Category: CLIMATE

CLIMATE MODEL FAILURE

Temperature Record Chicanery: An Overhyped Scandal

The real scandal is climate model failure

|Feb. 11, 2015 10:03 am

In his article Booker is citing statistical work by climate change skeptic Paul Homewood who runs the science blog Notalotofpeopleknowthat. Homewood has analyzed changes made to temperature data series from weather stations in South America and the Arctic from Greenland east to Siberia. Those weather stations are part of the Global Historical Climate Network and are adjusted by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) to create one of the leading global temperature data series. Homewood notes that the raw data have been adjusted, which is not at all surprising since the data are affected over the decades by shifts in station locations, instrument changes, and urban heat islands.

Very generally, in order to detect such changes, climate researchers look for abrupt shifts in the temperatures recorded at each weather station which are presumed to be artifacts rather than actual temperatures.  These shifts are adjusted via an algorithm using data from nearby stations. What Homewood found is that a lot of the past data have been modified in a mostly cooling direction. Lower past temperatures would produce a steeper global warming trend over the past century or so. No doubt the researchers who fear the consequences of man-made warming are greatly edified when their adjustments produce the temperature trend that they expect. Everyone is suspectible to confirmation bias. But scandalously suspicious? Perhaps not.

Let’s forget the longer term global record for now. What do the main temperature datasets say about recent warming? The instrumental temperature records including the GISS dataset, the British HadCRUT4, and the NOAA NCDC find that average global temperature increased. GISS is the highest reporting a rate between 1951 and 2012 of 0.124 C° ± 0.020 per decade. NCDC finds the rate is 0.118 C° ± 0.021, and HadCRUT4 is lowest at 0.106 C° ± 0.027 per decade. The per decade trends for the period after 1979 is 0.161 C° ± 0.033 for GISS; 0.151 C° ± 0.037 for NCDC; and 0.155 C° ± 0.033 for HadCRUT4.

The period after 1979 is relevant not only because global average temperatures seemed to have jumped in the 1970s, but because the instrumental record can be compared to the satellite temperature record. Two groups process the data (a.k.a. “adjusted”) from the NOAA satellites to produce separate records. As frequent Reason readers know I tend to follow the results from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. UAH climatologists who are quite skeptical of predictions of catastrophic climate change report that since 1979 the atmosphere has warmed at rate of 0.14 C° per decade. Using satellite data, the private research company Remote Sensing Systems finds that the atmosphere has warmed at an average rate of about 0.13 C° per decade. Interestingly, the RSS reports that the models most closely match the satellite temperature trends for the arctic region.

Global Average Temperature Increase 1951-2012 per decade rate 1979-2012/14 per decade rate
GISS 0.124 C° 0.161 C°
NCDC 0.118 C° 0.151 C°
HadCRUT4 0.106 C° 0.155 C°
UAH 0.140 C°
RSS 0.130  C°

To recap: All of the global temperature records find that the atmosphere has warmed in recent decades. The difference between the high and the low trends in the datasets since 1979 is 0.03 C° per decade. Summed over the past 35 years, temperatures have increased by at most 0.56 C° and at least by 0.455 C°, that is to say, a difference of about one-tenth of a degree Celsius. Additionally, it appears that global average temperature jumped to a new higher level in the late 1990s and has more or less “paused” since then. This is why so many climatologists repeat the mantra that the hottest years in the instrumental record have all occurred after 1998.

Nevertheless whatever suspect “adjustments” that may have been made they have barely changed the trend in any of the datasets.

In an effort to allay “hide the decline” concerns about how adjustments are made to raw temperature data, an international consortium of climatologists have suggested that the algorithms used to make the adjustments be benchmarked. Basically, the International Surface Temperature Initiative would generate synthetic climate datasets in which the “true” temperatures and the errors and discontinuities are both known. Then adjustment algorithms would be run against them to see which comes closest to reproducing the “true” dataset.

The real scandal, if there is one, is that nearly all of the climate computer models run hotter than these empirical trends. As the researchers at RSS observe, “Climate models cannot explain this warming if human-caused increases in greenhouse gases are not included as input to the model simulation.” But the folks at RSS significantly further note, “The troposphere has not (emphasis RSS) warmed as fast as almost all climate models predict.” To illustrate this last problem, RSS created the several plots below.

Each of these plots has a time series of TLT temperature anomalies using a reference period of 1979-2008.  In each plot, the thick black line is the measured data from RSS V3.3 MSU/AMSU Temperatures.  The yellow band shows the 5% to 95% envelope for the results of 33 CMIP-5 model simulations (19 different models, many with multiple realizations) that are intended to simulate Earth’s Climate over the 20th Century.  For the time period before 2005, the models were forced with historical values of greenhouse gases, volcanic aerosols, and solar output.  After 2005, estimated projections of these forcings were used. If the models, as a whole, were doing an acceptable job of simulating the past, then the observations would mostly lie within the yellow band.  For the first two plots (Fig. 1 and Fig 2), showing global averages and tropical averages, this is not the case.  Only for the far northern latitudes, as shown in Fig. 3, are the observations within the range of model predictions.

RSS GlobalRSS

RSS TropicsRSS

RSS North PoleRSS

RSS speculates that the models get it wrong because they fail to properly take into account things like volcanic aerosols, stratospheric cooling, and/or cloud feedbacks. Of greater possible consequence is that the models may be wrong on climate sensitivity – they estimate a bigger temperature response to a given level of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere than may be warranted. And, of course, the models did not predict the current “pause” in global temperatures.

A final plea: Whenever you encounter information that confirms what you already believe, be especially skeptical of it.

Disclosure: I am not a member of “Team Hot” nor of “Team Not.”

 

NASA DATA : NO POLAR ICE RETREAT

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT 5/19/2015 @ 9:53AM 339,692 views

Updated NASA Data: Global Warming Not Causing Any Polar Ice Retreat

Updated data from NASA satellite instruments reveal the Earth’s polar ice caps have not receded at all since the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in 1979. Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average. The updated data contradict one of the most frequently asserted global warming claims – that global warming is causing the polar ice caps to recede.

The timing of the 1979 NASA satellite instrument launch could not have been better for global warming alarmists. The late 1970s marked the end of a 30-year cooling trend. As a result, the polar ice caps were quite likely more extensive than they had been since at least the 1920s. Nevertheless, this abnormally extensive 1979 polar ice extent would appear to be the “normal” baseline when comparing post-1979 polar ice extent.

Updated NASA satellite data show the polar ice caps remained at approximately their 1979 extent until the middle of the last decade. Beginning in 2005, however, polar ice modestly receded for several years. By 2012, polar sea ice had receded by approximately 10 percent from 1979 measurements. (Total polar ice area – factoring in both sea and land ice – had receded by much less than 10 percent, but alarmists focused on the sea ice loss as “proof” of a global warming crisis.)

NASA satellite measurements show the polar ice caps have not retreated at all.

NASA satellite measurements show the polar ice caps have not retreated at all.

A 10-percent decline in polar sea ice is not very remarkable, especially considering the 1979 baseline was abnormally high anyway. Regardless, global warming activists and a compliant news media frequently and vociferously claimed the modest polar ice cap retreat was a sign of impending catastrophe. Al Gore even predicted the Arctic ice cap could completely disappear by 2014.

In late 2012, however, polar ice dramatically rebounded and quickly surpassed the post-1979 average. Ever since, the polar ice caps have been at a greater average extent than the post-1979 mean.

Now, in May 2015, the updated NASA data show polar sea ice is approximately 5 percent above the post-1979 average.

During the modest decline in 2005 through 2012, the media presented a daily barrage of melting ice cap stories. Since the ice caps rebounded – and then some – how have the media reported the issue.

“Climate change is melting more than just the polar ice caps”

“2020: Antarctic ice shelf could collapse”

“An Arctic ice cap’s shockingly rapid slide into the sea”

“New satellite maps show polar ice caps melting at ‘unprecedented rate’”

The only Google News items even hinting that the polar ice caps may not have melted so much (indeed not at all) came from overtly conservative websites. The “mainstream” media is alternating between maintaining radio silence on the extended run of above-average polar ice and falsely asserting the polar ice caps are receding at an alarming rate.

To be sure, receding polar ice caps are an expected result of the modest global warming we can expect in the years ahead. In and of themselves, receding polar ice caps have little if any negative impact on human health and welfare, and likely a positive benefit by opening up previously ice-entombed land to human, animal, and plant life. Nevertheless, polar ice cap extent will likely be a measuring stick for how much the planet is or is not warming.

The Earth has warmed modestly since the Little Ice Age ended a little over 100 years ago, and the Earth will likely continue to warm modestly as a result of natural and human factors. As a result, at some point in time, NASA satellite instruments should begin to report a modest retreat of polar ice caps. The modest retreat – like that which happened briefly from 2005 through 2012 – would not be proof or evidence of a global warming crisis. Such a retreat would merely illustrate that global temperatures are continuing their gradual recovery from the Little Ice Age. Such a recovery – despite alarmist claims to the contrary – would not be uniformly or even on balance detrimental to human health and welfare. Instead, an avalanche of scientific evidence indicates recently warming temperatures have significantly improved human health and welfare, just as warming temperatures have always done.

 

NASA : “ICE CAPS ARE NOT MELTING”

New NASA Report Reveals Ice Caps Are Not Melting

Joshua Krause
The Daily Sheeple
May 20th, 2015
2,059 views

arctic ice

Ever since 1979, NASA satellites have been collecting data on the extent of the Earth’s polar ice caps. Traditionally, this information has been used to prove the threat global warming poses to the human race. If the ice caps are melting, it could displace millions of people living along coastlines across the planet. However, new data posted on NASA’s website suggests that the ice caps may not be melting after all.

The report shows that when the data is averaged, the extent of the ice caps remained static until 2005, which is when they started to recede. By 2012, they had lost 10% of their original mass. But since that time, the ice caps have increased 5% over the 1979 average. In any event, it turns out that the 1979 benchmark used to gauge ice melt, was abnormally high. At the time, our planet had witnessed the end of a 30 year cooling period, thus our ice caps were much larger than they would normally be.

This information appears to be in direct contrast to NASA’s previous reports. The data update arrived less than a week after NASA announced that the Larson B Ice Shelf, which is widely believed to be over 10,000 years old, would melt and disintegrate over the next few years.

 

– See more at: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/new-nasa-report-reveals-ice-caps-are-not-melting_052015#sthash.6XRlkL7c.dpuf

CLIMATEGATE

Climategate

Links to everything about Climategate here. Relevant links posted in comments will be added.

WUWT Stories in chronological order, newest first:

When Results Go Bad … 

U-CRU

Telegraph’s Booker on the “climategate” scandal

“Climategate” surpasses “Global Warming” on Google

Mann to be investigated by Penn State University review

Understanding Climategate: Who’s Who – a video

The Curry letter: a word about “deniers”…

How “The Trick” was pulled off

The Australian ETS vote: a political litmus test for cap and trade

An open letter from Dr. Judith Curry on climate science

Zorita calls for barring Phil Jones, Michael Mann, and Stefan Rahmstorf from further IPCC participation

Climategate protester pwn3d CBC on live TV

UEA Climate Scientist: “possible that…I.P.C.C. has run its course”

IPCC reviewer: “don’t cover up the divergence”

McIntyre: The deleted data from the “Hide the Decline” trick

Climategate: Stuart Varney “lives with Ed”

Climategate: Pielke Senior on the NCDC CCSP report – “strong arm tactics”

Warwick Hughes shows how Jones selections put bias in Australian Temperatures

Climategate: CATO’s Pat Michaels and Center for American Progress Dan Weiss on Fox News

Quote of the week #23 – calls for resignation in Climategate

Uh, oh – raw data in New Zealand tells a different story than the “official” one.

Climategate: “Men behaving badly” – a short summary for laymen

Statement on CRU hacking from the American Meteorological Society

Climategate: hide the decline – codified

Must see video – Climategate spoof from Minnesotans for Global Warming

The people -vs- the CRU: Freedom of information, my okole…

Government petition started in UK regarding CRU Climategate

CEI Files Notice of Intent to Sue NASA GISS

The appearance of hypocrisy at the NYT – Note to Andy

Nov 24 Statement from UEA on the CRU files

Nov 23 Statement from UEA on the CRU files

Monbiot issues an unprecedented apology – calls for Jones resignation

The CRUtape Letters™, an Alternative Explanation.

CRU Emails “may” be open to interpretation, but commented code by the programmer tells the real story

Video: Dr. Tim Ball on the CRU emails

Pielke Senior: Comment On The Post “Enemies Caught In Action!” On The Blackboard

Bishop Hill’s compendium of CRU email issues

Spencer on elitism in the IPCC climate machine

CRU Emails – search engine now online

Release of CRU files forges a new hockey stick reconstruction

Mike’s Nature Trick

 

ARE THERE ANY EVILS GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR

 

Are There Any Evils Global Warming Is Not Responsible For?

Floods strand motorists after heavy rain in Houston on Tuesday. APFloods strand motorists after heavy rain in Houston on Tuesday. AP View Enlarged Image

Hysteria: Deadly flooding in Texas and Oklahoma is being blamed on global warming. Last year, when Texas was in a drought, global warming was also held responsible. Has anyone thought that maybe it’s just the weather?

‘Torrential downpours and events like this are consistent with the general theory of global warming,” Dave Schwartz of the Weather Channel has told the International Business Times.

Writing in the Huffington Post, James Gerken asks if the disaster is “climate change in action,” then answers his own question, declaring that, “at minimum, the recent downpours in Texas probably offer a glimpse of what certain parts of the U.S. can look forward to in the coming decades.” 

Meanwhile, Bill Nye, who doesn’t strike us as a particularly good science guy, tweeted:

“Billion$$ in damage in Texas & Oklahoma. Still no weather-caster may utter the phrase Climate Change.”

Not to be left out is Scientific American, which headlined a Web story thusly:

“Climate Change May Have Souped Up Record-Breaking Texas Deluge.”

So, we have to wonder, what about last year, when Texas had to worry about a shortage of rain and parched earth? Surely if heavy rains are deviations from the norm caused by global warming, then the dry conditions found in Texas must be natural and not the product of man-made climate change.

Well, not in the eyes of those who see man-made global warming as cause for every weather event that seems to be outside the ordinary. Last year during that harsh drought, they were also happy to lecture the public about global warming’s role.

“More Drought, Heat and Water Wars: What Climate Change Already Means for Texas” screamed a May 6, 2014, National Public Radio headline.

On that same day, the Dallas Morning News cited a federal report that said “worse” global warming effects were “ahead for Texas.”

Ten days later, Think Progress was swearing “Climate Change Dries Out Texas.”

A year earlier, USA Today reported that “Climate change’s heat intensifies drought in the USA.” And the 2011 Texas drought, reported NBC News, was “20 times more likely due to warming.” Climate Central cited a study that year that found that global warming was “amplifying Texas drought, wildfires.”

So, yes, global warming causes drought — and it causes heavy rain. In fact, it doesn’t matter what the weather does; there is a faction out there that’s always prepared to say that human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide are responsible.

The rational explanation for what appear to be weather extremes is actually found within the International Business Times story we cited above.

Far below the headline, Russell Persyn, a watershed engineering manager with the San Antonio River Authority, noted: “Texas in general goes back and forth from being very drought-stricken to where we get these heavy rainfalls that occur within a few hours.”

Neither drought nor hard rain is new to Texas and Oklahoma, whose histories are filled with excessive wet periods and extreme dry spells. This cycle was spinning before we began emitting CO2 and it will still be spinning after our CO2 emissions have ceased. These are facts, but some want the rest of us to forget them.

 

CLIMATE: PSEUDO SCIENCE TOUGHT IN SCHOOLS

While many American parents are angry about the Common Core educational standards and related student assessments in math and English, less attention is being paid to the federally driven green Common Core that is now being rolled out across the country. Under the guise of the first new K-12 science curriculum to be introduced in 15 years, the real goal seems to be to expose students to politically correct climate-change orthodoxy during their formative learning years.

The Next Generation of Science Standards were released in April 2013. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted them, including my state of New Jersey, which signed on in July 2014 and plans to phase in the new curriculum beginning with the 2016-2017 school year. The standards were designed to provide students with an internationally benchmarked science education.

While publicly billed as the result of a state-led process, the new science standards rely on a framework developed by the Washington, D.C.-based National Research Council. That is the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences that works closely with the federal government on most scientific matters. 

All of the National Research Council’s work around global warming proceeds from the initial premise of its 2011 report, “America’s Climate Choices” which states that “climate change is already occurring, is based largely on human activities, and is supported by multiple lines of scientific evidence.” From the council’s perspective, the science of climate change has already been settled. Not surprisingly, global climate change is one of the disciplinary core ideas embedded in the Next Generation of Science Standards, making it required learning for students in grade, middle and high school. 

The National Research Council framework for K-12 science education recommends that by the end of Grade 5, students should appreciate that rising average global temperatures will affect the lives of all humans and other organisms on the planet. By Grade 8, students should understand that the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels is a major factor in global warming. And by Grade 12, students should know that global climate models are very effective in modeling, predicting and managing the current and future impact of climate change. To give one example of the council’s reach, these climate-change learning concepts have been incorporated almost verbatim into the New Jersey Department of Education model science curriculum.

Many of the background materials and classroom resources used by instructors in teaching the new curriculum are sourced from government agencies. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency has an array of ready-to-download climate-change primers for classroom use by teachers, including handouts on the link between carbon dioxide and average global temperatures and tear sheets on the causal relationship between greenhouse-gas emissions and rising sea levels. 

Similarly, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Energy Department have their own Climate Literacy & Energy Awareness Network, or Clean, which serves as an online portal for the distribution of digital resources to help educators teach about climate change. One such learning module requires students to measure the size of their family’s carbon footprint and come up with ways to shrink it.

Relying on a climate-change curriculum and teaching materials largely sourced from federal agencies—particularly those of the current ideologically driven administration—raises a number of issues. Along with the undue authoritative weight that such government-produced documents carry in the classroom, most of the work is one-sided and presented in categorical terms, leaving no room for a balanced discussion. Moreover, too much blind trust is placed in the predictive power of long-range computer simulations, despite the weak forecasting track record of most climate models to date. 

This is unfortunate because the topic of man-made global warming, properly taught, would present many teachable moments and provide an example of the scientific method in action. Precisely because the science of climate change is still just a theory, discussion would help to build student skills in critical thinking, argumentation and reasoning, which is the stated objective of the new K-12 science standards. 

For instance: Why has the planet inconveniently stopped warming since the late 1990s even as carbon dioxide levels have continued to rise? How reliable are historical measurements of average global temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels when, before the 1950s, much of the data are interpolated from such diverse sources as weather balloons, kites, cloud observations, primordial tree rings and Antarctic ice bubbles? 

How statistically significant is a 1.4-degree Fahrenheit increase in average global surface temperatures since 1880 for a 4.6 billion-year-old planet with multiple ecosystems and a surface area of some 200 million square miles? How dangerous is the current level of carbon dioxide in the world’s atmosphere, when 400 parts per million expressed as a percentage of the volume of the atmosphere would equate to only 0.04% or approximately zero?

Employing such a Socratic approach to teaching climate change would likely lead to a rational and thought-provoking classroom debate on the merits of the case. However, that is not the point of this academic exercise—which seems to be to indoctrinate young people by using K-12 educators to establish the same positive political feedback loop around global warming that has existed between the federal government and the nation’s colleges and universities for the past two decades.

 

 

EAT BUGS STOP GLOBAL WARMING

Kofi Annan: Eat Bugs To Stop Global Warming

Photo of Michael Bastasch

Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan wants you to eat more insects. Why? It’s better for the environment and your health, he argues.

“Keeping meat consumption to levels recommended by health authorities would lower emissions and reduce heart disease, cancer, and other diseases,” Annan told The Guardian Sunday.

“And of course there are alternative sources of protein. For example, raising insects as an animal protein source,” Annan said. “Insects have a very good conversion rate from feed to meat. They make up part of the diet of two billion people and are commonly eaten in many parts of the world.”

“Eating insects is good for the environment and balanced diets,” Annan said.

In December, U.N. delegates are expected to hash out a successor to the now-expire Kyoto Protocol at this year’s United Nations climate summit in Paris.

For years, the U.N. has advocated eating bugs as a way to offset livestock production. The international body says there are more than 1,900 types of edible bugs on the planet. The U.N. also says livestock is a major emitter of greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from methane.

“Insects are reported to emit fewer greenhouse gases and less ammonia than cattle or pigs, and they require significantly less land and water than cattle rearing,” the U.N. reported in 2013. “Compared with mammals and birds, insects may also pose less risk of transmitting zoonotic infections to humans, livestock and wildlife, although this topic requires further research.”

These “peak beefers” also note that insects “are a highly nutritious and healthy food source with high fat, protein, vitamin, fibre and mineral content.”

The Obama administration recently outlined a plan to reduce methane emissions from the livestock industry, but the administration has yet to ask Americans to incorporate bugs into their diets.

“The global livestock industry is indeed a major threat to the climate as it represents 14.5% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,” Annan said. “A growing population and a rapidly growing middle class are increasing pressure on the traditional protein sources, beef and poultry meat, making it more difficult to meet demand.”

“We cannot continue the way we are producing and consuming meat,” he added. “Obviously, this should not go as far as governments telling people what to eat.”

2015-03-10T113054Z_1_LYNXMPEB290FI_RTROPTP_4_COCKROACH-PERSONALITIES-e1430768436374

POPE AND CLIMATE

The Pope, the Poor and Climate Change

Man is the despoiler in the Church of St. Green, but Genesis says we are here to work the earth.

Pope Francis addresses the crowd at St.Peter's square at the Vatican on Sunday. ENLARGE
Pope Francis addresses the crowd at St.Peter’s square at the Vatican on Sunday. Photo: TIZIANA FABITIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images
By

William McGurn

April 20, 2015 7:31 p.m. ET

This Wednesday we mark Earth Day. A week from now, the Vatican will add its own contribution to what Pope Francis calls “human ecology” in the form of a summit called “Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity.” The summit will in turn be followed by an encyclical some time later this year.

Many find the whole idea unsettling. They fear it means a papal imprimatur for the political and economic orthodoxies of the green movement, confusing the faithful and leading to another series of press conferences that will begin with a Vatican spokesman saying, “What the pope meant to say . . .”

The fears are not without cause. There are many signs that do not augur well, from the muddled section on economics in the pope’s first encyclical to his posing for a photo while holding up an anti-fracking T-shirt, to press coverage anticipating he will be to the fight against greenhouse gases what Pope John Paul II was to the fight against Soviet communism.

Opinion Journal Video

Main Street Columnist Bill McGurn on the Vatican’s embrace of environmentalism. Photo credit: Getty Images.

Even so, the topic is ripe for precisely the kind of corrective a pope has to offer: a reminder that God’s creation is meant to serve man—not man the environment. And its corollary: It is the have-nots who pay the highest price for the statist interventions so beloved of the Church of St. Green.

The Judeo-Christian view takes its lead from Genesis 2:15: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Plainly this imposes on mankind an obligation of stewardship. And yes, we can all think of people and regions that have suffered because someone exploited an area for private gain while dumping all the costs on the public.

Still, the first part of that Genesis passage means something too: that the earth is to be worked, and that this work and the fruit it bears are also blessed.

After all, what is work but the application of human ingenuity and labor to God’s creation to increase God’s bounty? For Genesis also tells us we are fashioned in the image and likeness of our Creator. In a sense this means we are at our most human when we use our God-given talents to participate in acts of co-creation.

How different this is from the narrative that dominates the conversation on the environment, and especially the conversation on climate change. All too often the vision of man here is as the despoiler, speeding the planet along the path to doom and destruction.

In this reading, modern technology is almost always an enemy, progress is illusory and more babies mean more carbon footprints melting the ice caps where polar bears live. Indeed, the number of environmentalists who end up embracing population control is astounding. Likewise their language, which tends to the apocalyptic—from Paul Ehrlich calling his book “The Population Bomb” to the conservationist Paul Watson characterizing humans as “the AIDS of the earth.”

When this thinking is taken to its logical conclusion, it’s not Swedish or American women or their babies who find themselves targeted. It is African women and African babies, Chinese women and Chinese babies, Indian women and Indian babies, Latino women and Latino babies, and so on. Something, perhaps, for the pope to ponder next time he’s in the mood to preach against noxious Western exports.

Meanwhile, encouraging a sturdier appreciation in the green movement for man’s ability to use his mind to find solutions for the earth’s problems would help. Take, for example, two popular targets of the environmental movement: chemicals and fossil fuels.

Those of us who get our fruit and vegetables at Whole Foods may have a hard time appreciating the scourge that insects, parasites and disease are to those in poorer parts of the world. Or the high price these people pay when they are denied these man-made tools in the name of some environmental fad.

How many African children died, for example, when the use of DDT on the continent—arguably the most effective anti-mosquito insecticide—declined after the U.S. banned it in 1972 on the basis of pop science? Along the same lines, when we measure the costs of fossil fuels, shouldn’t we include the human costs that result when restrictions on fossil fuels would mean denying hundreds of millions of people in the developing world the life-enhancing improvements that come from cheaper energy?

In its unwillingness to consider such trade-offs, modern environmentalism at times takes on the aspects of an authoritarian religion for the wealthy, with its own Eden (earth before man ruined it); its heretics (skeptics about man’s contributions to global warming are “deniers”); and its indulgences (make up for your corporate jet by driving a Prius).

All well worth not only mentioning but highlighting, especially in a papal effort that aims at putting the human back in human ecology.

Jerry Stergios
Jerry Stergios 1 hour ago

The Pope should confine himself to spiritual matters, otherwise “good works” devolve into crusades and matters of pride. To paraphrase Luther, are those works good enough?

CAMPUS CLIMATE CRUSADE

The Campus Climate Crusade

Liberal groups are out to sully the names of conservative professors and shut down programs funded by the Koch foundation.


PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
By 

KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

March 26, 2015 7:12 p.m. ET

Conservative thought on campus these days is rare, though for some it’s still not rare enough. Witness the growing campaign by politicians, unions and environmentalists to intimidate into silence any academic or program that might challenge liberal ideology. 

Congressional Democrats have grabbed most of the attention here, with their recent attempt to cow climate skeptics. Richard Lindzen, an emeritus professor of meteorology at MIT and a Cato Institute scholar, earlier this month described in these pages how House Rep. Raul Grijalva was targeting seven academics skeptical of President Obama’s climate policies, demanding documents about their funding and connections. A trio of Senate Democrats is working to muzzle more than 100 nonprofits and companies that have questioned the climate agenda, with a fishing expedition into their correspondence.

Largely unnoticed is that the congressional climate crusaders didn’t come up with this idea on their own. For several years a coalition of liberal organizations have been using “disclosure” to sully the names of conservative professors and try to shut down their programs. Their particular targets are academics who benefit from funding from the Koch Foundation, which has for decades funded free-market professors and groups on U.S. campuses. 

 National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood on a new report that shows sustainability initiatives are undermining the traditional liberal arts education. Photo credit: Getty Images.

Giving money to universities, and earmarking it for certain purposes, is common, though the left has largely cornered the market. Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer and his wife several years ago pledged $40 million to Stanford to start the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy. The Morningside Foundation, established by the family of the late T.H. Chan, last year gave Harvard $350 million to fund work on, among other things, gun violence and tobacco use. The Helmsley Charitable Trust has given money to several schools to advance Common Core.

Apparently the only kind of thought not allowed is that which might “undermine,” according to UnKochMyCampus, “environmental protection, worker’s rights, health care expansion, and quality public education.” Stopping such research is the mission of this organization, which is spearheaded by Greenpeace, Forecast the Facts (a green outfit focused on climate change), and the American Federation of Teachers.

The group’s website directs student activists to a list of universities to which Koch foundations have given money, and provides a “campus organization guide” with instructions for how to “expose and undermine” any college thought that works against “progressive values.” Students are directed to first recruit “trusted allies and informants” (including liberal faculty, students and alumni) and then are given a step-by-step guide on hounding universities and targeted professors with demands for records disclosure and with Freedom of Information Act requests. The AFT and the National Education Association devoted nearly a full day at a conference this month to training students on the “necessary skills to investigate and expose” any “influence” the Kochs have at universities.

This week Michigan State University released documents to student activists who had targeted political-theory professor Ross Emmett, director of the Michigan Center for Innovation and Economic Prosperity. His crime? Using Koch grant money to fund a reading group, called the Koch Scholars, that brings together students to discuss competing political economy ideas. The first two weeks were devoted to Marx, though the activists apparently couldn’t tolerate an equal discussion of capitalism.

Art Hall, who runs the Center for Applied Economics at the University of Kansas School of Business, was forced last year to file a lawsuit to try to stop a state records request from student activists demanding his private email correspondence for the past 10 years. Mr. Hall’s sins? His center got a seed grant from the Fred and Mary Koch Foundation, and he testified against green energy quotas at the state legislature last year.

As for those defenders of academic freedom and integrity, the American Association of University Professors several years ago defended climate scientist Michael Mann against a conservative group’s demands for his records. Now the Kansas chapter of AAUP helped fund the students’ demand for Mr. Hall’s records.

These UnKoch tactics are spreading. In February, Right to Know, a California nonprofit opposed to genetically modified food, filed freedom of information requests at four universities, demanding correspondence between a dozen academics and outside agriculture companies and trade organizations. The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, a left-leaning organization, recently forced the University of Louisville to release information about the founding of a new Free Enterprise Center, partly funded by Koch money.

Congressional Democrats are simply getting in on the game, using the power of government inquiry to up the ante. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin ran a campaign in 2013 against the free-market American Legislative Exchange Council, demanding information from its donors, trying to embarrass them out of funding ALEC. It worked.

Disclosure is becoming the left’s new weapon. And it’s shutting down debate across the country.

 

POLITICAL ASSOULT ON CLIMATE SCEPTICS

FROM WSJ MARCH 5, 2015

The Political Assault on Climate Skeptics

Members of Congress send inquisitorial letters to universities, energy companies, even think tanks.

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D., Ariz.) at a Capitol Hill news conference, Nov. 12, 2014.
By 

RICHARD S. LINDZEN

March 4, 2015 6:50 p.m. ET

Research in recent years has encouraged those of us who question the popular alarm over allegedly man-made global warming. Actually, the move from “global warming” to “climate change” indicated the silliness of this issue. The climate has been changing since the Earth was formed. This normal course is now taken to be evidence of doom.

Individuals and organizations highly vested in disaster scenarios have relentlessly attacked scientists and others who do not share their beliefs. The attacks have taken a threatening turn. 

As to the science itself, it’s worth noting that all predictions of warming since the onset of the last warming episode of 1978-98—which is the only period that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) attempts to attribute to carbon-dioxide emissions—have greatly exceeded what has been observed. These observations support a much reduced and essentially harmless climate response to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. 

In addition, there is experimental support for the increased importance of variations in solar radiation on climate and a renewed awareness of the importance of natural unforced climate variability that is largely absent in current climate models. There also is observational evidence from several independent studies that the so-called “water vapor feedback,” essential to amplifying the relatively weak impact of carbon dioxide alone on Earth temperatures, is canceled by cloud processes. 

There are also claims that extreme weather—hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, you name it—may be due to global warming. The data show no increase in the number or intensity of such events. The IPCC itself acknowledges the lack of any evident relation between extreme weather and climate, though allowing that with sufficient effort some relation might be uncovered. 

World leaders proclaim that climate change is our greatest problem, demonizing carbon dioxide. Yet atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have been vastly higher through most of Earth’s history. Climates both warmer and colder than the present have coexisted with these higher levels. 

Currently elevated levels of carbon dioxide have contributed to increases in agricultural productivity. Indeed, climatologists before the recent global warming hysteria referred to warm periods as “climate optima.” Yet world leaders are embarking on costly policies that have no capacity to replace fossil fuels but enrich crony capitalists at public expense, increasing costs for all, and restricting access to energy to the world’s poorest populations that still lack access to electricity’s immense benefits.

Billions of dollars have been poured into studies supporting climate alarm, and trillions of dollars have been involved in overthrowing the energy economy. So it is unsurprising that great efforts have been made to ramp up hysteria, even as the case for climate alarm is disintegrating. 

The latest example began with an article published in the New York Times on Feb. 22 about Willie Soon, a scientist at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Mr. Soon has, for over 25 years, argued for a primary role of solar variability on climate. But as Greenpeacenoted in 2011, Mr. Soon was, in small measure, supported by fossil-fuel companies over a period of 10 years.

 

The Times reintroduced this old material as news, arguing that Mr. Soon had failed to list this support in a recent paper in Science Bulletin of which he was one of four authors. Two days later Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, used the Times article as the basis for a hunting expedition into anything said, written and communicated by seven individuals— David Legates, John Christy, Judith Curry, Robert Balling, Roger Pielke Jr. , Steven Hayward and me—about testimony we gave to Congress or other governmental bodies. We were selected solely on the basis of our objections to alarmist claims about the climate.

In letters he sent to the presidents of the universities employing us (although I have been retired from MIT since 2013), Mr. Grijalva wanted all details of all of our outside funding, and communications about this funding, including “consulting fees, promotional considerations, speaking fees, honoraria, travel expenses, salary, compensation and any other monies.” Mr. Grijalva acknowledged the absence of any evidence but purportedly wanted to know if accusations made against Mr. Soon about alleged conflicts of interest or failure to disclose his funding sources in science journals might not also apply to us. 

Perhaps the most bizarre letter concerned the University of Colorado’s Mr. Pielke. His specialty is science policy, not science per se, and he supports reductions in carbon emissions but finds no basis for associating extreme weather with climate. Mr. Grijalva’s complaint is that Mr. Pielke, in agreeing with the IPCC on extreme weather and climate, contradicts the assertions of John Holdren, President Obama ’s science czar. 

Mr. Grijalva’s letters convey an unstated but perfectly clear threat: Research disputing alarm over the climate should cease lest universities that employ such individuals incur massive inconvenience and expense—and scientists holding such views should not offer testimony to Congress. After the Times article, Sens. Edward Markey (D., Mass.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) and Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) also sent letters to numerous energy companies, industrial organizations and, strangely, many right-of-center think tanks (including the Cato Institute, with which I have an association) to unearth their alleged influence peddling.

The American Meteorological Society responded with appropriate indignation at the singling out of scientists for their scientific positions, as did many individual scientists. On Monday, apparently reacting to criticism, Mr. Grijalva conceded to the National Journal that his requests for communications between the seven of us and our outside funders was “overreach.” 

Where all this will lead is still hard to tell. At least Mr. Grijalva’s letters should help clarify for many the essentially political nature of the alarms over the climate, and the damage it is doing to science, the environment and the well-being of the world’s poorest.

Mr. Lindzen is professor emeritus of atmospheric sciences at MIT and a distinguished senior fellow of the Cato Institute.

2006 MARCH AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING :)

 

 (IN 2015, WE CURRENTLY ARE IN THE COLDEST WINTER OF THE CENTURY. IT IS 7 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT IN FENTON TODAY TS)

Nation’s Snowmen March Against Global Warming

NEWS • Environment • Patriotism • Prejudice • ISSUE 44•27 ISSUE 42•04 •Jan 25, 2006
Snowmen from across the nation gather at the Washington Monument to protest global warming.

WASHINGTON, DC—Braving balmy temperatures and sunny skies, millions of scarfless snowmen and snowwomen gathered in cities across the world Tuesday to raise public awareness about the heavy toll global warming is taking on their health and well-being.

According to organizers of marches in Washington, Atlanta, Montreal, Berlin, London, Reykjavik, and Moscow, global warming is the primary cause of the steep reduction in the snowman population throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Demonstrators worldwide called on their governments to take more aggressive steps to reduce the effects of climate change.

Organizers estimated the crowd at more than 375,000, but D.C. Police Commissioner Charles Stacey estimated turnout at 30,000 whole snowmen, with scattered rounded abdomens accounting for an additional 5,000. Atlanta organizers and police agree that all demonstrators had melted by 11 a.m.

Larry Chilly speaks out against mankind’s global irresponsibility.

Joe Centigrade, president of the Advocates For Beings Of Frozen Precipitation, spoke at a mass rally Tuesday on Washington’s National Mall.

“The unseasonably warm winters of the recent past are a clear indication of a real environmental threat to humans and their frozen simulacra,” said Centigrade, his coals arranged in a frowning pattern. “As snowmen and snowwomen, we accept the inevitability of melting, but the actions of man are causing us to evaporate well before our time.”

Speakers at the Washington rally included a Chicago snowwoman who had lost three snowchildren to warm temperatures, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Larry Chilly, formerly a 6-foot-tall, triple-segmented Muncie, IN snowman, who had been reduced to a slushy head.

Centigrade told the slowly melting snowcrowd that as recently as 15 years ago, the average life span of a snowperson built in late December was three weeks to a month. Today, that same snowperson has an average life span of two weeks.

Centigrade also recounted stories of once-jolly snowmen unable to keep their carrot noses in their fast-melting faces, and of others who were made of only two undersize segments.

“In many regions of New England today, there’s not even enough snow on the ground to make snowballs, much less a torso,” Centigrade said. “Instead, some snowmen are stuck together with slush and leaves rather than pure, white snow. We must take steps now to end their suffering.”

Bearing signs with such slogans as “You Can’t Build A Snowman With Rain” and “Winter = Life,” the crystalline-ice protestors, many of whom had chartered refrigerated tractor-trailers and ice-cream trucks to travel to the mass protest, complained that popular stereotypes about snowmen obscure and trivialize the crisis.

“Humans sneer at us, ‘If you want to stay intact, go to the North Pole and live with Santa,'” said Susie Flakeman, a Thunder Bay, Ontario snowwoman waiting in line with hundreds of others to use a Porta-Freezer. “But less than one-half of 1 percent of us ever receive that honor. Most of us end up victims of the scourge that almost killed Frosty: man-made climate change.”

The protest was largely peaceful, disrupted only by a disturbing incident in which one distraught snowman hurled himself into the reflecting pool of the National Mall. He suffered third-degree slush on over 90 percent of his body before rescuers could recover him. He was rushed to a local meat locker where he was pronounced melted on arrival.

Some scientists refuted the snowbeings’ claims regarding global warming.

“Throughout history, the earth has endured periods of temperature fluctuation,” said Dr. Harley Morrison, a biochemist who has advised President Bush on scientific issues. “Also, there have already been several major blizzards throughout North America this season alone. I made a snowman myself, and he lasted for several weeks.”

Late word arrived Tuesday evening that the Moscow protest was violently dispersed by riot police bearing hot-water hoses and snow blowers. Moscow officials said the snowmen were illegally blocking pedestrian traffic near the Kremlin and causing people to slip and fall in their slushy wakes. Snow leaders, including Centigrade, condemned the crackdown.

“Those of us who remember the Icelandic anti-heated-sidewalk riots of the 1980s know that the powers that be despise and fear snowmen who fight for their rights,” Centigrade said. “They’d rather kill the messengers than face the fact that our ecosystems are changing irreparably. We’re prepared to stay in D.C. as long as it takes until Congress agrees to listen to our demands.”

Before he could conclude his remarks, Centigrade’s face slid off.