posted December 12, 2014 12:51 PM            

With expertise in multiple disciplines, including climate research, weather modeling, physics, geology, statistical analysis, engineering, and economics, the 15 signers make the case that the foundation of the White House National Climate Assessment (NCA) is a "masterpiece of marketing" that crumbles like a "house of cards" under the weight of real-world evidence.

"They promote their 'Climate Models' as a reliable way to predict the future climate. But these models dramatically fail basic verification tests. Nowhere do they admit to these well-known failures. Instead, we are led to believe that their climate models are close to perfection," assert the scientists.

The 829-page NCA report was released on May 6 and was characterized by administration officials as "the most comprehensive, authoritative, transparent scientific report on U.S. climate change impacts ever generated."

The administration seized on the NCA findings as justification for its push to further regulate the fossil-fuel industry and to bolster alternative green-energy sources.

The scientists' rebuttal, however, strongly challenges the theory of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW), which it says is "based on a string of inferences that begins with the assumptions" that human burning of fossil fuels is driving up atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and "is so grossly flawed it should play no role in U.S. Energy Policy Analyses and CO2 regulatory processes."

The scientists do not have any affiliation with any particular organization and have worked together pro bono for several years.

Among the signatories are: Dr. George Wolff, who formerly chaired the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee; Joseph S. D'Aleo, a fellow with the American Meteorological Society; Dr. Neil Laverne Frank, former director of the National Hurricane Center in Florida; and William M. "Bill" Gray, emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University.

The authors criticize the NCA report for a lack of objectivity and its failure to include input from scientists who may question whether climate change is irrefutable and that a robust regulatory response is required.

"Science derives its objectivity from robust logic and honest evidence repeatedly tested by all knowledgeable scientists, not just those paid to support the administration's version of "Global Warming,' 'Climate Change,' 'Climate Disruption,' or whatever their marketing specialists call it today," they said.

The NCA and the White House assert that urgent action is needed because increasing average temperatures in the United States are responsible for a greater frequency of extreme weather events.

According to the NCA, average temperatures have increased between 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit and 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895 and forecasting models show a potential increase of an additional 4 degrees Fahrenheit if countermeasures are not adopted, including cap-and-trade, greater subsidization of green energy, and reduced fossil fuel production.

According to the NCA, "human influences are the primary driver of recent climate change is based on multiple lines of independent evidence."

The scientists describe that contention as "grossly flawed" and take issue with the EPA's claim — used to justify greenhouse gas regulation — that there is "90-99 percent certainty that observed warming in the latter half of the twentieth century resulted from human activity."

That claim "is totally at odds with multiple robust, consistent, independently-derived empirical datasets, all showing no statistically significant positive (or negative) trend in temperature," they wrote. "Therefore, EPA's theory … must be rejected."

The group of scientists made similar points in a Supreme Court amicus involving EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles.

In the brief the scientists assert EPA's entire hypothesis that CO2 emissions endanger human health and safety has been falsified by real-world evidence.

"As the most important example, EPA asserts as its central 'line of evidence' for CO2 'endangerment' that CO2 will warm the surface temperature of the earth through a mechanism by which rising CO2 concentrations in the troposphere in the tropics block heat transfer into outer space."

They said that if EPA's hypothesis were accurate there would necessarily be an observable "hot spot" in the tropical upper troposphere. But that has not been proven to exist, therefore, they write "the basis that EPA has for this rulemaking is no basis," they wrote.

According to their rebuttal report, "over the last 130 years the decade of the 1930s still has the most U.S. state high temperatures records."

Their assertion that climate disruptions are not increasing, ironically, is echoed in the most recent report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which the White House often cites to support its own argument.

Globally, according to the IPCC in its 2012 special report on extreme events, "since the 1950s some regions of the world have experienced a trend to more intense and longer droughts, in particular in southern Europe and West Africa, but in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, in central North America and northwestern Australia."

Furthermore, the IPCC in 2013 concluded that "current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century" and "no robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin."

The scientists also dispute the administration's claims that proposed regulation of carbon dioxide can be achieved in a cost-effective manner that will create jobs and produce economic benefit. Rather, they argue, those policies will restrict economic growth causing harm to the poor.

posted December 15, 2014 09:14 AM            

The only conclusion rational people could draw is that the global warming yippers and yappers are...against more food to feed a hungry earth...against longer life spans and against human civilization. They're anti-human and anti-civilization.

Perhaps we should quarantine them all on some rocky, inhospitable island or archipelago where they can spend 12-15 hours a day trying to keep themselves warm and fed. Tierra Del Fuego sounds ideal for these idiots.

What we should never do is pay any attention to their yipping and yapping or follow these idiots off the cliff.

December 15, 2014
Rising Seas Are Nothing New
By Viv Forbes

The most careful analysis of world sea levels suggests they are rising at between zero and 2mm per year.

Sea levels are never still, but with global temperatures flat and snow cover and polar ice steady, sea levels are probably as stable today as they ever get.

However, we still have climatists creating computer models that predict dangerously rising seas to justify their goal to ban coastal development and to revive their failing war on carbon.

Alarmists should study Earth history.

At the depth of our most recent ice age, just 16,000 years ago, a thick sheet of ice covered much of North America and Northern Europe. So much water was locked up in ice that humans could walk on dry land from London to Paris, from Siberia to Alaska, and from New Guinea to Australia.

There was no Great Barrier Reef, as Queensland’s continental shelf was part of the coastal plain, and rivers like the Burdekin met the ocean about 160 km east of its current mouth.

Then, about 13,000 years ago, with no help from man-made engines burning hydrocarbons, the Earth began warming. This was probably caused by natural cycles affecting our sun and the solar system, aided by volcanic heat along Earth’s Rings of Fire under the oceans.

The great ice sheets melted, sea levels rapidly rose some 130m, and coastal settlements and ancient port cities were drowned. Without zoning laws to guide them, our smart ancestors moved ahead of the rising waters and adapted happily to the warmer climate with less snow, more rain, more carbon dioxide plant food, and more ice-free land.

This warming phase peaked in the Medieval Warm Era about 1,000 years ago, when sea levels also peaked. They fell during the Little Ice Age, rose slightly during the Modern Warm Era, and are relatively stable now.

Rising seas are never a lethal threat to life on Earth. The danger sign is falling sea levels caused by return of the great ice sheets. This would quickly put high-latitude farming into the deep freezer, thus creating widespread starvation. Trying to grow crops on emerging salty mudflats in an icy climate will give future farmers a real climate concern.

posted January 15, 2015 04:44 PM            

Chock full of links including:

posted January 17, 2015 11:48 PM            

Is 2014 The Hottest Year Ever? Satellites Say No
01/16/2015

Climate Change: The news is ablaze with a report that 2014 was the "hottest year." But there's no reason to be excited. The story the global warming alarmists are trying to tell isn't the only one out there.

'For the third time in a decade," shouted the AP, "the globe sizzled to the hottest year on record, federal scientists announced Friday."

The Washington Post reported that "the year 2014 was the hottest ever measured, based on records going back to the year 1880." Bloomberg News challenged readers to "deny this" and directed them to "animation below" that documents "2014: The Hottest Year."

Hysteria also reigned at the BBC in Britain, the New Era in Africa, Australia's Sydney Morning Herald and all points in between.

In one sense, the breathless stories are correct: 2014 was the hottest year on record — by no more than four-hundredths of a degree. But that's based on surface thermometer records, which are not reliable.

Better measurement is done by satellites, and they indicate 2014 was the third-warmest in the 36 years that satellites have been used to document temperatures.

John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, says the satellite data show that temperature changes since 2001 are "statistically insignificant."

As expected, though, some scientists — a few of whom are considered "distinguished" — take the hottest-ever report as confirmation that man is dangerously warming his planet due to fossil-fuel use.

But a few have kept their heads. Roger Pielke, professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, told the Post that "there remain significant uncertainties in the accuracy of the land portion of the surface temperature data, where we have found a significant warm bias."

Judith Curry, professor at Georgia Tech's school of earth and atmospheric sciences, said that "with 2014 essentially tied with 2005 and 2010 for hottest year," the implication is "that there has been essentially no trend in warming over the past decade."

"This 'almost' record year does not help the growing discrepancy between the climate model projections and the surface temperature observations," she added.

posted January 18, 2015 11:32 PM            

Newsflash, you encourage most people to look for the nearest exit, not to talk! and you exhibit no inkling of understanding my position tho I've stated it loud and clear often enough. I actually think its a little more complex than left/right or right/wrong for that matter.

posted January 19, 2015 11:40 AM            

I've always maintained these lying fraudsters are seeking to keep their place at the government feeding trough.

Hmmm, you have me confused with someone else. I encourage debate and never, ever tell anyone to shut up or complain to Randall about their comments...no matter how illogical, irrational or brain dead their comments may be.

posted January 21, 2015 08:49 AM            

With the World Economic Forum, the premier gathering of the world’s elite, convening in Davos, Switzerland, private jets are as thick as locusts in the air over Zurich Airport. 1700 of them, according to Twitter feed of Flightradar24:

Hilariously Ironic... “@flightradar24: 1700 private jets expected to Davos in Switzerland to discuss climate change at World Economic Forum

— Jack Taylor (@LordJackTaylor) January 20, 2015
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has the best response: “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.”

posted January 22, 2015 01:30 AM            

Lol well the repubs have just voted their admission that climate change is real. . When a much cherished bill depends on it.

posted January 22, 2015 01:17 PM            

In what The Washington Post characterizes as a "nifty, if insincere, bit of politics," Republicans successfully parsed language in an amendment to the Senate’s Keystone XL pipeline bill that stated climate change "is real and not a hoax."

Democrats had been trying to force Republicans to state, on the record, their positions on human contributions to climate change.

In an act of chicanery, Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, who authored a book on the subject entitled "The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future," argued in favor of the amendment, stating climate change is not a hoax.

He gave his reasoning in a speech on the Senate floor.

"Climate is changing, and climate has always changed, and always will, there's archaeological evidence of that, there's biblical evidence of that, there's historic evidence of that, it will always change," Inhofe said.

"The hoax is that there are some people that are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful that they can change climate. Man can't change climate."

The hoax, according to Inhofe, was the idea that man was responsible for global warming.

Just before the vote, Inhofe sent a cryptic message on Twitter alluding to something in the works.

Senators - join me in voting YES on Whitehouse's amdmnt saying climate change is a hoax, bc it is. I'll address my vote in floor speech soon
— Jim Inhofe (@jiminhofe) January 21, 2015

Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island had attached the "hoax" language to the Keystone bill.

It was expected to fail, but Republicans successfully altered the wording so that they could vote for the bill while continuing to argue that climate change was not man-made.

The only Republican who did not vote for the amendment was Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker.

"With Inhofe's re-framing the question, the Democrats, trying to engineer a gotcha moment, ended up empty-handed on the vote, with neither the satisfaction of nailing down opposition to scientific consensus and without a point of leverage for future discussions of addressing the warming planet," according to Post writer Philip Bump.

Politico reports that a GOP Senate aide needled Democrats following the vote, questioning why Democrats were wasting their time trying to "embarrass" Republicans on climate change instead of "offering substantive proposals" on carbon tax or cap-and-trade emissions legislation.