Guest post by David Middleton
Whether dismissing global warming as a hoax, questioning humanity’s role in it, exaggerating the unknowns, playing down the urgency of action, or playing up the costs, President Donald Trump and his team have served up every flavor of climate denial.
Although the arguments varied—as if they were different shades or stages of denial—they all served the same purpose: to create an exaggerated sense of dispute in order to bolster a case against decisive climate action. The latest gambit is to avoid the subject entirely.
In his announcement last week that he would pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, Trump didn’t bother addressing… [blah, blah, blah]…
[…]
In Trump’s retelling, the negotiators of the Paris deal were not grappling with a planetary crisis… [they weren’t]…
[…]
To help understand the arguments, we have developed a guide to what the science says about the five types of climate denial we’ve heard from Trump, his team, and their supporters, and how each served as a stepping stone on the path of a retreat from Paris.
‘It’s Not Real’
The deepest shade of denial—outright rejection of global warming—is embodied by Trump’s infamous 2012 tweet that called global warming a Chinese plot to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
[…]
To the hard-core unbelievers, climate scientists are conspirators in it for the grant money. They are not to be trusted, deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland suggested last month by giving Trump a print-out of a purported 1970s TIME magazine cover predicting a coming ice age. (The cover is an internet fake that has been circulating for years. It was cited last year by White House strategist Stephen Bannon in a radio interview he did while running the conservative media outlet Breitbart.)
[…]
[Bracketed, bold, red = my comments]
Debunking Shade #1
Technically, as a “luke warmer,” I won’t address the totality of Shade #1. I will just debunk Ms. Lavelle’s smarmy psuedo-intellectual handling of the 1970’s global cooling scare.
Well, I suppose that Ms. Lavelle is correct that a 1970’s TIME magazine cover did not predict “another ice age.” The prediction (sort of a prediction) was from a 1974 TIME magazine article…
The full text of the article can be accessed through Steve Goddard’s Real Science.
TIME, like most of the mainstream-ish media, has acted like a climate weathervane over the years…
Dan Gainor compiled a great timeline of media alarmism (both warming and cooling) in his Fire and Ice essay.
Then there was Newsweek…
And who could ever forget Leonard Nimoy’s 1977 narration of In Search of The Coming Ice Age?
While the 1977 TIME cover was a fake, this 1975 magazine cover and article were very real:
Energy and Climate: Studies in Geophysics was a 1977 National Academies publication. It featured what appears to be the same temperature graph, clearly demonstrating a mid-20th century cooling trend…
The mid-20th Century cooling trend is clearly present in the instrumental record, at least in the northern hemisphere…
Why are people like Ms. Lavelle so obsessed with denying this? Is the mid-20th century cooling period so “inconvenient” that it has to be erased from history like the Medieval Warm Period?
So, in accusing K. T. McFarland of Shade #1 of Climate Denial, Ms. Lavelle engaged in climate denial… Irony is so ironic!
The Other Shades of Climate Denial
Debunking Shade #2 “It’s Not Our Fault”
It’s not all our fault. The mythical 97% consensus only asserts that it’s at least half our fault. We certainly could be responsible for some of the warming that has occurred over the past 150 years. The point is that the warming observed in the instrumental temperature record doesn’t significantly deviate from the pre-existing Holocene pattern of climate change…
Over the past 2,000 years, the average temperature of the northern hemisphere has exceeded natural variability (+/-2 std dev) 3 times: The Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and the modern warming. Humans didn’t cause at least two of the three and the current one only exceeds natural variability by about 0.2 C. And this is a maximum, because the instrumental data have much higher resolution than the proxy data.
Debunking Shade #3 “It’s Too Uncertain”
Uhmmmm… It *is* too uncertain.
Debunking Shade #4 “It’s Not Urgent”
Melting icebergs are NOT beheading Christians in the Middle East. For that matter, all icebergs eventually melt… While no Christians ever get beheaded without someone else doing the beheading, except in very rare and bizarre accidents.
Not only is it not urgent. It is steadily becoming less urgent:
“It’s About Jobs”
It’s not just about jobs. This is what Vice President Pence actually said in context:
The White House
For Immediate Release June 01, 2017
Remarks by the Vice President Introducing President Trump’s Statement on the Paris Accord
The Rose Garden
3:29 P.M. EDT
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Secretary Mnuchin, Secretary Ross, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, members of Congress, distinguished guests, on behalf of the First Family, welcome to the White House. (Applause.)
It’s the greatest privilege of my life to serve as Vice President to a President who is fighting every day to make America great again.
Since the first day of this administration, President Donald Trump has been working tirelessly to keep the promises that he made to the American people. President Trump has been reforming healthcare, enforcing our laws, ending illegal immigration, rebuilding our military. And this President has been rolling back excessive regulations and unfair trade practices that were stifling American jobs.
Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, American businesses are growing again; investing in America again; and they’re creating jobs in this country instead of shipping jobs overseas. Thanks to President Donald Trump, America is back. (Applause.)
And just last week we all witnessed the bold leadership of an American President on the world stage, putting America first. From the Middle East, to Europe, as leader of the free world, President Trump reaffirmed historic alliances, forged new relationships, and called on the wider world to confront the threat of terrorism in new and renewed ways.
And by the action, the President will announce today, the American people and the wider world will see once again our President is choosing to put American jobs and American consumers first. Our President is choosing to put American energy and American industry first. And by his action today, President Donald Trump is choosing to put the forgotten men and women of America first.
So with gratitude for his leadership — (applause) — and admiration for his unwavering commitment to the American people, it is now my high honor and distinct privilege to introduce to all of you, the President of the United States of America, President Donald Trump. (Applause.)
END
3:31 P.M. EDT
President Donald Trump is the President of these United States of America. He took the following oath of office:
“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Since the Paris climate agreement was effectively a treaty and the prior occupant of the Office of President of the United States failed to submit it to the Senate for ratification, the only way President Trump could uphold his oath of office was to either withdraw from the agreement or submit it to the Senate where is would not be ratified.
That said, President Trump campaigned on the promise to put America, including American industry and energy, first.
Everybody knows these 1970s cooling articles are Soviet Propaganda. Make Climate Great Again!
Don’t make fun of Soviet propaganda. It is real, and existence of Greens is caused partly by it.
Climate already IS great–anyone who seriously wants it COLDER has rocks in their head!
I always suggest that those who are REALLY SCARED of a bit of natural warming, should move to Siberia.
So far they all prefer to stay in their nice warm inner city ghettos or palatial mansions, heated by fossil fuels.
Funny about that! 😉
Ahh, Russian collusion…..
When reading this I just realized that IPCC is the ministry of climate “truth”?
So climate change will stop if we all become socialist in a socialist society? They must be idiots if they believe that people are so easily fooled?
Van Jones gets caught telling truth about Russia fiasco. “Big nothing burger”.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-28/van-jones
Now to catch him admit the same about AGW…
Having met Jones , that is a remarkable occurrence .
He cares too much for his children to submit to reality .
Kudos for the courage to even visit Inside Climate News. Another worthless propaganda NGO.
After reading about Andy May’s “most excellent” march for science adventure, how could I resist? Besides, they are an easy target.
Why is there no peak in temperatures during and after WWII? The engines of the time were less fuel efficient, explosives and incendiary attacks were numerous, lots of things burning and being built, yet temperatures trended downward for basically the entire war. That seems counter-intuitive, but what do I know.
Atmospheric CO2 actually stopped rising and possibly declined due to that cooling.
You mean natural factors were stronger than CO2? Does anyone else know about this? (/sarc, if needed)
The germans in russia during 1941-1942 sure thought the world was getting colder
So did the US Marines at the Chosin Reservoir in December 1950.
And don’t forget the bitterly cold winters during the Korean War.
And let’s not forget the 101st Airborne at Bastogne, while we’re at it.
The world is a big place.
As big as WWII was on human scales, on global scales it was nothing.
About the biggest effect was the sealife getting fancy new real estate from the thousands of sunken ships and planes.
Here’s the conclusion of Robinson Jeffers’ poem, The Eye:
But I think people have missed the point. The war was big for people, is current normal life activity just as big? Bigger? I don’t believe that human activity has all that much effect on climate, but for those that do, this should be a thorny problem.
contrails
Earth cooled naturally from the early ’40s to late ’70s, and would have done so with or without WWII. But CO2 took off after the war and the response of the climate system was to cool dramatically until the abrupt and powerful PDO flip of 1977.
I have often wondered if the smoke from all those burning cities had an effect… there were some very cold winters in the N hemisphere in the 1940s
Watching propaganda at work is fascinating in and of itself – in this instance, the way they use catch-phrases from ‘edgy’ popular movies to sell their message… which also gives you an idea of their target audience.
I used to subscribe to SKEPTIC magazine, published by Mike Shermer, but he has become of the alarmists, and of course a hypocrite as he uses fossil energy like the rest of us, so I left a few choice words there as John Quest.; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVvggZo8m7c&lc=z12igxgrkzrlunnlp23jwfihcyn1tfytl.1498670822262503&feature=em-comments
Ah, Jonny Quest! That brings back memories. Spent a lot of time watching him, Race Bannon, Hadji and the rest. I applaud your choice of pseudonym.
I really loved the original 60s series… remember the episode with the invisible monster?
Didn’t know that Mike Pence had his own cartoon!
Yes, the invisible monster and the giant robot spider thingy.
So there are multiple reasons to reject the CAGW thesis? All the better. Propaganda campaigns do not bear up well under examination.
They don’t realize that some people are old enough (me) to actually remember reading these global cooling articles and seeing the global cooling TV programs?
Who are you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes?
These were discussed in Earth Science classes (university level) in the 1970s.
Anyone born before 1955 could not have missed the issue.
If born after 1975, these articles and TV programs are likely not part of one’s past.
If you are somewhat older, you might remember Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody. Then, air pollution was a problem but climate change was not. Ask folks from Pittsburgh and London.
While I remember the “we are heading into an ice age” theme too from the 1970’s, it did not die out until later. Consider Colleen McCullogh’s “A creed for the Third Milenium” (1985) on how we should just adjust to living in an Ice Age.
It was definitely a topic when I was getting my Earth Science degree (1976-1980) and there was also this…
The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in
Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear era, but I have no fear
’Cause London is drowning, and I live by the river
— The Clash “London Calling,” released in 1979
I was a skeptic from day one because of the ’70’s coming ice age scare, which I totally believed in due to my age (born in the 60’s) and being told it was going to happen by everyone I trusted (teachers, scientist and news organizations). Anyway, first time I heard about how we were causing the planet to burn up I was “Wait a minute, thought we were heading for the next ice age.” That led me to actually looking into the subject.
Old textbooks can be so cool. Way back in the fall semester of 1976, this was my Physical Geography textbook…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/dhm1353127/20151024_054710_zpsndzfcaaw.jpg
It was my first introduction to climatology. One of the authors was the late Reid Bryson, the “father of scientific climatology” and AGW skeptic…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/dhm1353127/20151024_054631_zpsa7ogeno7.jpg
This is what it had to say about the so-called greenhouse effect…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/dhm1353128/20151024_054604_zps2jtuppvz.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/dhm1353128/20151024_054501_zps0el2gcjs.jpg
“As a planet, the Earth is not warming or cooling appreciably on average…”
The book was published in 1974.
Green = “not warming or cooling appreciably on average”
Red = Gorebal Warming crisis.
The rate of warming from 1975-2010 is almost identical to the rate of.warming from.1910-1945 (smack in the middle of “not warming or cooling appreciably on average”).
Green = “not warming or cooling appreciably on average”
Red = Gorebal Warming crisis.
Green ≈ Red
Therefore AGW is
QED
David… that’s my favourite song…!
Funny, I think there must be at least 50 shades of Climate Belief.
The one kinkier than the next. Imagine the climate believers submissively tying themselves in pseudo scientific knots, the heavy breathing when challenged and the bonding sessions at COP get togethers…. 🙂
Fifty Shades of Green!?
See my Orwellian spoof at https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/winston-smith-loves-big-brother-even-more-now-that-he-has-returned-to-the-fold-and-discovered-global-warming/ on the global cooling meme.
In case anyone hasn’t seen it, also note the 1958 Harpers story at https://harpers.org/archive/1958/09/the-coming-ice-age/
I forgot about the old Harpers article.
Apparently you are unaware that so-called Intelligent Design has infinitely less scientific basis than CACA, since consensus “climate science” at least contains scientific elements, however wrong, while “ID” is inherently an anti-scientific pack of lies with less than no scientific basis.
Do you understand the genetic fallacy?
First, “contains scientific elements” is irrelevant. If the elements do not provide evidence to support the theory, the elements are nothing more than random pieces of information. Having elements of science can apply to many, many things that are in no way scientific.
ID is not the only reason to question evolution, though most commenters I have ran into persist in the belief that it is ID and only ID that is preventing evolution from being elevated to its rightful “it’s a true theory” status. ID is actually a scientific hypothesis looking for evidence of design in the world. It is different from creationism. I am assuming you meant creationism.
The arguments for ID are compelling. You have not engaged one might surmise.
There seems to be a need to introduce two new words into the language: oldscare and newscare.
And Marianne Lavelle knows this because she is … ?
Journalist.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariannelavelle
Thanks Mariano. Journalist. Like those writing in the TIME magazine.
And Macron is kindly testing the grant money theory in practise https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/10/french-president-offers-us-climate-scientists-e1-5-million-each-to-move-to-france/
For the Canadian audience:
Environment and Climate Change Canada
‘Canada’s Second Biennial Report on Climate Change’, 2016
Sections:
1.1 Highlights of Canada’s Action on Climate Change
1.2 Sub-national action on climate change:
Has activities listed related to sub-nationals at the provincial level across Canada.
https://www.ec.gc.ca/ges-ghg/default.asp?lang=EN&n=02d095CB-1
And:
MOU/Memorandum Of Understanding, 2015, 12 pages
Governments of: Quebec, Manitoba, Ontario
Concerning: ‘Concerted Climate Change Actions And Market-Based Mechanisms’
Page 2/3 also mentions the role of IISD for Manitoba in the preparation of the MOU.
http://www.gov.mb.ca/sd/climate/pdf/mou_quebec_manitoba_ontario.pdf
‘Gov. Schwarzenegger Announces New Coalition Of Subnational Leaders To Combat Climate Change’
Re: R20/Club of 20 Regions and the Western Climate Initiative.
The Western Climate Initiative was launched in Feb. 2007 and a short time later was joined by Canadian provinces.
https://www.gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=14032
And:
‘Governor’s Global Climate Summit’
https://www.gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=14034
Re: Gov. Schwarzenegger.
Re: Global Climate Solutions Declaration.
That leaves us with a Conan the Climate Barbarian with Total Recall -scary thought.
UNDP, Los Angeles, Oct.2, 2009
Governor’s Global Climate Summit 2
’30 global leaders sign declaration before next climate agreement’
Re: Gov. Schwarzenegger.
Included signers from the U.S. and Canada.
List at:
http://undp.org/content/undp/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2009/10/02/30-global-leaders-sign-declaration-in-advance-of-next-climate-agreement.html
UNDP In Partnership With UNEP & 8 Associations Of Regions
UNDP: Down To Earth: Territorial Approach to Climate Change
Donor Proposal 2010-11:
Low Carbon and Climate Resilient Strategies At The Sub-National Level
Appendix 1, p.16
October 2009, California hosted in partnership with UNDP and UNEP the 2nd Governor’s Climate Summit
R20 will be officially launched at the 3rd Governor’s Global Summit to take place in Los Angeles in September 2010.
http://adaptation-undp.org/sites/default/files/downloads/tacc_-_down_to_earth_-_donor_proposal_2010-11.pdf
Western Climate Initiative, Launched Feb.26, 2007, U.S.
WCI Governors’ Agreement
Re: GHGs/Greenhouse Gas emissions and climate effects. Has the supporting reasons for the agreement.
Governors and Agreement are at:
http://www.westernclimateinitiative.org/componet/remository/general/WCI-Governors-Agreement
Try:
http://www.westernclimateinitiative.org/component/remository/general/WCI-Governors-Agreement
Wait for download.
Climate Action Coalition At GGCS, Nov. 2010, California
Re: R20 Charter
Members and partners who will be signing the R20 Charter
https://www.gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=16497
GGCS/Governors’ Global Climate Summit.
Internet information: Three GGCS Summits 2008-2010 in California in this time-frame.
There are online links to the R20 Charter document with the November, 2010 signers.
UNDP
‘Charting A New Low-Carbon Route To Development’
‘A Primer on Integrated Climate Change Planning for Regional Governments’, June 2009
Primer on how to create low-carbon initiatives at the sub-national governmental level and bypass the national level such as the U.S. Congress.
More online on this issue and at least one online link to the UNDP publication.
Also mentions the California Governors’ Global Climate Summit 2008.
UNDP
‘Sub-national initiatives’
First page has UNDP 2008 and more recent sub-national initiatives publications
More information on this topic online.
http://undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/environment-energy/climate_change/sub-national_initiatives.html
Marianne Lavelle seems to have missed Salena Zito’s (a reporter) insight:
The press takes him (Trump) literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally …
Ms. Lavelle is like a mushroom regarding Trump.
She should be reassigned to the ‘pets for adoption’ column.
~ ~ ~
Willis E. commented on Salena and Kellyanne Conway with a post.
Here
“That said, President Trump campaigned on the promise to put America, including American industry and energy, first.”
Indeed, he campaigned on the job description for President of the United States of America. Fancy that.
The Global Warmistas are vulnerable on many fronts because their world view does not match up with reality.
One that rose up and bit them in their Australia was that all the “experts” had, in the 1970s, claimed that fossil fuel consumption was surely causing global COOLING.
Once the cult members realized they had really stepped in it, they had to figure out a response.
Their response was: “sure, a couple people thought a slight downward trend in the 1970s might represent Global Cooling, and sure it might have been suspected to be related to fossil fuel consumption, but this idea was barely espoused by a few people.”
From that point, some people dug around and made it even more clear: the Global Warming Cult members had really stepped in it. Here is a WUWT post with MANY pronouncements of the Manmade Global Cooling:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/01/global-cooling-compilation/
“Their response was: “sure, a couple people thought a slight downward trend in the 1970s might represent Global Cooling, and sure it might have been suspected to be related to fossil fuel consumption, but this idea was barely espoused by a few people.”
That’s the way Wikipedia characterizes it. I think alarmists have taken over the editing function for this particular item.
But that’s just propaganda. I lived during the era and read the literature of the time and there was definitely a human-caused Global Cooling drumbeat. And I didn’t doubt them at the time, I figured they knew what they were talking about. Was I in for a surprise. I don’t automatically figure they know what they are talking about anymore. But I was young and naive back then. Not now. 🙂
The alarmists don’t want people to think they might have gotten it totally wrong about Global Cooling at one time. That harms their credibility, and they want to avoid that by avoiding the truth of what happened back then.
It’s always been an Orwellian Left narrative from inception, invent a reason to central plan then enforce the plan by any means needed. The usual suspects support the proposition and I found the Harpers storyline incredibly illustrative of the formation stage. It’s all there, the guilt projection of human behavior, the “science” mystic belief in the global “thermostat”, the demand for “research” to save humanity from itself. 1958?!
Worth taking a look at the satire/sci-fi writing of Kurt Vonnegut a somewhat iconic leftist figure, “Cat’s Cradle”-1963 which includes “Ice-9” and a doomsday plot device and narrative about freezing the Earth by human error and folly. There are numerous Ice age references in “Slaughter House 5”- 1969. Kurt’s brother Bernard was a noted atmospheric physicist credited for discovering cloud seeding with Iodine.
The “belief” system really didn’t depend on the actual science proposition, humans are to blame and must be regulated. Warm or cold. That is the core belief system of the elite Greenshirt culture then and now. The great strides of anti-Americanism central control of the 1960’s dominate climate advocacy to this day.
That the cooling fear movement existed is only part of the story. How the early green movement formation over carbon began, the control formula for society and how it became so compelling to central planning leftist culture deserves more exploration. The contradiction of the Keynesian war economy standard that focuses on maximum short-term production also emerged from the 1930’s-60’s establishment left. The very consumer demand stimulated economics that the alternate Green left austerity worshipping and anti-materialism (for others at least) participants maintained simultaneously. “Doublethink” defined, two completely contrary policy goals as basic orthodox political belief systems of a common group. Scorched Earth economic central planning (Keynes), pious anti-production central planning Greens. The single side simultaneously defends unlimited fiat borrowing of free money consumption economics while advocating Medieval wind power, carbon rationing and consumptive contempt for the working classes as well as the global poor.
The shades of Green/Left hypocrisy are more telling then the shades of AGW policy resistance.
Uk June 28th – i had my heater on today. The guy who rents my barn for furniture making had his wood burner stove alight.
Scottish borders June28th- me too!
It’s ‘kin cold here.
Another smoking gun is the landmark paper by Rasool & Schneider, with kudos to Hansen…
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/173/3992/138
http://vademecum.brandenberger.eu/pdf/klima/rasool_schneider_1971.pdf
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/11/07/1971-stunner-nasa-and-ncar-knew-that-catastrophic-global-warming-was-a-farce/
From the abstract…
“It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
So CO2 is not important.
But dust is…
“If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.”
And from the text…
The total effect from CO2 is likely to be LESS than 1 degree.
This paper was so important I referenced it in my thesis (1979), so don’t let the the warmers tell you it was a sidelight.
So this puts Rasool and Schneider, later vigorous warmers, in Shade #2 of climate denial.
Further, just because someone said Carbon Dioxide had been observed to cause warming doesn’t invalidate the law of thermodynamics governing atmospheric and gas temperatures, which explicitly, mathematically, specifically dictates, that addition of Carbon Dioxide to Atmospheric Air can’t raise the temperature of that volume of atmospheric air.
This is the chart of gas energy constants as set forth in that law: you can see Carbon dioxide has lower energy holding capacity than atmospheric air.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-heat-capacity-gases-d_159.html
The formula of the law governing atmospheric temperature is PV = nRT.
In the equation, the energy constants of gases goes where ”R” goes.
Gustav sez…
“addition of Carbon Dioxide to Atmospheric Air can’t raise the temperature of that volume of atmospheric air”
True, mostly, if the volume of air w/CO2 is isolated in space with only sunlight (which is NOT absorbed by CO2) passing through it. Intuit case, PV=NRT applies, since it is Adiabatic, meaning no external source of energy. But is there is ground – which does absorb sunlight, and convert it to thermal heat) at the bottom of the atmosphere, the ground radiates IR that is absorbed by CO2, and DOES raise the temperature of that volume of air. Then the air back-radiates to the ground, and the ground warms. As the Great Warmer Richard Alley (from State Penn) says, it’s Simple Physics.
But what he doesn’t say is that the Simple Physics calculates 1/4 degree warming over the past century. The current models invoke non-simple physics to magnify that amount beyond all reason.
Curiously, Rasool & Schneider had it right back in 1971, with a minimal effect of CO2. They should have called it a day and said problem solved, but there’s not much $$$ in that.
BTW, R&S calculated a 2K rise of temperature with 8x CO2, or 0.66K (or 0.66C) rise for a doubling of CO2, which is the “simple physics” Planck sensitivity of the climate. The warming predicted by Planck, Rasool & Schneider, and “simple physics” fits the observed shown in the now famous chart below “Debunking Shade #3 “It’s Too Uncertain” very well.
As far as I’m concerned the Paris Agreement was signed by President Obama as and executive order and is/was his responsibility while he was president. President Trump has rescinded/nullified that executive order. Anyone who has problems with that can take it up with former President Obama. It’s his baby, his responsibility.
As a newly minted multimillionaire he and his wife have enough money to keep up the payments on his promises if they wish to.
I agree, it is his baby, he made the commitment without the proper authority. He should pony up.
BTW has anyone noticed the magnitude of OBAMA’s carbon footprint vacationing on a huge private yacht, private plane flying here and there constantly on vacation from his recently walled home in Washington.
I’m sure the MSM will point out his hypocrisy to the world as he criticizes those who are not CAGW believers..
OT but…
1 wind farm, 4 major failures within weeks.
http://journalstar.com/business/agriculture/causes-of-turbine-failures-remain-a-mystery/article_1e6a6b1d-b3d2-5f0d-8885-a1990fa9b111.html
do look at the number of wind turbines world wide these days and the numbers of fires/failures. Not a large percentage…
Real climate d@nial:
1) CO2 is the control knob on climate.
2) Man-made CO2 is causing the world to warm (and other bad things like storms).
3) This warming is dangerous, from sea level rise (and other bad things, like extreme WX)..
4) We must cut emissions to save the world from this danger.
5) World government is needed to do this and save us all from the Venus Express! Send money and give us power over you.
6) Windmills kill birds and bats, but that’s OK.
7) More CO2 doesn’t green the earth.
8) More CO2 reduces the nutritive value of crops.
Five shades just aren’t enough.
Pretty much covered the reality of it – except for 6 – only older and badly sited wind turbines, mostly in a few US sites, kill birds and bats in other than very small numbers.
“Over the past 2,000 years, the average temperature of the northern hemisphere has exceeded natural variability (+/-2 std dev) 3 times: The Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and the modern warming.”
I can’t see how this (definition) manages to distinguish natural and non-natural variability. Any 100% “natural” process which exhibits a bell curve will have tails extending beyond ±2 SD. They are still natural (if low frequency/probability) parts of the (all natural) process.
But proxies for past temperatures can’t show the tails, because such short-term extremes get smeared over by the longer-term average.
The fact that they might be unresolvable in certain records does not cast them into the category of “unnatural” though.
Exceeding natural variability is not synonymous with unnatural.
It’s just a general convention. Natural processes can and do exceed +/-2 std dev. If I performed the same exercise on the Holocene of Alley’s GISP ice core reconstruction, the 8.2 KYA cooling event and LIA would probably exceed -2 std dev. This doesn’t mean they weren’t natural. It just means they were anomalous deviations from natural variability.
Exactly the point I was trying to make. For runs of 100 (fair) coin tosses, the std. dev. is 5. This does not relegate any runs with less than 40 heads or more than 60 heads to be “unnatural”.
Why not call them “unusual natural variations” instead of implying that they are somehow beyond nature?
It doesn’t imply that it’s “beyond nature.” It means that it’s beyond the natural (or ordinary) variability of a data set.
In a normal distribution, 95% of the values should fall within ± 2 standard deviations of the mean. This range is often referred to as “natural variability.” Values that fall outside of that range can be outliers or they can be the result of events that exceed the natural variability range. These events can be totally natural.
OK, I can see it’s actually just a bit of standard terminology used in statistics. But it’s probably a very confusing expression in the context of natural vs. manmade (not natural) global warming. Indeed, I wonder if the alarmists have deliberately confused the interpretations to further their dogma in non-technical MSM articles and the like.
They probably have deliberately blurred the distinction.
I am really surprised that Trump has gone this route, since his daughter and many other advisers are in with the CAGW crowd. He must be listening to Ted Cruz and Mark Levin and others who are realists…and WUWT..too. At least he is listening to some conservatives/etc. on this issue…
And then again, they might be listening to Trump.
Trump seems to have formed his opinion on CAGW early and has pretty much stuck to it, although he did give all sides a chance to sit down and talk about it to him, before he pulled out of the Paris Accord, probably thanks to his daughter, Ivanka, who said in an interview the other day that one of her priorities was to get her father all points of view on any particular topic.
Ivanka also said some news articles were quoting her in the first person when the reporters who wrote the stories had never talked to her even once. More Fake News.
It’s important to distinguish supporting staying in Paris with being in the “CAGW crowd.” Most of Trump’s advisers who supported staying in the Paris agreement (i.e. Perry, Tillerson) aren’t part of the CAGW crowd.
Perhaps President Trump followed the advice of “Climate Prophet” Dr. James Hansen on the utility of the Paris Climate Accord.
So Merkel is going to go head-to-head with Trump on this at the G20 (I would expect her to have 18 backers too)
https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3012872/reports-merkel-to-challenge-trump-on-climate-change-at-g20-summit
(Link open now but will paywall later)
Griff wrote: “So Merkel is going to go head-to-head with Trump on this at the G20 (I would expect her to have 18 backers too)”
A lot of good that did her last time.
Last time, Merkel and her backers were going to straighten Trump out about NATO, too, but it appears Trump straightened them out, since it was reported in the last few days that NATO countries were increasing their military expenditures for NATO by 4.2 percent. NATO nations not paying their fair share was one of Trump’s primary criticisms of NATO. Merkel and NATO got the word.
The G20 is waiting for their leader to come to town. Trump will be there soon to show everyone what a real leader looks like.
Collected over 2,400!! views on my WriterBeat papers which were also sent to the ME departments of several prestigious universities (As a BSME & PE felt some affinity.) and a long list of pro/con CAGW personalities and organizations.
NOBODY has responded explaining why my methods, calculations and conclusions in these papers are incorrect. BTW that is called SCIENCE!!
SOMEBODY (Willis, Ferdinand?) needs to step up and ‘splain my errors ‘cause if I’m correct (Q=UAdT runs the atmospheric heat engine) – that’s a BIGLY problem for RGHE.
Step right up! Bring science.
http://writerbeat.com/articles/14306-Greenhouse—We-don-t-need-no-stinkin-greenhouse-Warning-science-ahead-
http://writerbeat.com/articles/15582-To-be-33C-or-not-to-be-33C
http://writerbeat.com/articles/16255-Atmospheric-Layers-and-Thermodynamic-Ping-Pong
The silliness of the anthropogenic ice age scare of the Seventies (the ice age was said to be caused by smog, i.e. automobile exhausts — the diagnosis changes, but the prescription is always the same: take people’s cars away) is epitomized by a dreary Robert Altman movie, Quintet, in which six people wearing furs and left-over Shakespeare costumes in a city being destroyed by glaciers play a game called quintet. The big Soylent Green reveal is that the loser will be killed. Because ice age.
If the Times and others reporting on the coming ice age means nothing because it was the press, then anyone getting their information about global warming from the news media should immediately stop doing so since the press is not reliable. Only if you read the actual science papers can you decide. The media is not an acceptable source of scientific information. It follows that movies made by Hollywood are not acceptable sources either.
Is collected a team of wise excellent and honest men
So voice to post doesn’t work so well lol.
It is clear that the President has collected a team that understands the situation quite well.
Based on the paleoclimate record and modeling results, the reality is that the climate cchange we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is no such evidence in the paleoclimate record and plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is zero. One researcher found that the initial calculations of the climate sensivity of CO2 were too great my more than a factor of 20 because the calculations failed to take into consideration that a doubling of CO2 will cause a slight but very significant decrease in the dry lapse rate in the troosphere which constitutes a cooling effect. Then there is the issue of H2O feedback. Besides being the primary greenhouse gas, H2O is a primary coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere as evidenced by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly less than the dry lapse rate hence more H2O in the atmosphere promotes cooling, not warming.
The primary flaw in the AGW conjecture is that the radiant greenhouse effect upon which the AGW conjecture is based has not been observed anywhere in the solar system. The Earth’s convective greenhouse effect accounts for all 33 degrees C warmer the surface of the Earth is because of the atmosphere. An additional radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed. If CO2 really affected climate then the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years should have caused at least a measureable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but such has not happened. Because the radiant greenhouse effect is nothing but sceince fiction so must be the AGW conjecture.
Climate alarmists should stop worrying so much and embrace The Donald
Climate alarmists should stop worrying so much and embrace The Donald
“Decisive climate action” – you’ve got to love that little oxymoron. How does someone dumb enough to write such gibberish survive in the real world?
“Decisive climate action” = “Devisive climate action”
Is space cold or hot? There are no molecules in space so our common definitions of hot and cold don’t apply.
The temperatures of objects in space, e.g. the earth, moon, space station, mars, venus, etc. are determined by the radiation flowing past them. In the case of the earth, the solar irradiance of 1,368 W/m^2 at average orbital distance has a Stefan Boltzman black body equivalent temperature of 394 K. That’s hot.
But an object’s albedo reflects away that heat and reduces that temperature.
Because earth’s albedo reflects away 30% of the sun’s 1,368 W/m^2 energy only 70% or 958 W/m^2 actually stays behind to “warm” the earth at a S-B BB equivalent temperature of 361 K, 33 C colder than the earth with no atmosphere or albedo.
The earth’s albedo/atmosphere doesn’t keep the earth warm, it keeps the earth cool.
On Thu,Jun 29, 2017 at at 8:32 AM Tanya Zwick wrote:
>spam > again>
I became a climate realist (read skeptic) when I met John Maunder and he stayed with me and I invited him to speak at our Rotary Club John was a climatologist and he taught climate around the world in various universities .John came back to New Zealand and was appointed as the head of our Meteorological Service .He was involved in the initial conferences in Villach in Austria and Rio deJaneiro on global warming .He took the same line as Roy Spencer now takes but what made my mind up was that he said there was no mention of ruminant farm animals warming the world with methane at the early conferences .This myth was brought to the Kyoto conference and embodied in the Kyoto treaty .The politicians lapped this up without any proof the same as they were fed the climate change scam .The green activists were pushing this because they dont like livestock farming and believe that the world can feed it self on vegetables . Farmed livestock eat vegetation and during digestion they belch up methane .Methane lasts in the atmosphere for 8 to 10 years and breaks down to CO2 and H2o ,. And guess what — that is exactly what grass and crops need to grow well and the cycle repeats with no additional CO2 or methane than before so where is the problem . The atmosphere .contains about 1.7 parts per million of methane and if you do the maths a constant number of cattle and sheep or equivalents can never increase the percentage of methane in the atmosphere .That is entirely different than the burning of coal oil and natural gas that has been extracted from the earth although there is little proof that higher CO2 will have a noticeable effect on the temperature of the planet.
I still can’t believe anyone would use a phrase like “climate denial”. To be a warmist do you have to be dyslexic? Or is this a commentary on our present educational system?