RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/thirty-years-on-how-well-do-global-warming-predictions-stand-up-1529623442

James E. Hansen wiped sweat from his brow. Outside it was a record-high 98 degrees on June 23, 1988, as the NASA scientist testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources during a prolonged heat wave, which he decided to cast as a climate event of cosmic significance. He expressed to the senators his “high degree of confidence” in “a cause-and-effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming.”

With that testimony and an accompanying paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Mr. Hansen lit the bonfire of the greenhouse vanities, igniting a world-wide debate that continues today about the energy structure of the entire planet. President Obama’s environmental policies were predicated on similar models of rapid, high-cost warming. But the 30th anniversary of Mr. Hansen’s predictions affords an opportunity to see how well his forecasts have done—and to reconsider environmental policy accordingly.

Mr. Hansen’s testimony described three possible scenarios for the future of carbon dioxide emissions. He called Scenario A “business as usual,” as it maintained the accelerating emissions growth typical of the 1970s and ’80s. This scenario predicted the earth would warm 1 degree Celsius by 2018. Scenario B set emissions lower, rising at the same rate today as in 1988. Mr. Hansen called this outcome the “most plausible,” and predicted it would lead to about 0.7 degree of warming by this year. He added a final projection, Scenario C, which he deemed highly unlikely: constant emissions beginning in 2000. In that forecast, temperatures would rise a few tenths of a degree before flatlining after 2000.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/warmists_lynching_an_innocent_bystander_co2.html

I live in SE Queensland. Yesterday the surface air temperature rose from a frosty 36ºF at sunrise to a balmy 72ºF in mid-afternoon. The enormous heat needed to achieve this 36º of warming came via radiation from the sun. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no significant part in this daily heating event – in fact it may intercept a tiny proportion of the incoming solar radiation and re-radiate it in all directions, thus keeping the daytime surface temperature a tiny bit cooler than it would have been otherwise.

At the deep Mount Isa Mine in NW Queensland, the surface temperature may average about 77ºF but it increases by about 20ºF every 50 meters of depth – rock walls are red hot in places. The enormous heat causing this comes via conduction from Earth’s geothermal heat plus some oxidation and heating of the sulphide ores as they come in contact with natural air containing oxygen. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no part in this heating.
There are volcanic windows open right now in Hawaii, Japan and the Galapagos revealing the vast resources of volcanic geothermal heat which is always migrating towards the cooler surface, sometimes violently.

Temperatures vary greatly over Earth’s surface, making a mockery of attempts to calculate an “average” for the globe. Air surface temperature may be minus -22ºF at the South Pole, while at the same time it can be plus 86ºF at the Equator. This enormous difference is caused by the varying intensity of solar radiation striking the surface – carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no significant part in creating this variance.
Surface air temperatures in big cities can be 9ºF hotter than surrounding rural land partly because bitumen roads, roofs and runways heat up more than grassy or forested countryside. Mega-cities are also full of heat-producing humans, engines, trains, vehicles, air conditioners, heaters, stoves, fridges, pumps and mowers.

Urban heat also comes from the warm bodies and hot exhalations from millions of humans digesting carbon-based foods, from stored chemical energy from burning hydro-carbons (wood, lignite, coal, oil and gas) or from nuclear power. Using green energy also adds to urban heat. Wind towers and solar panels extract energy from wind and sun in the countryside and release it where most of the electricity is used, usually in cities and suburbs. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no measurable part in producing these islands of urban heat.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2018/06/climateers-latest-little-earner/

Rising CO2 levels haven’t produced the soaring temperatures warmists so confidently predicted, but not to worry. In their latest grant-snaffling gambit, catastropharian careerists are saying greenhouse gases produce ‘extreme weather’ even without the missing heat. Yes, really.

Readers may remember a CAGW paper, co-authored by Professor David Karoly, that professed to demonstrate recent climate extremes in south-east Australia were unprecedented in the paleoclimate record. This paper was announced with suitably hysterical headlines as you might expect. Then sceptic Steve McIntyre identified a fatal flaw within hours of publication and it was withdrawn for “revision”. This took all of four years to publish and, when resubmitted, produced markedly less alarming conclusions. To no-one’s surprise this farce was conveniently overlooked by the mainstream media.

Anyway, the redoubtable Dr Karoly is back in the news today having co-authored a new paper which can only strike those without a seat on the warmist gravy train as plumbing the depths of desperation. They can see the writing on the wall. As CO2 concentrations inexorably rise and global temperatures disobligingly refuse to rocket upwards, the warmist establishment sees the need for a new and foolproof narrative. They have done it often enough before, so it is not as if switching stories is a great challenge. Remember those dams that would never fill again and, when they did, how the narrative switched tacks and proclaimed torrential downpours and flooding as the “genuine” consequences of electricity bills that just aren’t high enough?

The latest line appears to be that, even if CO2 doesn’t cause warming per se it can still cause “extreme weather” through some other, unspecified and malign influence. Thanks to Eric Worrall at WUWT for spotting the latest meme switch.

Now I haven’t read the paper, it being paywalled, and even if I did I’m sure it would dazzle baffle me with ‘science’. However, I have read the abstract, which pretty much tells you all you need to know. Here is how it begins (emphasis added):

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/leftist-democrats-environmental-hypocrisy-on-gas-prices/They advocate steep taxes, then complain about high gas prices.

A recent letter sent to President Trump says a great deal about how cynical energy and environmental policy has become in the United States. An excerpt: “The impact of rising fuel prices on our economy and on family budgets is significant and widespread.”

Those words of concern about the price of gas are from a letter co-signed by Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer. Ironically, Senator Schumer (D., N.Y.) has long supported increasing the price of gas as part of a policy to reduce CO2 emissions to fight climate change.

So too have the three others who signed the letter. Senator Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.) proposed a “cap-and-dividend” bill that would have increased gas taxes by up to 21 cents per gallon. The letter was also signed by Senator Ed Markey (D., Mass.), whose name adorns the most aggressive climate legislation of the last decade, a bill that would have increased gas prices by up to 63 cents per gallon, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The senators’ letter laments the rise in oil prices as summer approaches, calling on the president to jawbone Saudi Arabia to cut prices and “put pressure on oil exporting nations.” Ironically, the United States may soon become the world’s leading oil-exporting nation.

Demanding that the president cut gas prices so families can use more fossil fuels demonstrates how cynically the Left uses environmental policy. The explicit goal of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems is to increase the price of gasoline, home heating, and electricity, providing an incentive for consumers to use less. Schumer and the others who signed the letter all support these policies, which would, in their words, have a significant impact “on our economy and family budgets.”

http://thefederalist.com/2018/06/08/scientific-discovery-will-nuke-climate-change-scaremongering/

A team of scientists at Harvard University and a company called Carbon Engineering announced this week that they’ve figured out a low-cost, industrial-scale method of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Needless to say, it sounds like an exciting technology, which would, as The Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer notes, “transform how humanity thinks about the problem of climate change.”

To be fair, though, plenty of humans have argued that innovation, rather than widespread state-compelled behavior modification or top-down economic regimes like the ones the Left has proposed over the years, would eventually deal with climate change. This conviction was based on the historic propensity of those human beings to hatch advances in efficiency and technology when left to their own devices. They always do.

If the industrial-scale de-carbonization stabilizes temperatures — and it now seems inevitable that it’ll be a big part of the solution — the Malthusian notions that dominate the modern Left will once again lose out to capitalistic innovation. This was inevitable when Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon were betting on resource scarcity, Al Gore was producing chilling Oscar-winning science-fiction films, and contemporary Chicken Littles were telling us the human race was doomed.

“This opens up the possibility that we could stabilize the climate for affordable amounts of money without changing the entire energy system or changing everyone’s behavior,” Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, told The Atlantic.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/pope_francis_meets_with_oil_execs.html

Pope Francis is meeting with executives from top oil companies and investment funds to discuss climate change. The Pope’s perspective will presumably reflect his 2015 encyclical “Laudato si’”, which (among many points) called for a drastic reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. As an economist who has contributed to the book, Pope Francis and the Caring Society, that respectfully but critically engages the thought of Pope Francis, I laud the spiritual motivation of his concerns but question the actual consequences of his recommendations. Simply put, the Pope’s ideas on climate change would end up hurting the world’s poorest members, the very people his supporters think they are helping.

As Philip Booth points out in his own chapter in the book, St. Thomas Aquinas understood that private property provides the incentive to individual owners to use the resources under their control in the public interest. To give a concrete example, the African white rhino’s population soared after a change in the legal code that enabled private rights in the animals, fostering a robust market. Yet in his encyclical, Pope Francis seems to overlook this appreciation of the “Invisible Hand” when he sweepingly writes: “The natural environment is a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone.”

Regarding climate change, the Pope’s encyclical stresses that a “very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system.” People should realize that this popular term “consensus” obscures the vigorous debate among genuine experts on the extent of warming and how much to attribute to human versus natural factors. For example, John R. Christy has a PhD in Atmospheric Science, has been a Lead Author, a Contributor, and a Reviewer for the UN’s periodic report on climate change science, and (with Dr. Roy Spencer) won a Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement from NASA in 1991 for their creation of a dataset of satellite-based global temperature readings. Notwithstanding these “mainstream” credentials, in 2017 Christy testified before Congress that even the latest suite of climate models has vastly exaggerated the sensitivity of global temperatures to human activity.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-change-tort-racket-1528499384

Liberals want to use racketeering laws to prosecute so-called climate-change skeptics. But the real conspiracy may be between plaintiff lawyers and Democratic politicians who have ganged up to shake down oil companies.

San Francisco, Oakland, New York and Seattle have sued five global oil giants—BP, Chevron , ConocoPhillips , ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell —for billions in future damages from climate change. Brass-knuckled plaintiff firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro has been shopping around the lawsuit to other cities desperate for cash.

No court has recognized common-law claims for injuries supposedly caused by climate change, and the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in AEP v. Connecticut (2011) that the Clean Air Act pre-empts public nuisance torts against corporations for greenhouse-gas emissions. So the cities are now arguing that the mere production and promotion of fossil fuels create a public nuisance, and the suits are heading to court.

San Francisco and Oakland were counting on a home courtroom advantage with their choice of legal venue give that climate change is something of a religion in California. But Clinton-appointed federal Judge William Alsup is calling fouls as he sees them.

http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/7175/full
Myron Ebell is Director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, and Chairman of the Cooler Heads Coalition, which aims to dispel myths about global warming.

Donald J. Trump has made many decisions since becoming President of the United States that have offended the permanent political establishment in Washington; and in foreign policy, he has also shocked political elites in Britain and Europe by doing things that are simply not done. To take a recent notable example, in May Trump stopped pretending that payoffs to Iran would slow the ayatollahs from developing nuclear weapons. Before that, he angered pro-Arabists everywhere by moving the American embassy to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem. But perhaps the foreign policy decision most upsetting to politically correct sensibilities everywhere occurred on June 1, 2017 when the President announced that the US would withdraw from the Paris climate treaty.

In the months leading up to the announcement, intense pressure was put on Trump to stay in Paris from every direction — environmental pressure groups, Democrats in Congress, mainstream media, Hollywood celebrities, countless CEOs of international corporations, and several members of his own administration, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The push by world leaders peaked at the G7 summit meeting in May 2017 in Sicily, but in the end all the cajoling and coaxing from Prime Minister May, Chancellor Merkel, President Macron, and EU Commission President Juncker did not convince Trump to break his campaign promise.

Although Trump made clear in his Rose Garden speech why undertaking international commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is not in America’s national interest, he created confusion when he added: “I’m willing to immediately work with Democratic leaders to either negotiate our way back into Paris, under terms that are fair to the United States and its workers, or to negotiate a new deal that protects our country and its taxpayers . . . And we’ll make it good, and we won’t be closing up our factories, and we won’t be losing our jobs.” He added to the confusion in January when, as the BBC reported, he said, “we could conceivably get back in”.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-has-run-its-course-1528152876

Mr. Hayward is a senior resident scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley

“Scientists who are genuinely worried about the potential for catastrophic climate change ought to be the most outraged at how the left politicized the issue and how the international policy community narrowed the range of acceptable responses. Treating climate change as a planet-scale problem that could be solved only by an international regulatory scheme transformed the issue into a political creed for committed believers. Causes that live by politics, die by politics.”

Climate change is over. No, I’m not saying the climate will not change in the future, or that human influence on the climate is negligible. I mean simply that climate change is no longer a pre-eminent policy issue. All that remains is boilerplate rhetoric from the political class, frivolous nuisance lawsuits, and bureaucratic mandates on behalf of special-interest renewable-energy rent seekers.

Judged by deeds rather than words, most national governments are backing away from forced-marched decarbonization. You can date the arc of climate change as a policy priority from 1988, when highly publicized congressional hearings first elevated the issue, to 2018. President Trump’s ostentatious withdrawal from the Paris Agreement merely ratified a trend long becoming evident.

A good indicator of why climate change as an issue is over can be found early in the text of the Paris Agreement. The “nonbinding” pact declares that climate action must include concern for “gender equality, empowerment of women, and intergenerational equity” as well as “the importance for some of the concept of ‘climate justice.’ ” Another is Sarah Myhre’s address at the most recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union, in which she proclaimed that climate change cannot fully be addressed without also grappling with the misogyny and social injustice that have perpetuated the problem for decades.

The descent of climate change into the abyss of social-justice identity politics represents the last gasp of a cause that has lost its vitality. Climate alarm is like a car alarm—a blaring noise people are tuning out. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/three_climate_change_questions_answered.html

A claimed nearly unanimous scientific consensus on fear of climate change has caused a push to substantially reduce or even eliminate the use of fossil fuel in favor of solar and wind. But three crucial questions are 1) is the scientific community really united?, 2) can solar and wind take over any time soon to provide the required vital energy for the maintenance of modern civilization in today’s world of 7 billion people?, and 3) has CO2 caused any harm yet? The answer to all three questions is no.

A major theme of this essay is that many assertions can easily be checked out by a simple Google search.

One of the most persistent false impressions, which the mainstream media have ingrained in us, is that 97% of scientists agree that CO2 is indeed doing irreparable harm. However, this figure was obtained not by a respected, impartial polling organization, but by believers for their own purposes.

Exactly what do the 97% agree on? Had the question been “Do you believe that the Earth’s climate is changing, and does mankind have an effect on the climate?,” the response would not have been 97%, but 100%. But had the question been “Is burning fossil fuel such a threat that there should be a major effort to stop?,” who knows? Probably less than 50%. That question was never asked on a large-scale survey, done by a respected polling organization and documented in a place easily available to the public.

To get an idea of how divided the scientific community is, a petition was circulated, led by Friedrich Seitz, the president of the National Academy of Sciences, disputing the ill effects of CO2. It garnered 32,000 signatures, over 9,000 by Ph.D. scientists. To justify the 97%, there would have to be another opposing petition signed by a million scientists.