Killing the Paris Agreement is Not Enough
If President Donald Trump merely pulls the United States out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, it will be like cutting the head off a dandelion. It will look good for a while until equally bad agreements quickly grow back when a Democrat occupies the White House again. Trump needs to dig up the roots of Paris — the 1992 U.N. climate treaty — if he is to keep his campaign promise to “stop all payments of the United States tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs.”
Trump can — and should — get the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, of course. Besides the scientifically unfounded objective of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels,” as if we had a global thermostat, the agreement lets so-called developing countries almost entirely off the hook despite the fact that non-OECD countries are now the greatest source of energy related emissions. Consider the agreement’s emission targets for the U.S. versus China, currently the world’s largest emitter, for example:
The Obama administration agreed to an economy-wide target of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas (82% of which is carbon dioxide (CO2)) emissions by 26%-28% below its 2005 level in 2025.
China agreed “to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030” and to other measures such as those designed to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption. Taking into consideration expected economic growth in China and other factors, their target translates into about a 70% increase above its 2005 level in 2025.
Yet writing in the Chicago Tribune, Paul Bodnar, a Special Assistant to former-President Obama and a key architect of the 2014 U.S.-China deal (which has the same emission targets as Paris), echoes the position of many opinion leaders when he asserted, “The Paris Agreement… puts China, India, and other emerging markets on equal footing with the United States.”
Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth. It will not even be necessary for developing nations to meet their weak Paris emission targets anyway. They have an out-clause, one not applicable to developed countries.
The Paris Agreement starts:
“The Parties to this Agreement, being Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [FCCC], hereinafter referred to as ‘the Convention’…”.
Trump shadow hangs over UN climate talks opening in Bonn
By Matt McGrath
Climate negotiators meeting in Bonn have begun their work amid on-going concern about future US participation in the Paris Agreement.
These latest talks are aimed at developing the rules for implementing the accord signed in the French capital in 2015.
But there is a growing worry that President Trump might soon pull out of the historic deal.
Some delegates say such a move would be a body blow for the landmark deal.
The May meeting of the UN climate talks body is normally a pretty low-key affair but this is the first gathering of delegates since Donald Trump was inaugurated. Many are worried that it could also be the time the new president decides to pull the plug on US participation in the Paris deal.
“This was supposed to be a highly technical and uneventful meeting to flesh out some of the details in the Paris Agreement. But, obviously, the speculation coming out of Washington is now at the top of our minds,” said Thoriq Ibrahim, minister of environment and energy for the Maldives and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States.…
Mr. President, Tear up this (UN climate) treaty
“Our government rushed to join international agreements where the United States 
pays the cost and bears the burdens, while other countries get the benefits and pay nothing,” the President said. “This includes deals like the one-sided Paris climate accord, where the United States pays billions of dollars, while China, Russia and India have contributed and will contribute nothing.
“On top of all of that, it’s estimated that full compliance with the agreement could ultimately shrink America’s GDP by $2.5 trillion dollars over a ten-year period. That means factories and plants closing all over our country. Not with me folks! I’ll be making a big decision on the Paris accord over the next two weeks, and we will see what happens.”
After months of White House and Administration discussions and battles over what to do about this anti-fossil fuel, anti-people, anti-US, wealth-redistributionist agreement, there is hope that President Trump will do what Candidate Trump had promised: Bring the United States back from the brink of disaster.
Colleagues and I have previously suggested two options that would quickly nullify what President Obama unilaterally tried to do during his final months in office, as well as any international justification for EPA and other regulations, such as the Clean Power Plan and social cost of carbon charade.
(1) Send the proposed Paris treaty to the US Senate, as required by the Constitution for any international agreement that significantly affects the United States and its citizens. This accord arguably affects us more than the vast majority of agreements that have indeed been treated as treaties and presented to the Senate under its advice and consent duties.
(2) Withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the grandfather of the Paris treaty. We are well beyond the period during which withdrawal was not permitted, and pulling out of the UNFCCC would terminate any US obligations under the convention, the Obama Paris treaty and all other climate-related agreements.
Here’s why we should do that – and why President Trump should stick to his newly rediscovered guns.
It is increasingly obvious from what has been happening in the USA, Europe, Canada, Australia and elsewhere that climate and renewable energy policies kill millions of jobs and
Are Microbiologists Climate-Denying Science Haters? – AGW world’s #1 Threat? ‘Not a single person raised hand’
By Alex Berezow
Recently, I gave a seminar on “fake news” to professors and grad students at a large public university. Early in my talk, I polled the audience: “How many of you believe climate change is the world’s #1 threat?”
Silence. Not a single person raised his or her hand.
Was I speaking in front of a group of science deniers? The College Republicans? Some fringe libertarian club? No, it was a room full of microbiologists.
How could so many incredibly intelligent people overwhelmingly reject what THE SCIENCE says about climate change? Well, they don’t. They just don’t see it as big of a threat to the world as other things. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of them felt that antibiotic resistance and pandemic disease were the biggest global threats. One person thought geopolitical instability was the biggest concern.
I told them that I believed poverty was the world’s biggest threat. The reason is poverty is the underlying condition that causes so much misery in the world. Consider that 1.3 billion people don’t have electricity. And then consider how the lack of that basic necessity — what the rest of us take completely for granted — hinders their ability to develop economically and to succeed, let alone to have access to adequate healthcare. If we fix poverty, we could stop easily preventable health problems, such as infectious disease and malnutrition.
Was I booed out of the room? No, the audience understood why I believed what I did. But woe unto you who try to have a similar conversation with climate warriors.
…
Can Smart People Disagree About the Threat of Climate Change?
What so many in the media (and apparently the climate science community) fail to understand is that people have different values and priorities. Foreign policy analysts are terrified of North Korea. Economists fear Brexit and a Eurozone collapse. Geologists, especially those in the Pacific Northwest, fear a huge earthquake. Experts across the spectrum perceive threats differently, usually magnifying those with which they are most familiar.
That means smart people can accept a common core of facts (such as the reality of anthropogenic global warming) without agreeing on a policy response.
Yet instead of being a place to debate a policy response for complex science issues, the media have chosen to be an extension of the militant Twitterverse. Even if you are just discussing courses of …
Ivanka Trump to review climate change as US mulls UN Paris pullout
WASHINGTON (AP) — Ivanka Trump will head a review of US climate change policy even as President Donald Trump considers pulling the US out of a global emissions-cutting deal.
The United States says it it will continue attending United Nations climate change meetings next week in Bonn, Germany next week, but Trump’s advisers will meet Tuesday to discuss what to do about the global pact known as the Paris agreement, officials said.
The conflicting signals suggested the administration was trying to keep its options open while Trump decides whether to withdraw, a move the international community would strongly oppose.
Though Trump’s inclination has been to leave the agreement, he’s allowed his daughter, White House adviser Ivanka Trump, to set up an extensive review process, a senior administration official said. The goal is to ensure Trump receives information from both government experts and the private sector before a making a decision.
To that end, Ivanka Trump will hold a separate meeting Tuesday with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, the official said. Pruitt is a chief proponent of leaving the deal and has questioned the science that says humans are contributing to global warming.
President Donald Trump, accompanied by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt, third from left, and Vice President Mike Pence, right, signs an Energy Independence Executive Order, March 28, 2017, at EPA headquarters in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
And the decision to participate in next week’s UN climate talks shouldn’t be construed as a sign that Trump has decided to stay in the Paris pact, a State Department official added. To the contrary, the US will be sending a “much smaller” delegation than it has in years past, the official said.…
Scientists ‘More Confident Than Ever’ In Global Warming After Studying The Lack Of It For 15 Years
By Michael Bastasch
A new study examining explanations for the 10- to 15-year “hiatus” in global warming has scientists “more confident than ever that human influence is dominant in long-term warming.”
“In a time coinciding with high-level political negotiations on preventing climate change, skeptical media and politicians were using the apparent lack of warming to downplay the importance of climate change,” researchers with the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science (IACS) in Switzerland wrote in a study published Thursday in the journal Nature.
“A few years of additional data are unlikely to overturn the vast body of evidence that supports anthropogenic climate change,” reads the study, adding the recent El Nino and new data have them “more confident than ever that human influence is dominant” in global warming.
IACS’s study looked at different explanations for the “hiatus” in global warming, which the study defined as the 10 or 15 years after 1998, ultimately to put to rest arguments by skeptics the lack of warming during this time cut into theories of catastrophic warming.
Data Analyses Show Rapid Global Surface Cooling, Growing Arctic Ice Thickness
Analyses show that global temperatures continue their rapid cooling trend, as Schneefan here writes. What follows are excerpts of his recent comprehensive analysis.
The cooling comes naturally in the wake of the moderate La Nina conditions that have ruled over the past months.
In April surface temperatures 2 meters above the ground plummeted as the following NCEP chart shows:
Source: weatherbell.com/temperature.php
Global satellite temperature anomaly from the mean measured by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) rebounded a bit after a large March drop.
Source: UAH Global Temperature +0.27 deg. C.
Foremost the atmosphere above the oceans cooled the most during March, 2017. This is clearly depicted by the UAH: an anomaly of +0.29°K to +0.09°K compared to the WMO 1981-2010 mean.
Plot UAH satellite temperatures von UAH in the atmosphere 1500 m altitude (TLT) over the oceans. Note the rose colored curve shows the ARGO ocean buoys’ mean of the sea temperature to a depth of 2.5 m, with 37-month smoothing. Source: www.climate4you.com/, sea surface temperature estimates: UAH.
Global RSS satellite data show a rapid cooling since early 2016:
Moreover despite the powerful warming El Niño event of 2015/16, the unfalsified satellite data in 2016 show that no new significant global heat record was seen when compared to the El Niño year of 1998. We are talking about hundredths of a degree, completely within the boundaries of uncertainty.
No significant warming in 20 years
The powerful linear global cooling continued in April 2017 and will continue for the time being, Schneefan writes.
What does that mean for the global warming? Schneefan adds:
The IPCC global warming claimed by the climate models has been missing for almost 20 years. And that despite the constantly rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations!”
And just days ago, Kenneth Richards here showed that there hasn’t been any warming over the entire southern hemisphere at all. The warming of the past decades is not even global.
What is now becoming glaringly obvious is that the IPCC has wildly overestimated its projected global warming for the future. When the IPCC models from the various IPCC reports are compared to the observations, the result gets vividly illustrated by the following chart showing the satellite observed temperatures from January 2001 to June 2016:
![The Speedometer for the 15 years 4 months January 2001 to April 2016 shows the [1.1, 4.2] C°/century-equivalent range of global warming rates (red/orange) that IPCC’s 1990, 1995 and 2001 reports predicted should be happening by now, against real-world warming (green) equivalent to <0.5 C°/century over the period, taken as the least-squares linear-regression trend on the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite global lower-troposphere temperature datasets. Quelle: http://joannenova.com.au/2016/05/monckton-ipcc-climate-models-speeding-out-of-control-compared-to-real-world/](https://wobleibtdieglobaleerwaermung.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/klimamodelleabweichungenjan2016bisjunil2016-e1469356263447.jpg)
The Global Warming Speedometer for January 2001 to June 2016 shows observed warming on
Oh noes! Global warming kills gut bacteria in lizards
From the UNIVERSITY OF EXETER and the department of “likely headed for Retraction Watch” comes this study that doesn’t seem to pass the smell test, because putting lizards in hot boxes isn’t the same as lizards in the wild, and the diurnal variation of temperature far exceeds 2-3°C. More likely, the lizards are reacting to stress from the environment, and have less bacteria because they’ve been isolated from their normal exposure to microorganisms.
Climate change could threaten reptiles by reducing the number of bacteria living in their guts, new research suggests.
Scientists from the University of Exeter and the University of Toulouse found that warming of 2-3°C caused a 34% loss of microorganism diversity in the guts of common lizards (also known as viviparous lizards).
In the experiments, lizards were put in temperature-controlled enclosures and samples of their gut bacteria were tested to identify which bacteria were present.
The diversity of bacteria was lower for lizards living in warmed conditions, and the researchers found this had an impact on their survival chances.
By raising the temperature by 2-3°C in their experiment, the researchers reflected warming predicted by current climate change models.
“Our research shows that a relatively small rise in temperature can have a major impact on the gut bacteria in common lizards,” said Dr Elvire Bestion, of the Environment and Sustainability Institute on the University of Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall.
Study: Antarctic Ice Sheet Has Been Stable For Millions Of Years – During Warmer Temps Than Now
Via: http://mailchi.mp/thegwpf/antarctic-ice-more-stable-than-thought?e=f4e33fdd1e
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 The ice sheets of central Antarctica have been stable for millions of years when conditions were warmer than now, a new research has found. Researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Northumbria studied rocks on slopes of the Ellsworth Mountains in Antarctica, whose peaks protrude through the ice sheet. However, the scientists are concerned that ice at the coastline is vulnerable to rising temperature, though the discovery points towards the long-term stability of Antarctica’s ice sheet. — The Indian Express, 8 May 2017 Glacier flow at the southern Antarctic Peninsula has increased since the 1990s, but a new study has found the change to be only a third of what was recently reported. The new research calls into question recent claims of much more dramatic ice loss. The new Leeds led research calls into question a recent study from the University of Bristol that reported 45 cubic kilometres per year increase in ice loss from the sector. The Leeds research found the increase to be three times smaller. —University of Leeds, 2 May 2017 1) Antarctic Ice Sheets Stable For Millions Of Years 2) Antarctic Peninsula Ice More Stable Than Thought 3) Data Analyses Show Rapid Global Surface Cooling, Growing Arctic Ice Thickness 4) Scientists ‘More Confident Than Ever’ In Global Warming After Studying The Lack Of It For 15 Years 5) NYT Columnist Warns Of ‘Intellectual Hubris’ Among Climate Scientists 6) Ivanka Trump To Review Climate Policy As US Mulls Paris Pullout 7) And Finally: Are Microbiologists Climate-Denying Science Haters? A new study examining explanations for the 10- to 15-year “hiatus” in global warming has scientists “more confident than ever that human influence is dominant in long-term warming.” But climate skeptics are already firing back at the claims. IACS’s study looked at different explanations for the “hiatus” in global warming, which the study defined as the 10 or 15 years after 1998, ultimately to put to rest arguments by skeptics the lack of warming during this time cut into theories of catastrophic warming. “I think it |
Paper: ‘Earth On Course For 100-Year Mini-Ice Age’
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/611671/ice-age-britain-freeze-climate-change-weather
Experts told Daily Star Online planet Earth is on course for a “Little Age Ice” within the next three years thanks to a cocktail of climate change and low solar activity.
Research shows a natural cooling cycle that occurs every 230 years began in 2014 and will send temperatures plummeting even further by 2019.
Scientists are also expecting a “huge reduction” in solar activity for 33 years between 2020 and 2053 that will cause thermometers to crash.
Both cycles suggest Earth is entering a global cooling cycle that could have devastating consequences for global economy, human life and society as we know it.
If predictions of the world-wide big freeze come true, the plot to 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow would not be far from reality during winter.