RUTHFULLY YOURS

The world’s response to climate changing under natural and human influences is best founded upon a complete portrayal of the science. The U.S. government’s Climate Science Special Report, to be released Friday, does not provide that foundation. Instead, it reinforces alarm with incomplete information and highlights the need for more-rigorous review of climate assessments.

A team of some 30 authors chartered by the U.S. Global Change Research Program began work in spring 2016 on the report, “designed to be an authoritative assessment of the science of climate change.” An early draft was released for public comment in January and reviewed by the National Academies this spring. I, together with thousands of other scientists, had the opportunity to scrutinize and discuss the final draft when it was publicized in August by the New York Times . While much is right in the report, it is misleading in more than a few important places.

One notable example of alarm-raising is the description of sea-level rise, one of the greatest climate concerns. The report ominously notes that while global sea level rose an average 0.05 inch a year during most of the 20th century, it has risen at about twice that rate since 1993. But it fails to mention that the rate fluctuated by comparable amounts several times during the 20th century. The same research papers the report cites show that recent rates are statistically indistinguishable from peak rates earlier in the 20th century, when human influences on the climate were much smaller. The report thus misleads by omission.

This isn’t the only example of highlighting a recent trend but failing to place it in complete historical context. The report’s executive summary declares that U.S. heat waves have become more common since the mid-1960s, although acknowledging the 1930s Dust Bowl as the peak period for extreme heat. Yet buried deep in the report is a figure showing that heat waves are no more frequent today than in 1900. This artifice also appeared in the government’s 2014 National Climate Assessment, which emphasized a post-1980 increase in hurricane power without discussing the longer-term record. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently stated that it has been unable to detect any human impact on hurricanes.

Such data misrepresentations violate basic scientific norms. In his celebrated 1974 “Cargo Cult” lecture, the late Richard Feynman admonished scientists to discuss objectively all the relevant evidence, even that which does not support the narrative. That’s the difference between science and advocacy.

These deficiencies in the new climate report are typical of many others that set the report’s tone. Consider the different perception that results from “sea level is rising no more rapidly than it did in 1940” instead of “sea level rise has accelerated in recent decades,” or from “heat waves are no more common now than they were in 1900” versus “heat waves have become more frequent since 1960.” Both statements in each pair are true, but each alone fails to tell the full story.

Several actions are warranted. First, the report should be amended to describe the history of sea-level rise, heat waves and other trends fully and accurately. Second, the government should convene a “Red/Blue” adversarial review to stress-test the entire report, as I urged in April. Critics argue such an exercise would be superfluous given the conventional review processes, and others have questioned even the minimal time and expense that would be involved. But the report’s deficiencies demonstrate why such a review is necessary. CONTINUE AT SITE

Mr. Darwall is author of “Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex” (Encounter, 2017).
A majority of scientists might say a scientific theory is true, but that doesn’t mean the consensus is reliable. The science underpinning environmental claims can be fundamentally wrong—as it was in one of the biggest environmental scares in recent decades.

The acid-rain alarm of the 1970s and ’80s was a dry run for the current panic about climate change. Both began in Sweden as part of a war on coal meant to bolster support for nuclear power. In 1971 meteorologist Bert Bolin wrote the Swedish government’s report on acid rain to the United Nations. Seventeen years later he became the first chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

There are many parallels between acid rain and global warming. Each phenomenon produced a U.N. convention—the 1979 Geneva Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution in the case of acid rain, and the 1988 Framework Convention on Climate Change. And each convention led to a new protocol—the 1985 Helsinki Protocol and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Public alarm surrounding acid rain was far more intense, especially in Germany, where popular reaction to media stories about acid rain reached a pitch of hysteria not yet seen with global warming. A 1981 Der Speigel cover story featured an image of smokestacks looming over a copse of trees with the title “The Forest Is Dying.”

The most striking parallels are the role of scientific consensus in underpinning environmental alarm and the way science is used to justify cuts in emissions. The emission of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere “has proved to be a major environmental problem,” Bolin wrote in his 1971 report. National scientific academies across North America and Europe were in complete agreement. “We have a much more complete knowledge of the causes and consequences of acid deposition than we have for other pollutants,” a report by the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council said in 1981. According to the NRC, the circumstantial evidence was “overwhelming.” Many thousands of lakes had been affected, rivers were losing salmon, fisheries in the Adirondacks were in a bad way, red spruce were dying, and production from Canadian sugar maple trees had been affected. Acid rain was a scientific slam dunk.

Politicians duly parroted what the scientists told them. “Acid rain has caused serious environmental damage in many parts of the world,” President Jimmy Carter wrote in his 1979 environmental message to Congress. He signed an agreement with Canada to establish five acid-rain working groups, and Congress set up a 10-year National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program, which went by the catchy acronym Napap.

To Canadian anger, President Ronald Reagan was more skeptical than his predecessor. The head of Canada’s Federal Assessment and Review Office accused Mr. Reagan of “blatant efforts to manipulate” the science being done by the working groups. A formal note of protest from Ottawa pointed to the more than 3,000 scientific studies on acid rain yielding “sufficient scientific evidence” for policies to cut emissions.

The late economist and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman used to say that only in government, when a program or project fails dismally, the instinctive response is to make it bigger. This is especially the case in a modern Administrative State like the one we have in America today where a program alleged to serve the well-being of the public is most often proven to serve, in a big way, the interests of a large client of that administrative state.

We’re seeing Friedman’s observation validated yet again in the congressional response to an exposé of the pervasive dishonesty in the organic agriculture industry.

Following a scathing report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s inspector general that details fraud, mismanagement, and negligence throughout the global organic agriculture/food supply chain, Congress wants to throw yet more money at the problem.

Last month, Reps. John Faso (R-New York) and Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-New Mexico) introduced the “Organic Farmer and Consumer Protection Act.” It would nearly triple the budget of the USDA’s National Organic Program, which oversees the country’s organic standards and commerce. Faso said in a news release that the legislation will “provide for a modernization of organic import documentation, new technology advancements and stricter enforcement of organic products entering the US.”

The organic industry is cheering Faso’s bill; the Organic Trade Association says it “would make significant strides to improve the oversight of global organic trade, create a level playing field for American organic farmers, and establish a better system to ensure the integrity of organic.” Integrity of organic? Rubbish; it would only create a bigger fig-leaf.

When the organic designation was established in 1990, then-Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman emphasized its fundamental meaninglessness: “Let me be clear about one thing, the organic label is a marketing tool. It is not a statement about food safety. Nor is ‘organic’ a value judgment about nutrition or quality.” The Faso-Grisham legislation is yet another special interest bonanza designed to further subsidize domestic organic farmers and enrich the bottom line of already hugely-profitable organic businesses.

Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration should oppose the legislation and, beyond that, demand explanations of the multiple violations revealed in the recent USDA inspector general’s report. After a year-long investigation, the Inspector General found serious breaches in the international organic market that may result in “reduced U.S. consumer confidence in the integrity of organic products imported into the United States.” Federal authorities failed to verify whether imports were organic, did not perform mandatory on-site visits of exporting countries and ignored requirements to resolve the different organic standards among exporters. Moreover, imported agricultural products, whether organic or conventional, are sometimes fumigated at U.S. ports of entry to prevent alien pests from entering the United States. USDA investigators found pesticides that are prohibited under organic protocols were being sprayed on organic shipments.

At every point in the supply chain, National Organic Program officials have been negligent, allowing the participants in this booming sector to mislead consumers into believing organic food is healthier, safer and more eco-friendly than non-organic food—none of which would be true even if there were strict adherence to organic standards.

The misrepresentation and chicanery in the supply chain aren’t new, and the feds have long been aware of that. For example, USDA reported in 2012 that 43 percent of the 571 samples of “organic” produce tested were in violation of the government’s organic regulations, and that “the findings suggest that some of the samples in violation were mislabeled conventional products, while others were organic products that hadn’t been adequately protected from prohibited pesticides.”

The bipartisan pull of corporate welfare—also known as the swamp—is powerful. Last week it swallowed up no less than Donald Trump and his fearless Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt. They caved under pressure from the ethanol lobby and political extortion from Republican Senators Joni Ernst, Deb Fischer and Chuck Grassley.

Mr. Pruitt announced Thursday that EPA won’t reduce its proposed 19.24 billion gallon biofuels quota for 2018, and may even increase it. The EPA will further consider giving biofuels a pass to pollute that no other industry enjoys, via what’s known as a Reid Vapor Pressure waiver for high-ethanol blends.

As bad, the EPA announced it will keep intact a compliance credit scheme that benefits global and integrated oil companies and ethanol producers at the expense of smaller independent refiners and manufacturers. “Renewable identification numbers,” or RINs, are a credit created each time a gallon of ethanol is mixed with fuel. The EPA requires refiners to use RINs as proof of compliance with biofuel standards, and credits can be bought or sold.

Because only major global refiners have the capabilities to blend their own fuel, most small and midsize merchant refiners have no way of producing RINs in-house. Big Oil, the ethanol lobby and speculators have cornered the market for the credits, and RIN prices are soaring.

In 2012 Philadelphia Energy Solutions paid $10 million for RINs. This year, it will spend $300 million, twice the price of payroll. Only crude oil—the refinery’s main input—costs more annually. Because of that skyrocketing expense, Moody’s has dropped the refinery’s credit rating from a B+ to a CCC- in four years. Mr. Pruitt’s announcement means it will get no RIN relief.

These independent refiners provide the sort of blue-collar manufacturing jobs that President Trump promised to protect. Philadelphia Energy Solutions had to lay off 70 workers last year. Ryan O’Callaghan, the president of United Steelworkers Local 10-1, said the EPA announcement makes him fearful for the fate of his 692 members who remain at the refinery. Philadelphia Energy Solutions also uses hundreds of contractors from the building trades unions.

“I voted Donald Trump, I urged my members to vote for Donald Trump, and I urged them to ask their families and friends to vote for Donald Trump,” Mr. O’Callaghan said. “As a union president, to support a Republican candidate for president, there was some backlash. And now we’re left out in the cold. It’s very disappointing. It feels like the government has the chips stacked against us. We’re crushed in between Big Oil and Big Ethanol. I thought President Trump would be able to see through that. Hopefully he changes his mind and goes with workers.”

The Australian politician Tony Abbott has delivered a really terrific speech on the AGW scam to the Global Warming Foundation. What was so good was that he placed the fake science of anthropogenic global warming theory squarely in its correct and all-important context – the suicidal attack by the west upon its own civilisation and the principles underpinning it, including the pursuit of rationality and evidence-based inquiry. Here are some extracts:

“In Britain and Australia, scarcely 50 per cent describe themselves as Christian, down from 90 per cent a generation back. For decades, we’ve been losing our religious faith but we’re fast losing our religious knowledge too. We’re less a post-Christian society than a non-Christian, or even an anti-Christian one. It hasn’t left us less susceptible to dogma, though, because we still need things to believe in and causes to fight for; it’s just that believers can now be found for almost anything and everything.

“Climate change is by no means the sole or even the most significant symptom of the changing interests and values of the West. Still, only societies with high levels of cultural amnesia – that have forgotten the scriptures about man created “in the image and likeness of God” and charged with “subduing the earth and all its creatures” – could have made such a religion out of it.

“There’s no certain way to regain cultural self-confidence. The heart of any recovery, though, has to be an honest facing of facts and an insistence upon intellectual rigour…

“There are laws of physics; there are objective facts; there are moral and ethical truths. But there is almost nothing important where no further enquiry is needed. What the “science is settled” brigade want is to close down investigation by equating questioning with superstition. It’s an aspect of the wider weakening of the Western mind which poses such dangers to the world’s future.

“Physics suggests, all other things being equal, that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide would indeed warm the planet. Even so, the atmosphere is an almost infinitely complex mechanism that’s far from fully understood.

“Palaeontology indicates that over millions of years there have been warmer periods and cooler periods that don’t correlate with carbon dioxide concentrations…

“The growing evidence that records have been adjusted, that the impact of urban heat islands has been downplayed, and that data sets have been slanted in order to fit the theory of dangerous anthropogenic global warming does not make it false; but it should produce much caution about basing drastic action upon it.”

Do read it all.

There’s a new day dawning at the Environmental Protection Agency. On October 16, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt announced that he is pulling the plug on the “sue and settle” strategy his predecessors used to impose new regulations and funnel large amounts of cash to their allies in the environmental movement.

Under President Obama, the sue-and-settle gambit was raised to an art form. The administration would invite special-interest groups to sue the EPA over a regulation that it wanted to change but couldn’t, at least not expeditiously. Instead of fighting the lawsuit, the EPA would then almost immediately surrender, agreeing to settle. Inevitably, the settlement entailed consenting to whatever outrageous demands were being made by the agency’s handpicked “adversary.”

As Pruitt noted, this tactic allowed the Obama administration to “circumvent the regulatory process set by Congress,” avoiding the requirements of public notice that are supposed to give citizens and industry a chance to comment on changes in existing regulations or proposed new ones. Under the settlements that resulted, the EPA would often commit to imposing changes that went far beyond what the law required, short-circuiting statutory deadlines and timetables along the way. And even though the EPA settled the friendly suits in record time, it still paid tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to cover the plaintiffs’ legal bills. Between 2009 and 2012, the EPA chose not to defend itself in 60 such lawsuits. In each case, the agency agreed to settle on terms favorable to the advocacy groups, according to a 2013 report of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. These “sue and settle” lawsuits resulted in more than 100 new federal rules estimated to impose $100 million in annual regulatory-compliance costs.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is one of the laws that proved especially ripe for friendly lawsuit abuse. It attracted many so-called “deadline” lawsuits, in which plaintiffs sue the government for failing to meet a deadline — like responding to a petition to add a species to the endangered list.

For example, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to re-declare a bird found on the Pacific island of Tinian as endangered. A 90-day clock started ticking as soon as the petition was filed. This particular bird had already been placed on the endangered-species list once, when the USFWS officials misinterpreted a reported sighting of 40–50 Tinian monarchs as being a population estimate for the entire island. In fact, the island teemed with tens of thousands of the birds. Eventually, the agency recognized its blunder; it disingenuously proclaimed the bird “recovered” and removed it from the endangered list.

Among the reasons the CBD cited in arguing that the bird should be put back on the list is that its small range — Tinian is roughly 40 square miles in size — makes it susceptible to “stochastic” — a fancy word for “random” — events that could supposedly wipe it out. But the Tinian monarch population has proved plenty tough. During World War II, the birds survived 43 days of naval bombardment in advance of the U.S. amphibious landing on the island. In the day before the marines hit the beach, Navy battleships shelled the island with hundreds of rounds from 14- and 16-inch guns; the Army hit it with more than 7,000 artillery rounds, and American warplanes dropped over 100 tons of ordinance — including napalm. Somehow, the Tinian monarchs survived not only all this but also the subsequent ground battle, a typhoon, and the introduction of a prolific shrub that took over 40 percent of the island’s forested areas. The bird was reported to be “abundant” shortly after the war.

Nevertheless, in September 2015, USFWS determined that CBD’s petition to re-add the bird to the endangered list “may be warranted” and ordered a status review for the species. This started another clock ticking.

As the Coalition attempts to soften the economy-wrecking absurdities of the renewables it has assiduously promoted it faces a problem of its own making. Once you’ve fired up a generation that finds it easier to care than think, how to cool that activist ardour?

My wife listens to ABC Illawarra radio in the mornings (much to my irritation) but sometimes it pays a perverse dividend. Without a recent broadcast broadcast I would not have known that we, in the Illawarra, are blessed with our own superhero. Let me introduce you to – drumroll please – Climate Girl, aka Parrys (pronounced Paris) Raines. A law student (environmental law, naturally) at Wollongong University. Her ambition, she tells us, is:

…to become a world leader in Environmental Law and an environmental entrepreneur. I plan to use my law degree and environment knowledge to develop Climate Girl into world class sustainable business. The primary focus is to educate young people, to inspire and motivate them to take action locally on sustainable issues that ultimately benefits the communities they live in. Benefits gained from these sustainable actions will ensure a healthy planet, healthy people and a sustainable future.

As very few Quadrant Online readers will have caught this young woman’s insights at the time, let me refer you to the video clip below, which amounts to a neat self-portrait.

I caught only the tail end of Climate Girl’s ABC feting of its guest, in which she lamented with all the certainty of her 22 years that her Third World counterparts are hard hit by climate change because it is foiling their educations, but that was enough to pique a degree. I discovered she has impeccable credentials for a life in her chosen field, having boarded the UN gravy train earlier than most.

In Climate Girl’s own words, she has been a three-time keynote speaker for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in Norway, South Korea and Java. A little research determines that these were children’s conference she attended at ages 13, 14 and 16. She’s also the recipient of a grant from the Layne Beachley Foundation. When she was 14 she launched her website Climate Girl, with the aim of educating fellow youngsters in the articles of her green faith.

She certainly has accomplished a lot in her short life:

I have travelled extensively through my environmental work. I have seen the planets natural capital being misused and not replaced. I have seen shrinking glaciers, I have seen vast amounts of precious rainforest cut down, I have seen animals that are on the brink of extinction, and I have seen extreme poverty. I have heard firsthand from children I have met from around the world about issues they are facing everyday due to environmental impacts.

Just what we need, I hear you say, another earnest young undergrad educating us about climate change. But fear not. Her climate change credentials are built on very solid foundations. Here she is explaining when she started:

I have had two defining moments where I have learnt how humans are having a negative impact on our planet. The first was when I was about six years old, I was at the beach and questioned why I had to wear sunscreen. I was told that the planet was changing and we needed to protect our skin.

The second moment was when I was ice climbing in New Zealand when I was 11. I noticed a red line in the ice and I was told it was red dust from central Australia that had blown across the South Pacific. I learnt about impact and how our actions impact on people and places elsewhere but because we don’t see what our actions have contributed to, we are unaware of the problems we have caused.

Who knew that CO2 causes ultra violet radiation?

When Barack Obama appointed Jim Yong Kim as the institution’s president, the emphasis switched from lifting the world’s poor out of poverty to prioritising ‘environmental sustainability’, not least by banning Third World investment in cheap, reliable power sources

For evidence that wind and solar energy wind and solar push up energy costs, wreak havoc on the investment needed to keep the lights on and compromise grid security, look no further than South Australia. The state has faced crippling black-outs, spiralling energy bills and fleeing businesses. Rich countries that have already built their grids can throw money at the problems created by weather dependent wind and solar. Poor countries that are still building out their grids don’t have that luxury. Why, then, would anyone think it sensible to push these expensive, flawed technologies down the throats of vulnerable developing countries?

Cheap, universal access to reliable grid power is the single most powerful boost to economic development and improving the lives of the world’s poor. The World Bank’s mission is to free the world of poverty. Yet under its current president, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, appointed by President Obama in 2012, the World Bank abandoned its core development mission and now prioritises environmental sustainability over poverty reduction. In 2013, it adopted anti-coal funding policies, effectively blocking investment in what, for many developing nations, is likely to be the cheapest and most reliable generating capacity. The World Bank’s near categoric refusal to finance coal-fired capacity is worsened by it favouring high-cost, unreliable wind and solar technologies.

The World Bank justifies doing this in order to cut global emissions of greenhouse gases. But poor people in developing countries consume very little power. Their per capita consumption of coal can be measured in kilograms and pounds (in the case of Bangladesh, in ounces). The World Bank admits that the incremental greenhouse gas emissions from extending access to the grid to the world’s poor “will not make a material difference.” That being the case, the World Bank’s anti-coal/pro-renewable policy is morally and economically indefensible. For those genuinely worried by the prospect of anthropogenic global warming, enabling the energy-starved in the world’s developing nations is genuinely not a problem.

The World Bank’s own analysis also highlights the extra costs caused by the variability of wind and solar output and the extra grid infrastructure they need. In spite of this analysis, the World Bank decided to from a “unique partnership” with the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in the 2011 Sustainable Energy For All initiative (SE4ALL). This set an arbitrary target of doubling renewables’ contribution to the global energy mix by 2030. Mr. Ban’s own numbers show why the World Bank made a colossal blunder: According to Mr. Ban, universal energy access has a price tag of $50bn a year. Renewable energy costs $500bn a year and a further $500bn a year for energy efficiency. To any objective analyst, these numbers should have settled the matter.

In giving its support to Mr. Ban’s aim of doubling renewables’ share in the energy mix, the World Bank went much further than the UN General Assembly, which in a March 2013 resolution noted that renewable technologies had yet to achieve economic viability. The UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, agreed in September 2015, also watered down SE4ALL’s renewable energy target. When the governments of the world finalised the text of the December 2015 Paris Agreement, they removed references to renewable energy from the draft circulated by the French conference president.

Leaders in the developing world blast the West’s apparent hypocrisy in denying them the energy that made them rich. The West’s industrialisation was built on coal, notes Nigeria’s finance minster, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun. Yet when Africa wants to use coal, the developed world says, “you have to use solar and the wind which are the most expensive.” There’s a similar story in Asia. At last month’s ASEAN+3 meeting in Manila, energy ministers affirmed the need to achieve energy security with economic efficiency and environmental sustainability before going on to recognise that “coal continues to be a major fuel source in the region.” The communiqué calls for continued public financial support for new coal-fired power stations and promoting of the newest clean coal technologies, including high efficiency coal-fired generation.

The World Bank’s self-imposed embargo on coal financing has opened up the field to rivals like China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Australia is also an investor in the AIIB. Responding to pressure from the Turnbull government, its lending guidelines allow it to support the latest generation of highly efficient, low emission coal fired power stations. As the world’s largest coal exporter, Australian mining jobs are on the line. So is the welfare of the world’s poor. It is irresponsible for a multilateral development bank to push high-cost, operationally defective technologies onto nations which will retard development and make electrification vastly more expensive.