CAGW

Climate Activist Recants His Alarmism, Then is Victimized by Cancel Culture

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– Re-Blogged From Liberty Headlines

‘I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding…’

Top Environmentalist Goes Rogue, Apologizes for Climate Change Alarmism

Michael Shellenberger / IMAGE: TEDx Talks via YouTube

After an opinion piece it published Sunday drew the wrath of militant eco-warriors, Forbes appeared to have doubled back on it only a day later, pulling from its online platform the shocking apology by reformed climate-alarmist Michael Shellenberger.

Shellenberger is a devout environmentalist and political progressive, and he’s blowing the whistle on the climate change movement starting with a simple message: Sorry.

“On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years,” he wrote in a Sunday Forbes op-ed.

As of Monday, however, only a faint trace of the original article was visible on the site.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #412

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By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Re-Blogged From WUWT

Quote of the Week: “Aqueous vapor [water vapor] is a blanket, more necessary to the vegetable life of England than clothing is to man. Remove for a single summer-night the aqueous vapor from the air which overspreads this country, and you would assuredly destroy every plant capable of being destroyed by a freezing temperature. The warmth of our fields and gardens would pour itself unrequited into space, and the sun would rise upon an island held fast in the iron grip of frost.” – John Tyndall (“Heat: A Mode of Motion”, 1861) [H/t William Happer]

Number of the Week: Daily change of 100⁰C (or daily change of 180⁰F)

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Aussie Royal Commission to Investigate how Climate Activists “Hijacked” Forestry Management

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

There is growing pressure on the Australian Royal Commission investigating Bushfires to investigate how greens in positions of authority allegedly hijacked forestry management, to frustrate efforts to protect property and lives by back burning, to manage forest fuel load.

Bushfire royal commission ‘to examine green movement to hijack back burns’

There is “irrefutable evidence” environment and conservation departments around Australia have been “hijacked by lefties and greenies” who are pushing their own agenda on climate change says Sky News host Peter Gleeson.

On Wednesday, the royal commission into Australia’s Black summer bushfires saw the emergence of evidence that “fuel reduction burns saved lives last summer,” Mr Gleeson said.

CSIRO Project Aquarius experimental fire Block 20, 1/3/83, McCorkhill, WA. Fire emerging from block 1 hour after ignition. Crowning of intermediate tree layer. Intensity 7500 kW/m, rate of spread 800-1000 m/h. CSIRO [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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Climate Statistics 101: See the Slide Show AOC Tried, and Failed, to Censor

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By Caleb Rossiter – Re-Blogged From WUWT

This is the slide show and 20-minute talk that Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Chellie Pingree tried to censor at the LibertyCon 2020 conference in Washington, D.C. After Dr. Rossiter gave a climate talk at LibertyCon 2019, they wrote to sponsors of the event, such as Google and Facebook, and asked them not to fund any event with an appearance by “climate deniers” from the CO2 Coalition. See http://co2coalition.org/2019/01/30/representatives-ocasio-cortez-and-pingree-and-climate-change-debate/

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #412

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By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Re-Blogged From WUWT

Quote of the Week: “I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.” – Richard Feynman

Number of the Week: 11,000 & 1,600

Dynamics in the Tropics: In 2017, Judith Curry retired from her tenured position as a professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she had been Chair of the department, to focus on her private firm, Climate Forecasts Applications, citing the “craziness” of the field of climate science and the great politization of research funding. She has long recognized that there are major problems in the field, particularly in the dynamics of the atmosphere and the oceans in the tropics. As a climate modeler, she has first-hand knowledge of these problems, yet to be solved.

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COVID-19 Global Economic Downturn not Affecting CO2 Rise

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By Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. – Re-Blogged From WUWT

The Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 concentration data continue to show no reduction in the rate of rise due to the recent global economic slowdown. This demonstrates how difficult it is to reduce global CO2 emissions without causing a major disruption to the global economy and exacerbation of poverty.

After removal of the strong seasonal cycle in Mauna Loa CO2 data, and a first order estimate of the CO2 influence of El Nino and La Nina activity (ENSO), the May 2020 update shows no indication of a reduction in the rate of rise in the last few months, when the reduction in economic activity should have shown up.

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Biden’s Green New Deal Turns One

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By Robert L. Bradley, Jr. – Re-Blogged From WUWT

One cannot know what is going on in a certain Wilmington, Delaware, basement. But so far, the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden has committed to go far beyond the activism of President Obama and 2000 nominee Al Gore in regard to energy and climate policy.

Last June 4, Biden released a 22-page, 10,000-word Joe’s Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice that can be reduced to 17 words: “Biden believes the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face.”

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Models Can’t Accurately Predict Next Week’s Weather, So Why Should We Trust Them To Predict Climate Change?

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By Daniel Turner, The Daily Caller – Re-Blogged From WUWT

It’s curious … SpaceX has all the money in the world, and they didn’t hire someone who could have accurately predicted the afternoon weather in Florida on May 27, 2020.  Seems like a huge oversight, doesn’t it?  And to think there are scores of nonprofit leaders and academics in Washington, DC who can accurately predict global temperatures 10, 15, even 50 years into the future.

Oh, stop it with the “climate isn’t weather” rebuttal. It’s trite and silly. The guys who says “food isn’t cuisine” is a food critic, and by default, haughty and obnoxious.

How about this one: science isn’t semantics.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #411

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By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Re-Blogged From WUWT

Quote of the Week: “’It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of the castle and to see the battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.’ so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride.” – Of Truth, Francis Bacon (1625)

Number of the Week: 140% more than [of] a very small number is still a very small number

Political Rhetoric: Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Todd Myer, the author of “Eco-Fads: How the Rise of Trendy Environmentalism Is Harming the Environment” discusses how certain politicians use the term science without any special meaning. Myer states:

“The word ‘science’ has been hollowed out by politicians, who have stripped it of its substance and power and replaced them with emotional pabulum. These politicians discard the scientific method and deploy the term merely as a weapon against their opponents.”

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A big thank you from the front line in the war for free speech

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By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley – Re-Blogged From WUWT

To all the kind and generous readers who have donated to the appeal for Naomi Seibt, I should like to say how very grateful she for your support. Thanks to your contributions to her Patreon account, she now has $1800 a month in income, and skeptics everywhere are spreading the word. Stefan Molyneux, who has interviewed Naomi in the past, has just retweeted it, and from there it has been retweeted almost 1000 times. Latest news is that the State Media Authority in North-Rhine Westphalia has threatened Naomi with imprisonment.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #410

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By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Re-Blogged From WUWT

Quote of the Week: “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” – Voltaire

Number of the Week: 25 to 100 times greater

Disruptive Wind: The electrical grid operators provide reliable electricity with narrow tolerances. Generally, grid operators plan that power sources can be shut down for maintenance, usually in the spring and the fall. To keep costs down, grid operators desire to have maximum operating capacity in the summer (cooling) and in the winter (heating). According to the EIA’s description of electricity generating capacity:

To ensure a steady supply of electricity to consumers, operators of the electric power system, or grid, call on electric power plants to produce and place the right amount of electricity on the grid at every moment to instantaneously meet and balance electricity demand.

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Michigan Dam Failures and Climate Change

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By Kip Hansen  —  Re-Blogged From WUWT

In keeping with the NY Times’ Editorial Narrative on climate change (“every story is a climate story”), Henry Fountain writes this piece:  ‘Expect More’: Climate Change Raises Risk of Dam Failures.     It carries the sub-title “Engineers say most dams in the United States, designed decades ago, are unsuited to a warmer world and stronger storms.”

The story is the sad tale of the dual dam failures in Michigan – the Edenville Dam failed and the resulting downstream flow overtopped the Sanford Lake Dam situated 10 miles further downstream on the Tittabawassee River.

Don’t know where that is?

Edenville_featured_image

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There is no Climate Emergency !

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By edmhdotme – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Screenshot 2019-12-12 at 09.43.19.png

What if there is no Catastrophic Risk from Man-made Global Warming ?

What if Man-made CO2 emissions are not the “Climate Control Knob” ?

What if Man-made CO2 emissions really are a non-problem ?

But what if there is a real Global Cooling Catastrophe in the offing ?

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Climate Change and a Pandemic of Lies

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By Andrew Montford – Re-Blogged From Conservative Woman

THE health establishment was looking away when the coronavirus struck; it had other priorities. If you look at the World Health Organisation’s list of health threats, number one is climate change. Pandemics were down in third place, behind ‘non-communicable diseases’ such as diabetes and obesity.

Wherever you look, you will find some of the biggest names in the public health establishment declaiming on the risks of climate change to world health. On the eve of the outbreak, the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene declared that we would be seeing ‘mass migration, emerging infectious diseases such as dengue and a shortage of food’. As the first people fell ill in Wuhan, the WHO announced that in ten years we would be seeing 250,000 additional deaths per year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress as a result of global warming. Epidemiologist Professor Andy Haines told readers of the Telegraph that ‘climate change is a threat to global and national security that is costing lives and livelihoods right now’. 

CMIP6 Cranks Up the Climate Sensitivity Estimate for COP26

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Even worse than we thought ™ – global warming estimates have been raised, just in time for next year’s COP26 conference. But one of high end CMIP6 models, CESM2 (highlighted above), has already been invalidated by a paleo study.

Just how hot will it get this century? Latest climate models suggest it could be worse than we thought

Michael Grose Climate Projections Scientist, CSIRO
Julie Arblaster Associate Professor, Monash University
May 18, 2020 5.58am AEST

Climate scientists use mathematical models to project the Earth’s future under a warming world, but a group of the latest modelshave included unexpectedly high values for a measure called “climate sensitivity”.

CMIP6 Climate Sensitivities, with CESM2 highlighted (see the explanation at the bottom of this post). Source Carbon Brief

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The Covid Lockdown and CO2

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By Kip Hansen  —  Re-Blogged From WUWT

There has been a lot of talk in the press and from talking heads claiming that the Covid lockdown has “reduced emissions” (power plants cutting back on power generations, factories closed, populations ordered to stay home, most airplanes grounded) and talk encouraging that government Covid recovery packages, should support only companies and projects “which decouple economic growth from GHG emissions”.  The “Build Back Better” movement.

It is true that emissions from human sources – automobiles, factories, power plants, etc. – have been reduced by the multitude of nations that have sacrificed their economies in the [misguided] belief that doing so “saves lives”.

415

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #409

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By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Re-Blogged From WUWT

Quote of the Week: “When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarely, in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science.” – William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

Number of the Week: ZERO – $0

Red Team Vs Blue Team: Various organizations, such as the military, cybersecurity, etc. use a red team vs blue team conflict where the blue team uses the conventional thinking and tactics of the organization and the red team tries to break and / or exploit weaknesses in the conventional approach. Over the past several years there has been an effort to establish such a mental conflict to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the approach used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its followers. Thus far the effort has failed, and Washington is geared to the election cycle, making it unlikely such an approach will be used until after the elections, if ever.

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Novel #Coronavirus and Climate Change: A Tale of Two Hysterias

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By Tilak Doshi – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Up to a few months ago, life was normal. Well, sort of. In that pre-coronavirus normalcy, the reigning narrative was that of mankind facing assured destruction if we did not amend our wasteful – read carbon-intensive — ways. Short of a drastic curtailment in our use of fossil fuels, we would all perish in the not too distant future.

How distant depended on who one listened to. At the radical end of the spectrum — US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, teenage icon Greta Thunberg and the Extermination Rebellion folk among others — gave us a decade or less before we would face the fury of the elements, be they fires, droughts, floods, and other horrors of biblical proportions. The “moderate” position held by the mainstream climate change establishment — ranging from the key multilateral organizations such as the UN’s IPCC to the private sector with oil majors such as Shell and leading environment and social governance (“ESG”)  practitioners like Larry Fink, CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund BlackRock– held that we had to reach the “net-zero” rate of carbon emissions by 2050 lest the world climate “tip over” to Armageddon.

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Climate Change Experts Explain to Insurers They Don’t Understand Risk

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

You might think business stars like Warren Buffett have some idea of how to run an insurance company. But climate experts keep trying to explain that the focus insurers have on observational evidence is leading to insurers underestimating the risk of climate disasters.

Insuring your home may get harder and more expensive as climate change increases risks

ABC Radio National / By Antony Funnell for Future Tense

Our homes have become sanctuaries — places of refuge in the time of coronavirus. But they can’t protect us from all threats.

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A Miraculous Turn of Events

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By Paul Driessen – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Michael Moore and Driessen agree! Wind, solar and biofuel energy are devastating Planet Earth

Never in my wildest dreams did I envision a day when I’d agree with anything filmmaker Michael Moore said – much less that he would agree with me. But mirabile dictu, his new film, Planet of the Humans, is as devastating an indictment of wind, solar and biofuel energy as anything I have ever written.

The documentary reflects Moore’s willingness to reexamine environmentalist doctrine. It’s soon obvious why more rabid greens tried to have the “dangerous film” banned. Indeed, Films for Action initially caved to the pressure and took Planet off its website, but then put it back up. The film is also on YouTube.

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The Scientific Case for Vacating the EPA’s Carbon Dioxide Endangerment Finding

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From The Competitive Enterprise Institute

Patrick J. Michaels – Re-Blogged From WUWT

View Full Document as PDF

Executive Summary

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2009 “Endangerment Finding” from carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases grants the agency a legal mandate that can have profound and far-reaching effects. The Finding is based largely on a Technical Support Document that relies heavily upon other mandated reports, the so-called National Assessments of global climate change impacts on the United States.

The extant Assessments at the time of the Endangerment Finding suffered from serious flaws. We document that using the climate models for the first Assessment, from 2000, provided less quantitative guidance than tables of random numbers—and that the chief scientist for that work knew of this problem.

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Hopefulness Despite 2.9 Billion Lost Birds

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By Jim Steele – Re-Blogged From WUWT

What’s Natural

In 2019 bird researchers published Rosenberg et al “Decline of the North American Avifauna”, reporting a decline in 57% of the bird species. They estimated a net loss of nearly 2.9 billion birds since 1970, and urged us to remedy the threats, claiming all were “exacerbated by climate change”, and we must stave off the “potential collapse of the continental avifauna.” Months before publication the researchers had organize and extensive media campaign. Typical doomsday media like the New York Times piled on with “Birds Are Vanishing From North America” and Scientific American wrote, “Silent Skies: Billions of North American Birds Have Vanished.”

As I have now been sheltering in place, I finally had ample time to thoroughly peruse Rosenberg’s study. I had a very personal interest in it, having professionally studied bird populations for over 20 years and had worked to restore their habitat. I also had conducted 20 years of surveys which were part of the study’s database. Carefully looking at their data, a far more optimistic perspective is needed. So here I join a chorus of other ecologists, as reported in Slate, that “There Is No Impending Bird Apocalypse”. As one ecologist wrote, it’s “not what’s really happening. I think it hurts the credibility of scientists.”

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Some Dilemmas of Climate Simulations

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By Wallace Manheimer – Re-Blogged From WUWT

A great deal of the recommendation that the world should modify its energy infrastructure to combat climate change, costing tens to hundreds of trillions of dollars, is based on computer simulations. While this author is not what is called a ‘climate scientist’, a great deal of science is interdenominational, and experience from one field often can fertilize another.  That is the spirit in which this opinion is offered.  The author has spent a good part of his more than 50-year scientific career developing and using computer simulations to model complex physical processes.   Accordingly, based on this experience, he now gives his own brief explanation of his opinion, on what computer simulations can and cannot do, along with some examples. He sees 3 categories of difficulty in computer simulations, where the simulations go from mostly accurate to mostly speculative.  He makes the case that the climate simulations are the most speculative.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #407

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The Week That Was: April 25, 2020

Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

Quote of the Week: “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt – First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1933)

Number of the Week: 3, 4, & 5

Politics Not Science: The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) published a report by Patrick Michaels and Kevin Dayaratna discussing the critical thinking, or lack thereof, that went into the 2009 EPA finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare – the Endangerment Finding. The finding is largely based on the first and second US national climate assessments produced by what is now called the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). According to its web site, the legal mandate of the USGCRP is:

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Michael Moore’s new film trashes ‘planet saving’ renewable energy – full movie here!

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By Michael Shellenberger– Re-Blogged From WUWT

A MUST READ! Wow, the renewable light bulb of “great idea” over Michael Moore’s head just burned out. He’s trashing renewables in this new film Planet of the Humans.

On the 50th anniversary of EarthDay, the irony meter is pegged. It’s an epic take-down of the left’s love-affair with renewables by one of the left’s most known public figures. Full video follows. h/t to Dennis Wingo.

New Michael Moore-Backed Documentary On YouTube Reveals Massive Ecological Impacts Of Renewables

Over the last 10 years, everyone from celebrity influencers including Elon Musk, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Al Gore, to major technology brands including Apple, have repeatedly claimed that renewables like solar panels and wind farms are less polluting than fossil fuels.

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Climate Change – Ebb and Flow of the Tide – Part 3 of 3

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By Kelvin Kemm – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Dr Kemm’s complete essay containing all three parts may be found here.

The Pause Century

40. There has been essentially no global warming during the 21st Century. This reality has been called ‘The Pause’ by some, who claim that the real rise in temperature is actually going on, but that for some unexplained reason, has paused for a while.

There is debate about the ‘Pause,’ with some saying that there were gaps in data; the variations are too small to be statistically significant; etc. If this is so, how come climate change enthusiasts have been so utterly certain of their position and their figures for the past 20 years plus.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #406

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The Week That Was: April 18, 2020, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits.” – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics [H/t Demetris Koutsoyiannis]

Number of the Week: 2 cents

Limits of Models: In the midst of the lock-down of much of the U.S. public and the collapsing economy; some Americans are learning a few important lessons. One, the country is a republic with a written Constitution. As President Trump realized this week, that Constitution grants the Federal government limited powers, even during a health emergency. And two, numerical models are not infallible. Indeed, almost daily, Drs. Birx and Fauci repeat on television that: “this model is only as good as the data we put into it.” Speculation, scenarios or projections, may be interesting but must be supported by evidence fitting the issue. Unfortunately, all too frequently government policy has been based on models using inappropriate data.

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Climate Change – Ebb and Flow of the Tide –Part 2 of 3

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By Dr Kelvin Kemm – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Continued from Part 1

Emotional, agenda-driven politics confronts sound, evidence-based science

The topic of global warming and climate change is far more scientifically complex than the public is led to believe.

Myriads of newspaper, magazine and TV items over decades have tended to simplify the science to the point at which the general public believes that it is all so simple that any fool can see what is happening. Public groups often accuse world leaders and scientists of being fools, if they do not instantly act on simple messages projected by individuals or public groups.

One often hears phrases like: ‘The science is settled.’ It is not. Even more worrying is that the reality of the correct science is actually very different to much of the simple public perception.

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Fauci-Birx Climate Models?

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By Paul Driessen and David R. Legates – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Honest, evidence-based climate models could avoid trillions of dollars in policy blunders

President Trump and his Coronavirus Task Force presented some frightening numbers during their March 31 White House briefing. Based on now 2-week-old data and models, as many as 100,000 Americans at the models’ low end, to 2.2 million at their high end, could die from the fast-spreading virus, they said.

However, the President, Vice President Pence, and Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx hastened to add, those high-end numbers are based on computer models. And they are “unlikely” if Americans keep doing what they are doing now to contain, mitigate and treat the virus. Although that worst-case scenario “is possible,” it is “unlikely if we do the kinds of things that we’re essentially outlining right now.”

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Climate Change – Ebb and Flow of the Tide Part 1 of 3

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By Dr Kelvin Kemm – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Emotional, agenda-driven politics confronts sound, evidence-based science

The topic of global warming and climate change is far more scientifically complex than the public is led to believe.

Myriads of newspaper, magazine and TV items over decades have tended to simplify the science to the point at which the general public believes that it is all so simple that any fool can see what is happening. Public groups often accuse world leaders and scientists of being fools, if they do not instantly act on simple messages projected by individuals or public groups.

One often hears phrases like: ‘The science is settled.’ It is not. Even more worrying is that the reality of the correct science is actually very different to much of the simple public perception.-

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EU Green Leader Explains Climate Change and Democracy

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

According to Valentin Dupouey, head of communications for the European Greens, a pan-European federation of green parties, a major overhaul of Democracy is required to force acceptance of the economic de-growth required to address the climate crisis.

He also thinks its important to explain to China that because of climate change, “a Chinese average citizen … will never be able to reach the material lifestyle of a French minimum-wage worker.“

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How Much Human-Caused Global Warming Should We Expect?

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By Andy May – Re-Blogged From WUWT

OMG! The world is going to end, and we caused it. This story, in one form or another, goes back to biblical times. According to Genesis (6:9 to 9:17) God decided that humans had sinned too much and must be punished, so he called up a great flood to destroy the world. A similar story also appears in the earlier Epic of Gilgamesh. End of the world predictions are very popular and recur regularly in human history.

More recently, prognosticators have predicted climate change disasters that are due to human actions (sins?). During the Little Ice Age (see Figure 3 in the link), the European public blamed the cold weather on witches and Jews, over 50,000 “witches” and tens of thousands of Jews were killed because they supposedly caused the cold weather and glacial advances. Thus, the idea that humans somehow control climate change is very old. We have no more proof that this is the case today than people had in 800AD, which is about when Archbishop Agobard of Lyons, France said:

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Heartland Institute Launches ClimateRealism.com

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Re-Blogged From WUWT

This new website will debunk the alarmist climate propaganda that dominates the media’s coverage of the environment

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (March 19, 2020) – The Heartland Institute is proud to announce ClimateRealism.com, a new website that debunks climate scares perpetuated in the media. ClimateRealism.com is Heartland’s second new climate website launched this month; ClimateAtAGlance.com debuted last week.

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On UK Climate Policies

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By Neil Lock – Re-Blogged From WUWT

“I’d expect that some probing by independent experts into the economic calculations, and the assumptions on which they are built, might bear fruit.” But where are these calculations, and who are the unbiased experts who have quality controlled them? I couldn’t find any such calculations, or the names of any such experts. Perhaps, I thought, I’d better take a look at this myself.

So, I set out to learn as much as I could about the economic calculations which – so we’re supposed to believe – justify the extreme measures proposed, all the way up to total de-carbonization of the UK economy, to avoid alleged catastrophic damage from global warming. This essay is the result of that exercise. If it reads like a cross between a layman’s guide to the economics of global warming and a political rant, that’s because it’s both!

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The ‘Climate Emergency’ -Running With the Crowds?

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By Tony Brown – Re-Blogged From WUWT

This article about the ‘Climate emergency’ was written several weeks ago, before the Corona virus (Covid 19) really hit the headlines. Just today, President Trump banned travel from the European mainland to the U.S., the Australian Grand Prix was cancelled, Tom Hanks and his wife are in quarantine in that country and the virus has just been labelled a pandemic. Stock markets have plunged. All perhaps illustrating that we never quite know what is just around the corner, and how one panic can quickly supplant another.

The article originally written with the concerns over the ‘Climate Emergency’ in mind, has therefore taken on a different dimension, as for the first time we have some of those sceptical over the science of the ‘Climate Emergency’ accepting the science behind the consequences of the Covid 19 outbreak. Consequently, perhaps those alarmed about Covid 19 but not the climate, can, for the first time, understand the depths of concern and alarm of those who feel that a Climate Armageddon is upon us.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #402

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The Week That Was: March 7 / 14, 2020, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “Aqueous vapor is a blanket, more necessary to the vegetable life of England than clothing is to man. Remove for a single summer-night the aqueous vapor from the air which overspreads this country, and you would assuredly destroy every plant capable of being destroyed by a freezing temperature. The warmth of our fields and gardens would pour itself unrequited into space, and the sun would rise upon an island held fast in the iron grip of frost.” – John Tyndall (Heat: A Mode of Motion, 1861) [H/t William Happer]

Number of the Week: 15,000 parts per million (ppm) v. 400 ppm

Freeman Dyson: When mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Freeman Dyson died on February 28, the world lost an exceptionally brilliant humanist. Writing in the Quadrant, Australian Tony Thomas based his comments, in part, on an extensive interview by philosopher Arnis Rītups in the Latvian Journal Rigas Laiks. The interview gives an indication of the depth and extensive interests of Dyson. It is appropriately subtitled:

“Somehow the universe has a tendency to be as interesting as possible, more and more diverse, more and more interesting.”

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Changing Climate, Changing Minds

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By David Siegel – Re-Blogged From WUWT

How do we measure success in helping people understand the climate issue? I don’t think we can measure it by unique visits to WUWT or various videos that many of us know well. But they simply attract the same audience over and over. I think the only way to measure success is by somehow measuring minds changed. This is a quick announcement of a new video I recently released, my philosophy on how to change minds, and a request from the community to help me with some data science.

My name is David Siegel. In 1991, I wrote a book explaining how the greenhouse effect worked and how we have to cut back on CO2 emissions or suffer dire consequences. Then, in about 2014, a partner at a green fund told me “the science is settled.” That prompted me to revisit the subject, and I was surprised to find that the data didn’t support the “common wisdom” that I had believed for so long. So I started reading papers, blogs, and web sites like WUWT.

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Washington Bill Would Open Up Possibility of Regressive, Harmful Cap-and-Trade Program or Carbon-Dioxide Tax

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By Tim Benson – Re-Blogged From WUWT

A bill introduced in the Washington House of Representatives would give the state Department of Ecology (DOE) the authority to create either a carbon-dioxide tax or cap-and-trade system, or both, in the Evergreen State. If passed, DOE could establish each program without any sort of legislative approval.

“Department of Ecology staff could create rules that covered companies that emit as few as 25,000 metric tons of [carbon dioxide],” writes Todd Myers of the Washington Policy Center (WPC). “In Washington state, that would include food producers like El Oro Cattle Feeders in Moses Lake and Lamb Weston in Quincy. It could include timber mills like SDS Lumber in Bingen and Vaagen Brothers in Colville. It would include semiconductor manufacturers and solar panel manufacturers.”

Washington voters have signaled their opposition to a carbon-dioxide tax multiple times in the past half decade, most recently with their thorough rejection of Initiative 1631 (I-1631) in 2018.

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Heartland Institute Creating One-Page Climate Summaries Geared Toward Policymakers and Teachers

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Via press release. Re-Blogged From WUWT

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS (March 12, 2020) – The Heartland Institute is excited to announce a groundbreaking new tool for policymakers, teachers, and anybody else interested in climate change. Heartland’s new ClimateAtAGlance.com website provides powerful, concise, one- or two-page summaries of the most important topics in the climate change debate.

Today’s climate debate is often fought over sound-bites and bullet points. Heartland has broken down 20 of the most frequently argued climate issues into short, “at-a-glance” summaries that provide the most important, accurate, powerful information. Bullet-points at the top of each summary provide quick, memorable information.

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It’s Easy to be Fooled by a Climate Alarmist

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By Gregory Wrightstone – Re-Blogged From WUWT

An article highly critical of my book Inconvenient Facts, a bestseller, has received wide distribution. It’s Easy to be Tricked by a Climate Denier purports to be a factual take-down of the book and, by extension, of me. However, it is really just one more example of how proponents of catastrophic man-made warming need to resort to lies and distortion in order to advance their agenda.

The author, Willard MacDonald, is not a scientist but the Vice President of Vivint Solar, a solar panel manufacturer and installer. No conflict of interest there! He does have degrees in computer science and electrical engineering, documenting an education appropriate to his line of work but not applicable whatsoever to discerning the complexities of climate or the long-term records of temperature and carbon dioxide.

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Energy Used vs Wealth

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  By Bob Shapiro – Image from WUWT

As per capita use of energy goes up, so does wealth. Making energy cheaper means more energy can be used, which translates into a higher standard of living. To make people poorer – lowering their standard of living – you raise the cost of energy, reducing the per capita use of energy.

By forcing greater use of more costly solar, wind, and other uneconomical renewables, the US and other western governments (and the NGOs supporting the Global Warming nonsense) are spreading poverty throughout their countries.

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Growth Will Be A Thing Of The Past If Businesses Choose ‘Net Zero’

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By Rupert Darwall – Re4-Blogged From GWPF

Investors more obsessed with climate than investor returns, who bully corporations into adopting net-zero business strategies, are doing more than destroying shareholder value. They are destroying the capitalist growth machine.

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Virginia’s Clean Economy Act

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By Paul Driessen – Re-Blogged From WUWT

850-foot-tall turbines, 3.5 times DC covered with solar panels, mining, child labor, pricey power

Largely with party-line, urban-vs-rural votes, Virginia’s legislature is poised to enact a Clean Economy Act that would eliminate coal-based electricity generation, prevent construction of new gas-fired power plants – and replace reliable, affordable fossil energy with wind, solar and battery-backup power. The bill offers important cautionary lessons for voters, workers and consumers in Virginia and across the United States.

Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw has said Virginia has “a climate problem, and you can’t fix it for free.” However, the climate crisis is mostly exaggerated, imaginary or based on faulty computer models. Worse, the “fix” will be pricey on many levels, but won’t make an iota of difference to the global climate.

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Climate Change Refugees

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By Willis Eschenbach – Re-Blogged From WUWT

I keep reading over and over about the world’s “First Climate Change Refugees”. As near as I can keep count, we are already up to the Ninth First Climate Change Refugees, and we’ve seen … well … none. Links to my previous posts, each discussing one of the earlier winners of the Annual First Climate Change Refugees Prize are in the endnotes.

So I had to laugh when I saw the following story from the reliably climate alarmist BBC.

Let’s be clear about the violence that they are doing to both logic and the English language. They are declaring people as being “refugees” from a possible disaster foretold for the year 2054! That’s hilarious!

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Fact-Checking the NY Times’ “Lies”

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By Kip Hansen – Re-Blogged From WUWT

The NY Times has been at it again – this time printing bald-faced inaccuracies (some might call it lying….).

Hiroko Tabuchi, a climate reporter for The New York Times, penned “A Trump Insider Embeds Climate Denial in Scientific Research” in the 2 March 2020 online version of the Times.   I have tried, but I have found it difficult to find anything true in the story.

Here is Tabuchi’s lede:

False

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Aussie Government Predicts Mass Extinction in our Lifetimes

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

The Aussie Government ABC says there is nothing special about human beings.

The human race is not special. So why do we think we’re immune to mass extinction?

By Geoff Dawson

Could we face a mass extinction of human beings in our lifetime?

As global temperatures rise and this summer’s bushfires devastate the Australian landscape, it’s a worst-case scenario that is beginning to be seriously discussed.

The rapid spread of the coronavirus in recent weeks has also escalated the anxiety that people feel about their mortality.

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On Cambridge University, post-modernism, climate change, Oppenheimer’s Razor, and the Re-Enlightenment

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By Neil Lock – Re-Blogged From WUWT

In the early 1970s, I studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge. I enjoyed it at the time, but was left with a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Although I scraped a First, and was offered a place on Part III of the Tripos, I decided to go out into the real world instead. Never did I make a better life decision.

Over the intervening decades, I have come more and more to question the value of universities. I would have expected the remit of a university to be (1) to seek, (2) to develop, and (3) to pass on, ideas and practices to improve the human condition, both today and in the future. There should be no dishonesties in their processes, no imposed orthodoxies, and no restrictions on the freedom to seek, or to tell, the truth. Yet, universities – not just at Cambridge, but world-wide – seem to have become bastions of political correctness. Anyone in the faculty, who doesn’t toe the party line and parrot the narrative of the moment, will find difficulties in funding or in getting papers published, or may even be in danger of dismissal. Peter Ridd in Australia and Susan Crockford in Canada are topical examples.

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Hijacking the Winds of Change

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By Jim Steele – Re-Blogged From WUWT

What’s Natural

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Low-tech weathervanes have provided farmers with sage weather advice. If winds were coming from the north, temperatures would be colder than normal; if from the south, temperatures would be warmer. Most fascinating, if winds descended down a mountain slope, they could expect fluctuating extreme weather, with temperatures bouncing between extreme warmth and cold. Across the globe, local downslope winds cause dramatic weather changes and so are given special names such as Chinooks or Foehn winds.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #411

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The Week That Was: February 29, 2020, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.” – Benjamin Franklin

Number of the Week: $61,937

Green Dreams: Many political leaders and political factions have little or no understanding of the importance of reliable, predictable electricity to modern civilization and economic wellbeing. Without thoroughly demonstrated examples of success, a number of local and national governments have passed laws phasing out electricity generated by fossil fuels based on the belief that wind and solar can replace fossil fuels. This “green dream” may become a nightmare.

In the UK, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has produced a set of studies estimating that removing fossil fuels from:

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