From the Bend Bulletin:
Editorial: What’s safe to say about climate change?
We would appreciate it if Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum would tell us what we are supposed to say about climate change.
Her office has signed on to an agreement with 16 other attorneys general to potentially conduct investigations, including examining “representations made by companies to investors, consumers and the public regarding fossil fuels, renewable energy and climate change.”
Perhaps Rosenblum’s office could provide all companies in Oregon with a list of talking points and opinions on climate change that won’t make them subject to state investigation.
Is it OK to say there is debate about climate science? Is it OK to say there is uncertainty about how much of a role humans play in climate change? Is it OK to say you don’t believe Bend’s climate change ordinance is going to change the climate?
The agreement among the attorneys general was born in part out of the efforts of Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general and another signatory on the agreement. He got Peabody Energy, a large coal producer, to agree to disclose more information to investors about its financial risks. And Schneiderman is investigating whether Exxon Mobil lied in the past to investors and the public about climate change. Attorneys general have subpoena power that gives them the ability to vacuum up a company’s internal documents.
Rosenblum’s office signed on to the joint agreement on April 29. Her office declined this week to say if it was investigating anyone.
Rosenblum did say in a statement in March that climate change in Oregon is real. “My office is committed to working with other state Attorneys General to address the issue, and we will continue to push for and defend stronger federal efforts,” she said. “If we don’t act now, it may soon be too late.”
But that statement evades the important issues at stake in these investigations. What is righthink about climate change? Can the opinions of a company be held as criminal despite the First Amendment? To what extent must companies disclose risks to their businesses from climate change? Is this really about squashing dissent to climate change orthodoxy?
It’s a crazy idea that Rosenblum may be deciding what can be debated about debatable issues.
Source: http://www.bendbulletin.com/opinion/4604489-151/editorial-whats-safe-to-say-about-climate-change
Is it permitted that Spartacus has an opinion that differs from the State?
Hmm…interesting point, Resourceguy:
“L’Etat, c’est moi” (Louis XIV – oddly, the Sun King – and whose name, Louis-Dieudonné roughly translates to Louis the God Given – as Al Gore likes to think he is,
“I am Spartacus!” (Tony Curtis [cough] et al – who, with his fellow sceptics, was crucified for his beliefs)
What is the county by county impact in Oregon now? That is not even getting to projections and across time damage models.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/08/24/warnings-rate-hikes-as-oregon-becomes-1st-state-to-kill-coal.html
20 U.S. Attorneys General on-stage with Al Gore, issuing a statement that they intend to use their powers to fight “climate change.” Does any clear thinking person need more proof that the Police Powers of our government is being used to punish dissident belief?
When the gatekeepers to our system of justice say they intend to use their vast powers to enforce a politicized view of science, honest people must rise up in full-throated protest. Even if you believe AGW dominates our climate, you dare not accept a system that could come for you in the future.
A bunch of dead old guys overthrew such a corrupt system for your future benefit. Why stand by witnessing the wastage of those benefits?
Dave Fair
Thanks for providing an excellent example of alarmism.
Al Gore, who hasn’t held public office for 16 years, is going to use his vast powers. Right!
Non sequitur, again, Jim Y.
20 Attorneys General. Focusing on a politicised area like climate science. Vowing, in essence, to force unreliable climate models on the unbelievers.
Fines? Jail time? Worse? All for old thought crimes? All for pointing out the obvious weaknesses in the prevailing meme? All for moving too slowly in adopting the expedient corporate capitulation?
In what 3rd World fantasyland does your mind reside? We have (had?) a system of laws in this country. Ex post facto prosecution, anyone? Clearly stated prosecutorial bias against targets?
Does none of the above bother you, Jim Y?
Please try to actually respond to me. Non sequiturs will be summarily slapped down in the future.
And those involved in this affair have not complied with the issued Congressional subpoenas.
If they can get away with this then others can too.
Maybe they might be afraid of what might be in any revealed records?
The Democratic party has taken a big hit on their image. So will Republicans take a hit if they won’t do anything.
And McKibben thinks he’s so important he can’t be called before a Congressional committee and/or 350.org?
Boyo boyo Jimmy boyo, talk about mincing words and context, the context of the post clearly states that it is the 20 Attorneys general threatening the use of their power to fight climate change by bringing the force of Law to suppress freedom of speech, as is currently being demonstrated with ExxonMobile, Which is exactly what they are doing in prosecuting those corporations or individuals that speak out against the climate orthodoxy. Al Gore is merely their poster boy, hypocrite, celebrity who wrote a really bad movie and played second banana to a the second worse womanizer that ever held office
You should all send a harsh letter to your local newspapers (and yes, to your congressional representatives, but the media are the main thing), and include the graph comparing the temperatures in the atmospheres of Earth (with 0.04% carbon dioxide) and Venus (with 96.5%) provided in my 2010 post, “Venus: No Greenhouse Effect”. Tell them, don’t ask them, to show the American public that even a runaway carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere (from 0.04% to 96.5%) has no warming effect at all upon the global mean temperature, at any level of the atmosphere, over the full range of pressures in Earth’s troposphere. The only thing that affects that global mean temperature is the distance of the planet from the Sun (the graph I provided takes account of that, and shows that the curves for Venus and Earth are essentially the same, despite the huge difference in carbon dioxide in the two atmospheres).
You need to impress upon the media and your political representatives that the situation is NOT “normal”, not due to the usual differences of scientific opinion, but that the consensus “climate science” is NOT REAL, a general scientific incompetence is behind the current POLITICAL “debate”, and all of our supposedly most authoritative, and trusted, institutions have been suborned by this mass delusion.
It is useless to say things like “climate change MAY be real and is probably partially due to anthropogenic causes”. It is incompetent to ignore or dismiss my Venus/Earth temperatures comparison.
The AGs should be forced to defend the results of the climate models in court, under oath. This witch hunt is a clear example of blaming others of what you are guilty. It is a pure distraction tactic. Force them to defend to the public the models they are so convinced by. They would be made to look like the fools that they are.
Why?
I question climate models myself. They don’t change the basic science.
What basic science you say?
1. Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation.
2. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
That is what it took to convince me that humans are causing Earth to warm.
Does water vapor absorb infrared radiation?
Has upper atmosphere humidity been level for close to two decades?
Do clouds affect earthly temperatures?
Does evaporation cool the oceans?
Does convection move warm air higher?
Do CO2, water vapor, other radiative gases, clouds and whatnot reradiate infrared radiation to space?
And so on.
Give me more of your “basic science.”
And where does it go, Jim?
That’s the thing about thermodynamics, you need to understand the whole system. Half-answers like what you just gave are why so much of the thermo 1 class always drops from every engineering college in this country.
The CO2 is displacing, what precisely? Oxygen.
Now, this does increase absorption. Because CO2 is at such a lower concentration, it’s infrared band is much less saturated than oxygen’s.
OK, we have a direction, but that says nothing about magnitude. Basic physics says throwing pennies off a train will make it roll, but you won’t get it to Cleveland by throwing your life savings off the caboose. Here, there is a complicated set of interactions that are different for each of Earth’s many biomes. This is the sort of problem that any decent engineer would refuse to model. Because the feedback and be positive, if infrared absorption of water vapor is dominant, or negative, if cloud formation is dominant, and I have no idea what convection will do. Plus, you have the nasty fact that no matter what you model, there will be many effects that we cannot even know, much less quantify.
Jim you don’t really seem like you’re in full contact with reality. First, H20 IS water.
The sun side stream of infrared is many times greater than earth’s and therefore the light refraction of CO2 reduces energy to the surface of the planet. Surface energy density reduction is cooling. Not warming. Furthermore addition of CO2 to atmospheric air reduces it’s energy holding capacity – not raises it.
My experience filling scuba tanks many years had me knowing there is no way CO2 warming of the earth could be real, there’s no effect like that in any of gas energy mechanics.
A swift course in standard gas equations puts away any dream of there being warming associated with additional CO2 in any atmospheric mix.
Jim: to say CO2 should cause some warming is not sufficient to shut down coal and make everyone’s life miserable and persecute sceptics. We need to know HOW MUCH warming. And then we need good analysis of impacts. An analysis recently showed that due to climate change, US citizens in 2100 instead of being 4 times as wealthy would only be 3x (can’t remember exact numbers), but policies to stop it would make us even poorer. So it matters a great deal. To claim that we can just “decide” to stop warming is naive–it would take a shutdown of the world economy to stop CO2 from rising. Everything depends on fossil fuels.
JY,
What about Conservation Of Energy? The only way the consensus can support its insanely high sensitivity is by violating it. This occurs when Bode’s feedback system analysis is applied to the climate which implicitly removes the requirement for COE between the input of the system (forcing) and its output (temperature) by assuming an active amplifier with an implicit power supply (i.e. an internal source of heat) which can add power to the output of the network above and beyond what’s supplied as stimulus.
Strictly speaking, Bode’s analysis is only valid when the input and output are cast into dimensionally equivalent units which is another of the many serious errors mapping climate system feedback into the analysis claimed to support it.
Not only is COE violated by the consensus model, they redefined inputs and outputs to be units W/m^2 input and degrees C output) where COE can not be applied without making temperature equivalent to emissions in W/m^2 so that input and output units are the same. To cover their ass, they then go on to imply that the Stefan-Boltzmann LAW doesn’t apply to relate NET surface emissions to its equivalent average temperature (what about this Law?). I should point out that in satellite data analysis and other places in climate science, the equivalent surface temperature is defined to be the temperature whose ideal BB emissions produces the required energy flux from the surface into the atmosphere, sjnce radiative transfer codes deal in joules, not degrees.
This misconception arises because Trenberth makes it look more complicated than it really is by conflating energy transported by matter with energy transported by photons when only the energy transported by photons has anything to do with the RADIATIVE balance of the planet. The energy transported by matter is a net zero sum at the surface and any effect is might have is already accounted for by the resulting average surface temperature whose NET radiative emissions consequential to that temperature and given exactly by the SB LAW are all that’s relevant.
It’s the twisted, tortured path along which climate science has progressed in order to justify ignoring the laws of physics without appearing to do so is what got us into this mess in the first place.
Jim Yushchyshyn: “That is what it took to convince me that humans are causing Earth to warm.”
Dear me!
What a simplistic, utterly linear, scientifically illiterate little creature you are.
Concepts such as ‘logarithmic relationships’ and ‘functions tending to the asymptote’ are apparently totally unknown to you, and yet you have the damn gall to come on a science blog, insult the contributors – the vast majority of whom have made careers based on their scientific training and experience – with your ‘denier’ schtick with all the connotations of Holocaust denial and neo-Nazism associated therewith, and assert that they are unaware of the laws of thermodynamics. And as for non-linear systems…
You really are a piece of work!
As a matter of interest, how old are you?
http://bitsocialmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Internet-Troll.jpg
Jim
What is your position on the principle of the falsifiability of scientific claims? According to the United Nations, falsifiability has been replaced by peer review. Do you agree?
Why should the AGs be forced to defend the results of the climate models in court, under oath? Because, under the U.S. system of justice, prosecutors must defend their contentions in court.
I lived in Bend for several years. It is a great place, also on the East side of the mountains in the high desert and is not overly influenced by the super left wing enviro nut cases who live from Eugene to Portland.
That’s all past tense. Bend is just as bad if not worse.
Yeah, it’s nickname should be Roundabout, Oregon. 30 + and counting, did not fact check. Even have them on rural roads with a few hundred cars a day, maybe.
Not quite. Yet.
Bend is represented in the OR House and Senate by Republicans.
Blowback? Just an eddy in the maelstrom.
Blowback is when there is RICO suit against the #ExxonKnew AG’s.
What does “blowback” in this article’s title refer to? I, too, don’t see any significant mention of blowback against AG schneiderman or Rosenblum in this article or in the linked editorial. How is asking questions about “what’s safe to say about climate change” considered blowback?
Over the past decade, one group has been very successful at intentionally selecting specific terms, that it defines, which become commonly used terms by everybody. These terms are actually not rooted in facts or truth(often the opposite) but the way they are used, has imparted misleading assumptions and helped to reinforce the brainwash.
Examples:
Climate change: When this term is used, most people assume it means human caused climate change…………as natural climate change that has and still is happening, is not part of it anymore.
Denier: The term was invented to redefine scientists that question the absolutes of “the science is settled” and “debate is over” mentality. There truly are some “deniers” of the authentic science……..on both sides. It also makes a connection with the original deniers…….of the Holocaust.
Carbon pollution: There really are forms of carbon pollution(black carbon/particulate matter for instance) but the beneficial gas, CO2 is not one of them.
CO2 as pollution: The EPA ruled this to be so in 2009, which enables it to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act(GHG’s are harmful because of climate change). Ironically, this was against the voice of the American people and our elected officials, who represented them. In 2008, they voted against Cap and Trade. Of course the table was set by the Supreme Court, prior to this, when they voted 5-4 that the EPA had to make a ruling on this. Long story on this, here is part of it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_v._Environmental_Protection_Agency
Other terms:
Carbon Footprint: Related to the above with regards to how much CO2 pollution that an entity spews into the atmosphere every year. The higher the amount, the more damage that entity is assumed to be doing to the climate.
Carbon Capture and Sequestration: A great deal of effort and resources/cost are planned to capture beneficial CO2 emissions. Many entities advertising plans to do this or cut emissions are seen as friends of the environment/planet……………the same planet that is greening up because of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
Climate(other) models: Output/projections from these sources are used and referred to regularly and as the basis for conclusions, without the users realizing that often, they represent speculative theories which have a wide range of realistically possible outcomes, much different than the one(s) being presented by the model.
Greenhouse effect(gases): Seen as bad(pollution). Even though H2O, by far has the greatest greenhouse effect and life on this planet exists because of them. The same life that’s done better when it’s warmer than this with more CO2.
Photosynthesis: Far more important than it’s role as a greenhouse gas, the key role that CO2 plays in this scientific law is the reason we exist. Yet this gets almost no weighting by one side, even as life speaks louder and louder on this(to those who are listening). Here in 2016, the planet continues to green up from increasing carbon dioxide.
CO2 + H2O + photons → [CH2O] + O2
carbon dioxide + water + light energy → carbohydrate + oxygen
Pick your plant to see how much it likes even more CO2:
http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/plantgrowth.php
The most productive food producing region on the planet is once again on a course to smash record crop yields, here in 2016 with assistance from the continuation of the best weather/climate and growing conditions the past 4 decades that we’ve experienced in the past 1,000 years and especially from the increasing CO2:
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2016/08_12_2016.php
After reading these realities, maybe we should hold Exon accountable………….to farmers, for the cost of much bigger bins and storage of the massive crops they need to store (-:
Plus 10, Mike. I shall undoubtedly send this round my mailing list. Thank you.
excellent, Mike
another point for you – CO2 controls human (and animal) respiration in a negative feedback loop
Check your equation for photosynthesis.
You will note that it also requires water.
Last I checked H2O was water.
Harry/Bubba……thanks!
Jim,
Am I missing something? H2O/water is listed on the left side above.
Proof that Jim Y has mastered the art of meta-non sequitur “isms.” Don’t even bother to read — just blurt out anything that pops out of the fermenting mess.
Of course water is required, Jim, but with more CO2, most plants become more drought resistant, since less total air needs to be taken in to get the plant food gas (CO2) needed, allowing fewer stoma and thus less loss of water via transpiration.
Jim Yushchyshyn: “You will note that it also requires water.”
Oh good grief…
You really don’t have the first clue, do you?
Exactly the right approach! Focus on the Freedom of Speech aspect, and phrase the query in such a way that any response by the Gang of Seventeen or any of their offices could only have two possible outcomes; damning them as repressive of free speech, or confessing to overreach of their duly constituted powers.
Consider yourself lucky if your state governor is even slightly less of an idiot than is Washington State’s governor.
http://kuow.org/post/inslee-blames-climate-change-washingtons-sudden-and-severe-fires
California’s Jerry Brown could have penned that one!
He’s not that clever.
I guess you’re right. When I confronted him in Century City back in the ’80s, he asserted that Ayn Rand was a Fascist.
You got that right. Eastern Washington detests the man. I’ve lived here for 60 years and there have been fires every summer, sometimes a few sometimes many. It’s dry here! Dry grass and tumbleweeds burn. Duh.
Since the documents date back to the 70’s do they include specific warnings about nuclear war?
What about now? Are they required to warn about political instability, regime changes, war, nuclear war?
What is safe to say about climate change?
How about asking, “What is safe to say about an exposed electrical cable that may or may not be live?” Or, “What is safe to say about a funky looking liquid that you find in a warehouse that may or may not be poisonous?”
You beg the question, which is whether or not human impact on climate is non-trivial and dangerous. A more appropriate silly analogy would be: what is safe to say about a funky looking liquid that you find in a company’s warehouse, has been ingested for 20 years by all of planet earth with absolutely no ill effects, and in fact has shown to have some positive effects, despite constant warnings by a competing company to the contrary?
Jim continues misdirecting from the point of the post; to wit: threatening litigation, fines, etc to silence critics of the now mandatory narrative of human induced global warming.Irrespective of the “truth/untruth” of AGW, the silencing of those real scientists who question the science of AGW is alarming for many reasons. Which is what the post is about. Diverting into a “debate” over the reality of AGW is out of place in this thread, especially for the majority of WUWT followers who are AGW skeptics: This is the tactic of a troll.
Jim Yushchyshyn you sound like someone who never measured anything for money, in your entire life. Matter of fact you sound like some out of contact computer programmer who thought James Hansens’ various scams are real.
Your other hero Phil Jones spilled the beans in Feb 2010 when he confessed it hadn’t warmed a whit since 1998; in fact it had cooled a little bit. Check the Feb 2010 BBC Phil Jones interview where he explained what he’d meant in 2005 when he told scientist John Christie
”The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world cooled since 1998. Ok it has but it’s only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”
You sound like you’re on some kind of intoxicants and didn’t hear about how transparent and easy to spot government chemistry scams are. If the government tells you pot is like heroin don’t buy that either.
Oregon has a long history of debate about “paper or plastic” bags in its supermarkets with ever changing laws mandating one or the other.
(We won’t go into the use of “re-cycled paper bags” that at the slightest touch of water fell apart and about the piles of food on the sidewalks within 15 yards of the supermarkets. It rains all the time in Oregon.)
So which side of that debate should our attorney general investigate — paper or plastic?
Eugene WR Gallun
They do not have the science so here comes the law.
If I have missed the follow up I apologize… where do matters stand on Shukla et al? That seems like a tailor made case of climate corruption mixed with a call to use RICO against us. If nobody else is working on it I will.
Jim Yushchyshyn
August 24, 2016 at 5:32 pm
Well, we know in real Science that Peer Review is never warranted to deliver the given truth , whereas the Internet provides for the Publication and full Review of everything.
But we can also predict that to get a Nobel Prize it will soon be necessary to include Shariah Law Science or else be Peer-Review Banned as a raaaacist, Islamophobe, Xenophobe, or the equivalent.
Therefore I submit and will receive a Nobel Prize for this improvement, which obviously assigns certitude to whatever is said:
“Mecca is the Center of the World!”
It’s pretty obvious that Jim Yushchyshyn is paid to defend climate change, given the lack of substance in his comments. But what is even more disturbing is that, despite being in receipt of funds to post falsified information, he proceeds to defend the Orwellian censorship of contrary points of view by persecution of the state, which is the same kind of stance the so-called ‘catholic church’ had to Galileo, imprisoning him for daring challenging state mandated taboo.
When will Jim stop defending state level censorship (the fact he can post here freely is ironic – he enjoys freedom of speech for his own views but won’t defend others) and actually start advocating the freedom of scientific process to openly debate and dispute topics?
The government has never complained about receiving corporate funding or corporate sponsored studies (indeed, the EPA, FDA etc allow corporations to ‘self-regulate’, whatever that means, by conducting their own studies themselves)… until now.
They are all aiming for Soros dollars.
Amen @Joshua Flynn and Resource Guy:
Many of the minions of people like Soros, Obama, Hillary, etc, make a ‘living’ by trying to subvert the Constitution and the very idea of a fact based reality, and at the same time they seem to want and *need* Totalitarianism in order to face life, via their pursuit of the “Double-Plus Ungood” method of thought ~aka, “Rhetoric over Reality” or untethered verbiage producing “Perception is Reality Delusionalism”.
Well, “Dying ain’t much of a livin’, Boy.” – Clint Eastwood, “The Outlaw Josey Wales”
Ominously, In the opening paragraphs of IPCC AR4, the UN announces that “nullius in verba” has been superseded as an organizing principle for science by peer review. In the new order our masters are to be referees!
Yes Exxon must say …. Shareholders please be seated this may come as a terribly big surprise …
Climate Changes . Yes hard to fathom we know . It can get warmer or colder and the fossil fuels we sell unfortunately won’t stop global cooling . They will continue to provide the quality of life we all enjoy and they will add to the earth’s current warming trend until the cooling trend starts again . . Obviously the warmer it gets we are likely to sell less fossil fuels . We thought you should know that .
Any questions ? Madame … Are all the other fossil fuel companies being defamed as well or is Exxon part of a sue/ settle campaign ?
Next question please .
Large U.S. companies are where the money is. No point in suing Joe Lunchbucket.
And what about union busting? Coal miners union members sure took a hit.
“No State shall, without the Consent of Congress…enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State…”
US Constitution, Art. I, Section 10
These AGs, making this agreement in their official capacities as the chief law-enforcement officers of their respective States, are, in fact, violating the supreme law of the land, the United States Constitution. Any suit by them would fail immediately under the “clean hands” doctrine.
AG’s for hire is more appropriate . Did they declare they were lobbyist’s before running for office ?
Who is paying their salaries while acting as lobbyist’s ? How can they act without conflict when they
are lobbying for any industry let alone one that has fleeced tax payers of $$billions in loan guarantees and out right grants before declaring bankruptcy ?
How many, if any State Governors and legislators , were advised and approved their respective AG lobby activities ?
Who of their staff were told to or volunteered to spend their time and tax payers money organizing the staged lobby press conference , travel ,accommodation, etc . Who had the lobbyist’s sign done up and who paid for it ?
What are the guidelines that prohibit this flagrant breach of trust ? Are all public employees authorized to conduct lobby efforts , using their job titles and resources of tax payers ? Not likely .
What other industries have these AG’s been lobbying for ?
Amber, I believe your fundamental thrust is correct; the AGs’ actions will benefit particular industries. In fact, the AGs stated that one of their motivations was to support the President’s Clean Power Plan, presumably renewables and all.
After a number of other AGs pointed out that supposed fraud could cut the other way, because CAGW proponents/industries may have mislead investors, all but NY and MA pulled back. Their stunts with green NGOs and Al Gore may come back to bite them.
Dave Fair
daveginoly … Right you are . They have also conspired to shame and thus restrict competition by threatening one sector of the energy industry while they lobby for another . They have targeted one energy company out of thousands in the energy field to use as a scap goat and to crucify without any actual proof of wrong doing and because they see them as a threat to their lobby efforts .
Who funded the AG’s lobby ?
The thing for elements of the energy industry to do is to sue for fraud. Why the demonstrated reluctance to do so I don’t know.
It’s my understanding that U.S. AGs cannot be sued for things such as fraud. I think the best an individual or corporation could try for is violation of a Constitutionally protected right. Bring lots of dollars, though; their protector prints money.
I’ve thought of something like malicious prosecution, but anything is a stretch when you try to sue the government or its agents. I don’t know if you could go after them in their personal capacity in some way.
Conspiracy to deprive someone of a Constitutional right could ensnare those colluding NGOs. I assume a nonprofit like the one subpoenaed by the VI AG would have a better chance.
dogdaddy
The target I have in mind is not employees or agencies of the federal government but rather non-governmental employers of global warming pseudoscientists such as research universities. UCAR would be a good choice, for example.
I still can’t do better than http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/idiot-guide-to-global-warming.html and its sequel http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/moonshine-is-blinding.html
and, of course, don’t vote for Clinton…