opposition to the new rules are coming from Democrats in those states. In President Obama 's first term, intra-party tension after the House passed cap-and-trade legislation helped the Republicans win control in the 2010 elections.
A commentary in the National Review points out that the EPA 's own model predicts that its new policies will prevent 0.018 °C of global warming by 2100, and even if the CO2 emissions fell to zero the effect would be only 0.04 °C. A Watts Up With That article reports that the US Chamber of Commerce estimates that the rules will cost the economy $51 billion annually, result in 224,000 lost jobs each year and cost every American household $3,400 per year.
Greenpeace 's Climate Crimes Shakedown
Greenpeace has a new corporate PR shakedown campaign underway. On May 28 it, along with WWF International and the Centre for International Law, sent letters to the CEOs of 80 insurance and energy companies around the world asking whether they believed that company directors promoting climate denial should be held personally liable for its consequences. (Insurance companies are included because they provide cover to company directors who may be sued for engaging in organized climate denialism. ) Recipients are asked to respond in four weeks to a series of questions, which will be posted on Greenpeace 's website.
Who Will Rid Us of this Totalitarian Prince?
In a speech to business leaders in London Prince Charles said that a fundamental transformation of global capitalism was necessary in order to halt dangerously accelerating climate change that would bring us to our own destruction. This prompted Christopher Monckton to opine that it is not the place of the monarchy to take sides in political debates and that Charles, whether he knows it or not, is part of the international political class ' campaign to persuade the world to agree to a binding treaty by which sovereign nations would abandon their right to set their own environmental policy and allow a vast, entirely unelected international bureaucracy to rule them all.
Scientists Say IPCC Puts Politics Before Science, Needs Reform
On May 29 the US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology held a hearing to evaluate the process behind the IPCC 's AR5, with four witnesses testifying (see committee 's press release.) All the witnesses agreed that the science of climate change is not settled, as President Obama and others state unequivocally. Watts Up With That, Judith Curry and Donna Laframboise comment on the testimony, with Dr. Curry noting that all four testimonies were non-normative (where scientists become stealth advocates), with none of the ideology about urgent action needed that typically characterizes the testimony of witnesses for the Democrats.
Reflections on Bengtsson and the GWPF
Two weeks after accepting an invitation to join the Global Warming Policy Foundation 's academic advisory council [FoS Extracts - 2014-05-11], Lennart Bengtsson withdrew, after being put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. He also stated It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. After reporting the event and some reactions by others, Judith Curry posted her reflections, focussing on climate McCarthyism, which she thinks ignores the key concern over attempts to stifle open scientific inquiry and policy debates on the topic of climate change. Dr. Curry considers the role of think tanks in the debate, noting that employees of green advocacy groups can be IPCC authors, while a non-advocate scientist cannot participate in a non-green think tank without censure from scientist colleagues.
IPCC Refutes CBS, NBC and BBC Alarmism on Antarctic Sea Level Rise
On May 12, CBS, NBC and the BBC reported claims of large Antarctic-related sea level rise impacts of 3-13 feet due glacier ice loss, as reflected in two recent scientific papers. One of these two studies mentioned that the amount of ice in these glaciers which represent about 1% to 2% of the total Antarctica ice mass is equivalent to about 4 feet of sea level.
In fact the IPCC 's AR5 report shows that Antarctica will have negative contribution to sea level over the 21st century.
I 'll See Your 97% and Raise You 3%
Roy Spencer takes on the meme that 97% of climate scientists believe in human-caused global warming. Relying on facts, rather than opinions, he states that 100% of climate scientists don 't know how much of the warming in the past 50-100 years is natural versus human-caused. He supports this with a temperature graph of the past 2000 years highlighting the Roman, Medieval and Modern Warm Periods. As there is no fingerprint of human versus natural-caused warming, we may never know the answer to the central question.
Is Global Warming About to Make a Comeback?
An article in Time Magazine reports on a study by the Yale Project on Climate Communication finding that the term global warming is more effective at engaging people 's attention than climate change. People apparently associate global warming with terrifying climate catastrophes, such as melting ice and coastal flooding, but climate change tends to be associated with unusual, but not necessarily terrifying weather events.
The Pause Continues: Still No Global Warming for 17 Years and 9 Months
According to Remote Sensing Systems satellite data, the global warming trend from September 1996 to May 2014 is zero. In this article Christopher Monckton notes that the pause may end this winter due to a strong El Ni ±o event.
2014-05-11
US National Climate Assessment: More Doom and Gloom
On May 6 the US Government 's Global Change Research Program released its latest, 840-page National Climate Assessment report on climate change impacts in the US. The main theme of the NCA is that global warming is here and now. A Sun News TV interview points out that the NCA cites increasing extreme weather events, contradicting the recent IPCC conclusion stating no significant observed trends in tropical cyclones over the past century.
Judith Curry 's main conclusion from the NCA is: the phrase climate change ' is now officially meaningless, because the report implies that there is not climate change except that caused by humans and that extreme weather events are equivalent to climate change. Roy Spencer provides his thoughts on 12 of the report 's findings.
Watts Up With That carries an article from the Washington Times noting that the NCA confuses climate with climate change, ignores the minimal and diminishing effect of US greenhouse gas emissions on the future course of the Earth 's climate, ignores growing scientific evidence that future climate change is going to be smaller, and ignores the ability of humans to adapt. A second WUWT story quotes a Financial Times article highlighting the insignificance of the NCA on American public opinion: Americans have been receiving such warnings for a decade. None has managed to rouse the country from its seeming indifference.
Sacrificing Africa for Climate Change
Caleb Rossiter, adjunct professor at American University, has spent his life on the foreign-policy left, including writing books on how US policy in the developing world is neocolonial. Here he attacks his left-wing allies ' campaign for climate justice and denying Africans access to reliable electricity and economic development. With 15% of the world 's people, African produces less than 5% of its CO2 emissions, while the US with 4% of the populations produces 25%.
UN Climate Veteran Confident 2015 Summit Won 't Echo Copenhagen
Deputy UNFCCC chief Richard Kinley from Canada has been involved with the climate talks since the early 1990s and found the collapse of the Copenhagen climate summit to be cathartic. For the next attempt in 2015 in Paris, he hopes that talks among the three major emittersï¼the US, the EU and Chinaï¼will lead to a bottom up process where countries decide what they are going to do, mixed with a set of legal requirements imposed by the UN. Key to achieving this will be the levels of cash on offer to developing countries.
Lennart Bengtsson: He Knows How Little We Know
One of the most eminent climate scientists, Lennart Bengtsson, has defected to the camp of climate sceptics by joining the Global Warming Policy Foundation 's academic advisory council. Dr. Bengtsson is a former director of the ¼ber-warmist Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. The reason for his decision is that the relationship between greenhouse gases and global warming is complex and only partially understood. Also, all empirical observations showed that global warming has been no serious problem up to now.
Warren Buffet: Wind Farms Are Useless; I Only Invest for Tax Credit
In his 2012 re-election campaign President Obama invoked the Buffet Rule to propose a 30% minimum tax rate for the rich. However, in real life Mr. Buffet 's tax rule is to pay as little as possible. Regarding his company, Berkshire 's investment in wind farms he said: On wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That 's the only reason to build them. They don 't make sense without the tax credit.
The UN 's Sneak Attack on Your Pension
Institutional investors that have signed on to the UN 's six Principles for Responsible Investment are being pressured to stop investing in fossil fuels and move their money into lower-return alternative energy sectors. Vocal divestment campaigns are being driven by ENGOs ' wild claims about carbon pollution. The IMF and the World Bank recently demanded even greater divestment, claiming that two-thirds of the fossil fuels must be left in the ground to avoid dangerous warming.
These campaigns continue in the face of a recent Bloomberg report stating that the wind industry is now on a respirator ', while around the world governments are slashing subsidies, incentives and carbon credits, and ripping up feed-in-tariff contracts for wind and solar.
Will Solar Doldrums Lead to Global Cooling?
The strong Sun over the past five decades coincided with the largest warming of the last 500 years, which begs the question about a forecast decline in solar activity over the coming decades. Just a few years ago the tide changed when the sun ended its hyperactive phase. Few people had anticipated this, and so it was a surprise for many. Solar physicist Leif Svalgaard of California 's Stanford University expressed it as follows at the American Geophysical Union last December: None of us alive have ever seen such a weak cycle. So we will learn something.
2014-05-04
Friends of Science/Frontier Centre of Public Policy 11th Annual Luncheonï¼May 13, 2014 in Calgary
Dr. Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph will speak on The Pause in Global Warming: Climate Policy Implications. Dr. McKitrick, together with Steve McIntyre, was instrumental in discrediting Michael Mann 's hockey stick graph in 2003-2005. For information about luncheon tickets please see the following link.
Coal: The Fuel of the Future, Unfortunately
Unfortunately is how The Economist sees a fuel that is cheap, simple to extract, ship and burn. Also, unlike other fuels that are beset by state interference and cartels, consumers are firmly in charge of the coal market, thus keeping prices low. While opining that CO2 emissions from coal threaten to fry the planet, The Economist admits that poverty kills people too.
Post-Fukushima Japan is choosing coal over renewable energy, as the country 's cabinet approved a new energy plan designating the fuel as an important long-term electricity source. Japan 's appetite for coal mirrors trends in Europe and the U.S., where the push for cheaper electricity is undermining rules limiting fossil fuel emissions and supporting cleaner energy. Not only is Japan planning to use more coal at home, but it is going to support the construction of next-generation coal plants in Ukraine and other Eastern European nations, reports The Japan News.
Sweden 's state-owned Vattenfall, which runs Sweden 's hydro and nuclear plants,told Swedish public television that coal power will have an important role to play in the future.
UN Agency Spending Millions on Staff as Projects Dry Up
UN staff in Bonn responsible for the Kyoto Protocol 's Clean Development Mechanism helped funnel $400 billion into emission-cutting projects in developing countries, allowing investors to earn carbon credits to sell to companies and governments in rich nations. In 2008 these credits were worth up to $30.40/tonne. Since then interest has waned as countries wrangled over setting new emission goals post Kyoto, and the credits have slid to $0.30/tonne now. There is no prospect of recovery before 2020, when a new climate treaty is supposed to take effect.
The CDM agency has about 150 staff and an annual budget of $32.9 million to administer three projects a month in 2014, compared to 268/month in the peak year of 2012. The CDM raises funds by charging fees to developers for registering projects and issuing credits, and has an accumulated cash surplus of $193 million. This situation has led some observers to call on the CDM to scale back its operations and spend its cash pile elsewhere.
Poland Sets Out Conditions for EU 2030 Climate Policy Deal
The European Union can set its 2030 carbon goals as soon as October if the region 's governments agree to ease the cost for poorer countries to implement the policies, according to Poland 's climate negotiator. The level of climate ambition in future policies has divided governments and industry in the region, with countries including the U.K. and France calling on the EU to step up the pace of emission reductions in the next decade. Poland, which relies on coal for about 90% of its power, has led a coalition of mostly eastern European nations urging more cautious policies.
Should California Dictate US Climate Policies?
California, a state that preens itself on its green-ness, has a jobless rate higher than in all but three other states: 8.1%. California 's ruling classes strongly oppose drilling and fracking and leading Democrats are campaigning hard to impose at least a long temporary ban, based on ludicrous claims that fracking causes groundwater contamination and even earthquakes and birth defects. The reason California can afford such policies is that the state depends on its neighbours for 62% of its gasoline and 79% of its electricity.
These fuels power California 's profitable and liberal Silicon Valley and entertainment industries, as well as the subsidized electric and hybrid vehicles that the wealthy elites so love. Meanwhile, California 's poor white, black, Hispanic, and other families get to pay $4.23 per gallon for regular gasoline, the second highest price in America and 16.2 ¢/kWh for residential electricity, double that in most states.
Nigel Lawson: Cool It
Former UK chancellor of the exchequer Nigel Lawson gave a speech to the Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment at the University of Bath. In it he gives a summary of the state of affairs with respect to man-made global warming alarmism and the real costs to taxpayers and the poor. Among the topics covered are: the vilification of anyone who dissents from the orthodox view on climate; climate change alarmism as a belief system; uncertainty in how much increased atmospheric CO2 will warm the Earth; the lessons of the 15-year global temperature standstill; the fertilization effect of increased CO2; the latest IPCC report; and the blatant transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the UK.
Why Life in the 21st Century Will be Nasty, Brutish and Short
This is the subtitle of a book Twilight of Abundance by David Archibald, who makes a provocative argument about a world where a cooling sun means grain supply can 't keep up with demand, oil production starts to slide and forces in the Mideast collapse to chaos, while those in the far East are ascendant. He predicts a severe solar-driven global cooling, with the climate of the early 19th Century being the best outcome, and that of the 17th Century as the worst. The result would drive the North American mid-latitudes growing conditions 300 miles south of their present position.
The Climate Inquisitor
This title is give to Michael Mann, who in the course of his evangelizing has shown little tolerance for heretics. In a recent New York Times op-ed he castigates castigates his critics as a fringe minority of our populace who cling[] to an irrational rejection of well-established science. These aristarchs, Mann contends, represent a virulent strain of anti-science [that] infects the halls of Congress, the pages of leading newspapers and what we see on TV, leading to the appearance of a debate where none should exist.
This National Review article discusses the facts and merits of Dr. Mann 's ongoing lawsuit against the NR and Mark Steyn, noting that two words, fraudulent and intellectually bogus are used liberally by Dr. Mann, but are grounds for libel when applied to him. He has called fellow scientist Judith Curry a serial climate-disinformer and anti-science. The article also discusses the background to the famous hockey-stick graph.
IPCC 's Third Assessment Report and the Hockey Stick
Judith Curry revisits John Christy 's 2011 testimony to the US House or Representatives hearing on climate change. In it he provides a unique perspective, as Lead Author (along with Michael Mann) on Chapter 2 ï¼Observed Climate Variability and Change for the IPCC 's Third Assessment Report. Dr. Christy described how small teams of LAs travelled the world and tended to form close communities, becoming an establishment. The LAs have (a) complete control over the text, (b) sit in judgement on their own work as well as that of their critics and (c) have the option of arbitrarily dismissing any reviewer comments.
Dr. Christy describes how, with reference to LA meetings and Climategate emails, the hockey-stick travesty occurred. Dr. Curry concludes that this testimony clearly shows that the IPCC process (both in the selection of LAs and their powers over the reports) is broken.
Der Spiegel on Antarctic Sea Ice
Science journalist Axel Bojanowski, a trained geologist, at Spiegel writes how scientists think they may have solved the riddle of growing Antarctic sea ice in a warming world. It turns out that the high level of Antarctic sea ice hasn 't been an oddity at all and continues to set new record highs. Now red-faced scientists are desperately searching for an explanation, even a temporary one, that will at least allow them to buy some time.
2014-04-26
Kids Brainwashed over Climate Change
The Global Warming Policy Foundation has published a report Climate Control: Brainwashing in Schools that shows examples of how eco-activism has been given free rein within British schools. The slant is on scares, raising fears, followed by the promotion of detailed guidance on how pupils should live, as well as how they should think. As one of the authors puts it: Environmentalism and, in particular, global warming alarmism, is all-pervasive in the curricula in England and in Scotland. We found that global warming is being taught in almost every area of the curriculum. In one examination board we found global warming being tested as it were in papers in economics, in chemistry, geography, religious studies, physics, French, humanities and on-and-on.
It 's not only in UK elementary schools. Friends of Science media consultant Michelle Stirling-Anosh notes that the Wall Street Journal has reported on how climate change has conquered campuses. She recommends teaching of critical thinking on climate change in schools. Instead, children have been terrorized at school and through Earth Day to have an unfounded fear of global warming.
The Deadliest Environmental Threat (It 's Not Global Warming)
Bj ¸rn Lomborg uses Earth Day to take stock of the state of the world 's environment. The knee-jerk reaction is that it 's getting worse, with global warming getting the lion 's share of the headlines. However, one-third of the world 's people cook and keep warm burning twigs and dung, which give off fumes leading to strokes, heart decease and cancer. This disproportionally affects women and children.
While Mr. Lomborg considers global warming a problem, he points out that the World Health Organization estimates that between 50 and 250 times as many people die from the effects of air pollution. Even the IPCC 's latest report states: At present the worldwide burden of human ill-health from climate change is relatively small compared with effects of other stressors.
Spectacularly Wrong Earth Day Predictions
This year marks the 44th Earth Day, and U. of Michigan economics professor Mark Perry looks back at 18 of the torrent of apocalyptic predictions from 1970 and later that turned out to be spectacularly wrong. Among them: a prediction that civilization would end in 15 or 30 years; Paul Erlich 's forecasts that population will outstrip food supplies and that 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in a great die-off between 1980 and 1989; Life magazine reporting that by 1980 urban dwellers would have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution; a prediction that by 2000 an ice age would have dropped world temperatures by four degrees.
IPCC Lead Author: AR5 Report Was Watered Down by Government Officials
Prof. Robert Stavins of Harvard University, an expert on climate negotiations, was one of two co-ordinating lead authors of Chapter 13 (International Cooperation: Agreements and Instruments) for the IPCC 's recently-released Working Group 3 (Mitigation) report for AR5. Prof. Stavins spent what he calls a gruelling week (April 5-13) in Berlin with government negotiators on the line-by-line editing of the all-important Summary for Policymakers. The SPM condensed 2,000 pages of text for 15 chapters into a document of 33 pages.
Prof. Stavins was disappointed and frustrated by the outcome of the approval meetings in Berlin for the SPM. In particular, his original 1- ½ page section on the effectiveness of global climate talks over the past 20 years got whittled down to a half-page of headings (compare the text in the third and fourth links below.) Of special note is the removal of all references to pledges to reduce emissions and negotiations on a new climate pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
This prompted Prof. Stavins to write a bitter letter (second link) to his UN bosses, which includes a description of how a contact group representing a diverse group of countries met from 11:00 pm on April 11 to 1:00 am on April 12 to work out an acceptable text for the climate talks section. The only way to get agreement was to remove all controversial text (i.e., anything that was uncomfortable for any one government.) Prof. Stavins blames no one for the outcome; rather it was the requirement for unanimous agreement on the SPM that prevented production of a scientifically sound and complete version of the text. His recommendation is for the IPCC in future is to de-emphasize the SPM and instead publicize its Technical Summaries, which are are subject to government comment, but not approval.
US Power Grid at Limit: The Road to Electrical Blackouts
Last winter 's bitter cold placed massive stress on the US electrical system, and it almost broke. Environmental policies established by Congress and the EPA are moving the system towards grid failure as the reserve capacity margin shrinks in many regions. In particular, the EPA 's fight against global warming is forcing the closure of many coal-fired plants, which provided 39% of US electricity last year. Many of the 100 nuclear power plants that provided 20% of US electricity for decades can no longer be operated profitably.
However, there 's one power source the pays customers to take its product: the wind industry. The vast majority of US wind systems receive a federal production tax of 2.2 ¢/kWh, and some states add an additional credit. This means that wind operators can supply electricity at a negative pre-tax price and still make money, thus pushing nuclear operators into losses. Capacity shortages are beginning to appear, with a reserve margin deficit of 2 GW projected for 2016 summer projected for the northern plains states.
Svensmark 's Cosmic Theory and Cloud Cover Depictions in Little Ice Age Art
Correlation between sunspot numbers and global temperature was known for decades, but with no proven mechanism it was correctly set aside. That changed when Henrik Svensmark proposed his Cosmic Rays hypothesis, which postulates that low solar activity (i.e., sunspots) means less solar wind and more comic rays hitting the Earth 's atmosphere causing more cloud formation.
The Little Ice Age (1350 to1850) was a period of low solar activity. A statistical study of 12,000 paintings in 41 art museums covering 1400 to 1967 assigned each to one of four cloud cover categories and divided the period into three epochs. From this the study supports Svensmark 's hypothesis that changing solar activity creates changing lower cloud cover, which causes changing temperatures.
Judith Curry Levels Both Barrels against Alarmist Climate Science
Dr. Curry recently posted a three of sharply worded essays rebuking assertions of climate harm derived from biased and highly selective reading of the IPCC 's AR5 reports. One of these is the insistence on the facts that, in fact, are inference from incomplete, inadequate and ambiguous observations. A case in point is Michael Mann 's hockey stick graph.
In another posting she addresses the increasing trend of climate alarmists and their supporters in the media to try to suffocate and eliminate free speech by attacking those who offer opposing viewpoints, scientific analysis and alternative theories to unproven claims of man made global warming theories. A third essay deals analyses how the IPCC 's WG1 report fails to address the hiatus in surface warming and discrepancies with the climate models, the lowering of equilibrium sensitivity in the models, lack of evidence for rate of sea level rise, and lack of explanation for increasing Antarctic sea ice levels.
Reaction to the Latest IPCC Report
The HuffPost is distressed that the cable news networks didn 't treat the latest dramatic warnings from the IPCC 's Working Group 2 report with the same urgency as the New York Times. Terrance Corcoran writes that the IPCC report follows the familiar alarmist pattern set many decades ago: Catastrophes loom and something must be done. However, Mr. Corcoran notices that this time, there 's more emphasis on adapting to climate change, rather than its prevention.
Judith Curry reviews articles in The Economist and The Atlantic on the WG2 report. The former describes three sorts of problems: ones where climate is the dominant influence (sea level rise and ocean acidification); ones where climate 's influence is more modest (health effects); and ones where a changing climate affects species ' ranges. The Atlantic notes that the IPCC 's reports from the 1990s barely mentioned adaption and opines that the new shift is welcome for two reasons: adaptation is less politicized than mitigation, and preparing for the worst presents major opportunities for the private sector and local governments.
North America Slow to Reverse Renewables, but Its Turn Will Come Soon
Regarding renewable developers ' contracts with governments, Lawrence Solomon writes: Only those in fantasyland should expect a contract to be sacrosanct when one party to the transaction makes the law. He points to examples in the Europe where governments are have been systematically cutting their losses by ditching renewable commitments.
North America has been slow to recognize the damage wrought by renewable megaprojects, but its turn will come. Mr. Solomon thinks it will come from the 30 US states with the onerous renewables mandates. However, no citizenry would benefit more from reversing the wind and solar gravy train than Ontario 's. If governments are squeamish about unilaterally ripping up contracts they can use the property tax system or fines for bird deaths to claw back some of the money.
EU Unhappy that Climate Change is Off G20 Agenda
Australia is hosting this year 's G20 conference, and its prime minister has dropped climate change from the agenda, saying that he doesn 't want it cluttered by topics that would take focus from his top priority of economic growth. Climate change was on the agetda for the three most recent leaders ' meetings. The EU, which was expecting its emissions trading scheme to be linked to the Australian market, is unhappy to have the issue off the agenda and is lobbying to get it back on.
Ban Ki-Moon: EU Must Agree to a Climate Package in June
The UN's secretary-general has called on EU leaders to set an example and agree on an ambitious 2030 target at a Council Summit in June that can be taken to a UN conference in Lima three months later, and shape a legally-binding global treaty by the end of 2015. While the European Commission has proposed a 40% cut in emissions and a 27% market share for renewables by 2030, eastern states led by Poland blocked agreement at a Council meeting in March.
If the EU brings no pledges to the UNFCCC conference in Lima, reciprocal concessions from other UN states are unlikely. This in turn puts the UN 's objective of a new climate treaty next year in jeopardy. Hence the secretary-general 's admonition to the EU.
Going Green: A Luxury Good for the Rich at the Expense of the Poor
The dirty little secret of the modern green movement is that it's become a luxury good for the ¼ber-rich who espouse policies from carbon taxes to renewable energy standards to closing down coal plants that impose high costs on poor people who can least afford to pay the green tab. A Pew Research Center poll released in late March offers further confirmation of this truism. It found that only two major voting groups oppose construction of the Keystone XL pipeline: Democrats who make more than $100,000 annually and Democrats with college or advanced degrees.
2014-03-29
Soaring Energy Prices Making Ontario Look Dim for Manufacturers
Manufacturers located close to the US border have been getting a letter reminding them that Ontario 's electricity prices are projected to rise 33% over the next five years and 55% by 2032. The letter suggests that they set up operations across the border. The Association of Major Power Consumers of Ontario alleges that province has the highest industrial power rates in North America, 37% more than in New York for the biggest industrial users and 68% more for the smaller ones.
Ironically, Ontario has an excess of generating capacity and is selling surplus power into New York at steeply discounted rates.
European Governments Rip Up Renewable Contracts
In Italy, Belgium, France and Spain, governments have been reneging on the over-generous deals doled out to the renewable energy sector. In addition to earlier charges on solar producers Italy imposed a tax of 10.5% on all renewable energy producers with revenues more the ‚ 3 million and profits more that ‚ 300,000. Belgium slashed the price of green certificates by 79% and cut their terms from 20 years to 10. France has cut the guaranteed rate to solar producers by 20%.
Spain, which had paid renewable energy producers a premium of $41 billion for their power, recently killed its feed-in tariff and capped renewables companies ' profits at 7.4%. Wind projects built before 2005 lost all their subsidies. The producers sued, but found no sympathy at the country 's Supreme Court. It ruled that the companies do not have a right [to expect the government compensation regime] not to be changed.
Maine Superior Court Rules Against State Agency in Wind Turbine Case
After three years of litigation, a Maine Superior Court decision has finally found in favour of wind turbine neighbours complaining about excessive noise from three nearby 1.5 MW GE wind turbines. The judge 's decision follows the key claim of the plaintiffs who proved that Fox Islands Wind was not complying with the State 's noise limits that the State Department of Environmental Protection failed to enforce against the turbine operator or to require compliance. The immediate impact of the court decision is to remand to the state agency and work with neighbours to find an equitable way to measure and enforce against ongoing noise violations.
Why Aren 't Americans More Worried about Climate Change?
The editor-in-chief of Gallup 's Polling Matters is puzzled by the fact that the American public doesn 't share a sense of urgency or a perception of the need for urgent action on the issue of climate change. This follows a recent poll showing that Americans ranked climate change 14th out of 15 on a list of concerns [FoS Extracts - 2013-03-14]. After citing appeals to authority why the public should be alarmed about global warming, the editor offers possible nine reasons, among them: the crisis is not immediate and affecting people directly; the poll was taken during a very cold winter; global warming is a faith-based issue on which one has to accept the received wisdom of others, rather than relying on one 's own senses; cognitive dissonance; short-term economic problems have higher priorities; and other prophecies of doom and gloom have failed.
<http://pollingmatters.gallup.com/2014/03/why-are-americans-not-more-worried.html>
Bonfire of Insanity
In North Carolina a bottomland forest is being cut down in swathes, and much of it pulped and turned into wood pellets so Britain can keep its lights on. A million tons/year of the pellets are shipped 3,800 miles to the Drax power station, where the furnaces produce 3% more CO2 (870 g/MWh) than coal. Including the manufacture and transportation of the pellets, the overall emissions are 20% more. For Drax, burning this renewable fuel is lucrative: by 2016 it will get a government-decreed £105/MWh for biomass electricity, £10/MWh more than offshore wind and more than double the normal market price of £50/MWh.
IPCC 's WG2 Meets to Draft SPM
The IPCC 's Working Group 2 (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) is meeting in Yokohama to rewrite the Summary for Policymakers for its portion of AR5. This meeting has prompted some articles in the media and blogs. Planet Ark and BBC News reported that Richard Tol, one of the 70 authors of the draft SPM, is pulling out, calling it alarmist. In the online Wall Street Journal, Matt Ridley writes that the draft report is more cautious and vague than the previous one. It even admits that climate change has caused no species extinction and expresses little confidence that it will do so in the future. Donna Laframboise got leaked editions of the SPM and compares two versions of a paragraph to show how the text gets manipulated to insert scary language.
Time to Rein in the Climate Change Carbon Baggers
Writing in the Vancouver Sun, Friends of Science media consultant Michelle Stirling-Anosh hits the World Economic Forum, the IMF and the World Bank for raising fears about global warming. The IMF 's Christine Lagarde claimed at the WEF that if we don 't take action on climate change now, future generations will be roasted, toasted, fried and grilled. The IMF is heavily invested in low-carbon projects in developing countries, while it touts the benefits of carbon taxes for rich ones. The World Bank buys emissions credits from countries like China and resells them.
Finally, Some Real Climate Science
The 50,000 member American Physical Society has been amongst the loudest alarmist organizations whipping up hysteria about CO2. In 2007, and reaffirmed in 2010, the APS 'formal statement said the evidence for global warming was incontrovertible. This led to some high-profile resignations from the APS. The climate statement is coming up for a mandatory five-year review, and for this the society has set up a committee made up of three IPCC stalwarts and three skeptic scientists (Richard Lindzen, John Christy and Judith Curry.) The committee 's whole process, including drafts and workshop discussions, will be transparent.
Warming Interruptus: Causes for the Pause
The Global Warming Policy Foundation 's David Whitehouse has a 3:22 video examining the possible causes for the current warming pause. When the pause was first mentioned in 2007 there was denial and denigration. Then as it continued, it began appearing in scientific literature, if not the mainstream press. Now, there are more reasons for the pause than can be true. The most-cited is that the warming has gone into the oceans, though this is not backed up by the extensive array of ARGO buoys. Then there are the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, changes to trade winds, changes to the Atlantic Ocean, volcanoes, ozone, natural variations in stratospheric water vapour, and a chance lining up of errors.
In Dr. Whitehouse 's opinion, the pause has shown that natural climate variability is more important than we thought and played a role in enhancing global warming before dampening it.
Cloudy Forecast
The biggest source of climate uncertainty is white and fluffy. Clouds lead a sort of double life, both trapping and deflecting planet-warming energy. Their molecules, like all water in the atmosphere, contribute to the greenhouse effect by absorbing infrared radiation emitted by Earth and redirecting some of that energy back toward the planet 's surface. But clouds 'white tops also reflect, collectively, almost a quarter of the solar radiation that reaches them, in effect shading the planet.
All told, clouds cool through reflection far more than they warm through the greenhouse effect. Without them, Earth 's surface would be, on average, about 5 °C warmer.
<https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cloudy-forecast>
Europe 's Green Suicide: Chemicals Industry Could Be Wiped Out in a Decade
Jim Ratcliffe, the majority owner of chemicals giant Ineos, has written to Jos Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, warning that the chemicals industry is heading for the same fate as the textiles sector. He says a toxic cocktail of high energy costs inflated by green taxes feedstock prices in another league to those in America and the Middle East, and uncompetitive labour are leading to the rapid closure of Europe 's chemical plants. In the UK alone, there have been 22 chemical plant closures since 2009 and no new builds.
Setback as EU Leaders Postpone 2030 Climate & Energy Targets
According to a draft political statement to be adopted at a summit of EU leaders on March 20-21, the 28-member bloc will set a year-end deadline for decision on climate and energy strategy for 2030. In January the European Commission proposed that the EU deepen its emissions cuts to 40% by 2030. The new delay is seen as a blow to the UN Secretary-General, who is convening world leaders on September 23 to curb fossil fuel emissions.
Will the US Supreme Court Permit EPA Climate Declarations to Stand?
Paul Driessen, author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power Black Death, describes the implications of the coming US Supreme Court decision in the Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency proceeding. As Mr. Driessen puts it: The case will determine how far EPA can extend its regulatory overreach, to control climate changing ' carbon dioxide from power plants and other facilities by ignoring the Constitution 's separation of powers ' provisions, rewriting clear language in the Clean Air Act, and disregarding laws that require the agency to consider both the costs and benefits of its regulations and what it is regulating.
<http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/03/will-the-supreme-court-permit-epa-climate-decisions-to-stand/>
Americans List Climate Change as One of their Lowest Priorities
Two days after 28 US Senators held an all-night talkathon to call attention to climate change, Gallup released a survey on March 12 that puts the issue 14th on a list of 15. Despite what it calls public indifference, the HuffPost asserts that climate change remains a dire concern in both the scientific and political communities.
Video Interview of Patrick Moore
In this 6:08 video with transcript, Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Moore [FoS Extracts - 2014-03-02] is interviewed by Fox News. When asked if there 's an agenda driving climate change, Dr. Moore says: It is a powerful convergence of interests among a very large number of elites, including politicians who want to make it seem as though they're saving the world, environmentalists who want to raise money and get control over very large issues like our entire energy policy, media, for sensationalism, Universities and professors for grants. The climate models they rely on assume CO2-induced warming will magnify the CO2 effect by two or three times through increased water vapour, but the vapour may, in fact, dampen the effect.
Documentary: How the Global Warming Scare Began
This 36-minute video by TV weather-caster John Coleman compares the popular media scare stories (temperatures, ice melting at the poles, polar bears, rising oceans, superstorms, tornadoes, drought, heat waves) with what he calls cold hard facts. Then he explains how it all began with Roger Revelle (1909-1991), who in 1957 co-authored a paper on CO2 as a climate-threatening greenhouse gas. He moved to Harvard and started the Center for Population Studies, where one of his students was Al Gore. Thus inspired, Mr. Gore promoted global warming into a Senate seat, hearings, and $4.7 billion/year to support the scare.
Maurice Strong, with his dream of a UN world government, used the new fear of global warming at the1972 Stockholm conference to set up a UN bureaucracy, that eventually included the IPCC. Mr. Gore published An Inconvenient Truth, for which he shared a Nobel Peach Prize with the IPCC. However, in 1988 , Dr. Revelle had second thoughts about CO2-caused global warming, urging waiting another 20 years to see if it was real.
Mr. Coleman concludes that what 's going to defeat the global warming crowd is not money, but time - as people come to realize that there is no warming.
<http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/13/documentary-how-the-global-warming-scare-began/>
Where 's the Science at the IPCC?
This is a short (2:52) video by Donna Laframboise that begins with the premise that we 're supposed to trust the IPCC, because it is a scientific body. Rather, it is in the business of writing reports based on surveys of scientific literature, making judgement calls to do so. Thus, they are similar to jurors at a trial.
<http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2014/03/11/wheres-the-science-at-the-ipcc/>
The Economist on Climate Sense and Sensitivity
Despite its steadfast editorial stance in favour of CAGW, The Economist begins this article with: Climate science is never settled. The article then discusses explanations for the warming pause since 1998, including new estimates of climate sensitivity. It concludes that it 's not getting any easier to reconciles climate models with observations and the expectation that there 's going to be more global warming.
<http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/03/climate-science>
Report: Climate Less Sensitive to CO2 than Models Suggest
The title of the report by Nic Lewis and Marcel Crok is: A sensitive matter: How the IPCC buried evidence showing good news about global warming. Judith Curry was asked to review the report and write a forward. She says the Lewis and Crok report, which she characterizes as a technically sound, well-organized and readily comprehensible report on the scientific issues surrounding climate sensitivity and the deliberations of the IPCC on this topic. Watts Up With That states that is the importance of the report is that the IPCC has misled policymakers.
Causes and Implications of the Pause
Judith Curry was invited to talk to the American Physical Society meeting in Denver. The title of the talk: Causes and implications of the growing divergence between climate model simulations and observations. She discusses various hypotheses for the global temperature pause since 1998, implications for the future, and a summary of major uncertainties.
Top 10 Reasons for the Pause
Anthony Watts has his top 10 reasons for the pause. Each reason is backed by a link to studies by different climate scientists. Mr. Watts 'favorite is No. 10 by establishment scientist Gavin Schmidt et al, who argue that coincidence, conspired to dampen warming trends in the real world after about 1992.
German Government Advisers Call for Abolition of Renewables Subsidies
Chancellor Merkel won 't like this advice. A commission of experts appointed by the Bundestag has concluded that the country 's Green Energy Law is neither a cost-effective tool for climate protection, nor does it have any measurable impact on innovation. Among the reasons for the commission 's conclusions: the spiralling cost of ‚ 22 billion in green energy subsidies last year; the over-estimated impact of climate change; subsidies that incentivize companies to exploit market potential (rent seek), rather than invest in new technologies.
In another story, Germany 's exports would have been ‚ 52 billion higher from 2008 to 2013 if its industry had not paid a premium for electricity compared to international competitors. A der Spiegel story, translated in the No Tricks Zone blog states that 17% of all German households are now in energy poverty, a result of an energy cost explosion.
Behind the Scenes in the Legal Battle with the EPA over the Social Cost of Carbon
Watts Up with That has been granted exclusive first access to a new legal document challenging the EPA 's proposed use of calculations on the social cost of carbon. This document was prepared by attorney Francis Mellon in response to a request by the White House 's Office of Management and Budget for technical comment on the EPA proposal. Mr. Mellon focuses on the EPA 's reliance on three Integrated Assessment Models, that combine climate process, economic growth and feedbacks between the climate and the global economy.
The SCCs derived from the IAMs are critically dependent on the parameter of climate sensitivity. Even the IPCC, in its latest assessment report states No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given Mr. Mellon then notes that the EPA 's three lines of evidence have been falsified: the tropical hot spot ; the claim of unusual global warming over the past several decades; and the climate models.
John Kerry 's Remarks on Climate Change
Judith Curry responds to Mr. Kerry 's recent speech wherein he equated those who refuse believe in the science with members of the Flat Earth Society. She posted the complete text of the speechï¼which is instructive regarding administration thinkingï¼and found one statement she agrees with: The solution to climate change is as clear as the problem. Dr. Curry concludes: The climate change problem is not at all clear, especially with regards to impacts, and the solutions are even less clear.
<http://judithcurry.com/2014/02/17/john-kerrys-remarks-on-climate-change/>
UK Windfarm Plans in Tatters after Government Cuts Green Subsidies
Now that the government has cut subsidies, Developers are abandoning plans for new wind farms in Britain because they are no longer financially viable. Under the subsidy, wind farms were guaranteed to receive double the wholesale price for the electricity they produce. Under the new scheme, to be introduced later this year, companies will have to sell their electricity to the national grid under a competitive bidding system. The new scheme will limit the total amount of subsidies available for green energy; previously the subsidy budget was effectively limitless.
<http://www.thegwpf.org/wind-farm-plans-tatters-government-cuts-green-subsidies/>
Testimony of a Greenpeace Dropout to US Senate on Climate Change
Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, testified to the US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight on February 25. After 15 years with Greenpeace, and before climate change was an issue, he left the organization because it had taken a sharp turn to the political left. Dr. Moore points out that the IPCC 's extremely likely finding of human influence being the dominant cause of global warming is not a scientific term, but a judgment, as in a court of law. The IPCC 's judgments are based entirely on the results of computer models.
In Dr. Moore 's view, the simplest way to expose the fallacy of extreme certainty is to examine the historical record, where there is some degree of certainty, compared to predictions of the future. For example, an ice age occurred 450 million years ago when atmospheric CO2 was ten times the present level, and today we are locked into the Pleistocene ice age, with an average temperature of 14.5 °C. He then covers the temperature record of the past 130 years, in particular, the similar temperature increases for 1910-1940 and 1970-2000. The IPCC attributes only the latter to human influence.
Court Favours Wind Turbines over Blanding's Turtle
An Ontario divisional court has ruled in favour of industrial wind developer Gilead Power Corporation in an appeal [FoS Extracts 2014-02-02] of a decision by an Environmental Review Tribunal had concluded that the development would cause serious and and irreversible harm to some Blanding 's turtles. The court found that the Tribunal should have assumed that the Ministry of Natural Resources would monitor the permit under the Endangered Species Act.
John Holdren 's Epic Fail
Dr. Holdren is President Obama 's science advisor, and he characterized Roger Pielke Jr. as being outside the scientific mainstream regarding his views on extreme events and climate change. While such characterization is common in climate war blogs, it is rare for an appointee, especially a presidential one, to accuse an individual academic of holding views are are not simply wrong, but in fact scientifically illegitimate.
In a letter to Dr. Holdren, Dr. Pielke pointed out that his views on extreme events are supported by both the IPCC and the US Global Change Research Program, and asked for the professional courtesy of a clarification of Dr. Holdren 's statement. Dr. Pielke got a six-page response, which he characterizes in this critique as sloppy.
<http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/john-holdrens-epic-fail.html>
Michael Mann 's Legal Proceedings
Judith Curry comments on recent developments regarding Dr. Mann. In the latter 's suit against Mark Steyn [FoS Extracts 2014-01-01], Mr. Steyn has countersued for $20 million, claiming a pattern of abusive litigation designed to chill freedom of speech and stifle criticism of Dr. Mann 's work. The Virginia Supreme Court is to rule on litigation involving access to Dr. Mann 's emails while at the University of Virginia, a case which pits academic freedom vs transparency and media access.
Steve McIntyre has been auditing Dr. Mann 's suit and found a doctored quote purporting to be an excerpt from the Muir Russell inquiry report [FoS Extracts - 2010-07-14]. Other blogs note that Dr. Mann routinely attacks his opponents in the harshest terms, but sues anyone that criticizes him. Apparently Dr. Mann 's legal bills are being paid by the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund.
<http://judithcurry.com/2014/02/22/steyn-et-al-versus-mann/>
Time to Push Back against the Global Warming Nazis
When politicians and scientists started calling people like Roy Spencer deniers they crossed a line, by equating them with denial of the Nazis ' extermination of millions of Jews. What Dr. Spencer now calls the global warming Nazis: falsely warn of disasters; advocate supreme authority of the state the supports their scientific research; pressure journals not to publish papers with which they disagree; are willing to sacrifice millions of poor people in the cause of radical environmentalism.
Dr. Spencer 's post got under the skin of the Anti-Defamation League, which has apparently decided that anti-Holocaust imagery is OK on one side of the global warming issue, but not the other. He points out that the Holocaust has been invoked, explicitly or implicitly, for seven years to malign the characters of people like him, who assert that global warming might not be the fault of humans and might not be a problem serious enough to warrant killing poor people through higher energy prices.
Obama Hopes Paris Is No Copenhagen
More than four years after the fractious UN climate talks nearly collapsed in Copenhagen, President Obama introduced a new term to the AGW lexicon by stating: Next year's carbon climate conference in France will be an opportunity to forge a strong global agreement that reduces greenhouse gas emissions through concrete actions. This was no stray comment; it came during a joint press conference with French President Fran §ois Hollande.
A related story in Scientific American says that the Obama administration is quietly working on new, post-2020 GHG targets to deliver to the UN, even as it struggles to craft regulations that will enable the US to meet its current goals.
The Daily Caller reports that the administration would avoid the need for Senate ratification of any climate treaty by having individual countries enforce their own emissions reductions after the president has already implemented his own climate action plan through executive orders.
US Launches Climate Hubs to Help Farmers
As an example of executive action to fight climate change, the Obama administration announced the formation of seven climate hubs to help farmers and rural communities adapt to extreme weather conditions and other effects of climate change. The hubs will act as information centres and aim to help farmers and ranchers handle risks, including fires, pests, floods and droughts, that the administration believes are exacerbated by global warming.
The president is going to ask Congress to set up a $1 billion Climate Resilience Fund in his proposed budget next month. The fund, according to the White House, would go to research on the projected impacts of climate change, help communities prepare for climate change 's effects and fund breakthrough technologies and resilient infrastructure.
US December/January Temperatures 3rd Coldest in 30 Years
The winter months of December 2013 and January 2014 averaged over the contiguous 48 United States were the 3rd coldest Dec/Jan in the last 30 years. An interesting feature of the graph shown in Roy Spencer 's analysis is that 5 of the last 7 years have been below the 41-year average, which has happened only one other time in the 41-year period.
<http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/02/u-s-decjan-temperatures-3rd-coldest-in-30-years/>
Europe 's New Climate Targets: The Myth and the Reality
On 22 January, the outgoing European Commission proposed new EU-wide CO2 emissions and renewables targets for 2030, which will be discussed by the European Council (heads of state or government of the 28 member countries) in the next 12 months. While reported in the media as aggressive, new targets, they are in fact, offered as a conditional pledge for the 2015 climate talks in Paris.
Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation explains the myths and realities of the EU 's proposed climate targets in a 4:23 video. He points out that any targets become binding only when all member states accept nationally-binding targets. States remain split on the issue, as renewables and climate policies have become unpopular with their electorates.
<http://www.thegwpf.org/europes-climate-targets-myth-reality/>
Fighting the Wrong Battle: Public Persuaded about CO2 as Pollutantï¼Not as Cause of Global Warming
Tim Ball 's essay begins with the statement: Skeptics are winning the battle to reject CO2 as the only cause of warming, but losing the war to the misrepresentation of CO2 as a pollutant. Realizing that they can 't get the public to understand climate science, AGW proponents are changing the emphasis from climate change to CO2, as in coal death trains (James Hansen) or carbon pollution (Barak Obama). CO2 continues its hold because the public believes it is a pollutant.
Dr. Ball describes the template for his new book, The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science, which has the same objectives as those of the CRU whistleblower who released the Climategate emails. He lists seven groups of participants who created the myth of CO2 and will oppose its debunking.
If 99 Doctors Said
The If 99 doctors said argument has been used often by global warming enthusiasts. Bob Tisdale responds to that argument by supposing that the 99 doctors were a computer model that advises you of the computer-diagnosed ailment and prescribes controversial high-cost medications and treatment. But if this model can 't simulate basic bodily functions, you wouldn 't accept a diagnosis from it.
<http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/02/if-99-doctors-said/>
Debunking the 97% Consensus on Global Warming
American Thinker picked up Friends of Science 's review of the four main studies used to document the alleged 97% consensus on AGW. The FoS review found that only 1%-3% of respondents explicitly stated agreement the the IPCC declarations on global warming and that there was no agreement with a catastrophic view.
<http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/02/debunking_the_97_consensus_on_global_warming.html>
IMF Chief Warns of Merciless Climate Change
Addressing an audience in London, IMF head Christine Lagarde said that the planet is perilously close to a climate change tipping point. She predicted that the consequences of climate change will be merciless and said that reductions on fossil fuel subsidies and pricing carbon should be priorities for governments around the world. Ms. Lagarde 's comments come as preliminary negotiations on an international climate deal are set to begin in Bonn in March.
In response to a question from the audience, Ms. Lagarde said: Unless we take action on climate change, future generations will be roasted, toasted, fried and grilled.
The IPCC Official and the Loaded Gun
Chris Field the head of the IPCC 's Working Group 2 (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) thinks the world is staring down the barrel of climate change. This phrase appears on the title of Dr. Field 's talk to the American Association for the Advancement of Science on February 14. In about six weeks WG2 will release its 30-chapter part of AR5.
Monckton 's Challenge to Prince Charles
In response to Charles ' calling those who disagree with him on climate change headless chickens [FoS Extracts - 2014-02-02], Christopher Monckton addressed an open letter to His Royal Highness. He points out that HRH crossed a line by intervening in partisan politics, while displaying arrogant and derogatory dismissiveness towards" the 50% of his subjects who disagree with his views. Now that the prince has blown any claim to deference, Lord Monckton challenges him to debate the motion, Global warming is a global crisis at the prince 's alma mater: Cambridge.
<http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/05/monckton-challenge-to-prince-charles/>
Ontario Joins WWF for National Sweater Day
The Ontario government issued a press release titled Protecting the Environment One Sweater at a Time. Ontario is joining WWF-Canada for National Sweater Day, it read, before assuring us that we can all play an important role in fighting climate change by Putting on a sweater and turning down the thermostat. According to Donna Laframboise, government ministers apparently think that Ontariansï¼in the dead of a cold winterï¼aren 't smart enough to figure out that wearing a sweater is a good idea.
Donna Laframboise 's Video Interview
While in the UK recently Ms. Laframboise was interviewed by Ben Pile, who blogs at Climate-Resistance.org. In a 23-minute video, they discuss the IPCC 's AR5, the lively Internet debate on climate science, the slow turn-around by the mainstream media, governments making economic prosperity a higher priority than climate action, last November 's climate summit in Warsaw, where she was struck by the role activists were permitted to play, while the public was excluded. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is a treaty between sovereign governments, representing their people, but the unelected activists who represent a small slice of society, get their own press conference centre at the UNFCCC 's event.
<http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2014/02/09/video-interview-activists-the-un-climate-process/>
95% of Climate Models Agree: The Observations Must Be Wrong
Roy Spencer suggests that we should be taking a longer view than wrangling over the recent (15+ year) pause. The more important point is that the climate models that governments base policy decisions on have failed miserably. He illustrates this with a comparison of 90 climate models versus observations of global average surface temperatures through 2013. Over 95% of the models over-forecast the warming since 1979.
<http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/02/95-of-climate-models-agree-the-observations-must-be-wrong/>
How Much Weather Is Being Caused by Climate Change: 1 Part in 1,000
Roy Spencer takes issue with President Obama 's science advisor, who recently stated: Weather practically everywhere is being caused by climate change. First, he explains weather as the result of energy imbalances and then states that the best estimate of how much the climate system has been perturbed from energy balance comes from the slow warming of the oceans. Since the 1950s this warming equates to 1 part in 1,000 of the energy imbalance. Global warming warms the winter air masses more than it warms the oceans, reducing the temperature contrast. That 's the opposite to what 's happening this winter.
Obama 's State of the Union on Climate
This year 's SOTU was less alarmist than the 2013 version [FoS Extracts - 2013-02-16], such that the Wall Street Journal 's Washington Wire blog wonders if the president is going a little soft on climate change. Among the indicators, a big endorsement to domestic natural gas production. Nevertheless, the president stated: But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. As WUWT points out, there has never been any assertion that climate didn 't change.
In a WUWT piece rebutting the president 's concerns for the planet, Craig Idso, chief scientist of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate change, points out problems with the model-based view on future climate, the benefits of CO2 on plant life and the unnecessary taxation and regulation of CO2.
Industries Unite against Obama 's Climate Change Rules
Fearing that they 'll be next, 76 business groups have agreed to dedicate necessary resources to vigorously participate in every facet of President Obama 's effort to tackle climate change through regulation. New rules being developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the centrepiece of the president 's plan, threaten to damage an already-reeling coal industry. The business groups say that the administration is bound to move on to other industries once power plant regulations are in place.
<http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/196968-business-plans-major-pushback-on-energy-regulation>
EPA 's Ban on Wood Stoves Is Freezing Out Rural America
The Environmental Protection Agency recently banned the production and sale of 80% of America 's current wood burning stoves, because they can 't meet the agency 's new standard on particulate emissions. According to the US Census Bureau, 12% of homes (2.4 million), a lot of them in rural areas, burned wood as the primary heating fuel. To commentator Larry Bell, the EPA 's action is an example of Sue and Settle lawsuits, whereby environmental groups, or certain states, sue agencies like the EPA in order to craft a settlement behind closed doors obliging the agencies enact new regulations that they lack statutory authority to otherwise accomplish.
Louisiana Senator David Vitter has launched an investigation into this practice by asking his state 's attorney-general to join an FOIA request by 13 other states seeking all correspondence between the EPA and 80 environmental, labor union, and public interest organizations that have been party to litigation since the start of the Obama administration.
<http://www.cfact.org/2014/01/29/epa-ban-on-wood-stoves-is-freezing-out-rural-america/>
UK Parliamentary Hearing on the IPCC
Two panels of three warmists and then three skeptics appeared at the House of Commons ' Energy and Climate Change Committee hearing on the IPCC 's AR5 [FoS Extracts - 2013-11-02]. Judith Curry listened to the whole three hours and was impressed by the informed questions posed by committee members, and she made a pseudo-transcript of the hearing. While there were no knockout punches by either side, Dr. Curry found the warmist team to be on the defensive, while the skeptics made some convincing statements.
Turbines vs Turtles Case Goes to Court
Blanding 's turtles got their day in court three days, in fact as a case that pits turtles against wind turbines entered a new phase. The turtles won the first round when an environmental review tribunal blocked approval of nine turbines in Ontario 's Prince Edward County, because traffic on roads associated with the turbines ' construction would cause serious and irreversible harm to the turtles. [FoS Extracts - 2013-07-08]
The developer, Gilead Power, supported by the Ministry of the Environment, appealed to the Ontario Divisional Court, arguing that gates preventing traffic on the roads could be installed to protect the turtles. The three justices denied this attempt to introduce new evidence, confining the scope of the appeal to whether or not the ERT had conducted itself correctly and in accordance with the rules by which it is governed.
In addition to the developer 's appeal, there were cross-appeals by opponents arguing that the ERT should have applied the turtle reasoning to other species such as endangered birds, and that the ERT applied too high a standard in assessing the risk to human health. The Court will issue its decision on all three appeals later.
Gone With the Wind: Weak Returns Cripple German Renewables
Investments in renewable energy were supposed to be a sure thing, with wind park operators promising annual returns of up to 20%. More often than not, however, such pledges have been illusory, and many investors have lost their principal to boot. The latest example is the German renewable firm Prokon, which, despite being backed by ‚ 1.4 billion of investments, declared bankruptcy, leaving 75,000 stakeholders out in the cold.
In courts around the country, complaints are mounting from wind park investors who haven't received a dividend disbursement in years or whose parks went belly up. A study based on 1,150 annual reports found that, on average, investors got an annual return of 2.5%, despite prospectuses promising them returns of 6% to 8%.
Europe 's Green Frankenstein Monster
We can avoid what could well be a human calamity, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in 2007 after EU leaders decided to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% and to generate 20% of the EU's energy from renewable sources by 2020. While these policies might have no discernible effect on the climate, they are a calamity for the EU. Like Frankenstein, the EU has created a renewable-energy monster it does not know how to tame.
The European Commission has just published an analysis showing that the US cut its emissions by 12% since 2005, with American firms paying 2.6% less for energy, while the EU cut its emissions by 14% while European industry paid 16.7% more. Currently the energy price differential is 45%. With Europe home to 44% of the world 's renewable capacity, the Commission acknowledges that, because member states over-incentivized investment in renewables, they compounded the challenges posed by weather-dependent electricity generation.
The article ends with a pithy observation: For the rest of the world, Europe offers a stark lesson. When it comes to unilateral cuts in greenhouse emissions and aggressive incentives for renewables, this is a global race you don't want to win. As Europe shows, the winner loses big.
<http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303553204579348470302047850>
At Davos, Nestl Chairman Warns against Playing God over Climate Change
Peter Brabeck, attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, said that climate change is an intrinsic part of the development of the world, and the issue should be adaptation, rather than playing God trying to keep the climate as it is today. Chief executives from progressive companies, who focused their time at the WEF on seeking to build a common business platform ahead of the UN climate summit in September, will be unhappy to see Mr. Brabeck undermine their position.
Prince Charles Hits Out at Headless Chickens Climate Change Deniers
In an inflammatory speech to environmental entrepreneurs, the heir to the throne urged them to ignore the headless chicken brigade of climate change deniers. Charles has long led the public charge against global warming despite repeated warnings about his meddling in contentious global issues. While the prince railed against vested interests on the other side of the climate debate, his family 's Crown Estate is making huge profits from offshore wind farms.
DeSmogBlog: Doubt on Climate Change Climbing
The blog wants to know why in the face of what it sees as rising climate change disasters and yearly temperatures increasing in a nearly consistent pattern public opinion is shifting against the AGW viewpoint. It found the cause: the misinformation machine has kicked into high gear, and 2013 saw a massive increase in the amount of climate change denial being given a microphone throughout various forms of media.
Examples of the blog 's misinformation machine include Marc Morano, lackluster climate change coverage in the mainstream media, with the majority of MSM coverage skewed to the denial side. Also, 2014 got off to a bad start, with the polar vortex causing massive winter storms. Still, the blog admits that the problem is not necessarily the denial industry, but also a public so unwilling to accept the truth that it will buy into any piece of good news.
<http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/02/01/misinformation-winning-doubt-climate-change-climbing>
Morano vs Bill Nye Debate
In an 11-minute video on Fox News, Marc Morano debated Bill Nye on climate change. At the outset Mr. Nye points to the 7 billion humans living today, compared to 1 billion in 1750, and then introduces the hockey stick graph as fact. Mr. Morano notes that despite the huge amounts of government and foundation funding for climate scientists, the number of skeptical scientists has grown. He also points to declining weather extremes over the past century.
<http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/01/28/watch-now-morano-v-bill-nye-climate-debate-on-fox-with-stossel-nye-cites-hockey-stick-as-proof-says-politicians-can-fix-potholes-the-climate-morano/>
<http://www.cfact.org/2014/01/28/morano-debates-nye-on-warming-watch-now/>
Germany 's Energy Revolution on Verge of Collapse
Germany's energy revolution has gone sour, and so have its efforts to cut CO2 emissions, as energy minister Sigmar Gabriel announced cuts of one-third to wind and solar subsidies, while the country 's coal burning soared to its highest level in more than 30 years. Moreover, operators of renewable energy plants are no longer exempt from a surcharge on their power bills, making Germany the first European country to penalize the self-consumption of solar energy.
The Economist ran a story on Mr. Gabriel 's dilemma. He is a super minister, responsible for both energy and economy. While Germany exempts companies competing globally and dependent on electricity from paying the renewables subsidy, the EU 's competition commissioner says this violates EU law. Germany 's constitution forbids retroactively reneging on promises already made, so the renewables subsidies have to continue. The effect of the country 's renewable energy policy has been to turn the whole energy industry into a quasi-planned economy with perverse outcomes.
EU: Re-industrialization More Important than Climate Change
The European Commission is beginning to shift away from its current climate policy, stating that, without a strong industrial base, Europe will not be able to prosper. Since 2007, 3.8 million industrial jobs have been lost in the EU. Thus the Commission eschewed a binding target for development of renewable energy and left it up to member states to decide whether to allow fracking.
World Economic Forum Gets Hijacked by Climate Alarmism
Once upon a time, the meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos were gatherings of free-market economists and entrepreneurs. Not any more - the 2014 session includes the annual WEF insight report on global risks that rates climate change and extreme weather events among the greatest threats. Before 2011, environmental threats did not figure among the WEF 's top five global risks. Even the IPCC 's Fifth Assessment Report makes it quite plain that one cannot yet attribute any extreme-weather event to global warming .
UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon used the WEF gathering to push for production of a draft climate treaty to be negotiated at the next climate summit in Lima in December. The EU came in for criticism at the WEF by green groups and low-carbon investors for its newly-released (and in their view, too modest) set of ambitions for 2030.
Wind Turbines Allowing Eagle Deaths Face Blowback
An ongoing battle over a US Interior Department rule-making that allows wind-energy producers to kill bald and golden eagles without prosecution has created a rift between environmental advocates and the wind industry. Turbine operators can apply for a permit to avoid prosecution by taking measures to prevent avian deaths, but after the $1 million fine levied against Duke Energy [FoS Extracts - 2013-11-24], conservation groups are planning litigation against other operators.
According to Biological Conservation, the 44,577 turbines in the US kill 234,000 birds. The American Wind Energy Association hopes to keep animosity over the rule at bay by focusing on what it sees as the bigger picture (i.e., climate change is more of a threat to birds than wind turbines).
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/wind-permits-allowing-eagle-deaths-face-blowback-20140123>
Electric Vehicles Would Have Little Effect on US Emissions
A new study from North Carolina State University indicates that even a sharp increase in the use of electric drive passenger (EDV) vehicles by 2050 would not significantly reduce emissions of high-profile air pollutants carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxides. The researchers ran 108 different scenarios in a powerful energy systems model to determine the impact of EDV use on emissions between now and 2050. They found that, even if EDVs made up 42% of passenger vehicles in the US, there would be little or no reduction in the emission of key air pollutants.
NextEra Continuing Lawsuit against Esther Wrightman
Having got what it wanted permission to install its wind turbines in Esther Wrightman 's area NextEra sent Ms. Wrightman a letter in December about continuing its lawsuit against her for parodying its name and logo [FoS Extracts - 2013-06-09.] The power company promises in its court documents to donate any lawsuit winnings to the United Way, which the charity declared itself ready to accept. Ms. Wrightman remains defiant and refuses to remove her videos from YouTube and has moved her blog to an Icelandic website.
<http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/energy-company-suing-single-mother-for-using-their-logo>
Australian Government to Seek Cost Recovery from Ship of Fools
The federal environment minister said that the government would be seeking recovery of A$2.4 million from the insurer of the operators of the Akademik Shokalsky, which got stuck in ice during an expedition by a group of global warming enthusiasts [FoS Extracts - 2014-01-01]. The costs were incurred in rescuing the 52 passengers from the stranded vessel.
Procrastinating about the Pause
The world is entering the 16th year of the greatest climate science embarrassment in modern history the pause in global warming. No longer able to sweep the lack of warming under the observational rug, the climate change community has started flailing about for answers: the heat must be hiding deep in the ocean, it must be soot from China, and some have even begun to wonder whether there 's something wrong with their models. But for climate researchers, the global warming panic has been a goldmine as government funds are showered on researchers in order to cover politicians ' posteriors. For climate scientists the profits are in the present and the risk of being wrong far in the uncertain future.
As well as climate scientists, national academies persuaded themselves into giving support to the conclusions of the IPCC, based on assessments that were compiled by many of the same scientists involved with the IPCC. Now the pause threatens to destroy the reputation of science itself.
NASA and NOAA Confirm Global Temperature Standstill Continues
The two agencies held a joint press conference announcing the release of data for the 2013 global surface temperature, showing that the pause that began in 1997 continues. Statistically speaking there has been no significant trend in global temperatures over this period. All these years fall within the error bars of ±0.1 °C. The trend is less than this and is statistically insignificant. There is no statistical case for representing the post-1997 data as anything other than a constant line. The graphs presented at the press conference omitted those error bars.
When asked for an explanation for the pause ' by reporters Dr Gavin Schmidt of NASA and Dr Thomas Karl of NOAA spoke of contributions from volcanoes, pollution, a quiet Sun and natural variability. In other words, they don 't know.
With none of the fanfare that accompanies their prediction of the global temperature for the forthcoming year the UK Met Office has quietly released the global temperature for 2013, again confirming the standstill. The GWPF story includes a 3-minute video of a Met Office spokeswoman confidently predicting in 2007 that 2014 would show a global temperature anomaly of +0.755 °C. For 2013 it was +0.486 °C.
Scientists Baffled as Sun 's Activity Falls to Century Low
The Sun recently reached a quiet solar maximum of its current cycle (No. 24), which baffles some solar physicists. In a BBC video, two of them compare the recent decline in solar activity (i.e., sunspots) to the 17th century Maunder Minimum. One scientist says that the Sun 's rate of decline on activity is the fastest for 10,000 years, predicting a 20% chance of Maunder Minimum conditions in 40 years.
Judith Curry Responds to Michael Mann
Michael Mann had an op-ed in the New York Times titled If you see something, say something, in which he complains of being forced into public advocacy after being hounded for his hockey stick graph. He also tweeted about Judith Curry 's testimony to the US Senate 's Committee on Environment and Public Works [FoS Extracts - 2014-01-18] in which he accused her of being anti-science. In her blog, Dr. Curry challenges Dr. Mann to publicly document and rebut any statement in her testimony that is factually inaccurate or not supported by the evidence she provided.
Industrial Wind Turbines and Adverse Health Effects
This is the title of a peer-reviewed paper published in the Canadian Journal of Rural Medicine. It involved a search for articles that included the terms wind turbine health, wind turbine infrasound, wind turbine annoyance, noise annoyance or low frequency noise in the title or the abstract. The authors found that IWTs produced sound that is perceived to be more annoying than other forms of sound. If placed too close to residents, IWTs can negatively affect the physical, mental and social well-being of people. Inaudible low-frequency noise, and infrasound from IWTs cannot be ruled out as plausible causes of health effects.
This paper will doubtless be cited in the numerous appeals by Ontario residents fighting IWTs.
EU Commission Retreats on Climate Policy
The EU 's reputation as a model of environmental responsibility may soon be history as the Commission is set to propose, on January 22, modest energy and climate objectives for 2030, with goals, rather than mandatory targets for each country. The climate change and environmental commissioners have been isolated by their peers. There is also a tug of war among the EU 's 28 governments with Austria, Portugal, Belgium and Germany clamouring for binding targets on renewable energy, and other countries pushing for more nuclear or coal.
Mother Nature Suggests that the Party 's Over for the IPCC
Maurice Newman, chairman of the Australian prime minister 's Business Advisory Council, begins this article in The Australian with: What we now see is the unravelling of years of shoddy science and sloppy journalism. He goes on to attack the political awareness that has infected science academies and the capture of the IPCC by the green movement, but notes the changing political will among governments.
BBC Outed
After spending six years and thousands of pounds fighting an FOI request, the BBC revealed details of a secret seminar in 2006 for nearly 30 of the corporation 's senior executives. At this conference green activists and scientists set the line on the BBC 's coverage of climate change. A senior BBC official admitted that the seminar had an impact on a broad range of BBC output.
Green NGOs Break with Obama over US Energy & Climate Policy
Eighteen groups, including the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund and Earthjustice, have sent a letter to President Obama attacking his all of the above energy strategy. Under this strategy, the administration pushes for limits on coal plants and transportation fuel efficiency, while embracing domestic production of natural gas, oil and coal. The green groups regard the all of the above strategy as a compromise that future generations can 't afford.
US Senate Hearing on President 's Climate Action Plan
On January 16 the Senate 's Committee on Environment and Public Works held a hearing titled Review of the President 's Climate Action Plan (the plan reaffirmed his commitment to cut carbon pollution .) Among the group of witnesses administration officials, directors of green agencies and two scientists the only dissenting voices were those of Judith Curry and Kathleen White, Chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Dr. Curry 's second link has a link to the testimonies of all nine witnesses. Her testimony dealt with the 16-year pause in global warming, the IPCC 's lack of explanation thereof, the growing evidence of decreased climate sensitivity, and the IPCC 's use of expert judgement in lowering its temperature projection for 2016-2036.
Dona Laframboise 's No Frakking Consensus notes the lack of interest by the mainstream media in Dr. Curry 's testimony. The Daily Caller shows EPA chief Gina McCarthy attempting to answer a simple question whether the world has gotten warmer over the past decade.
Bob Tisdale 's Letter to Jon Stewart (The Daily Show)
Bob Tisdale, author of three ebooks on global warming, takes issue with Jon Stewart, host of the satirical series The Daily Show. The program poked fun at Fox News with two clips titled The Global Warming Hoax and War on Carbon. These clips expressed support for climate models and the CAGW wing of the climate science community. In this open letter Mr. Tisdale presents evidence to refute these beliefs.
The links in the WUWT story to The Daily Show don 't always work, but the YouTube one does.
Questions about the Ship of Fools
Now that Prof. Chris Turney and his 51 fellow passengers have been rescued from the ice-bound Akademik Shokalsky and are on their way back to Australia, Watts Up With That has some pointed questions about the poor choice of ship, how it got stuck in ice despite modern satellite imaging and weather forecasts, and who paid for the expedition (and the rescue). Opinion pieces in the Australian and the Financial Times (via the GWPF) say that the expedition was a debacle for climate change activists. In a SkyNews piece, the director of the French Polar Institute called the trip a pseudo-scientific expedition that drained resources from French, Chinese and Australian scientific missions in Antarctica.
Soak the Poor: Maryland 's Greens Following in Germany 's Footsteps
Maryland is funding green boondoggles on the backs of the poor. The state 's governor has put in place policies to raise energy prices, especially for low-income residents. Because the state government supports offshore wind projects, it forces Maryland companies to buy expensive forms of energy, and imposes extra fees on electricity users (for example, an implementation surcharge ), the average Marylander now pays more than $125 per month in energy costs.
That 's not all. The Maryland Budget & Tax Policy Institute has highlighted a home energy affordability gap, noting that energy is considered affordable when it costs less than 7% of household income. But in Maryland, people at 50% of the federal poverty level or below devote about 40% of their income to energy consumption.
Climate Skepticism in the Australian
The Australian has published two articles that caught Joanne Nova 's eye. The first by Maurice Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister 's Business Advisory Council, states that Australia has become hostage to climate change madness leading to a decimation of the country 's manufacturing industry. The cause is the cost of energy driven by the Renewable Energy Target and carbon tax. He notes: the climate change establishment, through the IPCC, remains intent on exploiting the masses and extracting more money
In the second article the Australian published a story about Michael Aston, a professor of geophysics at Monash University, who suggests that the government 's Direct Action Scheme should start with science. He lists five points to consider: (1) climate sensitivity; (2) the disconnect between CO2 increase and global warming; (3) cyclic variations in global sea level; (4) natural cycles in climate change; and (5) causative mechanisms for natural cycles.
The Cleantech Crash
This 14-minute video (with script) with CBS correspondent Leslie Stahl examines how, a decade ago, smart people from Silicon Valley turned their attention to the energy sector. Under the name of Cleantech they invested in solar panels, clean gasoline (from wood chips), futuristic batteries, and got their friends in Washington excited about it. American taxpayers spent billions in Cleantech, and there were spectacular failuresï¼Solyndra (solar panels), Fisker (electric cars), LG Chem (car batteries), A123 (batteries), Smith Electric Trucks, Abound Solar, Beacon Power (flywheels), Range Fuels (biofuels), Ener1 (batteries), ECOtality (car chargers).
A Chinese auto parts company, Wanxiang, scooped up some of the failures. Even its president agrees that the taxpayers didn 't get anything out of their investment.
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cleantech-crash-60-minutes/>
Blame Game
Judith Curry comments on a piece in the Guardian claiming that it will not be long before victims of climate change make the West pay through international litigation. Dr. Curry responds by quoting from an editorial in Nature commenting on attribution of extreme events: One critic argued that, given the insufficient observational data and the coarse and mathematically far-from-perfect climate models used to generate attribution claims, they are unjustifiably speculative, basically unverifiable and better not made at all. She also points to previous posts on why she thinks attempts to attribute blame for extreme events is pointless.
<http://judithcurry.com/2014/01/02/blame-game/>
Questions Policymakers Should be Asking Climate Scientists Who Receive Government Funding
Bob Tisdale, author of Climate Models Fail, notes that climate models are flawed and do not properly simulate the metrics of interest to the public and politicians. He then poses seven questions that policymakers should be asking climate scientists and agencies that receive government funding for research into human-induced global warming. These deal with the poorer performance of the current generation of models in simulating global temperatures, compared to the previous one; lack of ability to simulate Arctic ice losses and Antarctic ice gains; atmospheric reactions to volcanic eruptions; poor simulation of precipitation and drought; the inability to simulate multidecadal variations in sea surface temperatures; the inability to simulate El Ni ±o-La Ni ±a events; and finally the inability to predict the current halt in global warming.
Mr. Tisdale closes with a quote from Judith Curry: the issue of fitness for purpose of climate models for detection and attribution on these time scales should be seriously questioned.
IPCC Quietly Slashes Its Global Warming Projections in AR5 Final Draft
In the second draft of its Fifth Assessment Report issued last September, the IPCC wrote that it agreed with the models that the world would warm by 0.4 to 1.0 °C from 2016-2035, compared to 1986-2005. Now the final draft has quietly cut the 30-year projection to 0.3 to 0.7 °C, saying that the warming is more likely to be at the lower end of the range. If this rate continued the 21st century warming could be as little as 1.3 °C.
Interestingly, the IPCC is explicitly relying on its own expert assessment rather than the models ' projections, a significant climbdown. However, this climbdown is buried in Chapter 11 of the report. There is no hint of it in the Summary for Policymakers the only part of the latest assessment that lazy politicians and incurious journalists may ever get around to reading.
The Sydney Morning Herald is among the mainstream media that didn 't get the new IPCC message. It published a story about a group from the University of New South Wales who tweaked their models to show a global temperature increase of 4 °C by 2100. The researchers claim that CO2-induced warming will pull water vapour away from the level at which clouds form, resulting in less clouds and even more warming.
71 New Papers Reported in 2013 Demonstrating that the Sun Controls Climate, not Man-made CO2
The Club du Soleil has compiled a list of new papers published during 2013 demonstrating that the Sun controls climate, not man-made CO2.
Research Ship Studying Climate Change Trapped in Near-Record Summer Ice
One hundred years ago, Douglas Mawson 's expedition into Antarctica 's Commonwealth Bay found it clear of sea ice. Australian climate scientist Chris Tunney and a team of global warming believers tried to mimic the Mawson voyage, but their ship, the MV Akademik Shokalsky, became stuck in the ice on December 25. A rescue mission involving ships from China, France and Australia having failed to reach the expedition, a helicopter evacuation of the scientists and tourists will be attempted once conditions permit.
As skeptical bloggers around the world are having a field day with the irony of the situation, Prof. Tunney and colleagues try to argue that their predicament has nothing to do with climate change, blaming icebergs calving from the continent. Joanne Nova 's blog delights in how the mainstream media carefully avoid mentioning climate in connection with the plight of the passengers and crew of the Akademik Shokalsky.
Ontario 's Green Energy Laboratory
This seven-minute video examines how the Ontario government tried to use the province as a green energy laboratory. The rural areas, where the government holds few seats, are afflicted by wind turbines, while residents in the greater Toronto area successfully fought off gas-fired power plants. But everyone is hit by the resulting higher power costs, with the latest rate increase of November 1.
<http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/liberal-run-ontario-a- green-energy-laboratory '/2974337912001>
Climate Alarmism Alive and Well
This seven-minute video begins with the head of the IPCC 's Working Group 1 attempting to explain why the world hasn 't been warming. This is followed by an interview with Tom Harris of the International Climate Science Coalition, who notes that, as the IPCC 's models deviate further from reality, the IPCC 's confidence in them increases. He points out that the climate industry is spending about $1 billion/day and is not about to give up. In a conversation with the editor of a mainstream publication, he was told that big corporate advertisers are supporters of climate change.
<http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/2968321220001>
The Tesla Battery Swap: Hoax of the Year
California divides zero-emission vehicles, like the all-electric Tesla, into five categories, depending how far they go on a battery charge and the time to refuel. The higher the category, the more ZEV credits (i.e., manufacturer subsidies) the vehicle gets. The California Air Resources Board defines fast refueling as reaching 95% of capacity in 10-15 minutes, impossible for a battery recharge, but possible with a battery swap. Last June Tesla demonstrated a well-publicized, 90-second, fully-automated battery swap of a Model S. Some Model S owners, having experienced 3-4 hour non-automated battery swaps, called it a stunt. Also, no public swap stations exist and none are planned.
Nevertheless CARB is allowing Tesla not only to claim ZEV credits for fast refuelling, but to sell them to other manufacturers. According to the author of this article, these fraudulent credits account for 40% of the company 's total credits, and remain a key source of revenue.
<http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/21/the-tesla-battery-swap-is-the-hoax-of-the-year/>
To Help with Energy Crisis, British Plan Will Pay People to Be Ready to Do Nothing
The birthplace of the Industrial Revolution has a new bright idea. Big-Government is going to take £1 each from people using electricity and instead of giving it to people who make electricity, they 're going to give it to people who don 't absolutely have to have electricity. Those people might be paid for doing no useful work, or indeed, in a fabulous twist, they might be paid not to do no work, but just to be prepared to do nothing. It 's a brilliant left-of-center economic move, guaranteed to help the non-essential part of the economy at the expense of the part that does things that matter.
Denmark: Wind Turbine Syndrome
As bigger turbines replace smaller ones in Denmark, more people are affected, and the government has had no choice but to launch a study into their health effects. However, as in other countries, official studies protect the interests of the wind industry, so this one is likely to deny that there is a health problem. The study won 't be published until 2015; that way, victims will be silenced for two years during which more and bigger turbines (emitting more infrasound) will be installed.
<http://www.epaw.org/multimedia.php?lang=en&article=t24>
Renewables Fiasco in Germany: Doldrums and Clouds Bring Green Energy Production to a Halt
Germany 's wind and solar power production came to an almost complete standstill in early December. More than 23,000 wind turbines stood still. One million photovoltaic systems stopped work nearly completely. For a whole week, coal, nuclear and gas power plants had to generate an estimated 95% of Germany 's electricity supply.
<http://www.thegwpf.org/renewables-fiasco-doldrums-clouds-bring-green-electricity-production-halt/>
UN Calls Summit on Global Warming
In the hopes of advancing the UN agenda of getting a global agreement at the 2015 Paris climate summit, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon announced the next big global warming meeting in New York on September 23, 2014. He challenged delegates to bring to the summit bold pledges. Faced with increasing evidence of non-warming and scandal among climate scientists, the Secretary-General will have a difficult task.
<http://www.wnd.com/2013/12/u-n-calls-summit-on-global-warming/>
Setback for Michael Mann 's Lawsuit against Mark Steyn and Competitive Enterprise Institute
In October 2012 Michael Mann sued Mark Steyn and the Competitive Enterprise Institute [FoS Extracts - 2012-10-25]. Last July, in a botched ruling that mixed up the actions of the two defendants, the trial judge ruled that the defamation lawsuit could proceed. That ruling has been overturned by an appeals court, so Mr. Mann 's case will have to start over.
<http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/23/michael-mann-forced-into-a-do-over-in-mann-vs-cei-steyn/>
Many Climate Reconstructions Incorrectly Attributed to Temperature Change
The IPCC 's definition of climate change was narrowed to focus on human CO2 emissions and temperatures, and they exacerbated it by ignoring, downgrading or misusing other variables, in particular water in all its forms and functions. Thus, climate studies that considered only temperature usually and incorrectly attributed changes caused by precipitation to temperature. This became particularly evident when Tom Wigley took over as director of the Climatic Research Unit, as shown in the leaked CRU emails.
Climate as a Heat Engine
An often-cited myth in the media is that a warmer climate means more energy to power stronger storms. This guest essay by Jan Kjetil Andersen explains how the atmosphere acts as a gigantic heat engine converting heat to mechanical energy. Mr. Andersen demonstrates, using basic thermodynamic principles, how the efficiency of that machine depends on temperature differences, and it decreases as the climate warms.<http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/28/climate-as-a-heat-engine/>