BY TOM HARRIS AND DR. JAY LEHR
President Donald Trump is clearly on the right track on climate change. One of the strongest indicators of this is the mainstream media’s intense attacks on the president over the past month. After all, they would not be concerned if Trump were not attacking their most cherished, and vulnerable, asset—the supposedly “settled science” propping up the climate scare.
This is analogous to the experience of Air Force bomber pilots. An enemy won’t waste ammunition defending something unless they consider it both valuable and vulnerable.
In 2013, World War II Lancaster bomber pilot “Sandy” Mutch explained, “On bombing raids over Europe, we could tell we were closing in on the target when we started to get the most flak.” That was because important German assets were often surrounded by anti-aircraft guns that filled the sky with AAA fire. And, rather than being deterred by the resistance, it told Bomber Command exactly where the next wave of aircraft should concentrate their attack.
That is why we need to carefully examine media attacks on Trump’s climate policy, to help climate realists focus their efforts to win the war for the hearts and minds of Americans. So, let’s see what a couple of the more prominent recent media criticisms of the president’s climate stance can teach us.
While the June 11 CNN video, “Donald Trump vs. climate change,” was largely nonsensical, it was instructive nonetheless. Therein, Chris Cillizza labeled the president “one of the most prominent climate change deniers in the world.” Climate activists recognize that any point of view can be effectively discredited by making an analogy, even indirectly, with Holocaust denial. We can take advantage of this by pointing out that it is both irrational and offensive to Holocaust survivors and their families to equate the possibility of future climate problems with one of the most horrific events in history. Then we should point out that the president is the opposite of a climate change denier—he says that climate changes all the time, although he sensibly questions the degree to which it is caused by human activity.
The CNN video ridicules Trump for saying that global warming is “an expensive hoax.” We should respond by outlining the costs involved. Over one billion dollars a day worldwide is now spent on “climate finance,” according to the San Francisco-based Climate Policy Initiative, yet we see no impact on climate. In 2017, Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, explained that if the UN Paris Agreement targets for 2030 were met and sustained through the rest of the century, there would be 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit less warming in 2100, if the models relied upon by the UN were correct. He explains that the cost of the Paris pact would be $1 – 2 trillion every year. So clearly, CNN’s criticism tells Trump that he should continue calling it “an expensive hoax,” and cite the cost estimates and forecast results to illustrate his point.
Arguably the most significant of the recent attacks on Trump’s climate position appeared on May 27 in the New York Times in “Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science.”Therein, authors Coral Davenport and Mark Landler lamented the proposed creation of “a new climate review panel” to be led by Dr. William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Princeton University, now senior director of the National Security Council office for emerging technologies.
Davenport and Landler, and indeed, many in the press, are clearly appalled that the panel would question the supposed “scientific consensus on climate change.” They write that the Trump “administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests.” Were the science as settled as activists claim, then they should welcome a thorough review so as to put to rest questions about the science. But, given the vast uncertainty in the science demonstrated by reports such as those of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), an independent review obviously frightens supporters of the status quo. The last thing they want is for the lid to be lifted off the Pandora’s box that contains the highly controversial and seriously flawed science of climate change.
Davenport and Landler cite Larry Kudlow, the president’s chief economic adviser, and Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House strategist, as being against the proposed panel, fearing the controversy that would inevitably result. Marc Morano, publisher of the influential Washington D.C.-based Climatedepot.com, agrees that the results of such a panel would be tumultuous. But that, says Morano, is exactly why the panel should go ahead.
“Activists want to silence any skepticism that would encourage the public to think about the huge problems in the science,” said Morano. “And some frightened Republicans want to avoid a conflict on this issue. But a conflict is inevitable if we are to have any chance of getting the best science used to inform policy makers.”
Morano continued, “We need an official report with the seal of the U.S. government that would lay out the arguments against the groundless climate change fears being promoted by Al Gore and the UN. Then, federal judges would have a solid foundation on which to base their deliberations in climate-related cases.”
Mutch would certainly have agreed. He said, “Anyone who wants to kill the dangerous and unfounded climate scare…should focus on exposing the shaky science behind climate alarm. That is the Achilles heel of the whole movement. Shoot it down and you win the war!”
No one is asking politicians to risk their lives as many in Mutch’s generation did. “But they must be strong enough to take the flak that always comes when you are directly attacking your enemy’s most important asset,” concluded Mutch. “In this case, it is also their most vulnerable asset.”
Media coverage like that of CNN and the New York Times informs White House strategists that the president must intensify his attacks against the flawed science underling the climate alarm.
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Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute which is based in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Dr. Jay Lehr is Senior Policy Analyst with ICSC and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute.
The GOP surrendered long ago on the “science” part of the debate. The President is in a long term “triangulation” strategy to make the Greenshirts appear extreme (not hard) and position as appeasing to co2 reduction but not socially and economically extreme. The President denounces left wing media but he doesn’t spend much energy on academia bias which is the root of the climate change cult formation. It’s disappointing but that’s how it is.
The Pruitt “Red Team” never really formed, we aren’t going to denounce and exit the UN Climate Framework as Dr. Lindzen advocated for.
The calculus is that the anti-warmers have no where to go with there votes, by encouraging the extremists a few more votes might be picked up in reaction but if he declared war on Green extremists (Full AGW rejection with organized scientist supporting the argument) he would be characterized even more successfully as anti-environmental and be at further risk of Green mobilizing efforts. I don’t agree but I’m sure they recall the Reagan effort to stand up to the Green machine.
The truth is the skeptics are badly organized, politically divided and many have their heads buried in the “about science” sand. Most of the meaningful mainstream science for public consumption is already bought off for generations now. You create a government funded cartel, you end up with a “consensus” that is politically very hard to deal with or reject.
Some might even argue that giving the Greens the rope of policy implementation might have an upside of losing support as they most certainly have a Green Tyranny in their hearts. They’ll hang themselves with that rope. Not until millions even billions suffer far more of course. Every time a massive plan, cap and trade being the last major policy thought, it collapses with some backlash. So the President is on defense with this issue. The “Green New Deal” is really a 2020 gift to the Trump campaign as the electorate is exposed to the fanatical social and political engineering in the design. This might be viewed as a better outcome then trying to convince a public whose eyes roll over on science details that climate change is a dog whistle for New World Order globalism, which sums it up rather well. Ordinary people can’t argue tax code details or co2 impacts, they aren’t interested. Being Green is a carefully cultivated messaging brand for over 50 years, the tactic will remain restraining them but not humiliating them. The energy sector and high end capitalism isn’t popular. I don’t agree with the President’s passivity against Greenshirt efforts but I understand why it’s going this way.
“FAKE SCIENCE” which damages the standing of the real sciences. The hucksters have taken over. But how do you communicate that in the face of the lockstep media?
the same way most thinking people understand “fake news” as being a very real social reality.
People understand the funding scam and can put up with some of that, what people don’t like is the junk science produced being used to establish a central planning tyranny. It’s about the level of corruption.
We’ve had a population explosion in academics who simply can’t justify their views and existence with verifiable “science”. Climate was the perfect abstraction both politically and funding wise. “Gender studies”, every psychological malady and field just the tip of the iceberg in the growing area of pseudoscience advocacy and agenda. Over a billion a day changes hands on “climate” related spending, they dream of 25 billion a day within reach. Of course some of it is nonsense on the face of it and unrelated to the new climate concept. I saw an banana with a “Gluten Free” label not long ago in a convenience store. Does that transaction count for gluten free spending calculations?
So people will but electric cars, call it green and “carbon free” even if it’s charged by a coal or gas fired source. Storm windows, insulation, more efficient kitchen appliances all marketed as “Green”. The blood and guts is when it comes to rationing and taxes. Fake science has always been with us.
First there is the issue of consensus. It is all just speculation. Scientists never registered and voted on the validity of the AGW conjecture. But even it they had such would be meaningless because science is not a democracy. The laws of science is not some form of legislation. Scientific theories are not validated by means of a voting process. If “consensus” is given as one of the reasons to believe, then there must be some real problems with the science.
At first the AGW conjecture seems to be quite plausible but upon closer inspection one finds that the AGW conjecture is based on only partial science and is full of holes. Based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, one can conclude that the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. It is all a matter of science. Believing in the very flawed AGW conjecture has become a religion and is really anti-science.
The AGW conjecture depends upon the existence of a radiant greenhouse effect provided for by trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere with LWIR absorption bands. The claim is that gases with LWIR absorption bands trap heat because they absorb, LWIR absorption band photons. What is ignored is the fact that good absorbers are also good radiators so that the radiation that gets absorbed also gets radiated away. In the troposphere the increased energy that a greenhouse gas may acquire is thermalized and shared with other molecules. Heat transfer in the troposphere is dominated by conduction, convection, and phase change and not by LWIR absorption band radiation as the AGW conjecture would have one believe. It is the so called greenhouse gases that radiate heat related energy away to space. It is the non-greenhouse gases that are more apt to trap heat energy because they are such poor LWIR radiators.
A real greenhouse does not stay warm because of the action of so called greenhouse gases. A real greenhouse stays warm because the glass limits cooling by convection. It is entirely a convective greenhouse effect. No radiant greenhouse effect has ever been observed. So too on Earth where instead of glass, gravity and the heat capacity of the atmosphere act to limit cooling of the Earth’s surface. As derived from first principals, the Earth’s convective greenhouse effect keeps the surface of the Earth on average 33 degrees C warmer than it would otherwise be. 33 degrees C is the amount derived from first principals and 33 degrees C is what has been observed. Any additional warming caused by a radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed. In fact a radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed anywhere in the solar system. Hence the radiant greenhouse effect is nothing but science fiction. Hence the AGW conjecture is nothing but science fiction as well.
But for those that still believe in a radiant greenhouse effect, the primary greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere is H2O and not CO2. Molecule per Molecule, H2O is a much stronger IR absorber than is CO2 and there is so much more H2O ( 2%) in the Earth’s atmosphere than CO2(.04%). So actions to reduce CO2 emissions have no significant effect upon the total amount of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere and hence no effect on the total radiant greenhouse effect if there actually was such a thing. The AGW theory is that adding CO2 to the Earth’s atmosphere causes warming that causes more H2O to enter the atmosphere which causes even more warming which causes even more H2O to enter the atmosphere and so forth. The claim is that the positive feedback provided for by H2O results in amplifying CO2 based warming by roughly a factor of 3. But what the AGW conjecture totally ignores is that besides being the primary greenhouse gas, H2O is a primary coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere moving heat energy from the Earth’s surface, which is mostly some form of H2O, to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization. The overall cooling effect of H2O is evidenced by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly less than the dry lapse rate so that H2O provides a negative feedback attenuating any warming that CO2 might cause. If CO2 really caused warming than the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a measurable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened.
Climate change is happening so slowly that it takes networks of sophisticated sensors, decades ot even detect it. We must not mix up true climate change with weather cycles that are part of the current climate. But even if we could stop the Earth’s climate form changing, extreme weather events and sea level rise would continue because they are part of our current climate. Mankind has not been able to change one extreme weather event let alone alter global climate. But even if we could somehow change the Earth’s climate, we do not know what the optimum climate is so we do not know what climate to change it to. Spending huge amounts of money trying to alter the Earth’s climate is just a huge waste of money. We would be a lot better off improving the Earth’s economy so as to improve related infrastructure and to not have people living in dangerous areas. Extreme weather events are going to continue happening no matter what we do.
If we are really serious about conserving on the use of fossil fuels. solar and wind are a little help, but nuclear is the only serious alternative to supplying our energy needs. The rational approach is, as fossil fuel burning power plants become old and decrepit. they should be replaced by nuclear power plants.
If scientist could, they would conduct an experiment to prove that in 50 years we will find climate changed to an extent that damages “civilisation”, unfortunately a planet B is required and we need to keep “A” “safe” until the experiment concludes.
This is what you all demand but of course the experiment is impossible. so what can climate scientists do? they can look at the physics / chemistry/ fluid dynamics / etc. and make a scientific guess of what co2 is going to do if it doubles in quantity in the atmosphere.
This is of course not what they would like to do but it is the only option.
You could say prediction is not science. But you need to speak to bridge builders who predict how their design will react when traffic uses their structure. Sometimes they get it wrong and pay the price (foot bridge in London – they did not realise that as it starts swaying people will fall into step making it sway further but here a quick modification fixed the problem).
Scientists can only use what they know to make a prediction. A CONSENSUS of predictions is all that can be used to provide the most likely outcome. A quick fix is not a sensible solution if no action is taken but the scientists are right.
I do not understand why this is not acceptable when the result of getting it wrong is global warming beyond what society can safely tolerate and there is no quick fix. NOTE that NO climate scientist believes in a Venus-like outcome for the future over-co2d earth.
One of the best way to turn this ship around is for the government to provide a lot of funding for research into natural climate variability. Right now legitimate research into climate variability, aside from the ones which say it is unimportant, is viewed as denial propaganda. However, were the gov to pour money into such studies, universities and researchers will follow that money. Right now environmentalists and climate researchers are marching hand-in-hand after the government and foundation funds. If the money flowed the other way, we would begin to see a divergence and a healthy tension in academia between those who believe it is all man made and those who think they have other ideas. It was, after all, a stroke of genius when the IPCC was chartered to study MAN MADE climate change, not climate change in general.
Attacks by Climate Alarmists have really become rabid over the last 12 months. If I only count the number of times I have been attacked those last months, I assume they are growing desperate. And I get it, they see their options run away. More and more of their models get debunked, more and more evidence supporting much less dramatic developments in weather and climate pops up, and we are moving towards a cooling cycle. Plus, there is a political backlash already now and with mounting costs, this is going to intensify. But the Ponzi scheme called Climate Alarmism needs ever more cash and ever more young souls that can be fed to the grinder as soldiers for the cause. Time is running out and they know it. I would be petty desperate too in their place – but I am not in their place.
Climate scientists say there is a high probability that there will be a problem with AGW in the next decade or two.
Politicians say there is no problem now or in the future.
Who do you believe?? And why
The young green activated / on the road again :
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&ei=Ky0WXcqdA6eZ1fAP7oChCA&q=New+green+c20+hamburg+burning&oq=New+green+c20+hamburg+burning&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.
12 years left. For what:
https://www.dw.com/en/hamburg-g20-riot-damages-run-into-millions/a-39745157
Green riots G20:
https://www.google.com/search?q=g20+hamburg+krawalle&oq=g20+hamburg+&aqs=chrome.
It’s all a pleasant thought the President might take a more aggressive proactive skeptical posture to the contrived climate lobby.
The unfortunate reality is the President is committed to a triangulation strategy regarding the climate and Green voting sector. There is no alternative for skeptics with their votes and they remain divided and sadly ineffectual. The divide similar to those of establishment GOP and more conservative factions. Meanwhile to core Green movement is largely a monolithic block at the leadership level that make it worth the triangular approach if only to minimize their full mobilization should an aggressive challenge of the climate orthodoxy commence as policy. Hence no “Red Team” and certainly no exit from the UN Framework which would be the logical evolution if reason were the only guide.
Skeptics, in particular those of the weaker appeasement contingency pretending it’s some academic science dispute, remain remarkably obtuse to the political situation described. So many of the suggested sentiments in the post are worthwhile but wishful in thinking. I see no cleansing toward skeptic unity and the fractious resistance to Provocative climate agenda will remain not worth the President’s full commitment. It’s unfortunate from views but I see the calculation. Many skeptics remain politically obtuse and therefore marginalized in their lobbying efforts.
The Stupid Party revisited for many of us.
Is anyone else getting tired of reading and needing to comment on the same “pholish physics’ over and over again after >31 years? (or maybe it is just me.)
arationofreason