A new study that only looked at ocean temperatures is being trumpeted as disproving the global warming pause - it doesn’t.

According to a new study, the rate of ocean warming for the past 19 years was rising nearly twice as fast than originally measured, but land temps still show a global warming pause. Previously, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were rising at 0.07C per decade, but the new paper shows it’s actually .12C. But the new paper has flaws being glossed over by mainstream #News outlets to push the #Climate Change narrative. The study was published in #Science Advances and is open to the public.

First, the study only looked at ocean temperatures, not land, and didn’t include the year 2016, a markedly cooler year in the latter half. Even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said there was no discernible warming since 2000 in its 2013 report. They wrote that global temperatures showed a “much smaller increasing linear trend over the past 15 years than over the past 30 to 60 years.”

Yet another study tries to erase “the pause” - but is missing a whole year of data.

How they did it

In this new study led by Zeke Hausfather, they homogenized buoy, satellite, and ARGO buoy records to come up with mean ocean temperatures. The authors believe that ocean temperatures have been “underestimated” for the past 20 years because ocean buoys record slightly colder sea temperatures when compared to how they were measured last century; seawater would flow into a ship’s intake systems and a temperature reading would be taken.

But by ending the study on an El Nino year, estimating temperature trends that begin and end on an “El Nino curve will give a misleadingly high trend.” That’s according to a statement by Dr. David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Forum think-tank. He notes that researchers need to be careful when estimating temperature trends with rigid start and end dates. Adding or removing even a year or two can produce dramatically different results. Which is what happened here.

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Any estimate of temperature trends that have their endpoint on the uptick of the El Nino curve will give a misleadingly high trend. It is obvious that a better trend will be obtained after the natural El Nino has ended. Likewise care must be taken if the start point is near the La Nina years of 1999-2000. The temperature trends of the oceans estimated by the new paper fall into this trap. - Dr David Whitehouse, Death Of Global Temperature ‘Pause’ Greatly Exaggerated

No, the pause isn’t over

Because the study’s authors end their temperature dataset in 2015, the linear trend shows an uptick in ocean temperatures. The new study is an apparent attempt to reinforce a two-year-old NOAA report that came under heavy criticism even by scientists that fully support the theory of climate change. In the earlier NOAA study, Karl Mears et al modified SSTs of the 1900s by adjusting them downwards, thereby making the past 15 years look warmer and eliminating the pause.

The new study led many media outlets to inaccurately claim the global warming pause is over. But this study only addressed ocean temperatures, not land temperatures. Dr. Judith Curry, a climatologist and former IPCC author, said in an emailed statement “the hiatus is still going strong in the satellite dataset of lower atmospheric temperatures.”

Judith Curry:Uncertainties in sea surface temperatures https://judithcurry.com/2017/01/04/focus-on-sea-surface-temperatures/

It should be noted that Dr. Curry is not a climate skeptic. She has written extensively on global warming and believes that the Earth is indeed warming, and that carbon dioxide is just one driver given too much weight in the climate change debate. She also stated the “big El Nino last winter has temporarily stopped the slowdown in surface warming, but we need a few years yet to recover from it and see what is going on.”

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Dr. Roy Spencer reported:

The 2016 annual average global temperature anomaly is +0.50 deg. C, which is (a statistically insignificant) 0.02 deg. C warmer than 1998 at +0.48 deg. C. We estimate that 2016 would have had to be 0.10 C warmer than 1998 to be significantly different at the 95% confidence level. Both 2016 and 1998 were strong El Nino years.
ICECAP Note: It should be noted that in 1998, a strong La Nina kicked in during the last part of the year while 2016 was a borderline La Nina and actually ended the year in neutral territory. With that considered, two comparably strong El Ninos 18 years apart produced no difference in global temperatures implying stasis.

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See this collection of papers that show the ocean in the North Atlantic has cooled dramatically.

There is no more important year than 2017 since our inception 10 years ago in 2007 during which Icecap had 78 million page hits on the 7,234 blog entries. We and other courageous bloggers have been swimming upstream against the flood not from rising sea levels but from attacks by ideologues, globalists and leftists and others riding the gravy train of $1.5 trillion of government, radical environmental NGOs, large corporations largess that has corrupted our schools, media and many politicians. Part of the strategy from the start of the movement was to starve out or silence any opposition, claim a certainty and consensus (a sanctioned science) that can not and does not exist. This next 4 years is our best chance to expose the hype and where it exists the fraud. Globalists had thought they won and our country would be ceding control to a larger entity like the UN - Agenda 21. Big money extremists were planning for the day that bureaucrats outside instead of inside our government would control our energy, policies and eventually our lives including what you can drive, where you can live, how much you can make, etc.

Revealing Quotes From the Planners:

“Agenda 21 proposes an array of actions which are intended to be implemented by EVERY person on Earth...it calls for specific changes in the activities of ALL people… Effective execution of Agenda 21 will REQUIRE a profound reorientation of ALL humans, unlike anything the world has ever experienced...”

Agenda 21: The Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet (Earthpress, 1993). It was signed by George H.W. Bush.

We need to marshall our resources to fight this and the bad science that is supporting it. Help us fight this by studying Agenda 21 and reading about how the science has been corrupted or molded to fit their plans to scare us into compliance here, on WUWT and on Tony Heller’s blog, on Francis Menton’s blog and Alan Carlin’s blog and many others.

We have published the first volley with this analysis and plan much more.

Donate if you can to support all our efforts. Please speak up with your own posts, link to our stories and write your own letters to local media. We need to restore our science to what it once was.

Be safe this New Year’s eve and have a great and prosperous 2017. 

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The Impending Collapse Of The Global Warming Scare

By Francis Menton

Over the past three decades, the environmental movement has increasingly hitched its wagon to exactly one star as the overwhelming focus of the cause, namely “climate change.” Sure, issues of bona fide pollution like smog and untreated sewage are still out there a little, but they are largely under control and don’t really stir the emotions much any more.  If you want fundraising in the billions rather than the thousands, you need a good end-of-days, sin-and-redemption scare.  Human-caused global warming is your answer!

Even as this scare has advanced, a few lonely voices have warned that the radical environmentalists were taking the movement out onto a precarious limb.  Isn’t there a problem that there’s no real evidence of impending climate disaster?  But to no avail.  Government funding to promote the warming scare has been lavish, and in the age of Obama has exploded.  Backers of the alarm have controlled all of the relevant government bureaucracies, almost all of the scientific societies, and the access to funding and to publication for anyone who wants to have a career in the field.  What could go wrong?

Now, enter President-elect Trump.  During the campaign, as with many issues, it was hard to know definitively where Trump stood.  Although combatting climate change with forced suppression of fossil fuels could be a multi-trillion dollar issue for the world economy, this issue was rarely mentioned by either candidate, and was only lightly touched on in the debates.  Sure, Hillary had accused Trump of calling climate change a “hoax” in a November 2012 tweet.  (Actual text: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make American manufacturing non-competitive.") But in an early 2016 interview, Trump walked that back to say that the statement was a joke, albeit with a kernel of truth, because “climate change is a very, very expensive form of tax” and “China does not do anything to help.” Trump had also stated that he intended to exit the recent Paris climate accord, and to end the War on Coal.  So, was he proposing business-as-usual with a few tweaks, or would we see a thorough-going reversal of Obama’s extreme efforts to control the climate by fossil fuel restrictions?

With the recently announced appointments, this is starting to come very much into focus.  In reverse order of the announcements:

Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, as Secretary of State.  As of today, we still have as our chief diplomat the world leader of smugness who somehow thinks that “climate change” caused by use of fossil fuels is the greatest threat to global security.  He is shortly to be replaced with the CEO of Exxon.  Could there be a bigger poke in the eye to the world climate establishment?  I’m trying to envision Tillerson at the next meeting of the UN climate “conference of parties” with thousands of world bureaucrats discussing how to put the fossil fuel companies out of business.  Won’t he be laughing his gut out?

Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy.  Not only was he the longest-serving governor of the biggest fossil fuel energy-producing state, but in his own 2012 presidential campaign he advocated for the elimination of the Department of Energy.  This is the department that passes out tens of billions of dollars in crony-capitalist handouts for wind and solar energy (Solyndra!), let alone more tens of billions for funding some seventeen (seventeen!) research laboratories mostly dedicated to the hopeless task of figuring out how to make intermittent sources of energy competitive for any real purpose.

And then there’s Scott Pruitt for EPA.  As Attorney General of Oklahoma, another of the big fossil fuel energy-producing states, he has been a leader in litigating against the Obama EPA to stop its overreaches, including the so-called Clean Power Plan that seeks to end the use of coal for electricity and to raise everyone’s cost of energy.

You might say that all of these are very controversial appointments, and will face opposition in the Senate.  But then, Harry Reid did away with the filibuster for cabinet appointments.  Oops!  Barring a minimum of three Republican defections, these could all sail through.  And even if one of these appointments founders, doesn’t the combination of them strongly signal where Trump would go with his next try?

So what can we predict about where the climate scare is going?  Among members of the environmental movement, when their heads stop exploding, there are plenty of predictions that this will be terrible for the United States:  international ostracism, loss (to China!) of “leadership” in international climate matters, and, domestically, endless litigation battles stalling attempts to rescind or roll back regulations.  I see it differently.  I predict a high likelihood of substantial collapse of the global warming movement, both domestically and internationally, over the course of the next couple of years.

Start with the EPA.  To the extent that the global warming movement has anything to do with “science,” EPA is supposedly where that science is vetted and approved on behalf of the public before being turned into policy.  In fact, under Obama, EPA’s principal role on the “science” has been to prevent and stifle any debate or challenge to global warming orthodoxy.  For example, when a major new Research Report came out back in September claiming to completely invalidate all of the bases on which EPA claims that CO2 is a danger to human health and welfare, and thus to undermine EPA’s authority to regulate the gas under the Clean Air Act, EPA simply failed to respond.  In the same vein, essentially all prominent global warming alarmists refuse to debate anyone who challenges any aspect of their orthodoxy.  Well, that has worked as long as they and their allies have controlled all of the agencies and all of the money.  Now, it will suddenly be put up or shut up.  And in case you might think that the science on this issue is “settled,” so no problem, you might enjoy this recent round-up at Climate Depot from some of the actual top scientists.  A couple of excerpts:

Renowned Princeton Physicist Freeman Dyson:  ‘I’m 100% Democrat and I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on climate issue, and the Republicans took the right side.’....

Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Dr. Ivar Giaever: ‘Global warming is a non-problem’ - ‘I say this to Obama: Excuse me, Mr. President, but you’re wrong. Dead wrong.’

Now the backers of the global warming alarm will not only be called upon to debate, but will face the likelihood of being called before a highly skeptical if not hostile EPA to answer all of the hard questions that they have avoided answering for the last eight years.  Questions like:  Why are recorded temperatures, particularly from satellites and weather balloons, so much lower than the alarmist models had predicted?  How do you explain an almost-20-year “pause” in increasing temperatures even as CO2 emissions have accelerated?  What are the details of the adjustments to the surface temperature record that have somehow reduced recorded temperatures from the 1930s and 40s, and thereby enabled continued claims of “warmest year ever” when raw temperature data show warmer years 70 and 80 years ago?  Suddenly, the usual hand-waving ("the science is settled") is not going to be good enough any more.  What now?

And how will the United States fare on the international stage when it stops promising to cripple its economy with meaningless fossil fuel restrictions?  As noted above, people like Isabel Hilton predict a combination of ostracism and “loss of leadership” of the issue, most likely to China.  Here’s my prediction:  As soon as the United States stops parroting the global warming line, the other countries will quickly start backing away from it as well.  This is “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” with the U.S. in the role of the little kid who is the only one willing to say the obvious truth in the face of mass hysteria.  Countries like Britain and Australia have already more or less quietly started the retreat from insanity.  In Germany the obsession with wind and solar (solar—in the cloudiest country in the world!) has already gotten average consumer electric rates up to close to triple the cost in U.S. states that embrace fossil fuels.  How long will they be willing to continue that self-destruction after the U.S. says it is not going along?  And I love the business about ceding “leadership” to China.  China’s so-called “commitment” in the recent Paris accord is not to reduce carbon emissions at all, but rather only to build as many coal plants as they want for the next fourteen years and then cease increasing emissions after 2030!  At which point, of course, they reserve their right to change their mind.  Who exactly is going to embrace that “leadership” and increase their consumers’ cost of electricity by triple or so starting right now?  I mean, the Europeans are stupid, but are they that stupid?

And finally, there is the question of funding.  Under Obama, attaching the words “global warming” or “climate change” to any proposal has been the sure-fire way to get the proposal whatever federal funding it might want.  The Department of Energy has been the big factor here.  Of its annual budget of about $28 billion, roughly half goes to running the facilities that provide nuclear material for the Defense Department, and the other half, broadly speaking, goes to the global warming cause:  crony capitalist handouts for wind and solar energy providers, and billions per year for research at some seventeen (seventeen!) different energy research laboratories.  During the eight Obama years, the energy sector of the U.S. economy has been substantially transformed by a technological revolution that has dramatically lowered the cost of energy and hugely benefited the American consumer.  I’m referring, of course, to the fracking revolution.  How much of the tens of billions of U.S. energy subsidies and research funding in that time went toward this revolution that actually produced cheaper energy that works?  Answer:  Not one single dollar!  All of the money was completely wasted on things that are uneconomic and will disappear as soon as the government cuts off the funding spigot.  All of this funding can and should be zeroed out in the next budget.  Believe me, nobody will notice other than the parasites who have been wasting the money.

If the multi-tens-of-billions per year funding gusher for global warming alarmism quickly dries up, the large majority of the people living on these handouts will have no choice but to go and find something productive to do.  Sure, some extreme zealots will find some way to soldier on.  But it is not crazy at all to predict a very substantial collapse of the global warming scare over the course of the next couple of years.

The environmental movement has climbed itself way out onto the global warming limb.  Now the Trump administration is about to start sawing off the limb behind them. 

Important Update:

The Coastal Flood Risk report nonsense for NH refuted by real data in report that gets coverage in the Union Leader and NHPR. Michael shows how the university environmentalists continue to deliver self serving failing model based forecasts that will cost taxpayers billions. We should cut off funding for these programs and studies. As is usually the case the rebuttal was done pro bono.

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Manipulating Climate Data Right Before Our eyes

THE RECENT ELECTIONS have caused the climate alarmists’ heads to spin. Without a liberal President to force green policies on America, there is little chance their agenda will move forward. Regardless of policy preferences, what elected officials need to focus on is what is actually going on in our climate and what steps need to be taken to address them. It’s the data that count. The real data.

On this point, let’s all agree that the world is warming. It has been since the 1800s when the world started to emerge from the Little Ice Age. We have had periods of warming, periods of cooling and periods when global temperatures didn’t do much of anything.

The bigger question is “Are we seeing recent temperature trends that are out of the ordinary of what we have seen in the past?” Alarmists tend to scream that temperatures are rising out of control, in an unprecedented manner, and that we are reaching a tipping point beyond which we are doomed.

That is all a lie, but I am sure they believe it.

Let’s look at the data, and just as importantly what alarmists have been doing to the data.

If you look at raw global surface temperatures, you see the rate of increase in the early part of the 20th century is the same as what occurred from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. No one has argued the first rate of change was anything but natural. So why must the more recent warming be manmade? In addition, we saw a flat/downward trend in global temperatures from the 1940s to the 1970s and we saw, at least up until recently, another almost 20 year flat temperature period to start this century.

So if what we are seeing are trends that are no different than in the past, why should we think it is anything but natural? We shouldn’t. In fact, any scientist should assume that nature is driving global temperatures and prove otherwise before arguing that mankind is driving our climate. One of the dirty little secrets of the alarmists is that they haven’t been able to prove that. They like to point to the correlation of rising carbon dioxide levels and temperatures as “proof”, but even a third grader knows that isn’t proof. Their climate models certainly make it look warmer, but the model forecasts are terrible, only proving that the models don’t work.

So what is a climate alarmist to do? Well if you don’t want to fix the models, you fix the temperatures. And that is exactly what has been going on.

Anyone who has closely followed the climate debate is familiar with the “adjustments” to the raw temperature data. What most Average Joes don’t realize is that the adjustments are almost entirely done to accomplish one thing - cool the past and warm the present.

How did they do this? Scientists have “smoothed” regional temperatures to get better agreement between urban and rural data. But instead of adjusting city temperatures lower (because of urban heat effects) they raised rural temperatures. More recently, in order to get rid of the “pause” in temperatures, they adjusted the sea surface temperatures higher when they decided that mid-20th century temperatures taken in ship engine intakes are more accurate than the modern ocean buoys. That’s right, the technology of the 1950s with the ship engine heat influencing the data was determined to be better than the network of modern electronics uninfluenced by external heat sources. And these are only a few examples of what has been going on.

On a more local level, between 2011 and 2013, the NOAA data set lowered annual Maine temperatures between three to five degrees in the early 1900s....and made almost no changes to recent temperatures. That “adjustment” is more than three times the actual warming we have seen.

Enlarged

Enlarged

When you look at how temperatures have been manipulated you start to wonder if we have any idea what the global temperature is. Over the past decade or so, the keepers of the data have cooled temperatures in the pre-1910 period the equivalent of -0.52 degrees per century. They warmed temperatures from 1980 to the early part of this century by the equivalent of +0.11 degrees per century.

Those two changes represent half the warming since 1900! And this was before the “pause buster” sea surface temperature manipulation took place.

Keep this in mind when the alarmists start demanding more action. When every iteration of the global temperature data set incrementally warms the present and cools the past, it’s not science. It’s manipulation. Mother Nature is still driving the climate, no matter how much they fudge the data for their agenda.

Michael Sununu is a small businessman and selectman in Newfields.

From Judith Curry’’s Climate etc. website the Whistleblow, Dr. John Bates spoke:

Climate scientists versus climate data
Posted on February 4, 2017 by John Bates

A look behind the curtain at NOAA’s climate data center.

I read with great irony recently that scientists are “frantically copying U.S. Climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump” (e.g., Washington Post 13 December 2016). As a climate scientist formerly responsible for NOAA’s climate archive, the most critical issue in archival of climate data is actually scientists who are unwilling to formally archive and document their data. I spent the last decade cajoling climate scientists to archive their data and fully document the datasets. I established a climate data records program that was awarded a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal in 2014 for visionary work in the acquisition, production, and preservation of climate data records (CDRs), which accurately describe the Earth’s changing environment.

The most serious example of a climate scientist not archiving or documenting a critical climate dataset was the study of Tom Karl et al. 2015 (hereafter referred to as the Karl study or K15), purporting to show no ‘hiatus’ in global warming in the 2000s (Federal scientists say there never was any global warming “pause"). The study drew criticism from other climate scientists, who disagreed with K15’s conclusion about the ‘hiatus.’ (Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown). The paper also drew the attention of the Chairman of the House Science Committee, Representative Lamar Smith, who questioned the timing of the report, which was issued just prior to the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan submission to the Paris Climate Conference in 2015. See here for more and his biosketch.

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David Rose in the UK Daily Mail has a detailed expose of the data manipulation:
Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data

The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organization that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.

A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

The report claimed that the ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in global warming in the period since 1998 - revealed by UN scientists in 2013 - never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world’s media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.

But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data.

It was never subjected to NOAA’s rigorous internal evaluation process - which Dr Bates devised.

His vehement objections to the publication of the faulty data were overridden by his NOAA superiors in what he describes as a ‘blatant attempt to intensify the impact’ of what became known as the Pausebuster paper.

His disclosures are likely to stiffen President Trump’s determination to enact his pledges to reverse his predecessor’s ‘green’ policies, and to withdraw from the Paris deal - so triggering an intense political row.

Read much more detail here

See Tallbloke’s coverage here

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Also the same line,

Bryan Leyland: Things you know that ain’t so - 2016 was the warmest year

“Things you know that ain’t so - 2016 was the warmest recorded year: global warming is real and dangerous”.

Or so they tell you. But you when you examine the facts, you come to the opposite conclusion. It is a classic example of using half-truths to mislead.
They don’t tell you how much warmer it actually was. If they did, the myth would be exposed immediately.

The amount of warming depends on which of the five recognized temperature records you use.

If you believe the satellite records - that NASA says are the most accurate - the warming since 1998 is between 0.02 and 0.04C or 0.1 to 0.2C per century. Statistically, it provides no evidence of warming of any sort.

The other measurements are the surface temperature records that have very poor surface coverage - virtually nothing over the ocean and huge areas of the earth - and have been systematically “adjusted” over the years to exaggerate the warming over the last hundred years or so. For instance, according to the GISS 2008 temperature record, the world warmed by 0.45C between 1910 and 2000. By January 2017, the GISS records showed that the warming for the same period had increased to 0.75C. Remarkable!

According to the satellites, the 2016 El Nino was not much hotter than that of 1998 but the surface temperature records indicate a more rapid rate of warming. But there is a big problem with this. El Nino events are natural and unpredictable and, because they are isolated events, they are unrelated to increasing carbon dioxide concentrations that would lead to a steady temperature rise. Measuring from the 1998 peak temperature to 2016 peak temperature gives a much more rapid rate of warming than measuring the average temperature trend over the period.  So they use the temperature peaks. Putting it another way, if the 2016 El Nino had been cooler than that of 1998, would they have told us that it heralds global cooling? I think not.
The plain fact is that although the computer models predicted 0.5C temperature rise during the last 18 years the records show that world has not warmed in any statistically significant sense.  Even the surface temperature records show a warming of 0.2C over that period. According to the IPCC, half of this warming will be man-made. Nothing to get excited about.

Once again, the global warming fraternity have used half-truths to mislead the public into believing that dangerous man-made global warming is really happening when the information they quote from shows the opposite.

By Willis Eschenbach

I saw a lovely young woman on TV tonight at NYU, New York University. She was in a riot that was designed to silence someone, to keep them from speaking on campus. She was screaming “We will not sit back and allow Nazis to have a platform to feel comfortable and organize and mobilize!"…

I wanted to reach through the TV and shake her and say “Nazis are people who use violence to silence others from speaking, and that’s you!” But unfortunately, this bizarre inversion is all the rage these days. I saw an email to a Republican electoral voter that said “You are a hateful bigot, and I hope you die!”

Clearly the writer had not heard of irony.

Now, I was a student at the University of California in Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement of 1964-65. I was just a foot soldier, I went to rallies and speeches. It was a movement designed to force the University to use the same rules on campus that apply off campus - the usual American First Amendment rules. The movement was driven by the liberal side of the political spectrum. We sat in and had peaceful demonstrations to demand that the University stop censoring speakers and stop preventing them from speaking on campus. Back then, liberals were all about free speech and non-violence. And we succeeded, the University started letting all speakers have equal access.

So I nearly wept last night to see the University of California once again conspiring to silence a speaker, and the irony was, it was being driven to do so by violence from the very same liberals that once prized free speech and non-violence. When did that change happen? How did I miss it? When did the Democrats become the party of riots, beatings, and intimidation?

The Berkeley speaker in question was Milo Yiannopoulos. He is the ultimate liberal nightmare, because he is a funny gay Jewish Republican. He breaks all the boundaries at once, their minds can’t handle it.

Now, the University played an underhanded game. First they said OK, the campus Republican Club can invite you to speak. Then, not long before the event, they said the Republican Club had to pay for the security.

Note that this is not security to protect people from the Republican club. This is security to protect people from liberal rioters.. explain to me why the organizers need to pay for that?

Now, imagine for a minute that you run such a University. If you know that people may riot against a speaker, the obvious response is that you get your campus cops together with the city police. You plan on how you are going to control the crowd. You consider what you will do if various scenarios occur. You design, barricade, and enforce a pathway for people who wish to hear the speaker have safe access. You deploy your women and men to minimize and prevent violence from happening.

However, Janet Napolitano, the head of the University, along with the Mayor of Berkeley, acted in a most cowardly manner. Rather than do any of that planning and coordination and action, they stood idly by while a hundred thousand dollars worth of damage was being done by rioters. I couldn’t find a single report of anyone arrested.

And of course, a predictable riot occurred as an inescapable result of the pusillanimous actions of the authorities. Then the University cravenly used that riot as an excuse to cancel the event, preventing Milo from speaking. Not only that, but another University of California campus followed up by canceling Milo’s speaking engagement there. Gutless University cowards. UNIVERSITIES ARE SUPPOSED TO PRESENT AND PROTECT OPPOSING VIEWS!

So we have the irony of the University and the Berkeley Police force, those very institutions who are supposed to promote and protect free speech, standing by on a miniature modern Kristallnacht and watching as the windows of UC Berkeley, my alma mater, where liberals once demanded, promoted, and protected freedom of speech, get shattered to the ground by liberal rioters.

Then we have the irony of the name of the group who led the rioting and broke the windows to stop someone from exercising their Free Speech rights. They call themselves the “AntiFa”. This is short for “Anti-fascists”.

Who knew? Curiously, at least on my planet, “fascists” are people who riot and break windows to stop someone from speaking, and “anti-fascists” are the people who oppose that violence...in other words, anti-fascists are what the police and University are supposed to be.

Finally, we have the irony of the media. The Bloomberg headline about the UC Berkeley riots says “Milo Yiannopoulos Sparks Riots”. The Wrap says “Milo Yiannopoulos Speech at UC Berkeley Sparks Fiery Protest”.

Milo sparked the riots? Get real. THE ANTIFA SPARKED THE RIOTS! Milo is a smart, funny conservative comic who terrifies the liberals. The liberals are afraid someone might actually enjoy him and learn something from him. He didn’t “spark” anything. He was the victim of the riots, and as is far too common these days when the victim is a conservative, the media is blaming the victim.

So just to make sure I have this straight: white is black, up is down, people exercising their free speech rights are Nazis, a gay Jew is a homophobic anti-Semite, the victim of the riot caused it, and anti-fascists are people who riot and burn things ... OK, got it…

Like the song says, “I fought the irony and the irony won”....

Best to all, liberals and conservatives alike. I do wish the Democrats would get it together. Not one word from the Democratic leadership.

Forbes

It is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus.

Dont look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.

The survey results show geoscientists (also known as earth scientists) and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized one here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.

According to the newly published survey of geoscientists and engineers, merely 36 percent of respondents fit the “Comply with Kyoto” model. The scientists in this group “express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause”.

The authors of the survey report, however, note that the overwhelming majority of scientists fall within four other models, each of which is skeptical of alarmist global warming claims.

The survey finds that 24 percent of the scientist respondents fit the “Nature Is Overwhelming” model. “In their diagnostic framing, they believe that changes to the climate are natural, normal cycles of the Earth.” Moreover, “they strongly disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal lives.”

Another group of scientists fit the “Fatalists” model. These scientists, comprising 17 percent of the respondents, “diagnose climate change as both human and naturally caused. ‘Fatalists’ consider climate change to be a smaller public risk with little impact on their personal life. They are skeptical that the scientific debate is settled regarding the IPCC modeling.” These scientists are likely to ask, “How can anyone take action if research is biased?”

The next largest group of scientists, comprising 10 percent of respondents, fit the “Economic Responsibility” model. These scientists “diagnose climate change as being natural or human caused. More than any other group, they underscore that the ‘real’ cause of climate change is unknown as nature is forever changing and uncontrollable. Similar to the ‘nature is overwhelming’ adherents, they disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal life. They are also less likely to believe that the scientific debate is settled and that the IPCC modeling is accurate. In their prognostic framing, they point to the harm the Kyoto Protocol and all regulation will do to the economy.”

The final group of scientists, comprising 5 percent of the respondents, fit the “Regulation Activists” model. These scientists “diagnose climate change as being both human- and naturally caused, posing a moderate public risk, with only slight impact on their personal life.” Moreover, “They are also skeptical with regard to the scientific debate being settled and are the most indecisive whether IPCC modeling is accurate.”

Taken together, these four skeptical groups numerically blow away the 36 percent of scientists who believe global warming is human caused and a serious concern.

One interesting aspect of this new survey is the unmistakably alarmist bent of the survey takers. They frequently use terms such as “denier” to describe scientists who are skeptical of an asserted global warming crisis, and they refer to skeptical scientists as “speaking against climate science” rather than “speaking against asserted climate projections.” Accordingly, alarmists will have a hard time arguing the survey is biased or somehow connected to the ‘vast right-wing climate denial machine.’

Another interesting aspect of this new survey is that it reports on the beliefs of scientists themselves rather than bureaucrats who often publish alarmist statements without polling their member scientists. We now have meteorologists, geoscientists and engineers all reporting that they are skeptics of an asserted global warming crisis, yet the bureaucrats of these organizations frequently suck up to the media and suck up to government grant providers by trying to tell us the opposite of what their scientist members actually believe.

People who look behind the self-serving statements by global warming alarmists about an alleged “consensus” have always known that no such alarmist consensus exists among scientists. Now that we have access to hard surveys of scientists themselves, it is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus.

By: Dennis T Avery

We’re told “the science is settled” on global warming. “97 percent of scientists” agree that humans are to blame. Meanwhile, climate models continue to predict nearly three times as much warming as is recorded on earth Why the huge disparity?  CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Physics) says now it knows.

In 2015, London’s Express carried a startling headline on CERN’s recent study of interactions between cosmic rays and the clouds that let varying degrees of solar heat warm our planet. “Has climate change been disproved? Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels may not be the primary cause of global warming..."The Express ventured that the experiment “might turn the whole climate change debate and projected temperature increases upside down.”
The rest of the media - and the alarmists - ignored CLOUD.

Now, CERN has just informed its community of researchers that its CLOUD Experiment suggests “estimates of high climate sensitivity [to CO2 changes] may have to be revised downwards.” That is lead author, Ken Carslaw, quoted in the CERN Courier (Dec., 2016).

We know, from the Old Masters’ paintings in the world’s museums, that the Medieval Warming skies were generally sunny. Little Ice Age skies, in sharp contrast, were painted as heavily overcast. Researchers also agree that in the years since the intense cold of the Maunder Minimum, the sun strongly (but erratically) increased its sunspot average. (The more sunspots the warmer the earth.) The average day in 1710 had only three sunspots. By 2000, the average was up to 114!

But what links sunspots and the changes in cloudiness?

In 2008, Henrik Svensmark of the Danish Space Institute filled a cloud chamber with the earth’s atmospheric gases, and turned on a UV light to mimic the sun’s ultraviolet heat. He was amazed at how fast the chamber filled with myriad tiny cloud seed particles.

CLOUD used a particle accelerator and a super-clean cloud chamber to carry Svensmark’s experiment to the next level. CLOUD found that the computers had underestimated the cloudiness of the Little Ice Age, because they completely failed to understand the dramatic impact of the ionized cloud seed particles created by cosmic rays! The ionization attracts other molecules in the atmosphere, so the cloud seeds grow instead of evaporating,

In a related Nature article, CERN’s Jasper Kirkby says that ions from cosmic rays increase the number of cloud seeds by one to two orders of magnitude.  In addition, the ionized clouds reflect more solar heat back into space - and they’re longer-lasting.  The cloud variations thus amplify the sun’s variability! The clouds, in effect are the earth’s thermostats - and the IPCC has admitted it can’t model them!

Another climate factor has also confused us. The 60-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation - not recognized until 1996 - tricked us into believing, during the 1970s, that we faced another Ice Age; then, after 1988 we worried about a parboiled planet; now, we have the “inexplicable” pause in our global warming through the past 20 years. This non-warming will likely last at least until 2030. When the warming resumes, it will be significant but not dangerous.

Does this latest science spell the end of the world’s horribly expensive CO2 panic? Why aren’t the Left and the media welcoming this new high-tech science as eagerly as they did the computer models that failed?

Statistician Bjorn Lomborg just estimated we’d have to spend $100 trillion on renewables to cut global warming by merely 0.3 degree in 2100 - -assuming the computer models are correct. Can President Trump’s doubts about man-made warming save us from Lomborg’s pattern of terrifying waste?

Dennis T. Avery documented the long, natural Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle with co-author S. Fred Singer in Unstoppable Glial Warming Every 1,500 Years. 2007. His forthcoming book details why most ancient cultures collapsed in “little ice ages.” He has degrees from Michigan State and Wisconsin.

Alan Moran

Commenting on 2016 being the “hottest year on record” Richard Lindzen said, “the temperature is always going up or down a little. What is astonishing is that in the last 20 years it hasn’t done much of anything. Here’s how the New York Times depicted the El Nino-fueled 2016, which was about 1C above the 1880 level, in line with the Lindzen prediction of the eventual warming likely to occur and the fact that it already has taken place.

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Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT and a member of the National Academy of Sciences who has long questioned climate change orthodoxy, is skeptical that a sunnier outlook is upon us.

“I actually doubt that,” he said. Even if some of the roughly $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars currently spent on climate research across 13 different federal agencies now shifts to scientists less invested in the calamitous narrative, Lindzen believes groupthink has so corrupted the field that funding should be sharply curtailed rather than redirected.

“They should probably cut the funding by 80 to 90 percent until the field cleans up,” he said. “Climate science has been set back two generations, and they have destroyed its intellectual foundations.”

The field is cluttered with entrenched figures who must toe the established line, he said, pointing to a recent congressional report that found the Obama administration got a top Department of Energy scientist fired and generally intimidated the staff to conform with its politicized position on climate change.

“Remember this was a tiny field, a backwater, and then suddenly you increased the funding to billions and everyone got into it,” Lindzen said. “Even in 1990 no one at MIT called themselves a ‘climate scientist’ and then all of a sudden everyone was. They only entered it because of the bucks; they realized it was a gravy train. You have to get it back to the people who only care about the science.”

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Controversy continues over causes of climate change. 14 Scientists Affirm the Sun, Not CO2, is the ‘Dominant Control’ over recent climate change, pointing to the concordance of solar radiation and temperature shifts over recent centuries.

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Politics and investment

Trump wasted no time in starting to dismantle the Obama restraints on coal, oil and gas exploration and development.

Though at the time of writing, Mr Pruit had yet to be confirmed as EPA Administrator, his influence is already apparent. Mr Pruitt has rolled back EPA measures that were forcing closure of coal generators by limiting their emissions. And he has indicated that he will cease to allow California a waiver to continue pushing the envelope with stiffer auto emission requirements. That policy has brought a $500 million cross subsidy to the Elon Musk companies that have sold emission rights to other car companies; Mr Musk is disappointed that the boondoggle might be cut back.

And the Senate is moving to block EPA regulations that would impose additional costs on coal and gas generators by forcing them to monitor streams and limit methane venting.  EPA has also been forced to close down its climate change propaganda.

Myron Ebell, who led the EPA transition team, has called for the agency to be shrunk by two thirds, while Richard Lindzen has counseled the Trump administration not to simply rechannel funding on climate science, claiming the profession is now too rusted-on to the doom laden philosophy, and urges that spending on climate research instead be slashed by 80 per cent.

Myron Ebell also confirmed that Trump would pull out of the Paris agreement and visited Number 10 Downing Street to provide a briefing. But United Nations climate chief, Patricia Espinosa, has warned President Donald Trump against pulling out of the Paris agreement. The ex-diplomat apparently kept a straight face when she said, “Ultimately, this is about the competitiveness of the United States”.

Demonstrating the gulf between the global elites and popular opinion, the 2017 Davos meeting increased its focus on climate change with some 20 sessions devoted to it and an exhibition highlighting it as bringing calamities, “from rampant emissions to rising sea levels”. Polling of the 600 delegates showing that climate change had become the number one issue ahead of “involuntary immigration” and terrorism. Sharing the “Davos man” view is the European Environment Agency (EEA). Its latest report says we have to act soon to avoid rising sea levels, intense heatwaves, flooding, droughts, storms and increasingly extreme and frequent freakish weather.

Clean energy investments are not likely to save us.  Globally they seem to have stalled, falling 18 per cent in 2016 (though there may be an increase obscured by the falling price of some of the technologies which however remain three times more costly than coal)

Clean energy investments are not likely to save us.  Globally they seem to have stalled, falling 18 per cent in 2016 (though there may be an increase obscured by the falling price of some of the technologies which however remain three times more costly than coal).

Enlarged

Other proposals favoring economy-crushing policies to join two Australian states and California in opting for 50 per cent renewables include one from Scotland, though the director of policy at Scottish Renewables said the new renewable energy target was achievable but “absolutely depends on the right support from both the UK and Scottish Governments”.

South Korea claims it is to begin auctioning emissions rights from next year to meet its Paris commitment of 22 per cent reduction on 2012 levels (page 43). The first phase will provide 97% free allowances, and the next phase (2021-2025) only 90% free allowances and 10% auctioned. In the EU, carbon credits, having traded as high as 30 Euros per tonne of CO2 in April 2006, remain trading at less than one fifth of this ($) due to over-allocation and the economic effects of (regulatory induced) high energy prices. 

In Australia, the government-appointed “expert panel” examining the national electricity market came out with an astonishing paper that said the regulatory-propelled, green subsidy-laced electricity industry was actually being driven by consumers and technology! I demonstrated the fatuous nature of their report here and with my colleagues at the Australian Environment Foundation here. 

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, whilst re-affirming the crippling 23 per cent renewable energy goal appears to be softening towards “clean” coal as a continued future energy source. He seemed to see no link between the renewable impositions and his statement “We have an abundance of coal, gas, sun and wind resources ... Yet our energy is among the most expensive in the OECD.” He did however in response to a question say, “The Renewable Energy Target was never intended to be perpetual.”

After months of protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, activists left so much waste at their camp state, officials have ordered it be cleaned up to prevent an “environmental disaster.”

Dump trucks and work crews moved into the campsite Monday to clean up the abandoned cars, structures, trash and waste left by thousands of protesters who converged on the region to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline over concerns it would contaminate drinking water relied upon by American Indians.

Rather ironically, the waste generated by protesters posed its own threat to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s drinking water, Reuters reported. Protesters have long claimed the Dakota Pipeline would contaminate tribal drinking water.

State, tribal and local officials worked with protest organizers to clean up the campsite, which sits on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land in North Dakota.

“It is paramount for public safety, and to prevent an environmental disaster, that the camps be cleared prior to a potential spring flood,” GOP North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a pipeline supporter, said in a statement issued Monday.

Standing Rock Sioux officials asked pipeline protesters to leave the makeshift camp outside the reservation in January after months of sometimes violent protesting over the Dakota Access Pipeline. Hundreds of protesters stayed, and are now leasing reservation land.

The Dakota Access Pipeline sparked a massive political fight last year after Standing Rock Sioux tribal officials came out against the project, saying it would trample over sacred sites and threaten its drinking water.

They were joined by thousands of environmental activists in physically blocking the $3.8 billion pipeline’s route.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blocked the pipeline in November by not granting the project the easement it needs to cross the Missouri River. The Corps initially approved the project in summer 2016.

President Donald Trump came out in support of the pipeline, and signed an executive order to move Dakota Access along in the approval process. Observers expect the project to be approved by the Trump administration.

Germany’s DWD national weather service just issued the preliminary results for the country’s January 2017 mean temperature.

According the DWD’s approximately 2000 stations scattered across the country, January’s mean temperature came in 2.7C colder than the 1981-2010 mean. Especially southern Germany was cold, as was its neighbor Austria, see below.

The lowest recorded temperature in Germany was measured in Reit im Winkl: -26.3C. Most of the precipitation this past January, which was 27% below normal, fell as snow.

The DWD attributed the colder temperatures to a wintry weather pattern.

No warming

The European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) has analyzed the German data for the Erfurt-Weimar station and has found that there has been no warming in January over the past 45 years (since 1973):

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Despite rising atmospheric CO2 concentration, January temperature at the Erfurt-Weimar station has remained flat since 1973. Chart: Stefan Kampfe, EIKE.

Josef Kowatsch also analyzed Germany’s January temperature trend and found that the month has in fact cooled almost 2C over the past 25 years. I’ll see if I can chase down his chart.

EIKE also looked at the Central England January temperature record and found that there has only been a slight warming over the past 105 years!

In fact the warmest years in Central England were recorded in the early part of the 20th century.

Enlarged
Chart source: (EIKE)

Frigid Austria

Meanwhile Austria’s ZAMG national weather service reports that January 2017 in the country was “extraordinarily cold”, the second coldest in 30 years, with the preliminary mean coming in at 3.0C below the long term 1981-2010 mean.

The chart shows the temperature deviation from the mean.

Temperature January 2017: deviation from the 1981-2010 mean. Computed using SPARTACUS data through 29 January 2017. Source: ZAMG

President-Elect Trump has pierced the veils surrounding the holy of holies wherein reside the eco-dogmatists of the EPA and the U.N. and promises the rightful return of respect to the essence of scientific research...skepticism.  In 1746, philosopher Denis Diderot penned, “Skepticism is the first step towards truth.” Billions of taxpayer monies have been spent by our progressively bent government and its crony supplicants to turn that concept on its head.  Mass media acolytes wordsmithed “skeptic” into a dirty word.  Emulating the harsh but masterful government propaganda machine of 1930s Germany, they successfully convinced much of the public and ruling class that the life-sustaining trace gas, carbon dioxide, is an earth-destroying pollutant.  Federal agencies promoted the concept and dispensed billions of dollars in lavishly funding those scientists and commercial interests willing to pervert the term “climate change,” a constant feature of geohistory, into a man-made threat and a money-making commercial enterprise.

Classical scientific inquiry relies on axioms governing the formation of a tentative hypothesis, a nascent theory, and subsequent rigorous comparisons of predictions based on such a theory and real-world observations.  Climate computer-derived forecasts have consistently failed to match long-term climate reality.  Much of the error results from the dogmatic insistence by activist researchers that the model is reality, rather than a much simplified theoretical construct.  A trusting public expects the tax monies and gifts showered on universities and researchers to result in scientific reports and validated findings based on an impartial process.  What did it get?

It got Al Gore putting the carbon dioxide temperature change before the global temperature change horse.  It got “ClimateGate.” It got a Supreme Court that ruled that the Earth’s greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act.  It got the “carbon dioxide endangerment finding” by the EPA administrator du jour that gave legal power to the federal bureaucracy to regulate greenhouse atmospheric concentrations because they “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” It got “ethanolized” gasoline, to the delight of corn farmers, but also a gas tank brew that gives lower mileage and more net pollution.  It got wind and solar power advertised as “clean and free energy sources.” It got to see the resultant mountaintop destruction of natural habitats, and the conversion of farmland into automobile fuel stock.  It got to see wind turbine slaughter of eagles become a federally countenanced collateral damage cost.  It also thereby got needlessly more expensive and less reliable electric energy.  It got higher tax bills as complicit state legislators mandated increasing use of highly subsidized renewables.  It got “free solar” residential electricity subsidized by federal and state tax giveaways paid for on the backs of the poor.  It got to see the oxymoron “crony capitalism” in action.  It got to see scientifically illiterate Hollywood stars become climate and energy experts, forgetting that great actors become great by making the audience believe that what is not true seems true, and by mouthing words written by others.  It got to see the dire computer-generated scare stories of coming climate catastrophes fail to materialize on schedule.  It got to see a progressive waning of sunspot activity, and now a renewed concern about an approaching period of significant global cooling such as characterized the “Little Ice Age” of the 15th-18th century.

Echoing Ross Perot, the next great sucking sound should be that of the Washington, D.C. swamp being drained and taking away the accumulated detritus of pseudo-science coopted in the service of false dogma and political favoritism, with the subsequent restoration of “skepticism” to its place as a benchmark for the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Soon to be ex-president Obama is throwing as much sand as possible into the energy machinery on his way out the door.  What can only be interpreted as a petulant and defiant act of sabotage, he is poisoning the well of energy and environmental reform promised by president-elect Trump.

Labor employment figures may take a hit for a bit, as the newly unemployed bureaucrats, non-tenured university researchers, renewable energy businesses shorn of governmental subsidies, commercial mega-farmers of corn-for-ethanol, and the supporting cast of radical environmentalists and NGOs look for gainful employment.

Charles G. Battig, M.S., M.D., Heartland Institute policy expert on environment; VA-Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment (VA-SEEE).  His website is www.climateis.com.

As the end of the year approaches, perhaps it is time to make an accounting of 2016 from a climate viewpoint. The high points of the year included the stay by the Supreme Court on implementation of the EPA’s so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP) on February 9. This stay remained in effect for the rest of the year despite the death on February 13 of the author of one of the five votes cast in favor of it. The second high point was the decision by one of the candidates for President to oppose climate alarmism and his subsequent election victory in November.

The low point of the year was the decision of the Democratic Party to advocate an end to the burning of fossil fuels by 2050. This could not have been achieved, of course, but the attempt to do so would have resulted in huge adverse economic and environmental effects. Since the Democratic presidential candidate lost, these policy goals are now presumably null and void. With one added vote from a Supreme Court candidate nominated by a Democratic president, the CPP would likely have gone into effect in 2017 or 2018. A number of other EPA regulations that directly or indirectly implement climate alarmism have gone into effect, however, and may or may not be withdrawn by the new Trump Administration.

So it can be said that although climate policy was not the major issue in the election, the outcome means that there is now considerable hope that the US will avoid major damage from climate alarmism. No similar statement can be made for blue states, particularly California, that have or may adopt the anti-economic, anti-science, and anti-environmental tenets of climate alarmism.

So despite a roller coaster ride all year and several very close calls, the US as a whole appears to have escaped the devastating impact from climate alarmism at least for the next four years and possibly for eight years. Although it is much too early to be sure, there may even be hope for the demise of climate alarmism in Western Europe and other developed countries, although after much more damage has been done.

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How Trump’s Climate Skepticism Can Play a Crucial Role in Achieving His Larger Objectives
Alan Carlin

It is all too clear that the Climate-industrial Complex (CIC) has not abandoned its support for climate alarmism despite the shock of Donald Trump’s election. Instead, the last few weeks have witnessed their first counterattack - to try to persuade Trump of the virtues of their cause. The first effort was launched by the New York Times in a meeting with Trump where they attempted to persuade him, among other things, that recent storms have been unusually strong because of alleged climate change and that there was connectivity between human activity and climate change. They did succeed in getting Trump to agree that some undefined connectivity exists and that he had an open mind on climate.

But the major effort was that by Albert Gore to meet with Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, which led to a meeting with Donald Trump. We do not know what was said during the meeting except that Gore tried to find common ground between the two of them on climate. The proposed appointment of Scott Pruitt as EPA Administrator announced on December 7 underlines the ineffectiveness of both the NY Times’s and Gore’s efforts to persuade Trump.

In Understanding This It Is Important to Keep in Mind the Main Thrust of Trump’s Election Campaign

From a larger viewpoint, Trump has primarily set himself the task of reinvigorating the limping US economy and particularly the economic situation of those hurt by the Great Recession. He has even promised to revive the US coal industry. This last may be somewhat difficult since the advent of the widespread use of fracking has greatly lowered the price of natural gas by bringing huge new supplies to market. This has undercut the market for coal, although this has also been hurt by Obama’s regulatory “war on coal.”

It is far from clear whether Trump can do much more for coal than remove most or even all the climate-related regulations discouraging the use of coal, and this may not have a huge effect since to date the major adverse effects of the “war on coal” on raising electricity prices have not yet occurred because of the Supreme Court’s stay on the so-called Clean Power Plan. But he can do a great deal with regard to encouraging greater natural gas and particularly oil development. The most important of these actions would be to greatly ease the Federal regulations on and availability of oil and natural gas and to ease the regulatory oversight on the construction of additional pipelines to bring these products to market. If the resulting development were predominantly on Federal land or waters, it would result in a much greater increase in Federal revenue than if it were on state or private lands or waters.

Both would reduce the price of oil and natural gas and result in their more widespread availability for both domestic use and export. If these actions lowered prices sufficiently one could even conceive of making the US the new Saudi Arabia of oil, natural gas, and coal. If Trump can bring this about, this should provide a huge boost for the US economy and provide many jobs in the natural gas, oil, and pipeline industries.

It Is in Trump’s Interest to Support the Climate Skeptic Cause for Other Reasons

The logic of this approach should prevent Trump from any serious consideration of embracing even parts of the climate alarmist agenda and ideology. Presumably this does not bode well for the success of either the New York Times’s or Albert Gore’s attempts to do so. Unless Trump can show clear signs of an economic revival over the next few years, he is likely to be a one-term President. The easiest opportunity he has is probably rapid development of natural gas and oil and pipelines to carry them. It is hard to believe that Trump would give that up as a result of a little talk about climate alarmism from the Times and Gore. In the highly unlikely case that he embraces climate alarmism in any serious way, his major goal is much less likely to be achieved. So he is much more likely to lend no more than a few soothing words towards climate alarmism.

One of the most important aspects of this oil and gas strategy is that it should result in large increases in Federal revenue, particularly if the oil and gas come from Federal lands and waters. Because of the somewhat precarious Federal finances that may result from Trump’s tax, military and infrastructure enhancement proposals, and budget deficits inherited from the Obama Administration, these increased revenues could be very crucial to the success of Trump’s Administration as a whole and thus his chances for reelection in 2020.

The Best Approach Is to Adopt the Already Existing Case that the Alarmist “Science” Is Invalid

The easiest way to justify this approach to climate strategy is simply to adopt the arguments put forth by climate skeptics concerning climate alarmism “science.” They have shown that the climate alarmist science is invalid. What better reason to abandon the Times and Gore in their continuing efforts to promote climate alarmism? A considerable portion of the research has been done by volunteers rather than the few and much maligned (by climate alarmists) paid professionals, but it is free for the asking, so why not? Many of the arguments concerning scientific invalidity can be found in my book, Environmentalism Gone Mad, and in a new research report by Wallace et al., 2016 discussed here.

Together, this and other research by climate skeptics shows that the “science” used by climate alarmists is scientifically invalid since it does not satisfy the scientific method. If Trump pursues this approach, he would be well advised to say so very publicly and very explicitly rather than attempting to hide his climate skepticism like George W. Bush. The NY Times and Al Gore will not like this, but it is better to fight it out on the basis of the alarmists’ invalid science rather than the moral wisdom of their alleged attempt to “save the world” from imaginary global warming/climate change due to human-caused CO2 emissions. It would also promote the use of good science in the future.

There is a lot of angst in the air over the future of climate science now that the White House is occupied by a president who has referred to the global climate change scare as a hoax. But, is the anxiety warranted?

The president’s choice for the new directorship at the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, believes that climate change is real, as he attested in his recent confirmation hearing. He noted, “Science tells us that the climate is changing and that human activity in some manner impacts that change.”

Regardless of the obstructionist Democrats boycotting the committee confirmation vote, Pruitt’s main concerns as Oklahoma Attorney General is federal overreach into states rights, not encouraging dirty air and water.

So, what about any dangers to the science of climate science?

As any student of science knows, the scientific method involves observation, hypothesis, and testing - lots of testing - before a theory is established. Furthermore, modern scientific practice is assisted by the use of the powerful but quite limited tool of computer modeling.

To envision climate change decades from now, modern climatology must rely on modeling. Such modeling combines equations of atmospheric dynamics with multitudinous observations and estimates throughout numerous vertical layers of air to arrive at state-of-the-science outlooks of distant future global climate.

Obviously this is a complex job that would benefit from as much informed perspective and constructive observation and testing as available.

That’s where the new Trump initiative of more tolerance to alternative views comes in.

Rather than being anti-science, the new administration is more pro-perspective, apparently prepared to listen to scientists who have been marginalized as “deniers” by the Obama administration.

This can only improve the understanding of climate change, as many previously deplorable, yet highly qualified scientists are given a stronger voice to expand the frontiers of climate consciousness.

These scientists include atmospheric science PhDs, field-experienced practitioners, state and other government climatologists and meteorologists, and so many others well-versed in air-science theory and practice.

Regardless, there is a move afoot for some scientists to march against the perceived anti-science ideology of the Trump administration. When informed of this movement by a colleague who also wondered if there were any plans for a counter march, I responded: “Not ever likely… Those marching to protest the present leftist ideology permeating environmental science would probably have to march right to the unemployment office.”

Yet, even knowledgeable atmospheric scientists who are skeptical of the present climate change “theory” know that humans do affect climate in some way from a variety of activities; but the key questions include: to what spatial and temporal extent and how catastrophic is the manmade influence? Besides, is it worth spending trillions of dollars to theoretically control future global climate.

A good example of anthropogenically produced climate impact is the well-documented urban heat island. This heat island effect is demonstrated by the measured several degree increase in city temperatures compared with surrounding countryside temperatures. The magnitude of the city-country temperature difference can be mitigated somewhat by managed energy use, brightening cityscape rooftops to reflect away sunlight, and suchlike actions.

Note that the heat island effect is on a limited scale that most people seem to find quite bearable and preferable to more rustic subsistence.

Globally, measuring and finding natural versus human culprits for changing climate conditions is quite a bit more problematic.

Worldwide, both on the small-scale and the global scale, populations are better able to withstand the daily onslaught of changing weather and the long-term trend in climate when their governments properly allocate limited public funds to the best preparation, forecasting, and emergency response capabilities and ongoing research that tax dollars can buy.

Among this mix of critical funding allocations needed to best benefit the American public, the science of climate science should hold up well and advance just fine under the pragmatic Trump administration.

Anthony J. Sadar is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist and author of In Global Warming We Trust: Too Big to Fail (Stairway Press, 2016).

one-freezing cold, heavy snowstorms, and floods have been plaguing the European continent this week, causing power outages, traffic jams, cancelled flights, and even a stream of plastic eggs with toys washing up on a German island.

On Saturday, heavy precipitation paralyzed Istanbul, Turkey. Around 6,000 passengers found themselves stranded as hundreds of flights to and from the city’s main Ataturk Airport were cancelled due to the snowstorm.

People walk on the Istiklal avenue during snowfalls in Istanbul on January 7, 2017. Yasin Akgul / AFP

The Bosphorus Strait was closed to ships due to poor visibility, cutting off the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea from the Mediterranean.

Many drivers abandoned their cars and walked rather than waiting for streets to be cleaned. Istanbul’s metro system operated throughout the night to deal with a sudden passenger spike.

On Friday, blizzards and snowstorms wreaked havoc across Bulgaria, forcing the closure of major roadways and the airport in the coastal city of Varna, as well as delays at Bucharest International Airport. Bulgaria also experienced power outages after a nuclear power plant reactor in neighboring Romania was shut down by operator Nuclearelectrica. The company said the snowstorm caused interference in the power grid.

n Poland, local authorities said Friday was the deadliest day of the winter, with seven victims of the elements found throughout the day.

In Serbia, the weather caused a massive car collision involving 27 vehicles on a highway connecting the capital Belgrade and the city of Nis. Reports said 22 people were injured in the incident, including six children. The entire southwestern part of the country, where 10,000 people live, was blocked off from the rest of Serbia by the storm.

In Ukraine, over 70 towns and villages throughout the country experienced power outages, the national emergency service reported. Ukraine boosted consumption of natural gas in response to the cold snap, with forecasts that in January it may burn twice more fuel from underground storage tanks than planned.

Moscow, where Orthodox Christians celebrated Christmas on Friday, experienced its coldest Christmas night in 120 years. Temperatures dropped to almost -30C in the city and as low as -32.7C in Moscow Region, the Russian national meteorological service said. It was the coldest Christmas night in Moscow since 1891, when the temperature dropped to -32.7C.

Moscow (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
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Siberians Mock Muscovites for Panic Over Record Freezing Temperatures
Moscow Times
Moscow Times

Muscovites lamenting a record-breaking January freeze aren’t just battling plummeting temperatures: they’re also being mocked by their fellow countrymen.

Moscow’s Emergency Situations Ministry told residents on Friday that temperatures would drop as low as minus 35 degrees Celsius during the night of Jan. 7-8, warning that abnormal frosts may affect the city’s power grid in some areas.

“This is what it’s like here today,” journalist Michael Nacke wrote on Twitter, “But [Game of Thrones character John] Snow is a fool, he hasn’t got a hat!”

Yet even as Muscovites have taken to social media to vent their wintertime woes, Russians from across the country’s colder climes began mocking their softer countrymen in the capital.

“It’s a rare day when the tweets of frozen Muscovites warm all of Russia,” artist Artyom Loskutov from Novosibirsk wrote on Twitter.

Many Siberians were keen to show their friends in the capital a real Russian winter. Ilya Yablokov in the Siberian city of Tomsk shared his post on Facebook, showing the temperature hovering at a cool minus 46 degrees.  “I’m heading all this whining from Muscovites about the weather,” he wrote. “I just want to show them this.”

Moscow politician Vladimir Milov, originally from Kemerovo, was less amused, writing, “Today my news feed is filled with the traditional Siberian and Ural bullying about the Moscow “frost” (-25). Nice to know they love Muscovites.

Russian political activist Natalia Pelevina, possibly left speechless due to the bitter cold, simply posted a picture of the Mona Lisa bundled up in a warm blanket.

The Moscow government has advised residents to avoid going outdoors as much as possible and to wear appropriate clothing.

Temperatures in the capital are expected to rise to a balmy minus 19 by Monday Jan. 9.

From Wire and Twitter reports:

We know the northern hemisphere has been getting colder, for example we reported earlier this week that the USA was colder than any time last year with an average temperature of 16 degrees F. It isn’t just the USA, in northern Africa, reports suggest that it is only the second time in living memory that snow has fallen on the Sahara desert. The last record is for February 18, 1979, when the snow storm lasted just half an hour.

Snow falling on the Saharan mountain ranges is very rare, let alone on the sandy dunes of the continent’s largest desert.

sahara-snowfall
Photo by Karim Bouchetata of Meteo Algerie

Amateur photographer Karim Bouchetata says he took the incredible pictures of snow covering the sand in the small Saharan desert town of Ain Sefra, Algeria, on December 19. The unforgiving red dunes looked pristine and picturesque.

“It looked amazing as the snow settled on the sand and made a great set of photos. The snow stayed for about a day and has now melted away.” he added.

Quote via The India Times

Trump gives hope to derailment of the establishment’s plans (both parties) for a New World Order - which would cede our rights and control over our lives including a redistribution of any wealth to the UN.

Update: see the whole story behind the story in their own words in Global Warming Quotes & Climate Change Quotes: Human-Caused Global Warming Advocates/Supporters by C3 Headlines.

Quotes by H.L. Mencken, famous columnist: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” And, “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.”

We start with Mencken’s quotes because they are so well known from the past, but yet still so relevant so many years later. His past insights to those whose lives are addicted to the seeking of power, or control, or fame, or money is still as valid today, as it was 70 years ago. Below are quotes from the powerful; the rich; the religious; the studious; the famous; the fanatics; and, the aspiring, all sharing a common theme of keeping “the populace alarmed” to further their own personal, selfish goals.

The threat to the world is not man-made global warming or climate change. The threat to the world, as is always the case, is a current group(s) of humans who want to impose their values and desires on others. The people below represent such a group, and they are not saints as individuals; in fact, quite the opposite, unfortunately.

Once you read the below quotes, come back and re-read the previous paragraph. The threat to the world is not man-made global warming or climate change. The threat to the world, as is always the case, is a current group(s) of humans who want to impose an ‘Agenda’ based on their elite values and self-importance. The people below represent such a group, and they are not saints as individuals; in fact, quite the opposite, unfortunately.

See the quotes here.

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Australia PM’s adviser: climate change is UN hoax to create new world order

Maurice Newman, chairman of Tony Abbott’s business advisory council, says UN is using debunked climate change science to impose authoritarian rule.

The Australian prime minister’s chief business adviser has accused the United Nations of using debunked climate change science to lead a new world order - provocative claims made to coincide with a visit from the top UN climate negotiator.

Christiana Figueres, who heads the UN framework convention on climate change, touring Australia this week, urged the country to move away from heavily polluting coal production.

Under Tony Abbott’s leadership, Australia has been reluctant to engage in global climate change politics, unsuccessfully attempting to keep the issue off the agenda of the G20 leaders’ summit in Brisbane last year.

Maurice Newman, the chairman of Abbott’s business advisory council and a climate change sceptic with a history of making provocative statements, said the UN was using false models showing sustained temperature increases to end democracy and impose authoritarian rule.

“The real agenda is concentrated political authority,” Newman wrote in an opinion piece published in the Australian newspaper. “Global warming is the hook. It’s about a new world order under the control of the UN....

“It is opposed to capitalism and freedom and has made environmental catastrophism a household topic to achieve its objective.”

Figueres used an address in Melbourne to urge Australia to move away from coal, the country’s second-largest export, as the world grapples with global warming.

“Economic diversification will be a challenge that Australia faces,” she said.

Abbott has described coal as “good for humanity” and the “foundation of prosperity” for the foreseeable future.

Figueres also urged Australia to play a leading role at the climate summit in Paris in December, a call unlikely to be heeded given Abbott’s track record.

At the Brisbane G20 meeting, he warned that the Paris summit would fail if world leaders decided to put cutting carbon emissions ahead of economic growth.

At home, Abbott, who in 2009 said the science behind climate change was “crap”, repealed a tax on carbon pricing and abolished the independent Climate Commission advisory body.

Asked on the Canberra leg of her trip if the politics around renewable energy was as toxic elsewhere in the world, Figueres said: “No. At the global level what we see is increased participation of renewables, increased investment in renewables, increased excitement about renewables.”

Abbott’s office and the UN did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Updated: Public and many to most real scientists are unconvinced.

From: Malcolm Roberts [mailto:malcolmr@conscious.com.au]
Sent: Friday, 24 April 2015 12:07 PM
To: UQ VC OFFICE
Cc: John Cook; Ove Hoegh-Guldberg; FORBES VIV; Carter Bob; Plimer Ian; Jennifer Marohasy
Subject: D15/7927: Complaint of serious corruption of science by UQ’s John Cook and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg

Dear Professor Hoj:

As an honours engineering graduate from the University of Queensland I am inquiring of you as to the reasons our university supports the work of John Cook who serially misrepresents climate and science? Specifically, why is our university wasting valuable funds to mislead the public through a free course and by producing associated international video material?  Course

Please refer to the lower half of page 4 of Appendix 5, here.

It details John Cook’s fabrication of an unscientific ‘consensus’. Science is not decided by claims of consensus. Resorting to claims of consensus is unscientific and contradicts the scientific process.

Fabricating false claims of scientific consensus is not honest.

Science is decided by empirical scientific evidence. John Cook has repeatedly failed to provide any such evidence that use of hydrocarbon fuels is causing the entirely natural climate variability we experience.

A succinct summary of John Cook’s fabrication of a consensus, and of the corruption of science upon which his claims rely and that is furthered by his claims, and of the empirical scientific evidence he blatantly contradicts, are discussed in pages 6-18 of my report to federal MPs Senator Simon Birmingham and Bob Baldwin. It is available at this link. 

My seven years of independent investigation have proven that there is no such empirical scientific evidence anywhere in the world. Climate alarm is unfounded and is a purely political construct pushing a political agenda. Please refer to Appendices 2, 6, 6a, 7 and 8 at this link.

John Cook’s core public climate claims are false and blatantly contradict empirical scientific evidence. Please refer to appendix 4 at the same link.

Further, John Cook and / or his employer are receiving funds in return for his deceiving the public, politicians and journalists and I’m wondering if that would make his work a serious offense.

As you likely know, John Cook works closely with the university’s Ove Hoegh-Guldberg who reportedly has many serious conflicts of financial interest surrounding his false climate claims. These are discussed on pages 54-59 of Appendix 9 at this link and briefly on pages 16 and 17 of my report to Senator Birmingham and Bob Baldwin MP.

I draw your attention to my formal complain dated Wednesday 10 November 2010 to the university senate about the work of Ove Hoegh-Guldberg misrepresenting climate and science. That was not independently investigated by then Vice Chancellor Paul Greenberg who was subsequently dismissed over another event, reportedly for a breach of ethics. My formal complaint is discussed on pages 57 and 58 of Appendix 9 at this link.

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg’s responses to my request for empirical scientific evidence of human causation of climate variability have repeatedly and always failed to provide such evidence.

This email is openly copied to both Ove Hoegh-Guldberg and John Cook and to reputable Australian scientists and academics expert on climate and to Viv Forbes an honours graduate in geology from our university. Viv Forbes understands the key facts on climate and on the corruption of climate science by beneficiaries of unfounded climate alarm perpetrated falsely by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg and John Cook.

Please stop John Cook’s misrepresentations and restore scientific integrity to our university. I please request a meeting with you to discuss our university’s role in deceiving the public and to discuss restoring scientific integrity. I would be pleased for that meeting to be in the company of John Cook and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg if that suits you.

Pages 19-26 of my report to Senator Birmingham and Bob Baldwin discuss the serious damage to our nation and to humanity and our natural environment worldwide as a result of unfounded climate alarm spread by our university’s staff. I hope that you will fulfil your responsibility for investigating and ending such corruption. To neglect to do so will mean that you condone such damage and dishonesty. I seek confidence that you will restore the university’s scientific integrity and look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Malcolm Roberts

BE (Hons) UQ, MB U Chicago, Member Beta Gamma Sigma Honours Society

Fellow AICD, MAIM, MAusIMM, MAME (USA), MIMM (UK), Fellow ASQ (USA, Aust)

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The 97% “consensus” study, Cook et al. (2013) has been thoroughly refuted in scholarly peer-reviewed journals, by major news media, public policy organizations and think tanks, highly credentialed scientists and extensively in the climate blogosphere. The shoddy methodology of Cook’s study has been shown to be so fatally flawed that well known climate scientists have publicly spoken out against it,

“The ‘97% consensus’ article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country [UK] that the energy minister should cite it.”

Mike Hulme, Ph.D. Professor of Climate Change, University of East Anglia (UEA)

Only 65 Scientists of 12,000 Make up Alleged 97% on Climate Change and Global Warming Consensus According to Breakdown of Cook et al study, say Friends of Science

In response to multiple inquiries from media and global warming advocates, Friends of Science issue this release to expose the statistical manipulation evident from the break down of the Cook et al paper. Friends of Science decry the linking of this flawed study with alleged danger from man-made carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) as there has been no global warming in 16 years despite a rise in CO2 levels; Friends of Science say the sun and oceanic oscillations are the main drivers of climate change, not CO2.

See faulty methodology of Cook study.

The following is a list of 97 articles that refute Cook’s (poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed) 97% “consensus” study. The fact that anyone continues to bring up such soundly debunked nonsense like Cook’s study is an embarrassment to science. See the list here.

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See the Galileo Movement here. Visit Then click on the blue text: “9.2.12 Evidence of Political Fraud - Malcolm Roberts”

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See Dr. Doug Hoyt’s Greenhouse Scorecard on Warwick Hughes site here.

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From Jack Black’s Climate Change Dictionary

PEER REVIEW: The act of banding together a group of like-minded academics with a funding conflict of interest, for the purpose of squeezing out any research voices that threaten the multi-million dollar government grant gravy train.

SETTLED SCIENCE: Betrayal of the scientific method for politics or money or both.

DENIER: Anyone who suspects the truth.

CLIMATE CHANGE: What has been happening for billions of years, but should now be flogged to produce ‘panic for profit.’

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE: Leftist Nutcase Prize, unrelated to “Peace” in any meaningful way.

DATA, EVIDENCE: Unnecessary details. If anyone asks for this, see “DENIER,” above.

CLIMATE SCIENTIST: A person skilled in spouting obscure, scientific-sounding jargon that has the effect of deflecting requests for “DATA” by “DENIERS.’ Also skilled at affecting an aura of “Smartest Person in the Room” to buffalo gullible legislators and journalists.

JUNK SCIENCE: The use of invalid scientific evidence resulting in findings of causation which simply cannot be justified or understood from the standpoint of the current state of credible scientific or medical knowledge

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Speaking of junk science, see Lubos Motl’s excellent point by point counter to the John Cook 104 talking points document attacking the skeptical science here.

NOTE:

See all the talks at the latest ICCC9 Conference in Las Vegas in 2014 here.

Heartland has the presentations and powerpoints posted for the Heartland ICCC IV.  If you could not go, there is plenty to see there. Please remember the goldmine of videos and PPTs at the Heartland ICCC proceeding sites for 2008 NYC here, 2009 NYC here and 2009 DC here. Here is a PPT I gave at the Heartland Instutute ICCC Meeting in 2008 and here is the follow up in 2009. Here is an abbreviated PPT in two parts I presented at a UK conference last month: Part 1, Part 2.

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See C3 Headlines excellent collection of graphs and charts that show AGW is nonsense here.

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See Climate Theater with a collection of the best climate skeptic films and documentaries here. See additional scientific youtubes here.

The left loves to reference desmogblog.com when any skeptic produce an analysis or paper challenging CAGW - see the real story about this looney left green PR firm here.

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1350+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming Alarm and here a list of 1000 stories suggesting global cooling has begun.

“The above papers support skepticism of “man-made” global warming or the environmental or economic effects of. Addendums, comments, corrections, erratum, replies, responses and submitted papers are not included in the peer-reviewed paper count. These are included as references in defense of various papers. There are many more listings than just the 900-1000 papers. Ordering of the papers is alphabetical by title except for the Hockey Stick, Cosmic Rays and Solar sections which are chronological. This list will be updated and corrected as necessary.”

The less intelligent alarmists have written a paper allegedly connecting the scientists to Exxon Mobil. Here is the detailed response from some of the featured scientists. Note that though this continues to be a knee jerk reaction by some of the followers, there is no funding of skeptic causes by big oil BUT Exxon has funded Stanford warmists to the tune of $100 million and BP UC Berkeley to $500,000,000. Climategate emails showed CRU/Hadley soliciting oil dollars and receiving $23,000,000 in funding.

See still more annotated here.

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Many more papers are catalogued at Pete’s Place here.

The science and economics of global warming are not too complicated for the average person to consider and make up his or her own mind. We urge you to do that. Go here and view some of the articles linked under “What’s New” or “A Primer on Global Warming.” Or go here and read about the new report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), which comprehensively rebuts the claims of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Go here for the sources for the factual statements in the ads.

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See the ICECAP Amazon Book store. Icecap benefits with small commission for your purchases via this link.

Go to and become a member of WeatherBell Analytics here.

Website of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) here. It’s latest report (2013) details information from almost 4,000 papers.

Science and Public Policy Institute here.

Intellicast Dr. Dewpoint Library here.

RedNeck Engineer Energy and Innovation here.

The Weather Wiz here. See how they have added THE WIZ SCHOOL (UPPER LEFT) to their website. An excellent educational tool for teachers at all class levels. “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel” - Socrates (470--399 BC)