Barack Obama: Climate Denier

BY STEVEN HAYWARD

Further to my item here yesterday about how the term “climate denier” is extended to everyone who dissents even the slightest bit from narrow climatista orthodoxy, Barack Obama clearly didn’t get the memo, for yesterday in Italy he let fly with this:

“Ninety-nine percent* of scientists who study climate change carefully . . . will tell you that it is indisputable that the planet is getting warmer and the only real controversy is how much warmer will it get.”

Whoa there, Lightworker! You’re not supposed to say that last bit! There is no controversy, understand? Only “deniers” say there is any controversy about forecasting future warming.

The weakness of the forecasting models has been at the heart of climate skeptics’ critique for a long while, and you don’t need to read any renegade science to have large doubts about the probity of the climate models. You only need to read the chapter on the problems of the models in each of the successive Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) periodic reports. But I suspect that the number of journalists (and most climate activists, for that matter) who ever read the actual IPCC chapter on climate models asymptotically approaches zero. It suffices just to quote the “consensus science” document to get you branded as a denier, which is a great marker of scientific close-mindedness.…

Obama’s Contradictory Climate Talk

Obama’s Contradictory Climate Talk

His Milan remarks offered nothing but vague hypotheticals at odds with one another.

By Julie Kelly — May 10, 2017

EPA’s Pruitt hammers Obama environmental record: ‘What did they achieve?…Flint and Gold King’

 

Interviewed by WDAY’s Rob Port, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt excoriates the Obama Administration’s environmental record.
Pruitt: “What did they achieve? With respect to water you had Flint and Gold King. With respect to Superfund sites you have 1322, approximately, Superfund sites across the country which is more than when President Obama came in. Air attainment? Still at 40 percent non-attainment in this country, with respect to Ozone. Roughly 130 to 140 million people living in non-attainment. What’s so great about that record?”
ADMINISTRATOR PRUITT: “Look at the past Administration’s environmental record and ask yourself, ‘What did they achieve?’ With respect to water you had Flint and Gold King in Colorado. With respect to Superfund sites you have 1322, approximately, Superfund sites across the country which is more than when President Obama came in. Air attainment? Still at 40 percent non-attainment in this country, with respect to Ozone. Roughly 130 to 140 million people living in non-attainment. What’s so great about that record? On carbon, they tried twice to regulate CO2 and struck out twice. Supreme Court told them in UARG– the UARG decision that they overreached and they told them in the Clean Power Plan that they overreached. So, I don’t quite understand the environmental left when they say that somehow what the past Administration has done was so great.”
The Rob (re)Port
With Rob Port
Interview with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt
970 WDAY
Fargo, ND
May 10, 2017

Obama in Milan: Climate Change ‘Created by Man’ and ‘Can Be Solved by Man’

Former President Barack Obama returned to his gospel of climate change alarmism, preaching to Italians in Milan about the impending doom facing the planet.

“When it comes to climate change, the hour is almost upon us,” he warned, urging the world to “set aside our parochial differences” to create a better planet for the world’s children.

The former president spoke at the “Seeds and Chips” global innovation summit on food, but Obama used the occasion to focus on his climate change agenda and his signature Obamacare legislation.

“If we seize the future, there is nothing that we cannot do … I do not believe that this planet is condemned to ever-rising temperatures,” Obama said. “I believe these are problems that were caused by man and can be solved by man.”

The former president warned that climate refugees would be fleeing to Europe, causing population disruptions and global challenges.

“Some of the refugee flow into Europe originate not only from conflict, but also from places where there are food shortages that will get far worse as climate change continues,” he said.

Obama boasted about his record as president, cutting global emissions and making investments in clean energy. But he admitted that the Trump administration was ratcheting back his fuel standards and climate change progress.

He also complained that Americans were wasting too much food, while becoming more obese, during a discussion about food with his former chef Sam Kass.

3 Republicans Defect To Reject Bill To Repeal Obama-Era Methane Limits — Interior Dept. says it will scrap regs anyway

By Alexander C. Kaufman

Republicans’ bid to roll back an Obama-era rule limiting methane emissions from drilling rigs on public lands narrowly lost in the Senate on Wednesday after three GOP senators voted against the repeal.

In a 49-51 vote, the Senate preserved the rule, strengthened after last November’s election, that limited the amount of the powerful greenhouse gas methane that can be vented and burned from oil and gas extraction sites on federal lands.

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) were expected to vote against the rule, but the surprise defection of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) helped tilt the scales on a vote environmentalists are hailing as a rare victory over President Donald Trump’s assault on policies that address climate change.

“Improving the control of methane emissions is an important public health and air quality issue, which is why some states are moving forward with their own regulations requiring greater investment in recapture technology,” McCain said in a statement. “While I am concerned that the BLM rule may be onerous, passage of the resolution would have prevented the federal government, under any administration, from issuing a rule that is ‘similar,’ according to the plain reading of the Congressional Review Act.”

Obama Kicks Off First Foreign Speech With An Astonishingly False Statement On Global Warming

By Michael Bastasch

Former President Barack Obama told those gathered at an agricultural conference that man-made global warming was already impacting agriculture on a global scale, shrinking crop yields and raising food prices.

“Our changing climate is already making it more difficult to produce food,” Obama said at the Seeds & Chips conference in Milan, Italy Tuesday, according to The New York Times.

“We’ve already seen shrinking yields and rising food prices,” the former president said in his first speech outside the U.S. since leaving office in January.

But is global warming already hurting agriculture? There’s not a lot of evidence for that claim.

In fact, 2016 was a record year for crop yields, which have basically doubled since 2007.

Production of wheat, coarse grains and rice hit record levels in 2016, according to United Nations data. Cereal production is set to shrink 0.4 percent in 2017 “from the 2016 record high,” but “supplies are likely to remain large with next season’s cereal ending stocks remaining close to their record high opening levels,” the UN reports.

As for food prices, they’re well below recent highs hit in 2010. UN data shows the inflation-adjusted food index — the average of five commodity price indices — is just below where it was in 1965. the food price index peaked around 1975.

FAO food price index

Credit: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Some scientists predict global warming will shrink crop yields as extreme weather events, like droughts, storms and floods become more common. Crop production may improve marginally over higher latitudes, but countries at mid-and-lower latitudes could see food supplies crumble.

The Guardian reported “across Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could decline by as much as 50% by 2020,” summarizing UN findings.

Other experts say global warming, at least in the near-term, will be good for agriculture since increased carbon dioxide will boost plant growth. Current evidence suggests a “global greening” trend from increased CO2 from fossil fuel combustion.…

Obama Uses Private Jet, 14 Car Convoy to Get to European Climate Change Speech

Former President Barack Obama traveled to Italy this week to make a speech on climate change at the “Seed & Chips: The Global Food Innovation Summit” in the city of Milan.

It seems like Obama has taken a page out of Leonardo DiCaprio’s book of “do as I say, not as I do” and took a private jet to Milan. Not only that, he had a 14 car convoy to get into the city, which also included protection from above with a helicopter.

It doesn’t end there. According to The Daily Mail, 300 police officers were used to protect the former president.

The fleet of 14 included multiple SUVs, police cars, and sedans — not to mention a few motorcycles.

Here’s another look at the convoy:

While in Milan, Obama also met with former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who was a close partner during their respective times in office.

During his post-presidency vacation, Obama spent many weeks in French Polynesia on music mogul David Geffen’s 450ft superyacht, which surely does not frugally sip fossil fuels like he wants the rest of the country to do.

Mark Levin: Here’s Proof Obama Administration LIED To Us About Climate Change ‘To Advance An Ideology’

On his radio program Thursday, constitutional lawyer and bestselling author Mark Levin slammed the Obama administration for manipulating data about climate change and “lying” to the American in order to advance its socialist ideology.

Levin was responding to a report by The Daily Caller‘s Chris White, who highlighted an admission by a former Obama Energy Department official earlier in the week that the administration deliberately presented “misleading” and “sometimes just wrong” climate data. Here’s an excerpt from the report (second hyperlink added):

Former Energy Department Undersecretary Steven Koonin told The Wall Street Journal Monday that bureaucrats within former President Barack Obama’s administration spun scientific data to manipulate public opinion.

“What you saw coming out of the press releases about climate data, climate analysis, was, I’d say, misleading, sometimes just wrong,” Koonin said, referring to elements within the Obama administration he said were responsible for manipulating climate data.

He pointed to a National Climate Assessment in 2014 showing hurricane activity has increased from 1980 as an illustration of how federal agencies fudged climate data. Koonin said the NCA’s assessment was technically incorrect.

“What they forgot to tell you, and you don’t know until you read all the way into the fine print is that it actually decreased in the decades before that,” he said. 

Levin pointed to Koonin’s statement as yet more evidence that the Obama administration had let ideology trump the truth and outright “lied” to the American people.

“We were lied to. We were lied to in order to advance an ideology,” said the radio host.…

Former Obama Official: Bureaucrats Manipulate Climate Stats To Influence Policy

By CHRIS WHITE – The Daily Caller

A former member of the Obama administration claims Washington D.C. often uses “misleading” news releases about climate data to influence public opinion.

Former Energy Department Undersecretary Steven Koonin told The Wall Street Journal Monday that bureaucrats within former President Barack Obama’s administration spun scientific data to manipulate public opinion.

“What you saw coming out of the press releases about climate data, climate analysis, was, I’d say, misleading, sometimes just wrong,” Koonin said, referring to elements within the Obama administration he said were responsible for manipulating climate data.

He pointed to a National Climate Assessment in 2014 showing hurricane activity has increased from 1980 as an illustration of how federal agencies fudged climate data. Koonin said the NCA’s assessment was technically incorrect.

“What they forgot to tell you, and you don’t know until you read all the way into the fine print is that it actually decreased in the decades before that,” he said. The U.N. published reports in 2014 essentially mirroring Koonin’s argument.…