posted March 28, 2017 02:08 PM            

As a lifelong ecologist and environmentalist, I have seen much of the environmental movement hijacked for the purpose of alarming us about the future of the climate. All manner of horrific prospects are invoked to strike fear into the hearts of the citizenry and, most disturbingly, our children. Yet no weather event or change in climate during the past century is anywhere near out of the ordinary with the climate of the past 10,000 years since the great ice sheets melted after 80,000 years of glaciation. That was climate change, as the sea level rose 410 feet between 20,000 and 7,000 years ago. It has barely budged since.

Finally we are seeing the house of cards begin to fall as the fabrication called catastrophic human-caused global warming is unmasked. Anyone who studies the history of carbon dioxide and temperature knows that they are not even correlated during most of earth’s history, never mind in a lockstep causal relationship. The same is true today.

When we really began to emit carbon dioxide in earnest, following World War II, the climate turned colder for 30 years. Then it began to warm again from around 1970 to 2000. But even though about one-third of all human carbon emissions have occurred since 2000, the warming has slowed to less than half the rate from 1970 to 2000. All this points to an alternative explanation for the brief net warming that began 300 years ago in the depths of the Little Ice Age. Some very capable minds point to the sun. Hopefully one day we will figure it out. Until then the only sane approach, save for those dependent on maintaining the fear, is to be highly skeptical of anyone who claims to know with certainty the future of such a complex set of phenomena as the global climate.

Patrick Moore

Comox, British Columbia

posted March 28, 2017 04:50 PM            

The decree's main target is former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan that required states to slash carbon emissions from power plants - a critical element in helping the United States meet its commitments to a global climate change accord reached by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015.

The so-called "Energy Independence" order also reverses a ban on coal leasing on federal lands, undoes rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production, and reduces the weight of climate change and carbon emissions in policy and infrastructure permitting decisions.

"I am taking historic steps to lift restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion, and to cancel job-killing regulations," Trump said at the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters, speaking on a stage lined with coal miners.

The wide-ranging order is the boldest yet in Trump's broader push to cut environmental regulation to revive the drilling and mining industries, a promise he made repeatedly during the presidential campaign. But energy analysts and executives have questioned whether the moves will have a big effect on their industries, and environmentalists have called them reckless.

"I cannot tell you how many jobs the executive order is going to create but I can tell you that it provides confidence in this administration's commitment to the coal industry," Kentucky Coal Association president Tyler White told Reuters.

Trump signed the order with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Vice President Mike Pence by his side.

U.S. presidents have aimed to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil since the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, which triggered soaring prices. But the United States still imports about 7.9 million barrels of crude oil a day, almost enough meet total oil demand in Japan and India combined.

While Trump's administration has said reducing environmental regulation will create jobs, some green groups have countered that rules supporting clean energy have done the same.

The number of jobs in the U.S. wind power industry rose 32 percent last year while solar power jobs rose by 25 percent, according to a Department of Energy study.

'ASSAULT ON AMERICAN VALUES'

Environmental groups hurled scorn on Trump's order, arguing it is dangerous and goes against the broader global trend toward cleaner energy technologies.

"These actions are an assault on American values and they endanger the health, safety, and prosperity of every American," said billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer, the head of activist group NextGen Climate.

Green group Earthjustice was one of many organizations that said it will fight the order both in and out of court. "This order ignores the law and scientific reality," said its president, Trip Van Noppen.

An overwhelming majority of scientists believe that human use of oil and coal for energy is a main driver of climate change, causing a damaging rise in sea levels, droughts, and more frequent violent storms.

But Trump and several members of his administration have doubts about climate change, and Trump promised during his campaign to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord, arguing it would hurt U.S. business.

Since being elected Trump has been mum on the Paris deal and the executive order does not address it.

Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change who helped broker the Paris accord, lamented Trump's order.

"Trying to make fossil fuels remain competitive in the face of a booming clean renewable power sector, with the clean air and plentiful jobs it continues to generate, is going against the flow of economics," she said.

The order will direct the EPA to start a formal "review" process to undo the Clean Power Plan, which was introduced by Obama in 2014 but was never implemented in part because of legal challenges brought by Republican-controlled states.

posted March 29, 2017 09:53 AM            

President Trump's revisions to the EPA's global warming regulations, which killed jobs and had no basis in science, have created a crisis of faith in the environmentalist community.

Gina McCarthy, a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, called it a "dangerous," [sic] order that flies "in the face of EPA's mission."

"They want us to travel back to when smokestacks damaged our health and polluted our air, instead of taking every opportunity to support clean jobs of the future," McCarthy said in a statement. "This is not just dangerous; it's embarrassing to us and our businesses on a global scale to be dismissing opportunities for new technologies, economic growth, and US leadership."

Embarrassed? What an odd choice of words. Even if true, does a lack of economic growth or new technology embarrass people? No.

Embarrassment refers to a deep personal shame, as happens when soiling oneself in public. President Trump's actions don't cause Ms. McCarthy to soil herself. Why, then, does McCarthy feel embarrassed?

I believe that it is because McCarthy and environmentalists like her are suffering from cognitive dissonance. Deep down, they must have always had doubts about their beliefs in global warming. The changes to EPA regulations will let us to see in the next few years whether rising CO2 emissions really have any connection to global warming, and in their hearts of hearts, McCarthy and those like her fear they will be proven wrong.

That is the source of their embarrassment: the fear that their whole global warming theory will collapse and that they will open themselves to public ridicule.

McCarthy also said lifting global warming regulations would be "dangerous." This demonstrates that she suffers from a second mental disorder, anthropophobia. McCarthy has a fear of mankind, that the mere existence of men is causing the world to slowly self-destruct. Instead of fearing real dangers – like Islamic terrorism, or the economy collapsing, or unchecked illegal immigration – McCarthy fears an imaginary one.

Then there is the mental illness known as delusion. **mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the most delusional of all?**

"Trump's attack ignores reality – not just the reality of the climate crisis, but the reality that the clean energy economy is rapidly growing in both red and blue states, creating jobs and safeguarding our air and water," Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said in a statement. "Trump can't reverse our clean energy and climate progress with the stroke of a pen, and we'll fight Trump in the courts, in the streets, and at the state and local level across America to protect the health of every community."

Environmental regulations do not create jobs (except at the EPA). They destroy jobs, at all kinds of businesses. The jobs "created" are few in number in wind and solar and would not exist without massive taxpayer subsidies.

As for Brune complaining about reversing clean energy "progress" "with the stroke of a pen," it was Obama who put these rules into place with the stroke of a pen, so why is it surprising that they might be reversed in the same way?

Finally, Brune says his environmental thugs will fight Trump "in the streets." Is he threatening mob violence to get his way on iron-fisted environmental regulations? That's a phenomenon known as uncontrollable rage.

posted March 29, 2017 06:39 PM            

If anyone ever wondered why computer models compiled by so called climate scientists don't begin to reflect actual climate. Here's why.

They're not using Scientific Methods. They're addicted to the Man Made Global Warming Religion, not science.

There's still those 31,000 American scientists, 9,000 with Ph.Ds who say Man Made Global Warming is a total crock.

J Scott Armstrong: Fewer Than 1 Percent Of Papers in Scientific Journals Follow Scientific Method
Allum Bokhari
29 Mar 2017

Fewer than 1 percent of papers published in scientific journals follow the scientific method, according to research by Wharton School professor and forecasting expert J. Scott Armstrong.

Professor Armstrong, who co-founded the peer-reviewed Journal of Forecasting in 1982 and the International Journal of Forecasting in 1985, made the claim in a presentation about what he considers to be “alarmism” from forecasters over man-made climate change.

“We also go through journals and rate how well they conform to the scientific method. I used to think that maybe 10 percent of papers in my field … were maybe useful. Now it looks like maybe, one tenth of one percent follow the scientific method” said Armstrong in his presentation, which can be watched in full below. “People just don’t do it.”

Armstrong defined eight criteria for compliance with the scientific method, including full disclosure of methods, data, and other reliable information, conclusions that are consistent with the evidence, valid and simple methods, and valid and reliable data.

According to Armstrong, very little of the forecasting in climate change debate adheres to these criteria. “For example, for disclosure, we were working on polar bear [population] forecasts, and we were asked to review the government’s polar bear forecast. We asked, ‘could you send us the data’ and they said ‘No’… So we had to do it without knowing what the data were.”

According to Armstrong, forecasts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) violate all eight criteria.

“Why is this all happening? Nobody asks them!” said Armstrong, who says that people who submit papers to journals are not required to follow the scientific method. “You send something to a journal and they don’t tell you what you have to do. They don’t say ‘here’s what science is, here’s how to do it.'”

Digging deeper into their motivations, Armstrong pointed to the wealth of incentives for publishing papers with politically convenient rather than scientific conclusions.

“They’re rewarded for doing non-scientific research. One of my favourite examples is testing statistical significance – that’s invalid. It’s been over 100 years we’ve been fighting the fight against that. Even its inventor thought it wasn’t going to amount to anything. You can be rewarded then, for following an invalid [method].”

“They cheat. If you don’t get statistically significant results, then you throw out variables, add variables, [and] eventually you get what you want.”

“My big thing is advocacy. People are asked to come up with certain answers, and in our whole field that’s been a general movement ever since I’ve been here, and it just gets worse every year. And the reason is funded research.”

“I’ve [gone through] my whole career, with lots of publications, and I’ve never gotten a research grant. And I’m proud of that now.”