From 1483 to 1498, Tomás de Torquemada presided over the Spanish Inquisition, the notorious Catholic tribunal used to try heretics and nonbelievers. In order to force their confession, these victims were subjected to gruesome punishments including strangulation or being stretched on the rack. Others were waterboarded or put through strappado, a grueling torture in whichsubjects were hanged by their wrists until their arms dislocated.
By Michael Bielawski / April 6, 2016
RICO 20: Alan Betts, a climate scientist from Pittsford, Vt., is one of 20 environmentalists calling on the Obama administration to use RICO laws to investigate corporate opponents of climate change regulations.
By Michael Bielawski and Bruce Parker | Vermont Watchdog
As more than a dozen states investigate energy companies over an alleged global warming coverup, Vermont “RICO 20” professor Alan Betts says backers aren’t engaged in an anti-free-speech witch-hunt.
Last week, top attorneys led by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and former Vice President Al Gore announced a collective effort to investigate Exxon Mobil over environmentalist claims that the company misled the public about its role in climate change.
Among those present was Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell, who said his office may join the investigation.
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt blasted the investigation as a “publicity stunt,” and touted a 27-state lawsuit to fight the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, appearing on the Inside Shale Weekly radio program, responded, “You cannot use the power of the office of the attorney general to silence your critics.”
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The actions are backed by the “RICO 20,” a group of 20 climate scientists that urged President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act against fossil fuel companies, especially Exxon Mobil. Jagadish Shukla, a climate dynamics professor at George Mason University, and leader of the RICO 20, has been investigated by Congress for possible abuse of $1.5 million in taxpayer grants.
Alan Betts, a climate scientist from Pittsford, says the professors aren’t attacking free speech.
“It wasn’t about freedom of speech; it was all about Exxon and their deception back in the 1980s,” Betts told Vermont Watchdog.
“(Critics said) we were attacking scientists and things like that, but that was completely untrue. It was about trying to hold Exxon responsible for their deceit over the years, which has led to a great delay in taking action on greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
That “deception” and “deceit” refers to reports authored by Columbia Journalism School fellows — and run in the Los Angeles Times — that accused Exxon of expressing climate change doubts while internal company research supported global warming claims. While Exxon has attributed conflicting research to a lack of consensus on what to do about climate change, the New York Post reported that the Columbia Journalism School project was organized by anti-Exxon activist Steve Coll and funded by a host of anti-fossil-fuel foundations.
Despite telltale signs of environmental advocacy behind claims against Exxon, Betts maintains that Exxon’s actions are akin to tobacco companies defending cigarette marketing while knowing the dangers of smoking. That claim could allow states and the global warming industry to reap a financial windfall on par with the $206 billion attained through the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement of 1998. That settlement involved attorneys general of 46 states and four leading tobacco companies in the United States.
Walter Olson, a RICO expert and senior fellow at the CATO Center for Constitutional Studies, told Vermont Watchdog claims by the RICO 20 lack merit.
“This does remind me of the old days in which the authorities would decide they need to convict someone and now let’s find a crime,” he said. “… It does rather look as if they’ve decided they want to convict someone of something, and now the question is what remote area of law can they turn to in hopes finding guilt.”
According to Olson, companies — especially ones with tens of thousands of employees like Exxon Mobil — hire experts to pursue “what-if scenarios,” such as a global warming doomsday situation. He said the companies are not legally bound to promote the views of certain individuals or groups within the company. He added that the effort could have a chilling effect on free speech and open inquiry.
“They are attempting to attach legal punishment to businesses that speak their mind on controversial public issues — that is something that should frighten everyone in the business community,” Olson said. “Everyone sometimes has problems with government and wants to be free to speak out without punishment based on the fact that some people think the opinions are wrong.”
Betts denied that environmentalists could be heading for a scandal of their own making, as when leaked emails from East Anglia University in 2009 revealed climate scientists manipulated data to hide information that did not support the theory of global warming — a scandal popularly known as “Climategate.”
“Those allegations were created by the various organizations,” Betts said. “… Somebody hacked into their databases and proceeded to edit their databases and selectively manipulate their emails to try and make a case.”
Olson said fossil-fuel companies can’t be convicted of fraud in this instance because companies aren’t responsible for endorsing any particular internal opinion within a company.
“There is no single unified brain in a company. … There isn’t a requirement that there be a single person knowing everything that everyone knows in the company and then deciding who’s right,” he said.
He added that companies often keep employees with divergent views to gain the best insights, and that no single researcher represents the company more than another.
The One Thing about ‘Climate Change’ That’s Always Bothered Me…
Daniel Lattier | January 21, 2016
On the issue of climate change, there’s one particular claim of its apologists that has always bothered me. And I don’t think I’m alone.
It’s not the idea that we should take better care of the earth—I’m all for adopting a less utilitarian view toward it. It’s not the idea that taking better care of the earth may involve some major sacrifices and life changes—though I’d likely have issues with a national or global mandate. And it’s not the idea that the earth’s temperature may be warming, or cooling, or just “changing” (I can’t keep track of what’s currently considered orthodox).
It’s the claim that recent changes in the earth’s climate have been primarily caused by man, and that policy changes can reverse these changes. To me, it seems problematic to conclude this without defining a benchmark and without adequately taking into account dramatic climate change in past centuries.
Apparently Philip Jenkins, professor of history at Baylor University, agrees with me.
In a thoughtful piece for The American Conservative today, he explains that he doesn’t take issue with the scientific consensus “that the world’s temperature is in a serious upward trend,” and that it could have significant consequences for life on earth. And he’s in favor of developing new technology that depends more on renewable energy resources.
As a historian, however, he has a few issues “with defining the limits of our climate consensus, and how these issues are reported in popular media and political debate.”
For one, writes Jenkins, “[T]he correlation between emissions and temperatures is none too close. Rising temperatures do not correlate with any degree of neatness to overall levels of emissions.”
Also, Jenkins notes that assertions that modern climate change is “catastrophic and unprecedented” are amusing to historians:
“[Historians and archaeologists] are very well used to quite dramatic climate changes through history, notably theMedieval Warm Period and the succeeding Little Ice Age. That latter era, which prevailed from the 14th century through the 19th, is a well-studied and universally acknowledged fact, and its traumatic effects are often cited.”
And there seems to be a lack of precision when it comes to defining what constitutes a “normal” temperature for the earth. The 2015 Paris Conference said it hoped to restrict “the increase in global temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to… limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”—and did not provide further clarification. But as Jenkins asks,
“[W]hat on earth is intended here? Which pre-industrial levels are we talking about? The levels of AD 900, of 1150, of 1350, of 1680, of 1740? All those eras were assuredly pre-industrial, but the levels were significantly different in each of those years.”
These all seem like reasonable points to raise, though it’s difficult to do so in today’s political “climate” without being immediately shouted down.
Ridgewood NJ, Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a lawsuit on December 2, 2015, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking records of communications from National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officials regarding methodology for collecting and interpreting data used in climate models (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Commerce (No 1:15-cv-02088)). The lawsuit sought the same documents unsuccessfully subpoenaed by a House committee. Less than week after Judicial Watch served its lawsuit on NOAA, the agency finally turned over the targeted documents to Congress.
Judicial Watch sued the Department of Commerce after the agency failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted on October 30, 2015 – NOAA is a component of the Department of Commerce. The timeframe for the requested records is October 30, 2014, through October 30, 2015, and requests all documents and records of communications between NOAA officials, employees, and contractors regarding:
The methodology and utilization of night marine air temperatures to adjust ship and buoy temperature data;
The use of other global temperature datasets for both NOAA’s in-house dataset improvements and monthly press releases conveying information to the public about global temperatures;
The utilization and consideration of satellite bulk atmospheric temperature readings for use in global temperature datasets; and
A subpoena issued for the aforementioned information by Congressman Lamar Smith on October 13, 2015.
Judicial Watch is investigating how NOAA collects and disseminates climate data that is used in determining global climate change. NOAA collects data in thousands of ways – from temperature gauges on land and buoys at sea, to satellites orbiting Earth. Considered the “environmental intelligence agency,” NOAA is the nation’s leading collector of climate data. In July, Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) asked NOAA for both data and internal communications related to a controversial climate change study. After the agency refused to comply with the document request, Smith’s committee issued a subpoena on October 13. According to the Science, Space, and Technology Committee:
In June, NOAA widely publicized a study as refuting the nearly two-decade pause in climate change. After three letters requesting all communications from the agency surrounding the role of political appointees in the agency’s scientific process, Chairman Smith issued a subpoena for the information. Smith subsequently sent a letter on December 1st offering to accept documents and communications from NOAA political, policy and non-scientific staff as a first step in satisfying the subpoena requirements.
Information provided to the Committee by whistleblowers appears to show that the study was rushed to publication despite the concerns and objections of a number of NOAA employees.
Judicial Watch sued the agency on December 2 and served the complaint on the agency on December 8. Less than a week later, on Tuesday, December 15, NOAA finally began to turn over documents to the House committee. That same day, NOAA called and told Judicial Watch that it would begin searching for documents responsive to Judicial Watch’s FOIA request.
On November 26, Smith published an opinion editorial in The Washington Times, which accused NOAA of tampering with data to help promote global warming alarmism:
NOAA often fails to consider all available data in its determinations and climate change reports to the public. A recent study by NOAA, published in the journal Science, made “adjustments” to historical temperature records and NOAA trumpeted the findings as refuting the nearly two-decade pause in global warming. The study’s authors claimed these adjustments were supposedly based on new data and new methodology. But the study failed to include satellite data.
“We have little doubt that our lawsuit helped to pry these scandalous climate change report documents from the Obama administration. The Obama administration seems to care not one whit for a congressional subpoena but knows from prior experience that a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit cannot be ignored,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Given the lawless refusal to comply with our FOIA request and a congressional subpoena, we have little doubt that the documents will show the Obama administration put politics before science to advance global warming alarmism.”
Judicial Watch previously investigated alleged data manipulation by global warming advocates in the Obama administration. In 2010, Judicial Watch obtained internal documents from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) related to a controversy that erupted in 2007 when Canadian blogger Stephen McIntyre exposed an error in NASA’s handling of raw temperature data from 2000-2006 that exaggerated the reported rise in temperature readings in the United States. According to multiple press reports, when NASA corrected the error, the new data apparently caused a reshuffling of NASA’s rankings for the hottest years on record in the United States, with 1934 replacing 1998 at the top of the list.
In late 2014, Judicial Watch litigation forced out documents withheld in response to another congressional subpoena – one issued in the Fast and Furious scandal.Thanks to the Judicial Watch lawsuit, Congress finally obtained the information it had sought for years on Obama’s gun-running scandal.
BURNING fossil fuels and cutting down trees causes global COOLING, a shock new NASA study has found.
By JON AUSTIN
PUBLISHED: 13:07, Mon, Dec 21, 2015 | UPDATED: 17:00, Mon, Dec 21, 2015
Major theories about what causes temperatures to rise have been thrown into doubt after NASA found the Earth has cooled in areas of heavy industrialisation where more trees have been lost and more fossil fuel burning takes place.
Environmentalists have long argued the burning of fossil fuels in power stations and for other uses is responsible for global warming and predicted temperature increases because of the high levels of carbon dioxide produced – which causes the global greenhouse effect.
While the findings did not dispute the effects of carbon dioxide on global warming, they found aerosols – also given off by burning fossil fuels – actually cool the local environment, at least temporarily.
The research was carried out to see if current climate change models for calculating future temperatures were taking into account all factors and were accurate.
A NASA spokesman said: “To quantify climate change, researchers need to know the Transient Climate Response (TCR) and Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) of Earth.
President Obama’s national security priorities are dangerous. Two weeks after terrorist attacks rocked Paris, he is visiting France, not to focus on fighting global terrorism, but to tackle the global warming “security imperative.” America needs a commander-in-chief, not a weather-obsessed meteorologist-in-chief.
The federal government cannot control the weather. Period. We can control borders, military assets, critical airspace, and American intelligence. We can also kill Islamic terrorists and radical ISIS murderers. America needs a president focused on what we can control, not fixated on weather patterns which we cannot.
Even if we could control the weather, 95 percent of the world lives outside America, and we cannot control the behavior of seven billion people across the globe. Put another way, other countries refuse to tackle simple, dangerous threats like nuclear weapons proliferation. So how does Obama expect to persuade massive polluters like China, Russia and Pakistan to embrace expensive, job-killing global warming regulations?
Obama’s obsession with global, utopian collaboration and building a personal climate change legacy has made him allergic to common sense. Meanwhile, the real “security imperative” keeps metastasizing.
ISIS keeps swelling in size and power and Obama still has no strategy. In the Syrian city of Raqqa, which serves as the ISIS capital, Islamic radicals have established a treasury department with an elaborate system of taxes, public services and real estate rental agreements. Between oil production, smuggling, antiquity dealing and kidnapping, ISIS is building a comprehensive infrastructure.
What will it take for Obama to wake-up to this menace? Maybe he would take ISIS seriously if he discovered they didn’t recycle.
Homegrown terrorists and radicalized immigrants continue to pop-up across Europe. The Department of Homeland Security refuses to reform a dangerous travel program that allows unscreened foreign passengers from 38 countries, including France and Belgium, to enter the U.S. without a visa.
Illegal immigrants continue to cross our porous borders and thousands of immigrants overstay their visas each year. America’s cyber-defenses remain incredibly vulnerable and the White House has endless excuses for security breaches, intelligence failures and routine Washington incompetence.
Now more than ever, America needs a commander-in-chief focused on the global war on terrorism, instead we have a community organizer focused on global warming. Obama’s blindness is beyond baffling, it’s dangerous. It shouldn’t take another Paris attack for this White House to open its eyes: radical Islamic terrorism is a much greater threat than a sunburn.
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is a 2016 Republican candidate for president of the United States.
SCIENTISTS claim we are in for a decade-long freeze as the sun slows down solar activity by up to 60 per cent.
By JON AUSTIN
PUBLISHED: 03:07, Sun, Nov 29, 2015 | UPDATED: 15:42, Sun, Nov 29, 2015
A team of European researchers have unveiled a scientific model showing that the Earth is likely to experience a “mini ice age” from 2030 to 2040 as a result of decreased solar activity.
Their findings will infuriate environmental campaigners who argue by 2030 we could be facing increased sea levels and flooding due to glacial melt at the poles.
However, at the National Astronomy Meeting in Wales, Northumbria University professor Valentina Zharkova said fluctuations an 11-year cycle of solar activity the sun goes through would be responsible for a freeze, the like of which has not been experienced since the 1600s.
From 1645 to 1715 global temperatures dropped due to low solar activity so much that the planet experienced a 70-year ice age known as Maunder Minimum which saw the River Thames in London completely frozen.
The environmental intelligence agency ignores satellite data
By Lamar Smith – – Thursday, November 26, 2015
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the nation’s leading collector of climate data. Every day, NOAA analyzes vast amounts of data to predict changes to our climate, weather, oceans and coasts. The agency also publishes monthly temperature averages across the nation and compares those numbers to historical temperature records.
As the nation’s self-proclaimed authority on “environmental intelligence,” NOAA should be held to the highest scientific standards. This means their conclusions should be objective, independent of political consideration and based on all available sources of information.
NOAA’s top official, Kathryn Sullivan, has described the agency’s role as providing “timely, reliably, and actionable information — based on sound science — every day to millions of Americans.”
In testimony before the House Science Committee, NOAA’s deputy administrator, Manson Brown, made similar remarks, noting the importance of satellite data. He said that NOAA’s ability “to deliver environmental intelligence starts with keeping the pulse of the planet, especially the atmosphere and the ocean, and this is the central capability where space-based assets come into play.” So why does NOAA leave out satellite data when it releases climate projections?
NOAA often fails to consider all available data in its determinations and climate change reports to the public. A recent study by NOAA, published in the journal Science, made “adjustments” to historical temperature records and NOAA trumpeted the findings as refuting the nearly two-decade pause in global warming. The study’s authors claimed these adjustments were supposedly based on new data and new methodology. But the study failed to include satellite data.
Atmospheric satellite data, considered by many to be the most objective, has clearly showed no warming for the past two decades. This fact is well documented, but has been embarrassing for an administration determined to push through costly environmental regulations.
Instead, NOAA focused its study on surface temperature monitoring that is often flawed because these sites measure thousands of independent temperature readings and utilize a hodgepodge of different methods that have changed over time. For example, measurements from land-based stations can be skewed because of their location and proximity to surrounding heat-holding asphalt in urban areas.
Satellite data, on the other hand, is highly calibrated and provides complete global coverage. For decades, satellites have been used to monitor the earth and collect information. Satellites measure something extremely important — the deep atmosphere. The temperature readings collected by satellites often differ from ground monitoring stations and have consistently shown much smaller rates of warming. Yet NOAA refuses to incorporate satellite data into its monthly projections that are released to the public. Why?
NOAA appears to pick and choose only data that confirms their bias. NOAA then disseminates this incomplete data to the media who manufacture alarming headlines but ignore the uncertainty of the conclusions.
While 97 percent of scientists may agree mankind is driving global warming, 97 percent of Americans don’t seem to care about the issue when stacked up against other concerns such as terrorism or the economy, according to a recent Fox News poll.
A November Fox News poll of more than 1,000 registered voters found that only 3 percent listed “climate change” as the most important issue facing the country today, down from 5 percent in August. Americans were much more worried about terrorism, the economy and immigration than global warming.
Cold sun rising
Sam Khoury
Special to The Nation November 11, 2015 1:00 am
New studies flip climate-change notions upside down
The sun will go into “hibernation” mode around 2030, and it has already started to get sleepy. At the Royal Astronomical Society’s annual meeting in July, Professor Valentina Zharkova of Northumbria University in the UK confirmed it – the sun will begin its Maunder Minimum (Grand Solar Minimum) in 15 years. Other scientists had suggested years ago that this change was imminent, but Zharkova’s model is said to have near-perfect accuracy.
So what is a “solar minimum”?
Our sun doesn’t maintain a constant intensity. Instead, it cycles in spans of approximately 11 years. When it’s at its maximum, it has the highest number of sunspots on its surface in that particular cycle. When it’s at its minimum, it has almost none. When there are more sunspots, the sun is brighter. When there are fewer, the sun radiates less heat toward Earth.
But that’s not the only cooling effect of a solar minimum. A dim sun doesn’t deflect cosmic rays away from Earth as efficiently as a bright sun. So, when these rays enter our atmosphere, they seed clouds, which in turn cool our planet even more and increase precipitation in the form of rain, snow and hail.
Solar cycles
Since the early 1800s we have enjoyed healthy solar cycles and the rich agriculture and mild northern temperatures that they guarantee. During the Middle Ages, however, Earth felt the impact of four solar minimums over the course of 400 years.
The last Maunder Minimum and its accompanying mini-Ice Age saw the most consistent cold, continuing into the early 1800s.
The last time we became concerned about cooler temperatures – possibly dangerously cooler – was in the 1970s. Global temperatures have declined since the 1940s, as measured by Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The PDO Index is a recurring pattern of ocean-atmosphere climate variability centred over the Pacific Ocean. Determined by deep currents, it is said to shift between warm and cool modes. Some scientists worried that it might stay cool and drag down the Atlantic Decadal Oscillation with it, spurring a new Ice Age. The fear was exacerbated by the fact that Earth has been in the current inter-glacial period for 10,000 years (depending on how the starting point is gauged).
MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.
FACT: Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures. Average ground station readings do show a mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8C over the last 100 years, which is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. However, the ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas (“heat islands”), which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas (“land use effects”) i.e. local heat retention due to urban sprawl, not global warming…and it is these, ‘false high’ ground readings which are then programmed into the disreputable climate models used by your favourite enviro groups such as Greenpeace, which live up to the GIGO acronym — Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Looking at it from the long term, the planet has been gradually recovering from the Little Ice Age which ended in 1850. Our temps are in fact right where they should be. From a short term perspective, satellite measurements (which are far more accurate than land-based stations) are now showing a gradual decrease in global temperatures, and it is currently well accepted that temperatures have been slowly falling for over a decade now and cold records are being set far more often than warm records.
In summary, there has been no catastrophic warming recorded from either method whatsoever.
MYTH 2: It’s never been warmer in the past.
FACT: We are in a relatively cool period and it used to be much warmer over countless periods in the past. Even just a few hundred years ago, the Vikings used to live in parts of Greenland without snow, and vineyards flourished in the North of London! There is nothing apocalyptic about warmer temperatures, in fact it’s quite the opposite. In the UK, every mild winter saves 20,000 cold-related deaths, and scaled up over northern Europe mild winters save hundreds of thousands of lives each year. ALSO, data from ice core samples shows that in the past, temperatures have risen by ten times the current rise, and fallen again, in the space of a human lifetime. Nothing is happening “faster than normal” with today’s weather/climate change/temperature variations, etc.
MYTH 3: The “hockey stick” graph proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature decrease for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase.
FACT: The hockey stick graph seen in An Inconvenient Truth and elsewhere has been completely debunked and proven fraudulent. It has airbrushed out the significant changes in climate which have continually occurred throughout geologic time. For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland) was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17thCentury the “average global temperature” has been rising at the low steady rate mentioned above; although from 1940 – 1970 temperatures actually dropped, leading to a Global Cooling scare. And now the temperatures are dropping once again, in fact they’ve been dropping since 1998.
The “hockey stick”, a former poster boy of both the UN’s IPCC and Canada’s Environment Department, ignores historical recorded climatic swings, and is proven to be flawed and statistically unreliable as well. It has now been quietly removed from the IPCC reports and thoroughly discredited throughout the scientific world and is well regarded as one of the biggest scientific hoaxes of our time, yet you can still find it being used today by organizations such as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, etc. The chart is a computer construct and a very faulty one at that. But what else would you expect, seeing as it was created only to help perpetrate the climate change lie.
Speaking of computer generated scams, let’s not forget the drowning polar bears in Gore’s movie and the fraudulent claim that the bears are disappearing. In fact they are actually thriving. Polar bear populations are 500% larger than they were 50 years ago. Shame on you, Al Gore, for playing on people’s emotions to drive support for your enormous $45 trillion carbon tax hoax.
MYTH 4: Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.
FACT: Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased. The RATE of growth during this period has also increased from about 0.2% per year to the present rate of about 0.4% per year,which growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years. However, there is no proof that CO2 is a measurable driver of global warming, let alone the tiny amount released by humankind. As measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO2 levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming.
Effectively, the man-made global warming theorists have put effect before cause — this completely debunks the entire global warming theory and shows that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is a futile King Canute exercise! Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this causal relationship. There is solid evidence that, as temperatures move up and down naturally and cyclically through solar radiation, orbital and galactic influences, the warming surface layers of the earth’s oceans expel more CO2 as a result.
MYTH 5: CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas.
FACT: Greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume. They consist of varying amounts, about 96.5% is water vapour and clouds, with the remainder being trace gases like CO2, CH4, Ozone and N2O. CO2 constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere. And then the human portion of that 0.037% is incredibly small.
But isn’t CO2 the most important of the greenhouse gases? Nope. Not even close. Most of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor, which is about 100 times as abundant in the atmosphere as CO2 and thus has a much larger effect.
In summary, water vapour is by far the most important and overwhelming greenhouse gas. Those attributing climate change to CO2 rarely mention these important facts.
What’s next? A steam tax when you boil a kettle for your cup of tea?
MYTH 6: Computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming.
FACT: The computer models assume that CO2 is the primary climate driver, when in fact CO2 does not drive climate, and they do not take into account the Sun, which has the most significant effect on climate. You cannot use the output of a model to verify or prove its initial assumption – that is circular reasoning and is illogical. Computer models can be made to roughly match the 20th century temperature rise by adjusting many input parameters and using strong positive feedbacks. They do not “prove” anything. Also, computer models predicting global warming are incapable of properly including the effects of the sun, cosmic rays and the clouds. The sun is a major cause of temperature variation on the earth surface as its received radiation changes all the time, This happens largely in cyclical fashion. The number and the lengths in time of sunspots can be correlated very closely with average temperatures on earth, e.g. the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. Varying intensity of solar heat radiation affects the surface temperature of the oceans and the currents. Warmer ocean water expels gases, some of which are CO2. Solar radiation interferes with the cosmic ray flux, thus influencing the amount ionized nuclei which control cloud cover. Again, models are in essence: GARBAGE IN = GARBAGE OUT. (Maybe they should also take note that when the Earth warms, so do other planets in our solar system. Now please explain how CO2 can cause that?!)
MYTH 7: The UN proved that man–made CO2 causes global warming.
FACT: In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft. Here they are:
1) “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases.”
2) “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes”
Scientists draft reports for the IPCC, but the IPCC are bureaucrats appointed by governments, in fact many scientists who contribute to the reports disagree with the ’spin’ that the IPCC and media put on their findings. The latest report suggests that the next 100 years might see a temperature change of 6 Celsius yet a Lead Author for the IPCC (Dr John Christy UAH/NASA) has pointed out that the scenarios with the fastest warming rates were added to the report at a late stage, at the request of a few governments (to create urgency) — in other words the scientists were told what to do by politicians and many of them strongly disagree. This is not science. It’s political propaganda.
To the present day there is still no scientific proof that man-made CO2 has any effect on global warming or can cause “climate change”. However, there is plenty of scientific proof that the Earth has been cooling while CO2 has risen, and that increased CO2 is very beneficial to our planet.
MYTH 8: Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is a pollutant.
FACT: This is absolutely not true. Nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere. We could not live in 100% nitrogen either. Carbon dioxide is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is. CO2 is essential to life on earth. It is necessary for plant growth since increased CO2 intake as a result of increased atmospheric concentration causes many trees and other plants to grow more vigorously. Unfortunately, the Canadian Government has included CO2 with a number of truly toxic and noxious substances listed by the Environmental Protection Act, only as their means to politically control it. In the US, president Obama is also trying to classify CO2 as a “pollutant” for the same political reasons. It’s really quite terrifying and is a slap in the face to science.
MYTH 9: Reducing car use will cut carbon dioxide levels and save the planet!
FACT: The planet does not need saving from this mythical problem of CO2 emissions from cars, but taking this on anyway, removing every car from every road in every country overnight would NOT produce any change in the carbon dioxide level of the atmosphere, and in any case it is pointless trying to alter climate by changing carbon dioxide levels as the cause and effect is the other way round! — It is changes in the activity of the Sun that cause temperature changes on earth, with any temperature rise causing carbon dioxide to de-gas from the oceans.
MYTH 10: Global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes.
FACT: There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that supports such claims on a global scale. Regional variations may occur, and always do. Growing insurance and infrastructure repair costs, particularly in coastal areas, are sometimes claimed to be the result of increasing frequency and severity of storms, whereas in reality they are a function of increasing population density, escalating development value, and ever more media reporting. Weather records clearly show there has been adecrease in violent and extreme weather over the past century.
Extreme weather correlates with the cycle of solar activity, not carbon dioxide emissions or political elections. The recent heavy rainfall in winter and spring is a perfect example of this — it occurred at solar maximum at a time when solar maxima are very intense — this pattern may well repeat every 11 years until about 2045. Furthermore, the hottest and coldest days on record occurred more than 60 years ago (before industry) and the wackiest most extreme weather recorded over the last 100 years, including the strongest hurricanes, and devastating droughts/floods, all occurred in the 1940’s. And guess what? They will always happen, every year, with new records set daily. Normal.
Contrary to media hysteria claiming increasing storm severities, scientists have studied this issue and come to the opposite conclusion: extreme events are becoming LESS common. Atlantic hurricanes were much more numerous from 1950 to 1975 than from 1975 to present. Hailstorms in the US are 35% less common than they were fifty years ago. Extreme rainfall in the US at the end of the 20th century is comparable to what it was at the beginning of the 20th century. Also, there is much empirical evidence to suggest that when global warming does happen from time to time, more warmth generally leads to a more stable climate with less weather extremes. Once again, the greenies got it backwards.
MYTH 11: Carbon taxes, petrol duty, and workplace parking charges are justifiable environmental taxes.
FACT: As carbon dioxide emissions from cars and factories does not have any impact on climate, these taxes are ‘just another tax’ on enterprise and mobility, and have no real green credentials. None.
MYTH 12: Global warming must be real since governments are trying to cover it up and I see protests all the time!
FACT: It’s exactly the opposite. Governments everywhere are not only active supporters of the climate change lie, they are promoters of it and massively fund it. And they’ve done an absolutely brilliant job of it by easily convincing the world’s alarmists and Earth-conscientious citizens of an impending catastrophe, thereby utilizing the protesters and subsequent immense political pressure to push through the very policies they aspire to implement on all of us. Governments have learned the power of activism ever since the days of the revolution, and they’ve managed to use it to their advantage. Extremist environmentalists have been duped into becoming a tool for the very governments they believe they’re “fighting” against. A recent example of this was the declaration by Al Gore and James Hansen which encouraged activists to consider civil disobedience to stop the construction of new coal power plants.
In defense of many environmentalists and “cause-jumpers”, quite often they simply do not know any better but are actually well intentioned.
MYTH 13: Receding glaciers, the calving of ice shelves, and the shrinking of snow on Mt. Kilimanjaro are proof of global warming.
FACT: Glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for hundreds of years. Recent glacier melting is a consequence of coming out of the very cool period of the Little Ice Age. Ice shelves have been breaking off for centuries. Scientists know of at least 33 periods of glaciers growing and then retreating. It’s normal. Besides, glacier’s health is dependent as much on precipitation as on temperature. What you see on your television newscasts are images of the annual summer melt off, which happens every single year and is nothing to worry about.
Global warming is not melting Mt. Kilimanjaro’s alpine glacier. Temperatures at Mt. Kilimanjaro have been slightly cooling since at least the middle of the twentieth century, and those temperatures virtually never rise above freezing. Scientists have long known that deforestation at the base of the mountain is causing the mountaintop glacier to shrink, by reducing the moisture and resultant precipitation in mountain updrafts.
MYTH 14: The earth’s poles are warming; polar ice caps are breaking up and melting and the sea level rising.
FACT: The earth is variable. The western Arctic may be gotten somewhat warmer last century, due to unrelated cyclic events in the Pacific Ocean, but the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder. And now the western Arctic is cooling again. The small Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica is getting warmer, while the main Antarctic continent is actually cooling. Ice thicknesses are increasing both on Greenland and in Antarctica.
Sea level monitoring in the Pacific (Tuvalu) and Indian Oceans (Maldives) has shown no sign of any sea level rise.
MYTH 15: There are only a tiny handful of maverick scientists who dispute that man-made global warming theory is true.
FACT: There are literally tens of thousands of signatures from scientists worldwide on many petitions, ranging from the Oregon Petition Project, the Manhattan Declaration, all the way to the Leipzig Declaration which all state that there is no evidence for the man-made global warming theory nor is there any impact from mankind’s activities on climate. Many scientists are now dissenting against Al Gore and the IPCC and strongly believe that the Kyoto agreement is a total waste of time, expensive, dangerous and one of the biggest political scams ever perpetrated on the public … as H L Mencken said “The fundamental 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” … the desire to save the world usually fronts a desire to rule it. Of the scientists who support the climate change theory, many are on payrolls of government agencies and others are simply securing their funding. The consensus is clear: Man-made climate change is a hoax.
THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT
Over 95 percent of the Greenhouse Effect is the result of atmospheric water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere. But because water droplets held in suspension (clouds) make almost as good a reflector as they do a thermal insulator, there is little rise in daytime temperatures due to the Greenhouse Effect.
Any greenhouse warming, if it does occur, is limited to primarily increasing nighttime temperatures, which provides beneficial moderation of nighttime low temperatures, but no increase in daytime high temperatures.
Did you know…
Although the biggest source of greenhouse gas is our oceans, the world’s natural wetlands also produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined. Furthermore, Animals and volcanoes produce so much CO2 that it completely dwarfs mankinds insignificantly tiny emissions.
To summarize what we have learned so far:
Climate changes are not driven by CO2.
Air pollution has nothing to do with CO2.
Human-produced CO2 is a miniscule fraction of a percentage of greenhouse gases.
96.5% of all greenhouse gases emit from the oceans, naturally.
The small amount of CO2 produced by humans is wholly beneficial to the planet.
Without CO2, vegetation dies, herbivores die, you die.
CO2 levels used to be much higher many times in the past.
Higher temperatures from the sun result in CO2 levels rising long afterwards.
Rising CO2 is an effect of global warming, not a cause.
Global warming and cooling is a purely natural phenomenon.
The higher the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, the greener our planet becomes.
Forests and plant life growth has increased by approx 40% over the last 50 years, thanks to CO2.
Increasing CO2 yields larger food crops. This is beneficial to a growing population.
The Earth is not currently warming, it is in fact cooling.
Temperatures in the past have often been much warmer than today.
Even if it were to happen, a warmer Earth is far better than a colder one, for all life.
Many scientists believe we are on the cuss of the next little ice age.
When the planet warms and cools it is due to the sun. Not your car.
Polar ice is now at record levels and still growing.
Climate changes happen all the time, and have occurred much faster than anything in modern times.
There has been no increase in extreme weather. In fact, records show the exact opposite.
So don’t panic. You’re NOT at fault!
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” – U.S. Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
Former President Clinton, Al Gore, Obama and others have often cited a letter signed by 2600 scientists that global warming will have catastrophic effects on humanity. Thanks to Citizens for a Sound Economy, we know now that fewer than 10 percent of these “scientists” know anything about climate. Among the signers: a plastic surgeon, two landscape architects, a hotel administrator, a gynecologist, seven sociologists, a linguist, and a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. We also now know that many of the few actual scientists on that panel are not asked whether they agree with the UN’s asessments, and many of them vehemently disagree and have thus asked to have their names removed from that fraudulent list. Global Warming Treaty is All Pain, NoGain — Malcom Wallop
“When a bureaucracy’s reason for existence is threatened, it typically generates new missions.”Desperately Seeking Mission: Why the State Department’s Gone Green — Peter VanDoren
With the release of Al Gore’s propaganda movie An Inconvenient Truth and with the help of the media the public has been driven into a mass hysteria based not on science but lies. The movie has been completely debunkedand the junk science used by extremists is exactly that: junk.
You will learn that there is no empirical evidence that man-made CO2 is a cause of temperature increases. It is, in fact, an after effect of temperature increases. Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant, pollution has nothing to do with global warming, politicians who support such absurd notions are a fraud, there is no “consensus” on global warming, the Earth has been far warmer in the past than it is today, polar bears are not endangered or dying, they are thriving, droughts and hurricanes are not caused or made worse by global warming, extreme weather events are decreasing, and there is extensive evidence of the factual natural causes of global warming when it really happens from time to time, pointing squarely at increased solar activity and orbital variations.
Those who claim that skeptics are in bed with the oil companies or receive funding from questionable sources need to give their heads a shake and look at the facts. Funding and grants to PROMOTE the climate change myth are astronomical, while money for the skeptics is pocket change:
Debunkers of the global warming theory have received approx = $21M (Million).
Supporters of the global warming theory have received approx = $79B (BILLION!)
Many people want a piece of that $79 billion pie, and the figure will only get higher so long as these groups can continue to convince the populous that the end is near unless we all start paying to emit that evil CO2! Don’t you find it odd that nearly nobody ever accuses the giant Enviro groups of being in bed with the large Green Industry? Or that Al Gore has boatloads of his own cash on the line in these companies? Every environmental, political, and research group knows full well that in order to receive funding and grants they need to create urgency and panic. Money then flows in like a river, regardless of actual science. It’s a sad fact.
https://www.iloveco2.com/2009/01/top-15-climate-myths.html
It is better to trust scientists than politicans. Do not let fear ruin your day. Learn the Facts.
There are several motives for the media and politicians to lie to you about global warming, aside from money and control.
~The media sells more papers, magazines, and television ratings soar when their audience is scared of some imminent catastrophe that your respective service is reporting on. Although, they can’t decide whether we’re going to burn to death, freeze to death, or drown. https://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759
~Environmental organizations and some scientists will lie to you because their funding depends on it. If theres no crisis to work through, then they start losing funding. This is well documented.
https://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/von_Storch/staged_angst/a_climate_of_staged_angst.html
~Foreign countries are lying to us (by means of the IPCC) because they wish to throw a monkey wrench into the inner workings of western economies, which are the strongest in the world. If our economy slows down, the economic standing of other countries improves because we will no longer dominate the markets.
~Development and industrialization of third world countries will be stamped out, along with hundreds of millions of lives, all under the guise of “saving the planet from climate change”. It’s absolutely sickening. So, who’s really on the “immoral” side? Us or the alarmists?
~Wanna talk about new taxes and restricted freedoms? Try carbon taxes on everything and strict regulations for everyone….all coming soon by convincing you that CO2 & greenhouse gases are somehow evil and you must pay to emit them. Too bad they can’t tax the oceans since they are the cause of 96.5% of all greenhouse emissions, naturally, eh! Also too bad they can’t go back in time and tax the dinosaurs since CO2 levels were MUCH higher back then and it must have been their fault.
The motives for deception are there. Do your part to fight alarmism!
The EPA’s highest-paid employee and a leading expert on climate change was sentenced to 32 months in federal prison Wednesday for lying to his bosses and saying he was a CIA spy working in Pakistan so he could avoid doing his real job.
John C. Beale’s crimes were “inexplicable” and “unbelievably egregious,” said Judge Ellen Huvelle in imposing the sentence in a Washington. D.C. federal court. Beale has also agreed to pay $1.3 million in restitution and forfeiture to the government.
Beale said he was ashamed of his lies about working for the CIA, a ruse that, according to court records, began in 2000 and continued until early this year.
“Why did I do this? Greed – simple greed – and I’m ashamed of that greed,” Beale told the court. He also said it was possible that he got a “rush” and a “sense of excitement” by telling people he was worked for the CIA. “It was something like an addiction,” he said.
Beale pled guilty in September to bilking the government out of nearly $1 million in salary and other benefits over a decade. He perpetrated his fraud largely by failing to show up at the EPA for months at a time, including one 18-month stretch starting in June 2011 when he did “absolutely no work,” as his lawyer acknowledged in a sentencing memo filed last week.
When Huvelle asked Beale what he was doing when he claimed he was working for the CIA, he said, “I spent time exercising. I spent a lot of time working on my house.”
He also said he used the time “trying to find ways to fine tune the capitalist system” to discourage companies from damaging the environment. “I spent a lot of time reading on that,” said Beale.
What is the origin of the false belief—constantly repeated—that almost all scientists agree about global warming?
By JOSEPH BAST And ROY SPENCER
May 26, 2014 7:13 p.m. ET
Last week Secretary of State John Kerry warned graduating students at Boston College of the “crippling consequences” of climate change. “Ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists,” he added, “tell us this is urgent.”
Where did Mr. Kerry get the 97% figure? Perhaps from his boss, President Obama, who tweeted on May 16 that “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” Or maybe from NASA, which posted (in more measured language) on its website, “Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities.”
Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.
One frequently cited source for the consensus is a 2004 opinionessay published in Science magazine by Naomi Oreskes, a science historian now at Harvard. She claimed to have examined abstracts of 928 articles published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and found that 75% supported the view that human activities are responsible for most of the observed warming over the previous 50 years while none directly dissented.
Ms. Oreskes’s definition of consensus covered “man-made” but left out “dangerous”—and scores of articles by prominent scientists such as Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Sherwood Idso and Patrick Michaels, who question the consensus, were excluded. The methodology is also flawed. A study published earlier this year inNature noted that abstracts of academic papers often contain claims that aren’t substantiated in the papers.
With the country focused on this week’s high drama at the Supreme Court, President Obama’s EPA quietly released long-delayed regulations to apply global warming rules never authorized by Congress to new coal-fired power plants.
That Obama’s EPA would release a rule to destroy coal-fired electricity while the president gives stump speeches about an “all of the above” energy policy is an insult to the American people.
This rule will effectively block any new coal-fired power plants from being built in America, and a second round of related rules – expected after the election, of course – will shut down existing coal-fired power plants.
The result will be steeply higher electricity prices, lost jobs, and lower standards of living. Remarkably, this is all done in the name of global warming, but even EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson admits it will have no discernible impact on global temperatures. Obama’s EPA is crippling the U.S. economy not to accomplish anything, but just to enjoy a nice, warm, green feeling of self-satisfaction.
Four years ago, then-candidate Barack Obama explained his anti-coal energy policy in an editorial board meeting with the San Francisco Chronicle. Obama said: “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad.” He went on to explain: “So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them.”
Indeed Obama attempted to make good on his campaign promise to bankrupt the coal industry and make electricity prices skyrocket the legitimate way – by proposing cap-and-trade legislation in Congress. It was jammed through the House but crashed and burned in the Senate, where many Democrats understood such an energy rationing plan to be political suicide.
By Melanie Batley | Tuesday, 07 Jul 2015 11:35 AM!
A Nobel Prize-winning scientist who supported President Barack Obama has said that he does not believe global warming is a problem, and has openly criticized the president for his position on the issue.
“I would say that basically global warming is a non-problem,” Dr. Ivar Giaever announced during a speech at the 65th Nobel Laureate Conference in Lindau, Germany, last week, according to Climate Depot.
Quoting Obama’s warning that “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” Giaever said it was a “ridiculous statement.”
“I say this to Obama: Excuse me, Mr. President, but you’re wrong. Dead wrong,” he said, according to Climate Depot.
“Obama said last year that 2014 is [the] hottest year ever. But it’s not true. It’s not the hottest.”
I have been a professional meteorologist for 36 years. Since my debut on television in 1979, I have been an eyewitness to the many changes in technology, society, and how we communicate. I am one who embraces change, and celebrates the higher quality of life we enjoy now thanks to this progress.
But, at the same time, I realize the instant communication platforms we enjoy now do have some negatives that are troubling. Just a few examples in recent days…
I would say hundreds of people have sent this image to me over the past 24 hours via social media.
Comments are attached… like “This is a cloud never seen before in the U.S.”… “can’t you see this is due to government manipulation of the weather from chemtrails”… “no doubt this is a sign of the end of the age”.
Let’s get real. This is a lenticular cloud. They have always been around, and quite frankly aren’t that unusual (although it is an anomaly to see one away from a mountain range). The one thing that is different today is that almost everyone has a camera phone, and almost everyone shares pictures of weather events. You didn’t see these often in earlier decades because technology didn’t allow it. Lenticular clouds are nothing new. But, yes, they are cool to see.
No doubt national news media outlets are out of control when it comes to weather coverage, and their idiotic claims find their way to us on a daily basis.
The Houston flooding is a great example. We are being told this is “unprecedented”… Houston is “under water”… and it is due to manmade global warming.
Yes, the flooding in Houston yesterday was severe, and a serious threat to life and property. A genuine weather disaster that has brought on suffering.
But, no, this was not “unprecedented”. Flooding from Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 was more widespread, and flood waters were deeper. There is no comparison. In fact, many circulated this image in recent days, claiming it is “Houston underwater” from the flooding of May 25–26, 2015. The truth is that this image was captured in June 2001 during flooding from Allison.
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