Myron Ebell, who led Mr Trump’s transition team at the agency, said that he expects the new President to sack at least half of the staff there. He also hopes that the organisation will have its budget cut significantly, he said.
Trump will save the state based EPA roles, but chop the federal monster which has 15,000 employees:
Ebell suggested it was reasonable to expect the president to seek a cut of about $1 billion from the EPA’s roughly $8 billion annual budget.
About half the EPA’s budget passes through to state and local governments for infrastructure projects and environmental cleanup efforts that Ebell said Trump supports.
We live in hope:
“President Trump said during the campaign that he would like to abolish the EPA, or ‘leave a little bit,”‘ Ebell said.
Not surprisingly, climate scientists are reacting with their usual calm demeanor:
“It’s strange,” the woman said. “People keep walking up to me and giving me hugs.” Like several others I spoke to for this story, she declined to tell me her name out of fear that she might suffer retaliation, including being fired.
Imagine not being able to speak freely? Welcome to the world of skeptical scientists.
I’m thinking right now of a friend at an Australian University who I can’t name, who isn’t even in the field of climate research but was specifically warned not to speak publicly about climate issues, even in his personal time, “or else”. We’ve had messages from people in Australian and US institutions which study the climate or meteorology and who tell us there are other quiet skeptics “in the office”. And there is at least one other story of what sounds like quite appalling treatment that I have yet to cover.
The thing about being a skeptic is that, it’s not just scientists, but all kinds of people who can face punishment — even skeptical farmers can get suddenly slapped with severe new license conditions, and bled cash til they lose their farm.
Meanwhile Trump is putting the environmental establishment off-guard — romping, as it were, through any semblance of normal. He is not playing by the usual rules: climate change is gone from the website and the EPA have been told to freeze all grants and contracts. As a negotiation technique, this is the hammer blow opening move. He is forcing those he wants to deal with to rewrite entirely what they expect they can get. A gambit. He is reminding them he is the boss, and that they can take nothing for granted, and that he is not afraid of them calling him names like: “a racist anti-science, flat Earth, climate denier”.
Trump rightly calculates that they have already called him all of the above, and they will continue to do so, no matter what he does. They don’t have much ammo, he knows it, and he’s getting them to show their hand, and betting that they haven’t got much left to fire. How big are those protests going to be? Will the public really care? (His popularity might go up.)
Trump is overloading the media. By doing everything at once, immigration, the environment, the TPP, the love-media will have to pick their target.
Trump administration tells EPA to freeze all grants, contracts“They’re trying to freeze things to make sure nothing happens they don’t want to have happen, so any regulations going forward, contracts, grants, hires, they want to make sure to look at them first,” said Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-backed group that has long sought to slash the authority of the EPA.
So what is going on? If you are not familiar with the U.S. constitution, take a look at Article 2, The Executive Branch. Here is a good Summary. Excerpt of the key section:
Clause 1. The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
Here the Framers spell out several of the president’s more important powers. First and foremost, he is commander-in-chief of the military. Second, he is the boss of the heads of all the civilian departments of government; the bit here about requiring their written opinions provides the constitutional basis for the cabinet. And third, he has the power to pardon individuals convicted of crimes.
Basically, the civilian departments such as EPA, USDA and NOAA now work for President Trump, with the Directors of these agencies working with the administration to further the President’s policies.
A serious US and UK partnership reshapes everything
The leadership provided by our two countries through the special relationship has done more than win wars and overcome adversity. It made the modern world,” she will say.
“The institutions upon which that world relies were so often conceived or inspired by our two nations working together. It is through our actions over many years, working together to defeat evil or to open up the world, that we have been able to fulfil the promise of those who first spoke of the special nature of the relationship between us. The promise of freedom, liberty and the rights of man.”
So much has already changed. Only in November 2015 the same Theresa May as Home Secretary was considering whether to ban Trump from entering the UK over his divisive comments. She, clearly, has adapted to the Brexit-Trumpocene era. Can other world leaders do the same — (In Australia there’s no sign Turnbull or Bishop have any idea about going with the new flow — like dumping the TPP and doing one-on-one trade deals.).
The US and UK are talking about slashing tarriffs and making it easier for workers to move back and forward.
Sources believe any agreement on tariffs would give Mrs May significant leverage in her negotiations with Brussels and allow her to demand that EU leaders give Britain a good deal.
Government sources also said that Mrs May wants to explore ways in which it is easier for US citizens to work in the UK and vice-versa.
There are around 230,000 people born in North America aged between 16 and 64 living in Britain. The British population in the USA has been estimated at 700,000.
When a word that isn’t a word wins Word of the Year prize, we know Macquarie has lost it.
Bowing to the God of Political Correctness, Macquarie Dictionary has just named “Fake News” as Word of the Year.
In real English, “Fake news” is two words, otherwise known as a phrase. Separately both words have real and easy-to-understand meanings. Together they have become the the latest meaningless slur as the mainstream media realize they are losing power and influence to the real news on blogs and in the alt-media. The old-media is trying to stop the bleed by labeling the new media as “fake”. Instead of namecalling, the old-media could win easily if it just reported the real news.
When a word that isn’t a word wins Word of the Year prize, we know Macquarie has lost it. If any Macquarie products are on your back-to-school booklists, buy something else. Who wants to teach our kids fake English?
This is the latest attempt by wordsmiths to destroy the language honest people use. We need accurate words to slice and dice arguments of parasites, freeloaders, and self-serving fools. “News” used to mean the whole story and all the facts that matter. Fake news is what happens when a reporter hides half the story from their audience.
Now, finally, in 2017 Malcolm Turnbull is saying the same thing as the skeptics he mocked years ago. This is how the “climate meme” dies, one unacknowledged step at a time. Gradually all the skeptical positions get picked up, years later and after burning billions at the altar of “climate control”. This is a big win for skeptics, but don’t expect Turnbull or the ABC to be honest enough to say so. This marks a major turning point in the discussion about coal in Australia which has mostly never got past the “coal is dying” and the “stranded assets” inanity which implied that coal has no future and our massive coal reserves were useless instead of being our major export industry.
Last week Tony Abbott, former PM, called for stop to subsidies for wind power – an end to the RET (Renewables Energy Target) certificates which stop normal competition in the electrical market and force us all to buy a power we don’t want at prices far higher than we need to pay. This week, with no acknowledgement that Tony Abbott is right, Turnbull does a major about face. He calls this “cleaner coal” but it has nothing to do with the futile fantasy of carbon capture. It is the newer high tech coal which Greens will hate (because it works and it solves the fake problem they pretend to worry about).
As revealed in The Australian yesterday, research commissioned by the Turnbull government has estimated the country’s emissions would be cut by up to 27 per cent if coal-based power generation ran on “ultra-super-critical-technology” used in other parts of the world.
Carried out by the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, the research showed emissions would be reduced even further — by up to 34 per cent — if the technology now in development was adopted across Australia.
Turnbull attacks wind power now, but he didn’t warn about that train wreck coming as skeptics did:
Mr Turnbull acknowledged coal would be part of the world’s energy mix “for a very, very long time” as he attacked the Labor state of South Australia, which generates 40 per cent of its energy through wind, for having the “most expensive and the least reliable electricity” in the country.
If Turnbull had said this in 2009 he would have been PM in 2010 and we would have saved billions and have cheap electricity now:
“We are the biggest coal exporter in the world. If anybody, if any country has a vested interest in demonstrating that clean coal and cleaner coal with new technologies can make a big contribution to our energy mix and at the same time reduce our emissions in net terms — it’s us,” Mr Turnbull said.
Here is Turnbull pretending to be pragmatic about energy, but the only thing Turnbull is somewhat pragmatic about is his own political position:
“Our approach, and my approach, to energy is absolutely pragmatic and practical … Renewables have a role. Fossil fuels have a role. Every type of energy — storage, all of it — has an important role to play.”
The new coal plants cut emissions by 50% “compared with existing plants” (presumably the oldest brown power stations) and are as “clean” as gas plants says the Minerals Council of Australia using the Department of Industries projections. Bear in mind that this in itself is hugely important — wholesale coal power is 3 to 4 c KWhr. (I don’t know the cost of new “hot” coal power because those big plants cost a lot to build). But gas is 7 to 8 c per KWhr. More coal power means much cheaper electricity.
How much do we thank Donald Trump for this transformation? A whole lot. The writing is on the wall, Australia will lose more jobs, profits and companies to the US if they have cheap energy, and that is one of Trumps absolute priorities. Now if we can just kill off the RET.
A funny thing happens when governments put “free energy” into an electricity grid. Wind turbines force down wholesale prices, but everyone’s electricity bill goes up.
Those cheap green electrons look so seductive, but the advertising hides the effect that intermittent, unstable electricity has on the whole system.
Armada Funds Management manages $400m dollars worth of South Australian shops. Look at the price shock these small business managers are dealing with, like $1200 a month, and only one employee:
Power spike hits South Australian shopping centres
Chris Monaghan, Armada’s managing director [said]…costs for purchasing electricity for shopping centres in South Australia had increased by 87 per cent during peak times last year and 101 per cent in off-peak periods. Costs would increase again this year a further 57 per cent at peak periods and 15 per cent off-peak.
The total extra cost to landlords could run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Nino Pilaia, who has been running Meats-N-More Carvery & Spuds … His business was among those affected by power blackouts last year and ever-increasing energy costs. “For this little place here of about 30sq m, it is about $1200 a month, which is ridiculous,” Mr Pilaia said. “The rising cost of power has hit us hard, but you can’t keep on passing on the costs to consumers — you have to try and absorb it. It’s money out of my pocket, it’s as simple as that.
“I employ one other part-time person. I can’t afford to employ anyone else… The power costs are a business killer.”
South Australia has the highest proportion of wind power of any state without 6 interconnectors. Somehow the Premier accidentally gives the right answer:
South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill last week told ABC radio a lack of competition was to blame for high power prices, a claim rejected by the industry.
It is a lack of competition, but its not about retail competition — one more guy selling a dead dog doesn’t make it live again. What South Australians need is the right to buy whatever damn electricity they like. They need competition between generators: no RET’s, no schemes no subsidies — and may the best one win. All Jay Weatherill has to do is get out of the way, and consumers and energy companies will figure it out.
Bring it on, and watch those electricity prices plummet, and then watch big industry, shops, everyone clamour to live there.
How fast can we burn millions of dollars trying to stuff a perfectly good fertilizer down a sinkhole? This fast…
Carbon capture must rank as one of the most flagrantly ridiculous ways to spend money (even more pointless than desal). To capture and bury the CO2 of a coal fired plant we have to spend around 60% more to build every new power station and then throw away 40% the electricity it makes. (See TonyfromOz’s calculations in the link below).
The UK Government has wasted US$123 million on a competition to develop technology that will capture carbon emissions. The project was cancelled according to a report, after the Energy Department failed to agree the long-term costs of the competition with the Treasury.
Concerns over the price to consumers led to the competitions demise, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).
The report, which was produced by the NAO, warned that it was “currently inconceivable” that the CCS projects would be developed with government support, and that the competition costs did not achieve value for money.
This is not the first time a competition run by the government to kick-start CCS has been cancelled. In 2011, the government having spent U $70 million had to stop the project.
“The department has now tried twice to kick-start CCS in the UK, but there are still no examples of the technology working,” said Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office.
Other failures of carbon capture have also wasted wild amounts of money. The concept is so intrinsically futile we need some kind of miracle techno advance, or we need to break laws of chemistry to get it to work.
The Morning After: This is probably the best day for sane, honest, skeptical citizens in the last 30 years. In the long climate debate, this is the most significant political event — with more potential to restore science and free speech back to their rightful place. Ain’t democracy a great thing? Those who don’t like Trump say it was “populist” and a repeat of his campaign speech. Other people say “it’s about time”.
Trump is putting together a package for his customers, and telling the competition the US won’t be giving anything away.
UPDATE: and climate change disappears from the whitehouse website. Already Trump is in control of the Whitehouse.gov site and according to Jason Koebler “climate change has been deleted“. He writes: “It’s customary for www.whitehouse.gov to flip over to the new administration exactly at noon, but the only mention of climate on President Trump’s new website is under his “America First Energy Plan” page, in which he vows to destroy President Obama’s Climate Action Plan. A search of the website found no mention of “global warming,“…
“Today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington D.C. and giving it back to you, the people,” he said.
“For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.
“That all changes…
…
Today I take an oath of allegiance to all Americans. For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry, subsidised the armies of other countries, while allowing the sad depletion of our own military.
We’ve defended other nations’ borders while refusing to defend our own.
And spent trillion and trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay
The warming in the last two decades is 0.06C/decade not 0.22C.
The hottest ever year tells us nothing about the cause of global warming, but the 20 year trend does — and the message from the trend is “the models are wrong”.
Despite the Chinese releasing gigatons of coal fired CO2 into the air, the warming that has happened has been tiny compared to what their models predict. It is so low the Global Worriers won’t talk about the trend. Gone are the days when they would discuss degrees per decade. Meh! The same people who scoffed at skeptics for mentioning one freak season are now reduced to picking on one freak El Nino, and pumping annual tiny fractions of “record” after “record”. If the sun caused global warming (the evidence is there) we’d still be getting warm records, especially in El Nino years. What’s amazing is that after a record El Nino the world hit pretty much the same temperature as it did in 1998.
Dr David Evans has just recalculated the warming trend for the last two decades and found that the warming effect is a big six hundredth of a degree per decade, about one third the rate the expert climate models predicted. If the “best” models we have were right, the world would have warmed by around 0.22C per decade, not 0.06C. The current warming trend is equivalent to less than one degree a century, which is just like last century. Whatever.
CO2 may have done all the warming the models predicted, but all it takes is one dang feedback loop that they forgot, which reroutes that energy to space and CO2 becomes irrelevant.
If the ABC science team were skeptical instead of gullible, they’d know to ask Will Steffen and others about these trends. And if we use the trends from the entire satellite record since 1979 the warming still only comes in at 0.12C — half the rate those models predict. Far from accelerating as our emissions increased, the observations don’t fit the theory. Something else is more powerful than CO2 and the modelers don’t know what it is. — Jo
World temperatures have hit a record high for the third year in a row in 2016, creeping closer to a ceiling set for global warming with extremes including unprecedented heat in India and ice melt in the Arctic, US government agencies say.
No technical lies there, but it is misleading.
People keep asking me, so here is the truth as measured by our best method of measuring temperature globally, the satellites:
….
I chose the start date as just after the warming of the mid 1970s to mid 90s was petering out, at a nice round 20 years, because it best makes the point that global warming has more or less stopped. Download the data yourself.
Until global warming slowed dramatically, the warming crowd always loudly told everyone to ignore individual yearly temperatures and to focus instead on trends. So I put in a couple of trend lines on the graph.
The current estimate of sensitivity to increasing carbon dioxide by the IPCC* corresponds to an underlying warming rate of 0.22 °C per decade, but for the last 20 years it has only been warming at 0.06 °C per decade, as shown.
The same modelers were predicting drought and letting their friends nail their reputation to statements about how the dams would never fill, and Perth would be a ghost town. When Australia wasted billions on desal, they said nothing about the “extreme rain” coming. Then the endless drought broke, the rains returned, and now, years later, they’ve rejigged and tweaked their skillless models and put forward ambiguous, vague, yes-no-maybe, scare-scare-scary predictions that could have come from a tarot card reader.
Get ready for the full genius of expert modelling:
“There is no chance that rainfall in Australia will remain the same as the climate warms,” said an author of the paper UNSW Professor Steve Sherwood.
“The only way that this intensification of extreme rainfall falls at the lower end of the scale is if the continent becomes drier overall. The long and the short of it is that with 2°C of global warming Australia is stuck with either more aridity, much heavier extreme rains, or some combination of the two,” said Sherwood, from UNSW’s Climate Change Research Centre.
Other, less astrological climate researchers have found that Australia has had megadroughts for the last thousand years (Vance et al 2014). Paleoclimate rainfall estimates likewise find that both droughts and floods used to be worse and longer (Tozer et al 2016). None of the UNSW climate modeling experts know why.
Perhaps the CO2-addicted models just don’t work at all because it’s the sun driving rainfall patterns?
Climate models don’t include any solar influence other than total sunlight. Yet Australian and Asian rainfall has been linked to solar activity for last 6000 years (Steinke et al 2014) . Solar effects seem to shift wind and rainfall patterns over last 3000 years in Chile, while low solar activity means more central European floods. (Varma et al 2011, Czymzik et al 2016). Another study showed that when the sun is less active winters are likely to be warmer in Greenland with an increase in snowfall and yet colder in Northwest Europe. (Adolphi, 2014) The sun appears to control half of the groundwater recharge rate in China for last 700 years (Tiwari et al, 2014).
They looked at the heaviest 1% of rainfall events experienced in Australia across all seasons with a particular focus on precipitation in the very different climates of Darwin, Sydney and Melbourne.
So they are investigating noise — rare events which need very long datasets to find a signal in.
The paper also went beyond the 2°C international Paris Agreement target, looking at what would happen with a 4°C rise in global temperature, which is a likely outcome based on current increases in the rate of carbon emissions. It produced a projected increase in rainfall for extreme events of 22-60%.
Why stop there? How about 6°C, 8°C, 10°C or eleventy-hundred*?
hat tip Pat, Geoff Derrick, Scott, Another Ian, AndyG, Albert Parker
REFERENCE
Adolphi, Florian, and Muscheler R., Svensson, A., Aldahan, A., Possnert, G., Beer, J., Sjolte, J., Björck, A., Matthes, K., Thiéblemont, R. (2014) Persistent link between solar activity and Greenland climate during the Last Glacial Maximum. Nature Geoscience; DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2225
Jiawei Bao et al. Future increases in extreme precipitation exceed observed scaling rates, Nature Climate Change (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nclimate3201
Czymzik, M., Muscheler, R. and Brauer, A. 2016. Solar modulation of flood frequency in central Europe during spring and summer on inter-annual to multi-centennial timescales. Climate of the Past12: 799-805.
Stephan Steinke,*, Mahyar Mohtadi, Matthias Prange, Vidya Varma, Daniela Pittauerova, Helmut W. Fischer (2014) Mid- to Late-Holocene AustralianeIndonesian summer monsoon variability, Quaternary Science Reviews 93 (2014) 142e154
Christopher M. Taylor, Richard A. M. de Jeu, Françoise Guichard, Phil P. Harris & Wouter A. Dorigo ‘Afternoon rain more likely over drier soils’ will be published in Nature on 12 September 2012. www.nature.com DOI 10.1038/nature11377
R.K. Tiwari1,* and Rekapalli Rajesh2 (2014) Imprint of long-term solar signal in groundwater recharge fluctuation rates from North West China. Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1002/2014GL060204
C. R. Tozer et al.: An ice core derived 1013-year catchment-scale annual rainfall reconstruction, The paper will be available for download from Hydrology and Earth System Sciences from 0900 AEST, 11 May 2016.
Vance et al, Interdecadal Pacifi c variability and eastern Australian mega-droughts over the last millennium (2014) American Geophysical Union, doi: 10.1002/2014GL062447
Varma, V., Prange, M., Lamy, F., Merkel, U., and Schulz, M.: Solar-forced shifts of the Southern Hemisphere Westerlies during the Holocene, Clim. Past, 7, 339-347, doi:10.5194/cp-7-339-2011, 2011. [abstract] [PDF]
Eric Worrall notified me of Obama’s parting present to the UN Gravy Train. By handing cash to the UN he can put it beyond Trump (and the voters) control.
President Barack Obama has made one final contribution to the fight against global warming on his way out the White House door. On Tuesday, Obama transferred $500 million to the UN’s Green Climate Fund, a key program set up to finance climate change adaptation and renewable energy projects in developing countries.
I predict this will reduce sea levels by a factor too small for anyone to detect, even in 2100. But it’s very effective advertising for the Obama brand. Who knows what UN Department head, University, or Foundation is out there right now looking for a former US Pres?
Call me cynical, Obama may really believe he can hold back the tide, but obviously this is not what US voters just voted for. (But who cares what they want, right?)
As a form of resume-building, the gifting approach seemed to work well for Julia Gillard who donated $88million of our tax dollars and lo and behold, became Chairman of the Clinton affilliated Global Partnership for Education.
The Green Climate Fund is not just after the money though, in the past they have also sought to get exemption from prosecution (one law for you, and none for us, eh?!)
If the GCF succeeds in its broader negotiations, not only billions but eventually trillions of dollars in climate funding activities could fall outside the scope of criminal and civilian legal actions
It seems Obama promised $3 billion to the fund in 2012, but didn’t deliver anything til March 2016 when he handed out the first $500 million. So the $3b was advertising and PR, and the reality was a lot less. It’s still $1b too much.
At the present funding level, $1b would last skeptical scientists about 400 years.
Wind farm in Xinjiang viewed from the Lanxin railway. | Image by “Train to Xinjiang Provnice” (sic)
The command economy strikes again. China is touted as the renewables leader, installing a gobsmacking one third of all the worlds wind towers. But with a recent economic slowdown, when push comes to shove, coal power is used and wind farms are not.
[NY Times] — More than 92,000 wind turbines have been built across the country, capable of generating 145 gigawatts of electricity, nearly double the capacity of wind farms in the United States. One out of every three turbines in the world is now in China, and the government is adding them at a rate of more than one per hour.
But some of its most ambitious wind projects are underused. Many are grappling with a nationwide economic slowdown that has dampened demand for electricity. Others are stymied by persistent favoritism toward the coal industry by local officials and a dearth of transmission lines to carry electricity from rural areas in the north and west to China’s fastest-growing cities.
Apparently the wind farms are not well connected to the cities that need the power (not to mention that the wind probably doesn’t power them at peak times, always needs back up, is unreliable, and unpredictable.) The transmission lines are just not good enough. A friend from Switzerland writes: “When I studied Communist Economic planning 1978, we called these type of investments Economic Bermuda Triangles.”
Meanwhile in the US, the Amazon wind farm, a 104 turbine plant costing $400m is being built so close to military radars that people are saying it should be shut down before it starts because it is within the exclusion zone and is a threat to national security.
Not surprisingly, pensioners in the UK say they are cutting back on food so they can afford to keep the heat on. Still, their sacrifices will mean the world will be 0.00C cooler in 2100. Hard to argue with that.
And a third will be forced to ration their heating in a bid to keep the bills down, according to a new survey.
Of Britain’s 11.5m over 65s, nearly one in ten (nine per cent) are anticipating either a new health problem or the worsening of a current condition, like arthritis, as they struggle with the cold.
As many as 90 per cent of the 2,000 pensioners surveyed by comparison website comparethemarket.com believe the high cost of gas and electricity presents a real health threat to elderly people living in the UK.
At this minute the UK is apparently a balmy 5C. Parts of Canada and Alaska are minus 40. Siberia, minus 44C. I wouldn’t want to be a pensioner living in the highlands of Greenland though, where it is minus 54C right now.
FergusFallsJournal has a list of things to keep in the car in winter in case you get stranded. Conversely, in Pakistan, the news tells mothers how to spot when pneumonia in children requires a hospital visit. Two hospitals in Rawalpindi report that 500 children a day are being admitted suffering from pneumonia. Apparently, ninety thousand children a year die of pneumonia in Pakistan every year. Puts things in perspective.
Donald Trump nominated the man who is the expert at running lawsuits against the EPA to run it. Naturally this threatens a lot of sacred totems, not to mention a very big trough. Protests are raging. In reply, people are speaking up in support of Pruitt.
Those who think his nomination should be opposed are confused saying that “Mr. Pruitt’s backers tout it as a virtue that he has sued the EPA. … In every instance, Mr. Pruitt has joined forces with polluting industries seeking to avoid clean up responsibilities.”
The EPA is so lost, it doesn’t know what real pollution is anymore. Opposing the EPA is what any good environmentalist would do.
The EPA is so lost, it doesn’t know what real pollution is anymore. Opposing the EPA is what any good environmentalist would do.
The religious mission against plant fertilizer in the hope of holding back the tide by half a millimeter in 2100 is noxious, damaging, dangerous in so many ways. It deprives the poor of cheap energy, good jobs, and warm houses. It hurts the environment because it makes the EPA, the US, so much less effective at solving real environmental problems. The pogrom against carbon (we are carbon life forms) is anti-science, eating away at the core tenets of the scientific method, and teaching a whole generation nonsense. The CO2 fixation is over-riding every other environmental issue because the EPA makes it so. The toxic effect the EPA has on the broader community, the economy, on science and on education makes this more important than any single environmental issue today.
The EPA has run so far off the rails that only someone who has opposed it could possibly fix it. Trump can’t defeat the madness on his own. The nomination hearing is Wednesday morning US time. And Dr Nan Hayworth is collecting messages and names in support. If you want to add your name and thoughts below in comments or email them to me, I will forward them to her. Thank you. And if you think that international names don’t count, remember that science is bigger than any one country, and if Obama can threaten the Brits on Brexit, why can’t Brits help explain what science is (and what pollution is) to Congress.
Here’s one from Professor J. Scott Armstrong:
Dear Dr. Hayworth, January 15, 2017
Following up on your correspondence with Willie Soon, I strongly agree with the policies favored by Scott Pruitt.I have spent over 50 years as a forecaster and, over the past decade, have had the pleasure of working with Willie Soon, who I view as one of the leading climate scientists in the world. Along with Kesten Green, I am a Director of the primary website dealing with forecasting methods, author ofLong-Range Forecasting, and of a handbook on forecasting methods, “Principles of Forecasting.”Our studies have produced what we claim to be the only evidence-based forecasts of long-term global mean temperatures: there is no evidence that long-term warming is occurring.I proposed a ten-year bet with Al Gore on this issue in order to increase interest in testing predictive validity. (Ten years is not sufficient time to assess long-term trends and I expected to have only a 2/3 chance of winning, given natural variability). Mr. Gore refused to take the bet, so Kesten Green has been posting what would have happened had he done so on theclimatebet.com. Year nine just ended.We have been unable to find scientific forecasts showing that that warming would be harmful. I testified before Senator Boxer’s committee on this matter with respect to polar bears. My testimony was based on this paper.We have been unable to find any scientific forecast that there are cost-effective ways to affect global temperatures, up or down.
Here is a short summary of the above studies on climate change.
Now this is climate change. If you can believe this study, wow:
“In the tropics, annual mean temperature fell from 27 to 5 degrees Celsius”
And we worry about a warming of one degree in a century.
“It became cold, I mean, really cold,” says Brugger. Global annual mean surface air temperature dropped by at least 26 degrees Celsius. The dinosaurs were used to living in a lush climate. After the asteroid’s impact, the annual average temperature was below freezing point for about 3 years. Evidently, the ice caps expanded. Even in the tropics, annual mean temperatures went from 27 degrees to mere 5 degrees. “The long-term cooling caused by the sulfate aerosols was much more important for the mass extinction than the dust that stays in the atmosphere for only a relatively short time. It was also more important than local events like the extreme heat close to the impact, wildfires or tsunamis,” says co-author Georg Feulner who leads the research team at PIK. It took the climate about 30 years to recover, the scientists found.
The real threats are not fertilizer and balmy weather, but rocks from space, and cold, cold, cold…
How the darkness and the cold killed the dinosaurs
Who knew the US government accepted loan repayments in peanuts? And what happens to the $74 million dollars worth of peanuts that come in? They could pay politicians with it…
Other waste identified by Senator Flake in Wastebook: PORKémon Go, includes a study that found girls are more likely to play with Barbie dolls than boys are. Nearly $2m was spent on holograms of dead comedians. The IRS, not so surprisingly, says the IRS doesn’t waste tax dollars. Flake points out they spend $12m on an email archiving service in 2014 that they never even installed.
If the US government spent $12 million on using the sun to model the climate instead, it would be about 0.1% of what they’ve spent on models driven by CO2 which still don’t work after 20 years of tweaking.
Public relations and advertising amounted to a total of $1.4 billion. US national Debt is nearly $20 trillion.
Press Release
Among the 50 examples of egregious federal spending uncovered in Flake’s 2017 report are a program that accepts peanuts for loan repayments, a computer that binge-watches Desperate Housewives, and a study into what happens when you put a fish on a treadmill.
Highlights from Flake’s 2017 edition of Wastebook include (click links to view related footage and other content):
The Climate Study Group is trying a new approach with an Advert in The Australian on page 7 today. Or rather, you might say this is a very old approach…:
Socrates
Nice to meet you Mr Smith. I hear you are very concerned about dangerous global warming.
Mr Smith
Yes, we are facing an alarming prospect of a global warming catastrophe.
Socrates
What gives you such concern?
Mr Smith
Emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels.
Socrates
How were these fossil fuels formed?
Mr Smith
Various plant forms grew, died and formed fossil fuels before and during the Carboniferous Period.
Socrates
Was there dangerous global warming prior to the Carboniferous Period?
Mr Smith
No. There’s no evidence of dangerous global warming prior to the Carboniferous period.
Socrates
So where did the carbon in fossil fuels originate?
Mr Smith
Plants absorbed CO2 from the atmosphere prior to the formation of fossil fuels.
Socrates
So the CO2 absorbed by plants is now being released from burning fossil fuels.
Mr Smith
It must be so.
Socrates
You have observed there was no dangerous global warming prior to CO2 being absorbed to form fossil
fuels, so how could the same CO2 now being released cause dangerous global warming?
Mr Smith
I find the implication of your question provocative and disturbing. You should know there is a move to bring charges against you for corrupting youth with your philosophical questions.
Socrates I am well aware that people are disturbed by my philosophical enquiries which reveal the truth with compelling logic and facts which refute long held beliefs. Our conversation has been no exception.
Mr Smith
I have to go now.
_________________________________________
…
Cue believers now telling us that the Sun has dimmed, don’t we know, therefore even though the world was warmer 7,000 years ago, and 130,000 years ago and 250,000 years ago, etc etc, on and on, for millions of years, this particular warming is “due to CO2” and millions of other warmer years were due to “something else”.
Readers will no doubt be able to think of other Socratic approaches. :- )
UPDATE:
Alarmists have caused a malaise,
In our world, by their daft climate craze,
But their angst demagogic,
Could be cured by the logic,
And wisdom of old Socrates.
David Archibald writes” From some sort of parallel universe, this is part of a speech given by the Chief of Army, as in Australia’s army.
Campbell appears to be completely duped by the weather-doctors — not the kind of gullible guy you’d put in charge of heavy machinery (and y’know, national security):
For the first time in mankind’s history our planet may become unsuitable for habitation in many of the places where large populations presently live. The Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University (ANU) asserts; changes would be irreversible on the time scale of human civilisation and would dramatically change the planet as we know it.
This is an unprecedented problem – the global population and its actions are bumping up hard against the capacity of the planet to sustain us in the present form.
He appears to have done no minutes of cross-checking, just swallowed the academics and paparazzi opinions holus. Why fight the climate? Campbell’s reasoning amounts to saying that the US is doing climate stuff (Jo notes they were then, but they won’t be soon.). It’s not too good when the head of your army hasn’t figured out the big secret that half the US voters have. (ASIO — where are you?)
Campbell tells us the Commander of the Royal Fijian Forces thinks it’s worth doing, and so do a bunch of academics (though they can’t predict rainfall, drought, floods, sea ice, humidity, clouds, or much else. — Those references here).
If Campbell was a real leader, the one our army and nation deserves, he’d pop in and ask some of the top engineers and IT-guys in the ADF for a second opinion. If the climate was such a no-brainer threat, those brains would be the first to get it, instead, two thirds (or probably more now) are skeptics. Real scientists can spot the bluff when fake scientists rabbit on about consensuses, use tricks to hide declines, and find hot-spots they never said were missing. Not only does Campbell drink that kool-aid, he believes the economic models too — citing GDP predictions for 2100.
As it happens the speech was made in September, but nobody, except a guy called Anthony Bergin, noticed for three months. Bergin lavishly praised it inThe Australian, and suggested our jets might run on eucalyptus oil. Seriously. “Scientists are close to using eucalyptus trees to develop renewable jet fuel.” Righto…
“ANU researcher Dr Carston Kulheim suggests: “If we could plant 20 million hectares of eucalyptus species worldwide, which is currently the same amount that is planted for pulp and paper, we would be able to produce enough jet fuel for five per cent of the aviation industry.””
Phillip: So I’m guessing the Chinese, Russian and Islamic milataries are just as concerned with climate change…….. well maybe not. Pure ridiculous dribble.
Brian: Just goes to prove how deeply “group think” has permeated the body politic. Memo to ruling class ….. GW/CC is a myth and its OK to be a “denier”. The proletariat now realise the green-emperor has no clothes which is just one of the reasons Trump is US President and not Hilary
Ian: Shouldn’t defence be focusing on gay marriage, domestic violence and ethical investing? Make you wonder what on earth its priorities are.
Obama declines to bomb an ISIS convoy because burning trucks will boost CO2 emissions … Australia’s defence wallahs fret about rising seas and drowning air bases … alarmist ratbaggery distorts strategy and budgets. Military effectiveness has a new enemy: the climate-scam crowd.
The third order problem I will address is that of an unstable planet. The instability I refer to is global. It is being caused by climate change associated with global warming.
I note Colonel Sapenafa Motufaga, the Commander Land Forces – Royal Fijian Military Forces, has agreed to speak to us in more depth about this serious issue in our plenary on, ‘The Indo-Pacific region in a global context’.
The Fake Conversation where Bill’s informative, polite comments are removed, but the replies are left there.
Last week Bill Johnston posted a detailed, comprehensive analysis of Sydney Observatory thermometer record here that shows that most of the warming recorded there is due to buildings and freeways. But photo’s and graphs are “denier” stuff, and The Conversation is so afraid some its readers might see those historic photos they ban links to Bill’s work and joannenova.com.au. Apparently when the Bureau of Meteorology discusses “Australia’s hottest decade” it is off topic to discuss the condition of their thermometers.
Bill Johnston was happy to defend his work in comments at The Conversation, but Blair Trewin, who wrote the post itself, was entirely absent. Cory Zanoni had to close the dangerous thread. He removed scores of comments, but left replies to Bill Johnston intact. Some “conversation”.
Some skeptics will say “don’t bother writing comments there” — but that is exactly what The Conversation editors appear to want, so don’t! It’s a fake conversation when half the views get censored. Copy your most informative, considerate comments and put them here so the world can see what The Fake Conversation is afraid of. Tax dollars were used to set up a site that appears to be non-stop advertising for the academic grants machine. A lot of the contributors are funded by tax dollars, and the site is still supported by universities which also get tax dollars. Unless the Conversation allows dissenting voices the Liberal Coalition are crazy to let it get away with being a propaganda outlet for “Big-Gov”. Let it run on private funding and donations.
Bill may have set a new record for censorship at The Conversation. He wrote to me yesterday with this (examples of the hot and banned comments are below).
Jo,
Here are their community standards. The truly wonderful thing about this particular post, is that its Author, acclaimed Bureau climate scientist Dr. Blair Trewin didn’t come near the thing. The outcome is entirely embarrassing for Trewin, the Bureau, the Minister and the politics of climate change generally. It is also embarrassing for those associated with the Technical Advisory Forum, who could not be bothered researching any data.
Homogenisation has an interesting history. While there are reasons to adjust data to account for weather station moves and other discontinuities, the way it is done assures that if suitable trends exist they are preserved in some form; if they don’t, they become implanted by the process. Unfortunately, historical records are poorly documented and researching their history like I’ve been doing is tedious work. (Try getting a research grant LOL).
Staff working in the Sydney Weather Bureau office would notice that the site moved from the northeast to the southeast corner of the cottage yard in 1949; that the Cahill Expressway opened in 1958; that the 1.8m high brick wall was built in 1972/3; later that instruments moved to a relocated single large screen (possibly around 1974); and that the large screen is replaced by a small one in 2000.
The default position with homogenisation is that if data changes are not explained by metadata (or someone forgets what happened), they are due to the climate; which as a fall-back position is absurd. Combined with opening of the Cahill Expressway, the 1949 step-change is the one the professors tell us evidences “unprecedented climate warming in the latter half of the 20th century”. The 1973, brick wall, caused accelerated warming; while moving sensitive instruments to the small screen caused increased frequency of extremes and trends in extremes. The story is absolute bollocks.
While the girls and boys over at the Conservation lap it up and in obnoxious haste slap down anyone or any evidence that challenges their fantasies; Blair Trewin is missing in action.
The real significance of undocumented changes at the Observatory site, is that although data are not used directly to estimate Australia’s warming; the homogenisation process spreads the embedded faults far and wide. Potentially, they infect ACORN data as far away as Alice Springs (via Tibooburra).
Many sites have undocumented faults that are detected statistically then carefully researched. Homogenists prefer to tell the data what changed and then invent an adjustment using other data that are not homogeneous. Homogenisation of Williamtown RAAF involves numerous datasets that are faulty; same for iconic sites such as Broome, Laverton RAAF; Alice Springs; Mount Gambier; Geraldton; Melbourne; Rockhampton; Launceston. Across Australia no data are useful for detecting unambiguous climate-related temperature trends.
The whole thing is a carefully contrived myth which should be openly investigated (and not by the CSIRO).
Cheers,
Bill
—————————————————————–
Comments The Conversation don’t want you to see
Claims are made by the Bureau, that Sydney has just experienced its hottest ever year.
There is indisputable photographic evidence available in the public domain, that the Stevenson screen was moved to a more exposed position within the enclosure in front of the cottage in 1949. This caused minimum temperature to step-up (not trend, but step).
It is unarguable that the Cahill Expressway opened in 1958. This caused warm air to wash-over the site; Tmax stepped up abruptly in 1958.
Photographs also show a brick wall was built immediately south, and within metres of the relocated screens, most probably in 1972; possibly 1973. Tmin stepped-up indicating the wall trapped heat within the enclosure, which is not dissipated by advection to the local atmosphere, or radiation to space during the night.
A Bureau publication confirms that a small screen replaced the former large one in 2000. Both Tmax and Tmin stepped-up. The small screen is more sensitive to transient heat eddies, than the large screen and the sensor is more sensitive to slight temperature changes, than thermometers.
Google Earth shows vegetation close to the site (trees etc) were removed in 2006; which is also confirmed by site metadata (Page 7 vs. P.8), causing an abrupt increase in exposure to the east; which of course warms the site. Since 2006, the site has been kept fairly clear, except that there is now a hedge along the front fence, which matches the one on the western (cottage) side of the enclosure.
With those changes NOT adjusted-for by homogenisation (which can be verified by the ACORN adjustments file), how can it be that:
Claims are made by the Bureau, that Sydney has just experienced its hottest ever year?
That is a fair question; Blair Trewin is the homogenisation expert; he should be in a position to answer.
Claims are not extraordinary. Evidence, which is in the public domain, is presented in my essay at Jo Nova’s site. (I offered to do an article here once!) I deny being a denier (whatever that is);
I am an open-minded scientist asking a reasonable question.
As you say Ben:
“ When you ask a genuine question, you’ll see people make an effort to answer it – which is one of the great positives of this site.”
These are Enercon wind turbines in Germany, Lower Saxony. Image: Philip May
This could be a watershed — if word gets out that turbine manufacturers will not even contest claims of noise damage, there could be many more claims around the world. There are rumors these cases are often settled out of court with confidentiality agreements, but who would know?
In an update to the Irish court case we discussed last month, the latest news confirms that the wind turbine manufacturer has admitted liability without contesting it. The court will be deciding damages in April. As I deduced at the time, the wind industry was using desperate wordsmithing to minimize attention on the story. The news item related to it even disappeared from the Irish Examiner. The turbine industry must be hoping no one notices this story.
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