Climate Change

WUWT Retrospective Post

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By Rud Istvan – Re-Blogged From WUWT

My first recent ‘ruminative’ post was about basic climate science misconceptions. My second was about their resulting failed basic climate predictions over now 4 decades (e.g. Viner 2000–children will soon not know snow!).  This third ruminative post (celebrating roughly my 10th WUWT anniversary post here) introspects climate ‘science’ misconduct in the dubious service of posts 1&2.

Like my first here long ago, just more examples like that first, decade old provable NRC US crop canard.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #434

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The Week That Was: December 5, 2020

Brought to You by www.SEPP.org, The Science and Environmental Policy Project 

By Ken Haapala, President,

Quote of the Week:  Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thought-crime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?” – George Orwell, 1984 https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/450328-don-t-you-see-that-the-whole-aim-of-newspeak-is

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Slight, Beneficial Warming From More Carbon Dioxide!

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By David Wojick, Ph.D. – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Exhaustive study finds more CO2 and water molecules will not cause dangerous warming

Precision research by physicists William Happer and Willem van Wijngaarden has determined that the current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor are “saturated.” In radiation physics that means adding more CO2 or water molecules will bring modest warming that will benefit plant growth, and thus all life on Earth. More CO2 and H2O will not cause dangerous warming.

From this point forward, emissions from burning fossil fuels will bring little additional global warming, and what does occur will improve forests, grasslands and agriculture. There is no climate emergency.

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Crisis Looms in Alarmist Climate Science

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By David Wojick – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Climate science is dominated by alarmists addicted to the idea that increasing carbon dioxide will cause dangerous global warming. How much warming is thus the central scientific question.

This question has been surprisingly difficult to answer despite 40 years of research, costing tens of billions of dollars. Now the issue is exploding because two different answers are emerging, one harmlessly low and the other dangerously high. This divergence is a crisis for the alarmist community. How they handle it remains to be seen.

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Climate science and the Supreme Court

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By Judith Curry – Re-Blogged From WUWT

An alternative assessment of U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s statements on climate change.

For those of you not in the U.S., confirmation hearings on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court are currently underway.  There are many very political issues surrounding this nomination and its timing.  Lets put all that aside for the moment, and consider her statements on climate change.

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Greenland and the 1950s Climate Consensus

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By Jim Steele – Re-Blogged From WUWT

What’s Natural?

Glaciers around the world reached their greatest size in four thousand years by 1850. Then abruptly the world began to warm. Arctic sea ice lost 40% of its thickness by 1940. Around the Arctic island of Spitsbergen melting sea ice allowed shipping season to lengthen from 3 months to 7 by 1940, meanwhile 400 additional square miles of sea ice was melting along the Russian coasts. By 1950, 96% of Europe’s glaciers were retreating and small glaciers had simply disappeared. In the tropics, Africa’s Kilimanjaro’s iconic glaciers was also shrinking alarmingly.

In the far north, pine forests couldn’t reproduce between 1850 and 1900 due to the cold. But with warming, all age classes of seedlings proliferated. Tree-line rose by about 70 feet in a few decades. Plants were flowering earlier, and seeds and berries ripened earlier. Atlantic cod moved northward creating a new Greenland fishery and several southern bird species moved into Iceland.

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Weekly Energy and Climate News Roundup #426

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The Week That Was: October 10, 2020

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

Quote of the Week: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”— Richard Feynman, Theoretical physicist, co-recipient Nobel Prize in Physics.

Number of the Week: US$3,660 billion [$3.66 Trillion]

Guess and Test – and Re-Test: Writing in the Wall Street Journal, journalist Matt Ridley, author of books such as How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom (2020) and The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2010), had an outstanding, long essay titled:

“What the Pandemic Has Taught Us About Science

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‘The Weaponization of Weather in the Phony Climate War’

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By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Joe Bastardi, whom I consider a friend and a brilliant weather forecaster with a photographic-like memory for weather events through history, has written a book on the “climate war”, which is a rebuttal to Michael Mann’s use of the same phrase in his gloom and doom book.

The Washington Times had this to say about it:

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Restoring Scientific Debate on Climate

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By Jim Steele – Re-Bloggede From WUWT

The political genius of Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to unify the country during America’s most divisive time has been attributed to assembling a “team of rivals”. Likewise, scientific research is published so rivals and supporters of a hypothesis can independently and critically examine it. The great benefits of a team of rivals is also the basis for convening red team/blue team debates.

In 2017, Dr Steve Koonin, a physicist who served as Obama’s Undersecretary for Science in the US Department of Energy, urged convening red-team blue-team debates for climate science in his article A ‘Red Team’ Exercise Would Strengthen Climate Science.  “The national-security community pioneered the “Red Team” methodology to test assumptions and analyses, identify risks, and reduce—or at least understand—uncertainties. The process is now considered a best practice in high-consequence situations”.

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Nearby Supernova May Have Helped to Initiate Ice Ages?

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By Eurekalert – Re-Blogged From WUWT

From the TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH (TUM)

Stellar explosion in Earth’s proximity

When the brightness of the star Betelgeuse dropped dramatically a few months ago, some observers suspected an impending supernova – a stellar explosion that could also cause damage on Earth. While Betelgeuse has returned to normal, physicists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have found evidence of a supernova that exploded near the Earth around 2.5 million years ago.

Discovery of a nearby supernova 2.5 million years ago boosting cosmic rays may lend credence to Svensmark’s cosmic rays modulate clouds on Earth theory.

Supernova Explosion

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Svalbard Glaciers

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By By Brice Noël & Michiel van den Broeke – Re-Blogged From WUWT

[Global Warming may be caused both naturally and by humans. –Bob]

The archipelago of Svalbard, a land of ice and polar bears, is found midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. Its capital Longyearbyen on the main island of Spitsbergen is the world’s most northerly city, some 800 miles inside the Arctic Circle.

Svalbard is also home to some of the Earth’s northernmost glaciers, which bury most of the archipelago’s surface under no less than 200 metres of thick ice. Taken together, Svalbard glaciers represent 6% of the worldwide glacier area outside the large ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica – if they totally melted, they would raise the sea level by 1.7cm.

Kris Grabiec / shutterstock

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CNN: “The pandemic didn’t solve climate change. This week’s disasters are proof”

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

CNN laments that Covid-19 didn’t mess up the economy or frighten people enough to bring lasting change. But some see the Coronavirus lockdowns as a “test run”, which may help shape future climate policies.

The pandemic didn’t solve climate change. This week’s disasters are proof

By Eliza Mackintosh, CNN

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The “Escalator to Extinction” Myth

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By Jim Steele – Re-Blogged From WUWT

In Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain wrote, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.” Unfortunately, conjecture based on limited facts has produced “research” trumpeting catastrophic fears of extinction. The “escalator to extinction” theory argues organisms must migrate to higher elevations where a cooler altitude will offset global warming temperatures. But there is scant evidence that is happening.

Crested Quetzal

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Gavin Newsom’s Exceedingly Ignorant Climate Claim

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By Jim Steele – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Scientific evidence reveals there has been no climate effect regards California’s wildfires! None! The data below proves it beyond all doubt. There is no denying that warmer temperatures can cause drier fuels and promote larger fires. But that fact is being misapplied to all wildfires. About 70% of California’s 2020 burnt areas have been in grasslands and dead grass is so dry by the end of California’s annual summer drought that dead grasses are totally insensitive to any added warmth from climate change. Dead grasses only require a few hours of warm dry conditions to become highly flammable.

It’s fire weather not climate change that is critical. Furthermore, the century trends in local temperatures where California’s biggest fires have occurred reveal no connection to climate change. In most cases the local maximum temperatures have been cooler now than during the 1930s. Those cooler temperatures should reduce the fire danger. Newsom is either ignoring or distorting the scientific evidence, is totally stupid, or is a dishonest demagogue.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #424

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The Week That Was: September 12, 2020
Brought to You by www.SEPP.org
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature’s answer.” – Max Planck

Number of the Week: 10%

Review of the Greenhouse Effect: For the past few weeks TWTW used presentations by William Happer to discuss the greenhouse effect, which is how certain gases interfere with the loss of electromagnetic energy, particularly in the infrared frequencies, from the surface of the earth into space. The gases that slow the loss of energy (heat), keeping the earth warmer at night than it would be otherwise, are known as greenhouse gases. Starting in 1859, physicist John Tyndall described their influence through a set of experiments. Tyndall recognized that water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas, and without it land masses would freeze at night, making vegetative growth virtually impossible.

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Part of the Heat is Coming From Beneath our Feet

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By Judith Curry’s Blog – Re-Blogged From WUWT

A thought-provoking article  from my new favorite blog, The Ethical Skeptic.

The Ethical Skeptic

My new favorite blog is The Ethical Skeptic.  From the About page:

“It is the intent of this author and purpose of this blog to propose afresh from its beginning, a genuine problem in philosophy. A problem of method-induced creeping ignorance, wrought in the name of science. Until one understands how a philosophical definition or principle can be manipulated for ill intent, one has not really learned it. Such is the nature of ethical skepticism; an applied ability to spot the condition wherein skepticism is employed with the specific goal of cultivating ignorance inside society. In order for us to hone our skills at spotting scientific deception through means of this false skepticism however, it becomes necessary that one approach afresh, many core ideas of philosophy.”

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The Climate of Scott Adams

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By Willis Eschenbach – Re-Blogged From WUWT

At 73, I’m now in what I call my “late youth”. As a confirmed wanderer, I’ve seen a bit of the world, and I’ve read and studied extensively about our life here on this most lovely planet. As a result of my wide experience, I don’t often come across a book full of brand-new ideas and concepts which strongly affect how I look at the world.

So I have to give big props to my gorgeous ex-fiancee who went to the library and came back with Scott Adams’ book, “Win Bigly“. Scott Adams is the cartoonist who draws “Dilbert”, and it turns out he is much more than that.

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Northern Europe Deforestation Up 49% Due To Effort To Meet “CO2 Targets”

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By P Gosselin – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Wood pellets.

Swiss meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann calls it “the dumbest energy and environmental policy ever”. Now, finally, after years of being warned, Germany’s mainstream media are finally showing signs of waking up to it.

Idiots and energy policy: Burning of “CO2-friendly” wood pellets driving mass European deforestation. Illustrative photo by P. Gosselin

Germany’s flagship ARD public broadcasting recently presented a report earlier today about how “CO2 neutral” wood burning is leading to widespread deforestation across northern Europe – a rather embarrassing development for the Europeans, who  recently expressed their condemnation over Brazilian forest policy.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #422

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The Week That Was: September 5, 2020

By Ken Haapala, President, SEPP, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

Quote of the Week: “A few days ago, a Master of Arts, who is still a young man, and therefore the recipient of a modern education, stated to me that until he had reached the age of twenty he had never been taught anything whatever regarding natural phenomena, or natural law. Twelve years of his life previously had been spent exclusively amongst the ancients. The case, I regret to say, is typical. Now we cannot, without prejudice to humanity, separate the present from the past.” – John Tyndall (1854)

Number of the Week: 4.3 to 8.7 million people in California exposed!

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Minimizing California Wildfires

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By Jim Steele – Re-Blogged From WUWT

How do we focus our resources to minimize the devastation caused by California’s wildfires? First, we can reduce ignitions. California’s deadliest fire, the Camp Fire and California’s 2nd largest fire, the Thomas Fire were ignited by faulty powerlines during high wind events. California’s sprawling power grid has rapidly expanded since 1970 to accommodate the influx of 20 million people. Accordingly, powerline-ignited fires increased area burnt by five times relative to the previous 20 years.

California’s largest fire (Mendocino Complex), its 3rd largest (Cedar Fire), 5th largest (Rim Fire), and 7th largest (Carr Fire), were all ignited by accidents or carelessness. Uncontrollably, more people cause more accidents, suggesting California’s wisest course of action requires creating more defensible space.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #421

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

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.” – Karl Popper

Number of the Week: 50%

Popular Delusions: Last week, TWTW discussed the problem of the California Blackouts (also called greenouts) and the failure of California politicians to properly prepare for the simple fact that as the sun goes down Photoelectric Power declines and other means of electric power generation must be increased significantly (ramped-up). The state constitution places the ultimate responsibility on the legislature.

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False Alarm: Book Review

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By Bjorn Lomborg – Re-Blogged From WUWT

How climate change panic costs us trillions, hurts the poor, and fails to fix the planet

Reviewed by Thomas P. Sheahen

Danish Economist Bjorn Lomborg is already well known for eight other books at the intersection of economics and public policy. “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” published in 2001 established him as a perceptive observer of the cost of addressing the world’s environmental problems. He provided evidence to show that, with prosperity, civilization is addressing the major environmental issues.  Lomborg’s attention to the numbers hidden beneath the slogans gave his analysis a credibility that could not be brushed aside, to the chagrin of some prominent politicians and environmental organizations of the time.

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Cold Weather Kills More People Than Hot Weather

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By David Middleton – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Cold-weather accounts for almost all temperature-related deaths

With the number of extreme weather days rising around the globe in recent years due to global warming, it is no surprise that there has been an upward trend in hospital visits and admissions for injuries caused by high heat over the last several years. But cold temperatures are responsible for almost all temperature-related deaths, according to a new study published in the journal  Environmental Research.

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The Climate Left Attacks Nobel Laureate William D. Nordhaus

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By Benjamin Zycher, AEI – Re-Blogged From GWPF

Having received the 2018 Nobel Prize in economics largely in recognition of his economic analysis of climate policy—in particular the development and application of the Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy (DICE) model—William D. Nordhaus now is under attack from the environmental left.

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Cascading Fallacies in Climate Risk Assessment

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By David Wojick, CFACT – Re-Blogged From WUWT

As a logician, I am always on the lookout for fallacies and there is no lack of them in climate change alarmist policies. New Zealand’s newly released climate risk assessment not only has multiple fallacies, they build on one another in a cascade.

This is not about New Zealand. The authors of the assessment make clear that theirs is a new approach which they hope will be used globally. So this is about the world, including America.

North Island Brown Kiwi, Apteryx mantelli

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Undeniable Truths

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– Re-Blogged From WUWT

Out in the webiverse someone asked me “Willis… do you consider yourself a denialist?”

Mmmm … an excellent question, with an answer which likely won’t go the direction that they think.

First, the term “climate denier”, or in this incarnation “denialist”, was specifically chosen for its overtones of “Holocaust denier”. It is used as a pejorative term for anyone who disagrees with any aspect of climate science, usually without any attempt to say what the person is “denying”.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #419

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By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

The Week That Was: August 8, 2020, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

Re-Blogged From WUWT

Quote of the Week: “What we observe is not Nature itself but Nature exposed to our methods of questioning.” –Werner Heisenberg, also “We have to remember that what we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our methods of questioning.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein

Number of the Week: Zero (0)

July Summary Part V; General Conclusions: Four weeks ago TWTW reviewed Richard Lindzen’s new paper summarizing what we know with reasonable certainty, what we suspect, and what we know is incorrect about climate change, the greenhouse effect, temperature trends, climate modeling, ocean chemistry, and sea level rise. Key parts included (with additions in boldface):

1) The climate system is never in equilibrium.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup # 417

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The Week That Was: July 25, 2020

By Ken Haapala, President, SEPP

Quote of the Week: “When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.” —Thomas Paine (1776)

Number of the Week: 12 datasets of evidence

July Summary Part III; Models and Observations: Two weeks ago TWTW reviewed Richard Lindzen’s new paper summarizing what we know with reasonable certainty, what we suspect, and what we know is incorrect about climate change, the greenhouse effect, temperature trends, climate modeling, ocean chemistry, and sea level rise. Key parts included:

1) The climate system is never in equilibrium.

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Message to the President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences

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By David Wojick – Re-Blogged From WUWT

In the ongoing effort to clearly summarize their position, CLINTEL has published a Scientific Manifesto in the form of ten propositions. These specifically address, among other things, the role of National Academies in protecting the integrity of science, in the face of alarmist dogma.

Since the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has evolved from guardians of science to an alarmist fortress, I thought it interesting to contrast the basic CLINTEL Manifesto with the statements of NAS President Marcia McNutt.

First, here are the ten basic CLINTEL propositions. (In the Manifesto document each is elaborated with regard to the sorry state of climate science today. All-caps are in the original.)

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Faulty Forecasts and False Climate Narrative Hold Nations Hostage

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By Vijay Jayaraj – Re4-Blogged From WUWT

The United States is the only major Western country that is not part of the Paris climate agreement, which seeks to restrict and reduce fossil fuel consumption across the world. But the country is not immune from the impacts of the restrictive energy policies the agreement imposes on its trade partners. One of those is my own country, India.

India imports large amounts of coal, oil, and natural gas from the U.S., mostly to generate affordable power for its electric grid. That grid must grow rapidly to meet the needs of over 1.3 billion people. Over 300 million of them—comparable to the whole U.S. population—currently have no electricity. But they need it desperately for their health and their escape from severe poverty.

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BBC Asks Dr. Willie Soon to Respond to Climate Conspiracy Claims

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

The BBC has belatedly decided they need at least a little input from one of the targets of their latest big oil climate conspiracy propaganda piece. Dr. Willie Soon does not hold back in his response.

Note some of the links take you to a “You are leaving the mail.com service” page. This is a harmless artefact caused by copying Dr. Soon’s email, click continue to see the referenced document.

Dear Ms. Keane,

I am wary of responding to your false allegations, since your questions seem somewhat loaded. Disappointingly, they appear to repeat the dishonest and misleading claims of the former Greenpeace USA research director, Kert Davies (now running the so-called “Climate Investigations Center”), whose research we have shown to be disingenuous in Section 2 of our attached 2018 report on Greenpeace (Attachment 1). Unfortunately, the premise of your series seems to be the dangerous conspiracy theories promoted by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their 2010 book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change and their 2014 film of the same name. I’ve attached a short 3-page .pdf (Attachment 2) summarizing just a few examples of the poor scholarship and bizarre hypocrisies in Oreskes & Conway’s conspiracy theories.

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Climate Activists Step Up Calls for Imprisoning Climate Realists

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By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Originally published at Climate Realism

Unable to win the debate in the court of public opinion, climate activists are increasingly calling for the imprisonment of climate realists. The latest example is an article in The Carbon Brief titled “How climate change misinformation spreads online.”  The authors, who are all University of Exeter professors, advocate fines and imprisonment for people publishing “climate misinformation” online. They justify their call for imprisonment by claiming tremendous harm from “misleading information that is created and spread with intent to deceive.”

That’s one take, another take is that those who publish what the Left deems as “misinformation” are actually publishing what might be dubbed “inconvenient truths.” The 2006 film by Al Gore of the same name is a case in point. Gore, not being particularly good at details, published a boatload of misinformation in that film, and social media responded to correct the record. In one scene Gore used an animated clip of a polar bear in danger of drowning, trying to get onto a tiny ice flow made smaller, presumably by global warming. Gore cited this as the new normal of drowning polar bears. The reality? Scientists documented one drowned polar bear at sea after an intense storm, something that hasn’t been seen since. According to an Associated Press article:

“A federal wildlife biologist whose observation in 2004 of presumably drowned polar bears in the Arctic helped to galvanize the global warming movement has been placed on administrative leave and is being investigated for scientific misconduct, possibly over the veracity of that article.”

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #416

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By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Re-Blogged From WUWT

Quote of the Week: ““No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” – Albert Einstein [H/t H. Sterling Burnett]

Number of the Week: From 55% to 34% with no change in gross amount.

July Summary: Discussed in the previous three TWTWs, Richard Lindzen’s paper, “An oversimplified picture of the climate behavior based on a single process can lead to distorted conclusions,” contained nothing new, but provided an excellent basis for understanding what we know with reasonable certainty, what we suspect, and what we know is incorrect about climate change, the greenhouse effect, temperature trends, climate modeling, ocean chemistry, and sea level rise. Describing this knowledge, or lack thereof, will probably take two or three installments to complete in TWTW, but it may be a valuable reference in the future that can be modified as needed.

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Environmentalist Michael Shellenberger Interview

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Re-Blogged From WUWT

The Heartland Institute’s Donald Kendal, Jim Lakely, and The Center for the American Experiment’s Isaac Orr are joined by Michael Shellenberger in episode 250 of the In The Tank Podcast. Shellenberger is on the show to talk about his “controversial” new book “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.”

The book destroys the climate alarmist narrative that the world is coming to an end and that wind and solar are the future of energy in the United States. He also discusses how climate alarmism has become the new secular religion that he once observed, and his journey to the side of reason, science, and realism.

On Amazon: Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

Environmental Progress https://environmentalprogress.org/fou…

Deep reading: Climate Change Reconsidered series (published by The Heartland Institute) http://climatechangereconsidered.org/

New Climate Models Exaggerate Midwest Warming by 6X

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

For the last 10 years I have consulted for grain growing interests, providing information about past and potential future trends in growing season weather that might impact crop yields. Their primary interest is the U.S. corn belt, particularly the 12 Midwest states (Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Michigan) which produce most of the U.S. corn and soybean crop.

Contrary to popular perception, the U.S. Midwest has seen little long-term summer warming. For precipitation, the slight drying predicted by climate models in response to human greenhouse gas emissions has not occurred; if anything, precipitation has increased. Corn yield trends continue on a technologically-driven upward trajectory, totally obscuring any potential negative impact of “climate change”.

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The Climate Model Muddle

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By Ed Zuiderwijk – Re-Blogged From WUWT

This is a posting about the epistemology of climate models, about what we can learn from them about the future. The answer will disappoint: not much. In order to convince you of the veracity of that proposition I will first tell you a little story, an allegory if you want, regarding a thought experiment, a completely fictitious account of what a research project might look like, and then apply whatever insight we gained (if any) to the climate modelling scene.

A thought experiment

Here’s the thought experiment: We want to make a compound that produces colour somehow (the mechanism how it does that is not really relevant). However, we specifically want a well-defined colour, prescribed by whatever application it is going to be used for. Say a shade of turquoise.

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Climate Alarmism Versus Integrity at National Academies of Science

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By David Wojick – Re-Blogged From WUWT

National Academies of Science should speak out against climate alarmism, not support it. This is the major message in a recent letter from Professor Guus Berkhout, president of CLINTEL, to the new head of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. The integrity of science is at stake.

This letter is a model for how all alarmist National Academies should be addressed. For example, the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is painfully alarmist. Even worse, NAS has been joined in promoting alarmism by its two siblings, the National Academies of Engineering and Medicine. The fact that these Academies have become a servant of supranational political organizations such as IPCC shows how serious the crisis in climate science really is.

Climate alarmism versus integrity at National Academies of Science

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #414

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By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Re-Blogged From WUWT

Quote of the Week: “Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.” – Richard Feynman

Number of the Week: 2%

Oversimplified: Last week, TWTW presented a new paper from MIT Professor emeritus in Atmospheric Physics Richard Lindzen titled: “An oversimplified picture of the climate behavior based on a single process can lead to distorted conclusions.” The discussion was limited to what was presented in the No Tricks Zone blog. Further, TWTW did not draw a clear distinction between what the blog presented and what Lindzen actually wrote.

Starting with the UN and continuing through virtually all industrialized countries in the West, there is enormous political pressure to replace reliable fossil fuels with unreliable wind and solar power, particularly for electricity generation. Yet, no successful demonstration project exists showing this can be done at reasonable costs. Even the largest “battery” in the world, the Bath County Pumped [Hydro] Storage Station in Virginia, must be recharged, refilled, nightly by electricity from reliable nuclear and coal-fired power plants.

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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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