Scott Pruitt’s Game-Changing Call for Debate on Climate Science
People familiar with global warming science are well aware of the many serious problems with the politically correct yet scientifically improbable idea that carbon dioxide emissions from industrial activities threaten Earth’s climate. These problems were summarized in the 2016 State of the Climate Report, released during the UN Climate Conference in Morocco in November 2016 by Marc Morano, publisher of the influential ClimateDepot.com. Morano’s report demonstrated that prominent experts disagree with virtually all of the major concerns that activists tell us are “settled science.” Fears of catastrophic, human-caused changes in temperature, sea level, polar bear populations, sea and land ice and extreme weather are soundly debunked by scientists cited in the Climate Depot report.
University of London professor emeritus (biogeography) Philip Stott summarized:
The fundamental point has always been this. Climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, and the very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins one politically selected factor (CO2) is as misguided as it gets. It’s scientific nonsense.
Besides the Morano report and recent concerns about K15, thousands of peer-reviewed papers in science journals highlighted by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change show that much of what we thought we knew about climate is wrong or highly debatable. Given such massive controversy, Pruitt would be irresponsible to not call for a re-examination of the science backing current government climate change-related policies.…
A Climate Scientist Is Smeared for Blowing the Whistle on ‘Corrected’ Data
by JULIE KELLY February 15, 2017 5:18 PM The scandal is growing, as Congress investigates and NOAA brings in outside experts to review a key study. Less than 72 hours after a federal whistleblower exposed shocking misconduct at a key U.S. climate agency, the CEO of the nation’s top scientific group was already dismissing the matter as no biggie. On February 7, Rush Holt, head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), told a congressional committee that allegations made by a high-level climate scientist were simply an “internal dispute between two factions” and insisted that the matter was “not the making of a big scandal.” (This was moments after Holt lectured the committee that science is “a set of principles dedicated to discovery,” and that it requires “humility in the face of evidence.” Who knew?) Three days earlier, on February 4, John Bates, a former official with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — he was in charge of that agency’s climate-data archive — posted a lengthy account detailing how a 2015 report on global warming was mishandled. In the blog Climate Etc., Bates wrote a specific and carefully sourced 4,100-word exposé that accuses Tom Karl, his ex-colleague at NOAA, of influencing the results and release of a crucial paper that purports to refute the pause in global warming. Karl’s study was published in Science in June 2015, just a few months before world leaders would meet in Paris to agree on a costly climate change pact; the international media and climate activists cheered Karl’s report as the final word disproving the global-warming pause. But Bates, an acclaimed expert in atmospheric sciences who left NOAA last year, says there’s a lot more to the story. He reveals that “in every aspect of the preparation and release of the datasets, . . . we find Tom Karl’s thumb on the scale pushing for, and often insisting on, decisions that maximize warming.” Karl’s report was “an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.” Agency protocol to properly archive data was not followed, and the computer that processed the data had suffered a “complete failure,” according to Bates. In a lengthy interview published in the Daily Mail the next day, Bates said: They had good data from buoys. …
Gore warns ‘global warming’ will make parts of Earth ‘no longer be fit for human habitation’
Posted: 4:33 p.m. Thursday, February 16, 2017
A climate change meeting in Atlanta on Thursday had all the ingredients of a political spectacle.
With Donald Trump, a noted skeptic of climate change science winning the the White House, a nervous federal agency scrapped plans to host the event. Enter, Al Gore. The former Democratic presidential candidate helped revive the conference and took to the podium Thursday to talk about his signature issue.
But it was science – not politics – that carried the day.
Andrew Revkin on Dr. Will Happer: A Physicist And Possible Adviser To Trump Describes His Love Of Science, And CO2
Shortly before President Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, his staff confirmed that he had met with two brilliant and pugnacious scientists, each said to be a candidate for the position of science adviser or director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
On Jan. 13, Trump met at Trump Tower in Manhattan with one of them, Dr. Will Happer, an emeritus Princeton University physicist variously hailed and attacked for his enthusiasm about rising levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide that an overwhelming range of scientists see as a profound, if slow-motion, threat to human prospects and to nature.
As you’ll read below, even among foes of curbs on greenhouse gases, Happer is an outlier, insisting the benefits of more carbon dioxide will outweigh any harms.
Shortly after the election, two dozen scientific organizations pressed Trump in a letter to name a science adviser, at the level of assistant to the president. Phone and email contacts with the White House seeking an update on the position and any other candidates have not yet been answered.
In an hour-long Skype interview from his Princeton office on Monday, Happer offered fresh thoughts on science policy. Heis stuck by his unusual views on the benefits of global warming and the main warming gas, carbon dioxide. He insists warming will be at the lowest end of projections and is captivated by CO2’s plant-boosting properties and its implications for agricultural production. But he also expressed enthusiastic support for fresh investments in science, including climate science, and the need for greatly invigorated science education.
Happer’s own research focused on atomic physics and the interactions of light and matter and applications in optics and medical imaging. He has been a longtime member of JASON, the advisory group created during the Cold War to advise the government on defense-related science questions. He directed the Office of Science in the Department of Energy from 1991 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush.
But his sharp attacks on climate scientists have made him a popular witness at hearings convened by Republican lawmakers aiming to highlight doubts about climate change (explore his 2015 testimony at a Senate hearing and 2010 House testimony to get the idea).
As a result, he’s been a frequent target of environmental groups and scientists focused on slowing climate change. Greenpeace staff, pretending in 2015 emails to represent a Beirut company focused
A New Age for EPA in Era of Trump
In his article, Lehr suggests replacing many of the duties of the modern EPA with a “Committee of the Whole,” which would be composed of the states’ environmental agencies. Lehr suggests a five-year timeline for materially reorganizing the current, destructive version of EPA left behind by the Obama administration.
Under Lehr’s plan, the Committee of the Whole would review all national environmental regulations and remove those regulations that do not comport with the congressional intent of existing federal law. In many cases, EPA as it is currently structured has created unjustifiable, reckless regulatory schemes. Lehr’s plan would gradually phase out those programs deemed unnecessary, thereby reducing EPA’s size from 15,000 to 300 (six delegates from each of the 50 states). Such a move, if successfully implemented, would greatly reduce annual expenditures, from approximately $8.5 billion to perhaps as low as $2 billion.
Lehr would also transpose the existing Washington, DC headquarters to a location in America’s heartland, making it more readily accessible to all 50 states’ local environmental agencies.
I believe Lehr’s concept has merit, but its implementation would depend on the approval of the team yet to be fully devised by the incoming administration.
The still-developing Trump environmental team offers incredible opportunity, especially Scott Pruitt, who has been tapped by President Donald Trump to be the next EPA administrator. His arrival could not possibly come at a better time.
I sincerely and deeply applaud Trump for making this appointment, and I believe Pruitt will succeed in “Making America Great Again,” by leading the free world toward appropriate environmental management—to the extent humans can achieve that objective.…
SOLAR CYCLE 24 CONTINUES HISTORICALLY WEAK PACE & COSMIC RAYS ARE ON THE RISE
…Point: Trump’s Too Smart to Fall for Harmful GOP Establishment Carbon Tax Plan
Editor’s Note: For an alternative viewpoint, please see:Counterpoint: Carbon Dividends — the Gipper Would be Proud
Some old-guard Republicans are floating the idea of a national tax on carbon-dioxide emissions. The newly minted Climate Leadership Council (CLC), composed of aged establishment Republicans who’ve seen their stature diminish with the rise of the tea-party movement and election of Donald Trump as president, tried to appear relevant by pitching the worn-out idea of a carbon tax-and-rebate scheme in a meeting with President Trump on February 8.
In exchange for the tax, CLC proposes eliminating nearly all of former President Barack Obama’s climate policies. It’s almost certainly true regulatory greenhouse gas restrictions imposed by the Obama administration distort energy markets more than a straight carbon tax would, but why replace a bad set of policies with a slightly less bad tax? This is not one of those repeal and replace moments. Let’s just get rid of the regulations, full stop, no replacement!
The only reason to discourage the use of fossil fuels is to prevent supposedly dangerous climate change. Yet the best evidence — as opposed to dubious computer model predictions — suggests humans aren’t causing the climate to change in ways that even remotely threaten human health or environmental integrity.
NBC News: How Eating Crickets Could Help Save the Planet By Fighting Global Warming
The world’s population is creeping up on 7.5 billion, but estimates suggest we’ll have a whopping 9 billion mouths to feed by 2050.
Unless we all stick to salads, the global production of meat will need to double in that time to feed our growing population, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations (FAO). Feed and crop production will also have to increase in kind to support livestock and our own appetites, inevitably taking up more land space and water — precious and dwindling commodities required for cattle.
But resources aren’t the only issue. This increase in agricultural production will exacerbate the effects of climate change by releasing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (agricultural activities currently contribute nearly one-tenth of the country’s greenhouse emissions). What’s more, animal waste releases ammonia, a pollutant that can affect soil and water quality.
Yet this seemingly large food security problem may have a bite-sized solution: insects.
In a 2013 report, the FAO suggested our current farming and food production practices are unsustainable — but that edible insects are a viable, untapped resource that could help meet the food and water demands of the world’s ever-expanding population. And it’s really no wonder: Insects are highly nutritious, and also far more environmentally friendly to raise than conventional livestock. Compared with cows, pigs, or chickens, crickets require a fraction of the land, water, and food, and produce less greenhouse gases and ammonia.
Knowing this, multiple farms dedicated to rearing crickets for human consumption have sprung up in recent years. Insects from these farms are served up whole at local farmer’s markets or sold to companies that turn them into fine powders, which can be added to recipes for an easy protein and nutrition boost. Numerous startups have taken those powders and put them into everything from nutrition bars to chips and cookies, pastas and sauces.
Lomborg Blasts UN Paris Treaty’s $100 Trillion Price Tag For No Temp Impact: ‘You won’t be able to measure it in 100 years’
Via: Newsbusters – By James Powers
$100 trillion for a 0.3 degree temperature drop.
That’s a price tag that sounds acceptable to liberals, but not to everyone. An economist and environmentalist who says man-made climate change is real still argues that is “an incredibly expensive way to do almost no good.”
Self-proclaimed “skeptical environmentalist and” president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center Bjorn Lomborg appeared on FBN’s Varney & Company on Feb. 14, to discuss The Paris Agreement. He advised the new president to drop the agreement and focus on other solutions. He also criticized the expense of the deal, for what it would supposedly do to temperatures.
“If everyone does all they promised — and remember the track record ain’t that good — but if everyone does all they promised and do it all the way through the century, we’ll reduce temperatures by end of the century by 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit,” Lomborg said. “You won’t be able to measure it in a one hundred years,” he added.
“Yet the costs will be somewhere between $1 trillion and $2 trillion a year. Paying $100 trillion for no good is not a good deal.”
Lomborg recommended that President Donald Trump drop the Paris Agreement but added that “if you want to do something about climate” then we must “invest in research and development into green energy sources.”
He said the debate about the Paris Agreement is “about identity politics. It’s about feeling good… but the climate doesn’t care about how you feel. It’s about doing good.”
“The reason why we emit CO2 — remember, we don’t do it to annoy Al Gore — we do it because it powers everything we like about civilization. So we want permanent and good and cheap energy. Right now we get that from fossil fuels. If we are going to get it from some other source, we need that to be much much cheaper.”
That U.N. climate treaty was approved in late 2015 and signed by former President Obama in April 2016. Reuters reported the deal’s terms began to take effect Nov. 4, 2016.
The liberal media have exaggerated the supposed positive impacts of the agreement. NBC’s Ron Allen praised Obama’s support for the climate agreement and claimed it was …