RUTHFULLY YOURS

The climate cabal is in a panic. The Trump Administration is systematically dismantling President Obama’s climate change legacy: Federal agencies are scrubbing references to climate change, President Trump announced the United States. would exit the Paris Climate Accord, and his cabinet is peddling American-made fossil fuels around the world.

Climate change barely registered a blip in the 2016 presidential election, and even members of the alleged Party of Science are increasingly uninterested in global warming. Only 19 percent of Democrats say climate change is the most important issue in the mid-term elections, and that support drops to 11 percent for independent voters. On the heels of an El Nino season where temperatures were customarily warm, most of the country is now enduring a frigid, blizzard-like winter, which the climate propagandists counterintuitively also blame on global warming.

So, as the climate cabal feels their grip on federal policy and public opinion weaken, its zealots are becoming more desperate. Michael Mann, a Penn State University climatologist and the media’s go-to-guy for any apocalyptic quote about how anthropogenic global warming will kill us all, seems more unbalanced than usual. As the “Citizen Secretary of Science and Environment” in Donald Trump’s so-called “Shadow Cabinet”—which also includes Laurence Tribe and Robert Reich—Mann appears to be taking his pretend post a bit too seriously. Mann recently called White House advisor Kellyanne Conway “evil incarnate,” said Trump is a “moron” and a “threat to the planet,” and denounced Devin Nunes as “a traitor to this country” and demanded he “be subject to appropriate sanctions.” He’s mocked the president’s son and tweeted at the First Lady. (Pretty ironic coming from a guy who filed a lawsuit because someone called him a mean name.)

In these increasingly tempestuous political times it seems that each news cycle is trying to win an award for being the most ridiculous to date. Hysteria may be a rather bipartisan commodity now, but craziest of the crazies still hang out with the progressives.

Among that group, the climate change activists may be the most unbalanced. These are, after all, the people who are now using junk science to inform their family planning decisions.

That’s commitment to the cause.

Like all progressives, the climate cultists brook no dissent. When they encounter it, they want it gone.

Conservative mega-donor Rebekah Mercer sits on the board of trustees of New York’s American Museum of Natural History and a New York Times Opinion piece written by a couple of scientists makes it clear that her presence there has upset the climate activist masses.

Ms. Mercer’s crime is that she and “her family were important backers of President Trump,” and they’ve “contributed millions of dollars to climate-change-denying politicians and organizations like the Heartland Institute.”

The post lists every offending party and claims that each is “in clear conflict with the virtually unanimous international scientific consensus on climate change.”

A “virtually unanimous” “consensus” is a bold overreach even by climate hysteria standards.

Davos 2018 is gone, but not forgotten. This year’s World Economic Forum provided yet another opportunity for those who believe in apocalyptic climate change to harangue us about the evils of greenhouse gases amid warnings the world will end in 2050 or 2100 or one of these days when it gets warm enough. Most striking is the annual spectacle of the world’s wealthy and privileged disembarking from their fuel-gulping private jets and limousines or emerging from luxury hotel suites, to proclaim the world must cut back on the use of fossil fuels, or to question why the world’s common people do not feel as deeply or passionately about climate change as they do.

Other than a propensity for believing everything they are told, why are these people so agitated?

If you look at climate change predictions, almost all of them are bad. Critics refer to these views collectively as climate alarmism. Alarmists believe the Earth’s climate is warming because greenhouse gases are being added to the atmosphere through human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels. They claim unless the buildup of greenhouse gases is stopped, global temperatures will begin to rise exponentially, which will have terrible consequences, such as major flora and fauna extinctions, coastal inundation caused by melting ice caps, heatwaves, drought, famine, economic collapse, war, and the potential for human extinction.

The basis for many of these predictions are the reports issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). One of the functions of the IPCC is to model the Earth’s climate to predict changes in global temperature. Although the Earth is warming a bit, their models always seem to be more enthusiastic about warming than the Earth appears to be. In fact, a recent study from the UK suggests climate models factor in too much warming.

Readers of pre-millennial vintage may recall the 2008 presidential campaign when Republicans and especially Sarah Palin picked up the chant “drill, baby, drill” as a response to soaring oil prices. The theme was much derided, not least by Barack Obama, who as late as 2012 called it “a slogan, a gimmick, and a bumper sticker” but “not a strategy.” Ten years later, who was right?

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported Thursday that U.S. crude oil production exceeded 10 million barrels a day for the first time since 1970. That’s double the five million barrels produced in 2008, thanks to the boom in, well, drilling, baby.

The EIA summary puts it this way: “U.S. crude oil production has increased significantly over the past 10 years, driven mainly by production from tighter rock formations including shale and other fine-grained rock using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to improve efficiency.” This is the “fracking” boom our readers know well that has been driven by innovation in the private oil and gas industry.

The magnitude of the boom is remarkable. The gusher has pushed the U.S. close to overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world’s leading oil producer. In 2006 the U.S. imported 12.9 million barrels a day of crude and petroleum products. By last October that was down to 2.5 million a day. Some gimmick.
American Oil BoomU.S. monthly crude oil production, in millionsof barrels per day, January 1950-November2017Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration,Petroleum Supply Monthly
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This translates into greater energy security as the U.S. is less dependent on foreign oil sources. Donald Trump calls it “energy dominance,” which implies that the U.S. wants to husband its supplies like gold at Fort Knox. The reality is we want to produce and sell what the market will bear, including exports to willing buyers around the world.

In the old Soviet Union, science was subverted to promote failed socialist policies. The results were disastrous to both Russian society and to Russian science itself. Everything scientists did was for the advancement of the state, meaning the dictators. Individual scientists were imprisoned under torturous conditions, even murdered, if their science did not comport with official propaganda. Of course, in the end, the USSR collapsed.

Incredibly, the same failed trend toward politicizing science has resurfaced right here in the United States. A trio of articles in Scientific American reveal the danger, not as a warning, but in two cases, as actual advocacy.

In a commentary titled, “Universities Should Encourage Scientists to Speak Out about Public Issues,” the authors say this:

“Opioids. Fracking. Zika. GMOs. Scientists should be speaking up about all sorts of science-based issues that affect our lives. Especially now, when Trump administration officials tell us that climate change is debatable and that killing African elephants can benefit the herd, scientists should be constantly exposing misinformation, bogus alternative facts and fake science.”

While it is true that scientists should express their views, it must be true for all sides of a controversial issue, not only for the radical left, which dominates the universities where scientists are taught. It must also be the case that the science aspect of the issue be separated from the personal opinion aspect. Conflating the two is not only increasingly the practice, it is being encouraged by the left.

A second commentary concerned the decision by a noted science personality to attend President Trump’s first State of the Union Address. Bill Nye, the star of the PBS television series, “The Science Guy,” was invited to attend the event with Representative Bridenstine (R-OK), who is the nominee for NASA administrator. The commentary states that, “We anticipated this [attendance] would be a controversial decision, and we were right.”

Wind, solar and really big batteries aren’t cutting it. Were that the case atmospheric CO2 would be shrinking. So lets wallop well-heeled warmists Al Gore, Malcolm Turnbulls and the like with whopping taxes. They can bear the pain better than the poor can afford their green-inflated power bills.

Reportedly, 1700 private jets flew rich people into Davos. Energy guzzlers to a man and woman. Trump apart, you would be hard put to find a climate sceptic among them. I have it on reliable authority that all commercial flights served the wrong brands of caviar and champagne.

Al Gore is attending the talkfest. I don’t know his travel arrangements. However, as reported by Climate Depot in August 2017, Gore’s monthly electricity use at his mansion comes to 19,241 kWh. Apparently, this is 21.3 times more energy than is consumed by a typical American household. And this does not include the kilowatt appetite of other houses he owns, cars, boats and planes. He’s a guzzler.

This extravagance of the rich while the hoi polloi eat crumbs forms part of my theme, which I will come back to. My theme is why, as a non-scientist, I don’t fall into line with the official consensus. It’s a self-reflective exercise which might have more general applicability. It’s good to remind ourselves about “the consensus”, which is that burning fossil fuels has caused such an increase in atmospheric CO2 since the 1970s that an unparalleled rate of warming has occurred. The consensus goes on to say that unless the use of fossil fuels is very markedly reduced warming will continue and within a relatively short space of time will become catastrophic.

That sounds serious to me. But is it?

Suppose a friend tells you that his car is on the blink and in the same breath tells you he has bound some parts together with duct tape and is setting off across the Nullarbor. He has either exaggerated the problem with his car or he is mad or extremely cavalier. Suppose a friend tells you that his doctor told him he had early stage lung cancer caused by smoking, at the exact same time as he was buying a packet of extra-filter fags as a precaution. Suppose a friend told you he was intent on repairing the relationship with his wife by buying her some roses while, at the same time, buying his girlfriend a diamond bracelet.

It doesn’t stack up. Does it? If indeed we are on the brink of catastrophe why in the world would governments tilt at windmills by subsidising the building of them. We surely know, if we have half a brain, that wind and sun are not the answer. CO2 is rising steeply as we speak.

What’s happening is ‘solutioneering’, as coined by Roger James. Installing windmills and solar panels has become the objective. The real objective of lowering CO2 levels is hardly ever in the frame. It’s all about installing comparatively useless green energyAnd batteries, don’t forget the batteries.

If CO2 levels were in the frame, governments would consider how best to bring emissions down. This might mean replacing inefficient dirty coal power stations with new efficient cleaner ones. It might mean building nuclear power plants. It might mean extracting more coal-seam gas. It might mean all three which, taken together, is likely to be effective in curbing CO2 emissions. Oh, but we don’t like any of these options, comes the cry. But I say, so you would rather fry?

Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is settled science, proclaim the predictors of weather doomsday. Settled Science? Science evolves continuously and can never be settled, unless, of course, the ‘settled’ subject is dogma, not science. Is it just a ‘my way or the highway’ attempt by vested interests to close discussion on their terms?

Consider the term “peer reviewed”. Science evolves through the contribution of new ideas which are published so that their peers (other scientists) can review, validate, contribute, or argue with them. If we had accepted Niels Bohr’s version of the atom as settled science, there would have been no subatomic particles discovered and nuclear fission might not have ever been attempted, which would be perfectly okay with the modern day flat-earthers.

In 1990, we find the United Nations’ formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chartered to remedy carbon dioxide induced global warming without ever pausing to examine the plausibility of the theory.

A key feature of this plan is a carbon tax to be levied on developed economies with proceeds going to less developed countries (read members of the UN general assembly). The goal is to provide incentives to restrict fossil fuel development and invest (read sink money) in wind farms and solar panels with much higher costs per energy unit produced.

It also incentivizes participating governments to create grant funds for environmental lobby groups who make political contributions to the politicians responsible for creating those funds.

The ‘Science’

Combustion of fossil fuels, oil, gas and coal contributes to a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is defined as ‘greenhouse’ gas meaning that it traps heat in the atmosphere leading to an increase in ambient air temperature.

A temperature increase for the planet will cause melting polar ice caps with flooding of coastal areas, polar bear extinction, increased severe weather and drought.

Solutions include solar panels and wind farms, the so-called renewable energies.

The Real Science

The Pentagon released a National Defense Strategy that for the first time in more than a decade does not mention manmade global warming as a security threat.

An 11-page summary of the new National Defense Strategy makes no mention of “global warming” or “climate change,” according to a keyword search by the Huffington Post. The document reflects the Trump administration’s focus on “energy dominance” over climate.

The National Defense Strategy, signed by Defense Secretary James Mattis, doesn’t have much to say about energy issues, except that the U.S. would “foster a stable and secure Middle East” and “contributes to stable global energy markets and secure trade routes.”

The Pentagon released the strategy document Friday, and officials were clear that it would make no mention of global warming. The Bush administration added global warming to the defense strategy in 2008, but the issue gained top-tier status during the Obama administration.

The Trump administration released its “America First” security strategy in December, which called for “[u]nleashing these abundant energy resources— coal, natural gas, petroleum, renewables, and nuclear” to boost the economy and aid U.S. allies.

That plan de-emphasized policies aimed at fighting manmade global warming, a complete u-turn from national security under the Obama administration.

“Climate policies will continue to shape the global energy system,” reads the National Security Strategy, released in December.

“U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth, energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy security interests,” reads the plan. “Given future global energy demand, much of the developing world will require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to power their economies and lift their people out of poverty.”