Five ways Trump could unwind Obama's environmental policies

TheHill
....Obama’s regulations have been a hallmark of his environmental agenda. He frequently argued that Congress fell short of its responsibility to protect the environment and tasked his administration with filling the gap.
Since so many of Obama’s policies were regulatory, Trump can use the same regulatory process to roll them back. "

King Canute vs. the Climate Planners

Jeffrey Tucker

“With a small hammer you can achieve great things.”
Oh really?
This claim comes from French foreign minister Laurent Fabius as he banged his gavel at the close of the Paris climate summit. To the cheers of bureaucrats and cronies the world over, Fabius announced the deal that the press has been crowing about for days, the one in which “humanity” has united to stop increases in global temperature through the transfer of trillions of dollars from the rich to the poor, combined with the eventual (coercive) elimination of fossil fuels.
And thus did he bang his gavel. To his way of thinking, and that of the thousands gathered, that’s all you have to do to control the global climate, cause the world to stop relying on fossil fuels, and dramatically change the structure of all global industry, and do so with absolute conviction that benefits will outweigh the costs.
One bang of a gavel to dismantle industrial civilization by force, replace it with a vague and imagined new way of doing things, and have taxpayers pay for it...."

 

Scientists: 1930s Ice Melt Rates In Greenland, Iceland Were The Same As Today…No Net Ice Loss In 80 Years

NoTricksZone
.....Other scientists (Fettweis et al., 2008, below) have previously reached the conclusion that modern ice sheet and glacier recession is not only not unusual in the context of the last century, the surface mass balance loss in recent decades may have yet to exceed the losses from the 1930s period.   When also considering that the ice sheet cooled and gained mass between the 1960s and 1990s, it would be fair to say that there has been no net mass loss for the Greenland Ice Sheet in the last 80 years, or since anthropogenic forcing is believed to have exerted an “unprecedented” and potentially “catastrophic” influence on the climate."

As Predicted, The Next Global Warming Scam Has Arrived

Real Science
James Delingpole, Marc Morano and myself predicted last week that the New York Times and other climate scamsters would start their polar vortex scam this week. They delivered right on schedule."

The latest climate ‘conspiracy theory’

Judith Curry
JC message to the alarmed scientist/advocates:
Get over it, your side lost.  Changes of Presidential administrations occur every 4 or 8 years, often with changes in political parties.
Get busy and shore up your scientific arguments; I suspect that argument from consensus won’t sway many minds in the Trump administration.
Overt activism and climate policy advocacy by climate scientists will not help your ’cause’; leave such advocacy to the environmental groups.
Behave like a scientist, and don’t build elaborate conspiracy theories based on vague conflicting signals from the Trump administration.  Stop embarrassing yourselves; wait for the evidence.
Be flexible; if funding priorities change, and you desire federal research funding, work on different problems.  The days of needing to sell all research in terms of AGW are arguably over.
Open your minds to different perspectives and interpretations of scientific evidence.
If you are advocating for policies, do some serious homework about the policy process, economics, and unintended consequences of technologies and policies.
Understand that climate policies are not the only, or even primary, driver for energy policy."

Lawmakers Demand Obama Disclose What He Spent On Global Warming Programs

Dailycaller
House lawmakers sent a letter to the White House Monday demanding an up-to-date list of how much federal agencies spend on global warming-related programs.
The budget law, passed in late 2015, required the Obama administration to detail all its global warming expenditures, but so far, the White House hasn’t handed anything over to lawmakers.  .....
The White House reported to Congress in 2013 that it spent $22.2 billion on global warming programs that year. That number included scientific research, international climate assistance and green energy technology subsidies.
For perspective, the $22.2 billion in global warming spending was nearly twice as much as the government said it would spend on customs and border enforcement."

The Impending Collapse Of The Global Warming Scare

Manhattancontrarian
.....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.  "

Vox: Popular Clean Energy “is toast” Without Government Enforcement

WUWT
Why does “popular” green energy require rigid government enforcement? Why can’t people be free to make their own choices? Surely if renewables are as popular as Vox claims, people don’t have to be coerced – they will embrace clean energy of their own free will? "

U.S average temperature 16°F – colder than any time last winter, and winter hasn’t started yet!

WUWT
If you think it is colder than you remember last year, your’e right. Winter hasn’t officially started yet, it begins on Wednesday, December 21st. But the numbers tell a cold hard fact: as of 7 a.m. EST this morning, Sunday, Dec. 18, the average temperature across the Lower 48 states of the U.S. is colder than any time all last winter."

Why Investors Are So Reluctant To Build New CCGT Capacity

Paul Homewood

....And it gets worse! All government projections assume that the carbon price will have to carry on rising sharply after 2030. The BEIS study, for instance, assumes it will rise to £200/tonne by 2050 (all at 2014 prices).

Even if a new build CCGT can manage to turn a profit in the early years, it would quickly become totally unviable once carbon pricing starts mounting up.

Given all of these obstacles, it is little wonder that investors are not prepared to finance new projects."

Overwhelming Evidence Of Climate Fraud At NASA

Real Science
In 1973, glaciers were growing and animals were migrating south from the cold. The National Center for Atmospheric Research and CRU both reported a very strong cooling trend since WWII. In 1981, James Hansen at NASA still showed much of the post-WWII cooling trend, as well as a Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and a 7,000 year long global cooling trend. Gavin Schmidt at NASA has since completely removed this cooling trend, and now shows warming from 1945 to 1975. Gavin didn’t do this tampering all at once. It has been a 16 year long project where he has tripled global warming by altering the data set.

What is truly stunning is that satellite measured temperatures of the troposphere show little or no warming during that 16 year period when Gavin tripled global warming. "

Wrong Trump predictions due to omnipresent left-wing liars, propagandists, bullies

 Luboš Motl's Reference Frame 
There are people who manipulate because they consider a particular big outcome to be more important than the cleanness of the methods – which may sometimes be sensible. The real problem is that liars and bullies like that basically control the political sections of newspapers, polling agencies, universities, and many other important spots. So they collectively guaranteed that their ideological goals were always more important than the cleanness of the methods – and that would mean the end of democracy. In many environments, they are clear majorities; in others, they may be minorities but they are majorities among those who dare to speak. They don't find lies troublesome for a simple reason. They have been lying (and harming inconvenient people around them) pretty much 24 hours a day for many, many years and they have never faced any tangible backlash. Whether you like it or not, most truth-telling people avoid lies because they may face some problems when they're caught lying. If there's no God and no human who takes care of the punishment, most people find lies OK for them.

I hope that this will stop. One of the most well-defined examples of a persistent lie that is being defended by dishonest bullies like that is the climate hysteria, the claim that the climate is going to change dangerously and it will be because of the human activity, especially one involving CO2. Most people know this claim to be rubbish. And among those who have honestly studied this question using scientific tools, the fraction of those who realize that the worries are not backed by any evidence adds up to a very healthy majority.

Nevertheless, we still hear the indefinitely repeated lies about those 97% who support the climate hysteria. They're pretty much the same people as those who have been assuring us that Trump couldn't win. A deceitful, completely corrupt movement of mostly far left activists. I hope that President Trump will have the muscles to eradicate this climate hysteria movement not only in the U.S. but in the whole world. Dismantling of the U.S. role in the "Paris Agreement" should be the beginning."

The End of the Green Age

WUWT
The victory of President Trump is a gift not just for America but for the world.
As WUWT recently reported, the last few days has seen a growing panic amongst the inner core of the Climate movement, currently partying at taxpayer’s expense in Marrakesh, about what they hoped was the unlikely possibility of a Trump Victory. Now their worst fears are realised.
Many years ago, Lord Monckton predicted America would be nation to lead the world to freedom from the anti-humanist greed of the green movement. Lord Monckton’s prediction has now come to pass.
In my native Australia, in Europe, across the world, in the bleak halls of the United Nations, the climate elite were gathering for one final great push to claim the future. Their plans are now in ruins.
God bless the United States of America. God bless the next President of the United States, Donald J Trump."

NOAA US Temperature Nonsense Update

Real Science
NOAA claims January-October was the second hottest on record in the US, and that the US is getting much hotter. Their actual thermometer data shows that January-October was sixth warmest after 2012, 1921, 1934, 1938 and 1998. There has been no January-October warming over the last 80-90 years. Meanwhile, the frequency of very hot days has plummeted in the US, with 2016 being one of the coolest on record. "

20 New Papers: Higher CO2, Global Warming Increase Crop Yields, Green The Earth, Reduce Weather Extremes, Extend Human Life

NoTricksZone
Back in the early 1970s, when there was a scientific consensus that the Earth was cooling and that cooling was not good for the biosphere, scientists were ranking human-generated pollutants in terms of their potential to do harm to the planet. At that time, CO2 was regarded as “the least objectionable or only beneficial addition to the atmosphere from industrial sources.”   ......

Climate Clash: Aussie Senator Malcolm Roberts Owns TV Physicist Brian Cox

WUWT
Brian Cox attempted to embarrass Roberts with a copy an unnamed “Global Land Ocean Temperature” graph. Unfortunately for Cox, Roberts has expert knowledge of climate datasets. Roberts challenged the validity of the graph on the basis that it showed 1998 as being significantly cooler than 2015/16, and challenged Cox to provide details of the dataset, and the original unadjusted temperature records.
In my opinion Brian Cox came across as arrogant and unprepared – he obviously thought he would effortlessly trample Roberts with the help of some half baked assertions, an appeal to his authority as a “Physicist”, and a sympathetic audience. I doubt Cox will make the same mistake twice."

Aussie Chief Scientist: “We have [climate] models to try to predict what that will be and that’s difficult”

WUWT
One Nation Federal Senator and hardcore climate skeptic Malcolm Roberts, who recently skewered TV Physicist Brian Cox on national TV, has demanded the Australian Chief Scientist provide evidence that humans cause climate change. The response so far is less than confident.   ......
I suspect this challenge is going to get very uncomfortable for Australia’s chief scientist.
Malcolm Roberts, a qualified and highly experienced mining engineer, is one of the few elected Australian politicians with the skill and meticulous attention to detail required to dissect anything the bureaucrats who run government science organisations can throw at him.
His demand for proof that humans cause warming has struck at the weak point of the entire AGW scare campaign – because there isn’t any proof available to provide. Just a load of conjecture, based on a weak set of models which don’t work very well.
Most people agree that adding CO2, considered in isolation, should produce a mild warming effect. But the entire climate scare campaign is based on models which assume that the initial warming effect from anthropogenic CO2 is dramatically amplified by feedback, by climatic responses to the initial warming.
The problem is there is no evidence this amplification is actually occurring – models which assume amplification perform woefully when compared to real world observations, far worse than models which assume no amplification, or very little amplification."

Global Warming be Damned: Record Corn, Soybeans, Wheat

Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

For many years we have been warned that climate change is creating a “climate crisis”, with heat and drought reducing agricultural yields to the point that humanity will suffer. Every time there’s a drought, we are told that this is just one more example of human-caused climate change.
But droughts have always occurred. The question is: Are they getting worse? And, has modest warming had any effects on grain yields?   ......
So, here we are with yet another year (2016) experiencing either record or near-record yields in corn, soybeans, and wheat. Even La Nina, which was widely feared would cause reduced crop yields this year, did not materialize.
How can this be?"

Debunking the L A Times story claiming new study shows human caused warming doubled western U.S. area burned since 1984

WUWT
The number of U.S. wildfires for the period 1984 to 1999 is essentially unchanged from the number of  U.S. wildfires for the period 2000 –2015. Additionally the latest year to date wildfire data (http://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/nfn.htm) for the last ten years shows absolutely no consistent upward trend whatsoever in either burned acres or number of U.S. wildfires which have occurred. The new wildfire study also fails to address that U.S. drought data does not support claims of increased nationwide droughts as driving increased number of wildfires. "

Extreme Rainfall Trends In Australia

Paul Homewood
To sum up:
1) Rainfall is not becoming more extreme.
2) Dry spells are becoming less common.

We already seen that the extreme temperature graphs show that very hot days are not getting hotter or more frequent in Australia. Instead, it is the very cold ones that have become less common.
In other words, climate is not getting more extreme in Australia. If anything, the reverse is true.
We are often told that global warming is leading to more extreme weather. Not for the first time, the facts tell a different story."

The “Ice-Free Arctic” Big Lie

Real Science
Every year we are told by Nobel Prize winners, climate scientists and environmental activists that the Arctic will be ice-free that year. They are flat-earthers.
It is impossible for the Arctic to be ice-free under current climate conditions, because the Earth is round. Because of the high albedo of clouds and ice and the low angle of the sun, north of 80N they don’t get enough solar energy to melt that much ice. The prevailing winds also jam the ice up against the Canadian Coast, and make it very thick. Climate scientists have been making idiotic predictions about an ice-free Arctic for generations. They have no idea what they are talking about. ....."

Ontario’s electricity, “carnage”, “a train wreck”, electricity costs double to reduce carbon at $250/ton

JoNova (Australia)
The Ontario government has finally started canceling new wind projects, but there are long term contracts for current wind farms that go on for years. Jan Carr was head of the Ontario Power Authority and says the government is “finally waking up to Ontario’s electricity carnage.”

Arctic Ice Growing Rapidly

Paul Homewood
It is now safe to confirm that the minimum Arctic sea ice extent has now been passed this year, with an area of 4.083 million sq km on 7th September.
This is 22% greater than in 2012, despite two major storms in August that led to break up of ice.
The ice has been regrowing remarkably rapidly for the last week, and already stands above the start of the month. Tentatively, we may be seeing one of the fastest September growths on record."
 

Impact of the ~ 2400 yr solar cycle on climate and human societies

Judith Curry
For this article I am going to concentrate mainly on the ~ 2400-yr cycle during the Holocene and on its effects both on climate and people. It is important to highlight two things. First, that solar variability, even if an important factor affecting climate change is neither the main one, nor the only one. Temperatures on Earth appear to depend mainly on orbital changes, firstly obliquity, but also precession and eccentricity, and oceanic cycles, and volcanic activity also play an important role at times, and therefore solar variability alone does not explain climate changes. The second is that solar cycles are irregular in nature. The Schwabe cycle is a good example. Although described as an 11-yr cycle it can be anywhere from 8 to 15 years. Also its amplitude is very variable, and during the Maunder minimum between 1620 and 1700 AD even became inconspicuous. Other solar cycles also manifest this irregularity both in periodicity and amplitude, and similarly the ~ 1000-yr Eddy cycle was inconspicuous between 4500 and 1500 yr BP (years before 1950)."

Record Arctic Sea Ice Growth Continues

RealScience
The Arctic had the shortest melt season record this year, and the earliest end to the melt season on record. Now we have the fastest September growth of ice on record too. Ice extent is 30% higher than 2012, higher than last year and about the same as 2013."

Intermittent & Unreliable ‘Delivery’ Makes Wind Power Pointless

StopTheseThings
In fact, I have come to the rather astounding conclusion that even if wind turbines and solar PV could be built at zero cost, it would not make sense to continue to add them to the electric grid in the absence of very much better and cheaper electricity storage than we have today. There are too many costs outside building the devices themselves. It is these secondary costs that are problematic. Also, the presence of intermittent electricity disrupts competitive prices, leading to electricity prices that are far too low for other electricity providers, including those providing electricity using nuclear or natural gas. The tiny contribution of wind and solar to grid electricity cannot make up for the loss of more traditional electricity sources due to low prices."

Lewandowsky and Cook Study: “Deniers” Cannot Provide a Coherent Alternate Worldview

WUWT
This has got to be one of the most ridiculous claims Lewandowsky has ever promoted. “Something is wrong” with the current theory is a perfectly valid scientific position. A demonstration that a theory is useless at prediction does not have to be accompanied by a settled alternative theory – simply demonstrating that the current theory is wrong is enough."

Scientists and Studies predict ‘imminent global COOLING’ ahead – Drop in global temps ‘almost a slam dunk’

Climate Depot
Growing number of scientists are predicting global cooling: Russia’s Pulkovo Observatory: ‘We could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years’ ....."

Arctic ice – a historical viewpoint

WUWT
First, a significant warming of the Arctic was noted in 1922. The U.S Monthly Weather Review of November 1922 contained a report from the US Consul in Bergen, Norway, saying “The Arctic seems to be warming up. Reports from fisherman, seal hunters and explorers who sail the seas about Spitzbergen and the eastern Arctic , all point to a radical change in climatic conditions, and hitherto unheard-of high temperatures in that part of the earth’s surface.”

4 New Papers Link Solar Activity, Natural Ocean Cycles To Climate – And Find Warmer Temps During 1700s, 1800s

NoTricksZone
Not only do these papers describe solar activity and ocean oscillations as the dominant mechanisms of climate change, they provide evidence that the modern, post-1950 period does not contain the highest temperatures of the last few hundred years.  In fact, these papers each document that temperatures during some periods of the 1700s and/or 1800s were just as warm or warmer than present temperatures."

GOP Lawmaker Totally Trolls Obama’s Climate Adviser With ‘Global Warming’ Article From 1922

Daily Caller
California Republican Rep. Tom McClintock opened a congressional hearing by reading a Washington Post article detailing the “unheard of” impacts global warming had on the Arctic ecosystem. .....It turns out McClintock was reading a Washington Post article from November 1922, not November 2015 as many listening, including Goldfuss, likely assumed."

Arctic Sea Ice — it all melted before and it didn’t matter

JoNova(Australia)
Matt Ridley in The Australian explains how every man and his dog is forecasting the doom of the Arctic sea ice, and not only have they been wrong year after year, but they all assume that if the ice all melts it’ll be a global disaster. But Earth’s already been-there done-that, and for years, and it was no-biggie. Polar bears obviously got through it, as did seals. Humans without protective solar panels somehow spread far and wide, and generally flourished.
I suspect the main climate refugees from the Arctic would have names like Donner and Blitzen. This is the one thing Matt doesn’t explain — in 8,000BC when the ice melted,  what the heck happened with Santa? "

Emergency Theater for Paris Agreement: China, US rush to sham ratification

JoNova(Australia)
It’s a do or die moment for The Cause. Brexit has hit them hard, and the Trump factor threatens to wreck everything. The Paris agreement has stalled pathetically at 1.1% of all human emissions (they need 55% to come into force). They need a gamechanger or the illusion of one."

An Arctic expedition designed to raise awareness of the perils of man-made climate change is being frustrated by unexpectedly large quantities of ice.

Breitbart

All this nonsense you regularly hear from alarmists about the polar regions being navigable by ship for the first time because of global warming is historically and scientifically illiterate. Here, for example, is a history by the Ecotretas blog going back to the 1490s of all the various ships and explorers which have previously negotiated the North East Passage (as recently but-barely navigated by the Polar Ocean Challenge). It also looks like it was pretty toasty up there during the “Arctic Heat Wave” of 1923.

One of these days, someone’s going to get themselves hurt on one of these polar Ship of Fools expeditions. But until that day, I say: “Bring them on!” If idiots want to freeze their balls off, take City investment firms and insurance brokers for a ride, and make utter dicks of themselves for our delectation and amusement while making a mockery of current climate ‘science’, then I’d say they are performing a truly valuable public service."

Rare Event! Millions of Children Under 12 See First Ever Hurricane Hit Florida!

NoTricksZone
Rare! Children see first east coast hurricane ever!
This means that almost all children under 14 have no or barely any recollection of a major hurricane hitting the US east coast.

For Florida, ABC News here reports that Hermine is the first hurricane of any category to hit the state in a decade.
In summary, the exact opposite of what climate experts predicted in 2005 has in fact happened. They could not have been more wrong. Hermine it turns out, just barely made hurricane status."

It will be a cold day in August before…

E.M.Smith
San Francisco has seen only one 70-degree day in August, according to meteorologists. The last time the city had a month that wouldn’t budge above 70 at all was 1942, and there have been only two other Augusts on record — in 1917 and 1882 — with that distinct dishonor.
“We had the one day when we reached 70 degrees. That was on the eighth of August. And every other day has been in the 60s,” said Jan Null, a meteorologist for Golden Gate Weather Services who’s been tracking August records."

BUSTED: Analysis shows Mid-19th Century Warming Likely To Be Natural, Not Human-Induced

WUWT
In a critical analysis of the paper by Abram et al. (2016) and published today at the influential Climate Audit blog, Nicholas Lewis, an independent climate researcher, demonstrates that the evidence that supports the claimed anthropogenic origin of the early warming onset is inappropriate and does not substantiate that claim."

Obama's "ratification" of the Paris climate treaty is a joke

The Reference Frame

There's some news. The Chinese and the U.S. president have met in China and "ratified" the Paris climate treaty. This brings the number of countries that have ratified it to 26. Additional 33 countries have promised to ratify before the end of the year. It means that the total number will exceed 55 which is needed. If they also exceed 55% of the world's production of CO2, the Paris climate treaty will come into force for the countries that have ratified it. ........ Recall that the Paris climate treaty is encouraging the countries to make individual commitments in the form of five-year plans to decarbonize their economies. Like communist parties, all the signatories should gather, talk about their experience with the five-year plans, criticize those who aren't sufficiently tough, and agree about new five-year plans. During communism, similar voluntary activities encouraged by the communist leadership were known as the Initiative Z. ..... Instead, Barack Obama has declared that the salvation of the planet is no big deal legally. It is just an "executive agreement" which only requires the president's signature. ..... It's ludicrous to assume that this signature of Obama's will matter. But it's only ludicrous from the contemporary viewpoint – this scenario has nothing to do with the way how the republic works. However, the actual main goal of the Paris treaty and similar activity of the climate alarmists is to change the conditions, promote the climate hysterical politicians to Führers, and make it possible for them to control every fart of yours and your cow (California has banned or regulated cows' farts, no kidding) without any attention paid to any representatives, voters, or taxpayers. The actual goal of the climate hysteria is to introduce a new totalitarian system and this is why its proponents must be treated in the same way as the Nazis."

Looney Tunes...

China And US Ratify Climate Change Deal Ahead Of G20 (SkyNews)

"He said the agreement may be remembered as "the moment we finally decided to save our planet", while his counterpart Xi Jinping said the milestone marked the start of a "global government system" for climate change."

"...China is responsible for about 25% of global carbon emissions, with the US in second place on about 15%, making their efforts crucial in the fight against warming."

Software Expert Exposes Potential NASA Climate Data Fraud …Trend “Completely Fake” And “Manipulated!

NoTricksZone
Software engineering whiz Tony Heller makes a presentation on climate change and the data behind it .If you haven’t watched it already, then do take the time to do so.
Heller, who goes by the pseudo-name of Steve Goddard at his wildly popular realclimatecience site, calls the idea that it’s getting hotter is “utter nonsense” and shows how US temperatures were much hotter in the 1930s.  According to Heller, the warming in the US is not real, and was created through statistical tricks after 1990. Later he highlights some of the many ridiculous claims climate experts and activist politicians made, and have since turned out to be a complete folly. At this point the presentation rivets your attention and for skeptics it becomes one you don’t want to stop watching."

July 10, 1913 – Hottest Day Ever

Real Science
On this date in 1913, California reached 134 degrees during a week when every day was over 127 degrees  This was the hottest officially recognized temperature ever recorded on Earth. The heat wasn’t confined to California or to July. The US midwest had their second longest heatwave on record in August 1913, with 20 consecutive days over 100 degrees at Clinton, Missouri. CO2 was at very low levels in 1913, indicating that heatwaves have nothing to do with CO2 levels. This of course doesn’t stop government funded scientists from lying about the topic, like they do about every other climate topic. And according to NASA, 1913 was one of the ten coldest years on record."

New Nuclear Icebreaker Extends Russian Arctic Dominance

WUWT
Aside from utter defacto military dominance of the Arctic Ocean, the Russian icebreaker fleet ensures massive logistical support for growing commercial Russian oil and gas extraction in the far North.
Of course, given President Obama’s plan to make solar cost competitive in 10 years, and Obama’s confidence that the Arctic will be ice free by 2040, perhaps the current US administration thinks the massive Russian investment in icebreakers and Arctic fossil fuel extraction is wasted effort."

Modulation of Ice Ages via Precession and Dust-Albedo Feedbacks

WUWT
Why do ice ages occur? Surprisingly, even after many decades of paleoclimatic research we simply do not know for sure. Most scientists will agree that ice age cycles have something to do with precession: the slow wobble of the axis of the Earth. The ancient Egyptians and Greeks knew of precession and called it the Great Year, because it gives warm and cool seasons over its approximate 23,000-year cycle. But there is a problem with invoking the Great Year as the regulator of ice ages, because we should really get an interglacial warming every 23,000 years or so. And we don’t – they only happen every fourth or fifth Great Year.   ........And so now we have the entire ice age forcing and feedback mechanism, laid out and plain for all to see. It begins when a Great Summer turns into a Great Winter, which reduces the sun-strength in the northern hemisphere and allows ice sheets to grow. This is a slow process that takes tens of thousands of years, and appears destined to turn the world into a complete snowball. However, the high albedo polar ice sheets have an Achilles heel – dust. As the ice sheets grow and the seas cool, CO2 also reduces. The concentration finally reaches the critical 190 ppm level where world flora begins to die, especially at higher altitude, and the Gobi steppe-lands turn into a true sand desert. This turns northern China into the equivalent of 1930s Dust Bowl America, and the ensuing dust storms dump thousands of tonnes of dust onto the northern ice sheets each year. And so when the next Great Summer comes along, the dusty polar ice sheets can warm and melt and the next interglacial is born. So CO2 can indeed cause global warming but its effect is much more pronounced at low concentrations, rather than high concentrations."

UK competitors are laughing. We just set world's most stringent carbon targets unilaterally, and no one will follow

David Rose
The UK has announced an ambitious new carbon target for the early 2030s, allaying fears that the climate goal would be a casualty of the EU referendum.
Amber Rudd accepted the advice of the government’s statutory climate advisers, setting a target on Thursday of reducing carbon emissions 57% by 2030 on 1990 levels.
The legally binding “fifth carbon budget” laid in parliament today is tougher than the carbon emissions target the UK is signed up to as part of the European Union, which requires a 40% cut by 2030 on 1990 levels." (Guardian)

Remember that claim “global warming is causing cherry trees to bloom earlier” ? – Never mind, light pollution is likely the cause

WUWT
Liebig’s Law applies to plant growth and can be summed up as this:

“The availability of the most abundant nutrient in the soil is only as good as the availability of the least abundant nutrient in the soil.” Or, to put it more plainly, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.”
For example, the growth of an organism such as a plant may be dependent on a number of factors, such as sunlight or mineral nutrients (e.g. nitrate orphosphate). The availability of these may vary, such that at any given time one is more limiting than the others. Liebig’s Law states that growth only occurs at the rate permitted by the most limiting. – Wikipedia   .........Gosh, global night brightening  seems to be growing faster than global warming. And in Washington, those cherry trees sure seem to get a lot of light at night as this photo demonstrates:"

China: Wind turbines aren’t working, causing HUGE problems

Tallbloke's Talkshop

Even if the turbines themselves are in working order, unreliable intermittent wind power remote from the areas of densest population can cause havoc to China’s power grid system, as Andrew Follett reports in the Daily Caller. "

Wind Farm Noise Victims Sue Developer & Noise Consultant for $Millions

stopthesethings
he Waubra wind farm – which is run by Spanish outfit, Acciona – has drawn something like 1,400 noise complaints and has driven 11 farming families from homes that neighbour its operation, since it started operating over 6 years ago in July 2009 (see our post here).
The owners of those homes had been complaining bitterly about low-frequency noise and infrasound from the moment the turbines commenced operation.
Terrified of litigation, Acciona’s lawyers quietly went to each of the families complaining; purchased their properties and stitched them up with bullet-proof gag clauses – that prevent them from ever talking about the “sale” (see our post here).
So terrified were they that word of Acciona’s out of court settlements would get out, they even pursued one of the victims, Trish Godfrey all the way to Adelaide in South Australia in an effort to prevent her from giving evidence in a wind farm planning case about her acoustic torment – (see this article and our posts here and here)."

The sun is as blank as a billiard ball, solar activity dwindling to lows not seen in 200 years

WUWT

The last time sunspots vanished for a whole week was in Dec. 2010–a time when the sun was bouncing back from a long Solar Minimum. In this case, the 7 week interregnum is a sign that a new Solar Minimum is coming.
The sunspot cycle is like a pendulum, swinging back and forth every 11-years or so between times of high and low sunspot number.  The next low is expected in 2019-2020. Between now and then sunspots will become increasingly rare with stretches of days, then weeks, then months of “billiard-ball suns.”

Brexit Spells End Of Europe’s Climate Obsession Germany Starts Roll-Back Of Climate Policy

WUWT
Germany has abandoned plans to set out a timetable to exit coal-fired power production and scrapped C02 emissions reduction goals for individual sectors, according to the latest draft of an environment ministry document seen by Reuters on Wednesday. The new version, which was revised following consultation with the economy and energy ministry, has also deleted specific concrete C02 emissions savings targets for the energy, industry, transport and agriculture sectors. —Reuters, 29 June 2016 
....Economics editor Daniel Wetzel at Germany’s center-right national daily Die Welt here writes that the Brexit may be the end of the Paris climate treaty and that it is a climate-political nightmare for the EU. –P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, 30 June 2016

NY Post: ‘The imploding cabal to criminalize climate dissent’

Climate Depot
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and his fellow greenies are getting a lesson about the dangers of believing their own propaganda.  ......
But Walker sought Exxon’s correspondence with some 90 groups suspected of the “crime” of questioning climate-change orthodoxy. The obvious point was to make these groups think twice about the findings their research produces and their positions on the issue. It was also meant to scare off donors, like Exxon. Yet Wednesday, Walker withdrew his Exxon subpoena. He’d already taken back his order to CEI.     So his probe, it seems, is kaput."

Poll: ‘Only 8% of farmers believe climate change is taking place and caused primarily by human activity’

Climate Depot
A survey conducted by Iowa State Professor J. Arbuckle and Purdue University professor Linda Prokopy of 5,000 Cornbelt farmers—representing about 60% of U.S. corn production and 80% of farmland in the region—found that only 8% believed climate change is taking place and caused primarily by human activity. That 8% figure is significantly lower than the general population. A poll from January found that 27% of the general public primarily blames human activity."

Spectacular Drop In Global Average Satellite Temperatures

WUWT
The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for June, 2016 is +0.34 deg. C, down 0.21 deg. C from the May value of +0.55 deg. C (click for full size version): ....This gives a 2-month temperature fall of -0.37 deg. C, which is the second largest in the 37+ year satellite record…the largest was -0.43 deg. C in Feb. 1988."

Japanese Scientist Reiterates That CO2 Climate Sensitivity Is Overstated, “Theoretically Meaningless”

NoTricksZone
Japanese scientist Kyoji Kimoto reiterates his belief that CO2 climate forcing has been grandly overstated. See original story here.  Kyoji has sent the following essay to publish here at NTZ."

How the West got healthy and prosperous

The Hockey Schtick

Abundant, reliable, affordable energy – the vast majority of it fossil fuels – made all this and much more possible. It carried us from human and animal muscle, wood, dung and water wheels, to densely packed energy that could reliably power factories, laboratories, schools, hospitals, homes and offices. 

Those fuels also run equipment that removes harmful pollutants from our air and water, and they ended our unsustainable reliance on whale oil, saving those magnificent mammals from extinction.

Today, coal, oil and natural gas still provide 80% of America’s and the world’s energy, for transportation, communication, refrigeration, heat, lights, manufacturing, entertainment and every other component of modern life. Together, the scientific method and industrial-grade energy enable our Ultimate Resource – the human mind – to create more new ideas, institutions and technologies that make life for poor people in wealthier countries better, healthier, fuller and longer than even royalty enjoyed a mere century ago.

Medical research discovered why people died from wounds; the true causes of malaria, smallpox, cholera and other diseases; antibiotics, vaccinations, insecticides and pharmaceuticals to combat disease and improve our overall well-being; anesthesia and surgical techniques that permit life-saving operations and organ transplants; sanitation (toilets, soap, trash removal) and water purification; and countless other advances that raised the average American’s life expectancy from 46 in 1900 to 76 today for men and 81 for women."

Poor countries want $3 TRILLION to deliver on Paris climate commitments

JunkScience
Western taxpayers are expected to just cough it up....."

Sea Level Prediction

NoTricksZone
Earth is now entering a Climate Pulse Global Cooling Cycle which will last between 100 to 200 years, and this will greatly stabilize or even reduce sea level rise. The coldest years of the upcoming Natural Climate Pulse cooling cycle will be from the year 2020 through 2220, and especially from 2025 through 2060 – a period that will likely see epic cold temperatures not seen since the early 1800s. The Arctic and Antarctic entered the cooling cycle around the year 2013 and the full effects will become noticeable on or after the year 2019.
The Arctic and Antarctic will realize dramatic ice restoration during this period, and ocean water will contract during this period due to the much colder temperatures and cooling of the oceans. GWO predicts a complete stabilizing of the sea level rise early in this period and likely very little or no sea level rise during the period from 2020 through 2200."

Our crazy energy policy just got madder still

Christopher Booker, Telegraph
As we know, arguably the greatest collective flight from reality in the history of British politics was that brought about by Ed Miliband’s 2008 Climate Change Act, which committed Britain, alone in the world, to cutting its “carbon emissions” by 80 per cent. Anyone with a shred of common sense would have known that, with fossil fuels still providing (according to the latest government figures) 84 per cent of all our energy – including 70 per cent of our electricity and pretty well 100 per cent of our transport – while renewable wind, sun and hydro supply less than 2 per cent, it was not entirely rational to set ourselves a goal that could only be reached by closing down virtually our entire economy.
Yet this 80 per cent figure was at the last minute plucked from the air by Mr Miliband, on the advice of a young lady called Bryony Worthington, previously the climate change campaign director for Friends of the Earth, who had been invited to draft an Act which was then supported by all but five of our MPs."

Sons of Climategate: Dodgy Scientists Caught Red-Handed by FOIA Lawsuit

Breitbart

The dodgy scientists who wrote to President Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch demanding that RICO laws be used to prosecute climate skeptics just got even more badly screwed.

Already one of them — George Mason University professor Jagadish Shukla — is under Congressional investigation for what has been described as the “largest science scandal in US history.”
Now the background to their footling conspiracy has been exposed thanks to a FOIA request by the Competitive Enterprise Institute which has forced them to release their private letters and emails.
Like Climategate, it makes for some fascinating reading, mainly because — yet again — it shows the climate alarmist establishment in such a terrible light."

Massive Greenland Fraud Is Rapidly Growing

Real Science
Last summer, University of California scientists made this hysterical claim about the Zachariae Isstrom glacier in northeast Greenland. ...It’s a great story, only problem is it is a complete fabrication. If anything, the glacier has grown since 2012. In 1940, scientists reported that glaciers in Northeast Greenland were receding very rapidly, and were “nearing a catastrophe.“ The glaciers are still there, there is no catastrophe, and the only thing that has changed is that the fraudsters at NASA have erased the 1940’s warmth in that region. If the glaciers were receding rapidly in 1940 and are not now, then it must have been warmer in 1940 than it is now. But logic and data are not a part of the criminal venture known as “climate science.”

Jet Stream Slows Down As It Gets Faster!!

Paul Homewood
 As a footnote to the New Scientist piece on Greenland meltdown, it is interesting to note that Jennifer Francis is pushing her widely derided theory that loss of Arctic ice is causing the jet stream to slow down – something she then uses to blame every bit of bad weather on.
Readers will no doubt recall that fellow junk scientist, Dr Paul Williams of Reading University, has been claiming that global warming is causing the jet stream to become stronger.
In climate science, it seems that you can make up whatever BS you want!
UK taxpayers are paying Mr Williams £91k a year for this nonsense."

Treasury Dept. Sitting On Investigation Into Solar Energy Fraud That’s ‘Two-And-A-Half Times Solyndra’

Daily Caller
“As you are aware, the Department recently indicated that applicants included ineligible costs or otherwise overstated the value of their solar energy investments by claiming approximately $1.3 billion in unwarranted cash grants,” Republican senators, led by Jeff Flake of Arizona and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, wrote in a letter to Treasury officials obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation."

Uncovering the subversion of scientific methods in pursuit of politics

Matt Ridley
Science, humanity’s greatest intellectual achievement, has always been vulnerable to infection by pseudoscience, which pretends to use the methods of science, but actually subverts them in pursuit of an obsession. Instead of evidence-based policymaking, pseudoscience specialises in policy-based evidence making. Today, this infection is spreading.  ......
Pseudoscience is bad enough when it infects astrologers, 9/11 truthers and crop-circle makers. But when its symptoms show up in mainstream bodies, such as the World Health Organisation, it’s time to be worried."

NASA “Homogenization” Infusing MORE Error? Adelaide Airport: Cooling Turns Into Warming

NoTricksZone
Hiding the cooling
It should be obvious to all that these adjustments to the raw temperature data are an attempt to hide the long-term cooling temperature trend at Adelaide. These changes to the temperature data begs us to examine all station data for similar changes. Is global warming real or just a  product of pencil, pen, and computer? "

Superstition Is Occurring With Alarming Frequency In The US

Real Science
The New York Times believes that a warm Christmas in New York proves global warming, and that “Record-breaking temperatures are occurring with alarming frequency in the United States.” Like everything else the New York Times writes about climate, this claim is complete nonsense. The frequency of maximum daily temperature records in the US peaked in the 1930’s – and have generally declined since then. For stations with history extending back to at least 1930, almost all US all-time temperature records occurred before 1940. Last Christmas was the warmest on record in New York, beating 1982 by two degrees. Valentines Day this year was the coldest on record in New York. Last year January through March was the coldest in New York City since 1934. This is a typical content-free climate article for the New York Times. The author obviously did no research and is just making stuff up. "

175 nations signed, Paris climate insanity hasn't come to force yet

Luboš Motl
 It's a treaty in which the green activists in every nation invent an arbitrary five-year plan and they help their comrades in other countries to enforce this nation-specific anti-industrial terror on everyone else. They schedule a new convention each five years where their conspiracy is supposed to be updated. Whether this setup without any universal predetermined commitments may actually harm anyone is still debated. But the increase of the number of dirty parasites in the climate bureaucracy across the world and of the deceitful propaganda that these parasites need for their survival will certainly be genuine." 

Systematic Error in Climate Measurements: The surface air temperature record

WUWT
There is no support in the temperature record for any emergency concerning climate. Except, perhaps an emergency in the apparent competence of AGW-consensus climate scientists."

‘Bill Nye Is Not A Real “Science Guy” (He Just Plays One On TV)

Climate Depot

'Nye who has been a vocal supporter of the climate change hypothesis isn’t more qualified to speak about climate science than any other non-scientist. He has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Cornell University, and worked at Boeing in the mechanical engineering department. His entry into TV was not because of any science expertise but because he won a Steve Martin look-alike contest and began moonlight as a stand-up comic by night. Eventually he quit Boeing and became a comedy writer and performer on a sketch comedy television show in Seattle, Washington, called Almost Live!'

Hansen Repeating His Identical Lies From 30 Years Ago

Real Science
James Hansen says that we will have killer storms “stronger than any in modern times” and drowned cities in a few decades. He said the exact same thing 30 years ago. He predicted 50% stronger storms in 1988. He predicted that Manhattan would be underwater by now. Climate scientists have no idea what they are talking about and repeat the same lies decade after decade, but they do know that scaring people keeps the money coming in. "

Aussie Government Pledges $1 billion for Renewables

WUWT
Aussie Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has just pledged to spend $1 billion of Australian taxpayer’s money, on renewable schemes which are struggling to raise their own finance on the open market. "
--------------------

Satire Veep's Slogan Used By Australian PM  [SkyNews]

A "meaningless election slogan" created for the political comedy is used by Malcolm Turnbull in a number of interviews. .....
Veep writer Simon Blackwell was more severe: "In S4 of Veep we came up with the most meaningless election slogan we could think of. Now adopted by Australian PM," he tweeted."

The Sun in February 2016 and the latest heat records

WUWT
In February 2016 our sun’s activity was, as in almost every month of the current cycle, well below the average. The observed SSN (SunSpotNumber) was 57.2. The average of the cycles 1 … 23 for this month is 80.8, thus the observed activity was 71% of the average value in the current 24^th cycle.  ... An El Nino in the end therefore generates a heat loss of the system earth. The current pulse of warming is partly a consequence of this natural process. The recent temperature records therefore are more related to the natural ENSO cycle than to global warming of probably about 0.01° C / year by the effect of moderate greenhouse gases, when allowing for a reduced CO2 climate sensitivity."

February Was The Stupidest Month Ever

Real Science
It takes a very special brand of stupid to believe that February is the hottest month. The hottest months on Earth are always July and August, because most of the land surface is in the northern hemisphere. Southern hemisphere summers have little effect on global atmospheric temperature, because most of the sun’s heat goes into the ocean. "

Hottest seasonally adjusted month EVER! Hyperbole runs wild.

JoNova(Australia)

Who needs a trend when you can have a hot month?

The news is all over the media — Feb 2016 was a record hottest ever month — and the Global Worriers  are saying “Meltdown“, “Planetary Crisis” and “Terrifying Milestone.”
But the Pause is still there. No matter what happens now, the world didn’t warm for 18 years, and that shows the models can’t predict a thing. (Unless they take solar factors into account, which they don’t).
One big El Nino didn’t fix the climate models. (They can’t predict ElNino’s either).
During the last whopper El Nino in 1997-98, CO2 levels were 365pp, They’re now 400ppm. For a lot of the last 10 years the Global Worriers have been claiming that we can’t start a pause with an El Nino. So why is OK to stop a Pause with one?  The heat wasn’t “global” but was an Arctic, Russian, Alaskan thing (see the dark red above and the top graph of the three below). It’s likely the heat has come out of the ocean. So an ocean current may have shifted. Or solar influences may have moved the jet streams…. There is no 'planetary emergency' in half the planet. "

Erasing The 100% Consensus

Real Science
In the 1960’s and 1970’s there was a 100% consensus that the Earth was cooling The National Academy of Sciences showed this in their 1975 report. The New York Times began reporting on this in the early 1960’s. This doesn’t fit the current needs of NASA, so they simply altered the data to make the cooling disappear. Over the last 15 years, NASA has doubled 1880-2000 warming, by replacing rural stations with UHI infected ones. Global warming has very little to do with science, and very much to do with politics."

What’s Next? Prosecuting String Theory Denialists?

Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
The revelation that AG Loretta Lynch had discussions about bringing charges against climate change deniers (I’ve yet to meet a ‘climate change denier’) has led to a few questions about whether people like me (a skeptic of the view that the human influence on climate is either large or dangerous) should be worried.   ......
The very fact that politicians use terms like climate change deniers means they really don’t understand the scientific debate, anyway. The climate always changes.
The pertinent questions are: (1) by how much?, (2) how much is due to human activities?, (3) is it bad?, and (4) can we do anything about it without killing millions in the process?
Given the fact that CO2 is necessary for life on Earth to exist, and there is so little of it in the atmosphere, for now I’m going with the view that more CO2 in the atmosphere is a good thing — not a bad thing."

Ice does not control Ocean Rise, the Mantle does

E.M.Smith
I’ve often complained that sediments flowing into the oceans will cause them to rise while both the ocean floor and continental crust are rising / falling in different places and with a whole lot of motion going on, the ocean depth is dependent on geology much more than on ice melting.
This article looks to have the same idea, but looked at data to confirm it, and modeled the process."

A Warming Arctic Would Not Cause Increased Severe Weather or Temperature Extremes

WUWT
This essay is a critique Francis and Vavrus (2012), hereinafter FV (2012), by atmospheric scientists Jennifer Francis from Rutgers University and Steve Vavrus of the University of Wisconsin. Their paper can be downloaded here:    ..........What is particularly disturbing about FV (2012) is not only is it incorrect and flawed, but it passed peer review. Now, after publication, FV (2012) has been lapped up by media, touted and referenced in their severe weather stories that report on hurricanes, tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, heat, cold, drought and any other weather calamity as “proof” their paper is correct. Nothing could be further from the truth.   ................
The continued misuse, abuse and general trashing of important principles founded with atmospheric science remains as deplorable as ever by the groups promoting global warming from human CO2 emissions or by these same groups promoting climate hysteria by re-labeling this term “climate change”.
Now that the flawed FV (2012) passed peer review, it allows media to blame any severe weather on “climate change.” FV (2012) allows media to claim a wavier jet stream dips and meanders because the Arctic is supposedly getting warmer. All this is sheer nonsense and all demonstrably wrong.
I believe this flawed FV (2012) also shows how the quality of the scientific peer review process has been lowered in “climate science”.

Use of Fear to Silence Climate Skeptics Is An Assault On Reason

WUWT
Fear is aided and abetted by exaggeration, distortion, and falsehoods. Sadly, these exploitations litter history as people sought to control others and push a political or religious agenda.   ......If that doesn’t work, you manufacture the material and hire spin doctors to spread the lies and misinformation more effectively. The truth doesn’t need spin doctors.  ........Even the threat by US Attorney General (AG) Loretta Lynch that the FBI are going to examine the role of climate skeptics for charges under the RICO is deeply disturbing. It is the practice of leaders who hold a singular political view from either extreme to isolate and threaten. Totalitarianism occurs on the left and the right. "

The Cook ‘97% consensus’ paper, exposed by new book for the fraud that it really is

WUWT
I don’t like to use the word “fraud”, and I can’t recall if I’ve ever used it in a title. In this case it is warranted. Brandon Shollenberger writes of a new book, The Climate Wars:
How the Consensus is Enforced,  that proves without a doubt that John Cook and his “Skeptical Science” team are nothing but a gang of “say anything” activists, and that the much repeated “97% consensus” is indeed nothing more than a manufactured outcome.  .........."

Climate change profiteers have so far created a $53 billion market based on FEAR and FRAUD

Natural News
It used to be that pharmaceuticals were one of the biggest profiteering frauds in the global market (besides warmongering). But "climate change," and the ever-present fear of it, has created a whole new market for carbon dioxide "trading," that analysts at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon say is now worth $53 billion worldwide."

Global Warming "Science": New Study Reveals Large Temperature Fabrication By Cherry-Pick

C3Headlines
Recently, RSS satellite scientists decided they needed to proactively adjust atmospheric temperatures in order to rid the world of the widely reported global warming hiatus. It's a pause of insignificant warming that has existed since the major El Niño of 1998 that the 2015 El Niño recently stopped.
Thus, they produced a new study refuting their previous reported satellite temperature measurements for the mid-troposphere going back to 1979. .....
The study now identifies a higher global warming trend that they were previously unable to find with the best satellite technology available as a resource. Of course, for their new research, they are still using the same technology - go fabricate figure. "

GISS Adjustments Since 2008

Paul Homewood 
Following the pause busting adjustments made by RSS, we need to keep in mind how GISS have been up to the same tricks for years.
Last year, of course, they instituted the same massive set of adjustments that NOAA had done, following Thomas Karl’s efforts. However, although these were by far the largest ones, in recent years other adjustments had been made, gradually cooling the past and warming the present.
One of the problems in trying to keep track is that, unlike RSS, they don’t archive old data. Also, because they only report anomalies, it is impossibly to identify which years have been adjusted in absolute terms.
Fortunately, bloggers have been archiving their own GISS records, and we also have the Wayback Machine, so we can piece together some of the recent alterations. ........
These may only be small amounts, but cumulatively they gradually add up, and over such a short period of time can be quite significant. 
Also we don’t know what other changes took place prior to 2008, or what 2014 would have looked like if the 2008 methodology was still being used. 
But if we add the 0.01C adjustment. made between the 2008 to 2015 versions, to the 2014 discrepancy of 0.05C, we get a total of 0.06C. This is more than half of the claimed increase from 1998 to 2014."

NOAA Temperature Adjustments Invert Reality

Real Science
The EPA graph below is based on NOAA adjusted data, and shows that the area of the US affected by hot summer temperatures has increased to record levels. Actual thermometer data shows the exact opposite. The percentage of US stations to reach 100F has plummeted since the 1930’s.  This metric should not be affected by any of the published USHCN adjustments. The frequency of 100 degree days has also plummeted. The EPA’s own data shows that heatwaves were much worse in the 1930’s. The bogus top graph is the result of people tampering with data, and then actually believing the bogus data they generated. The NOAA Climate Extremes Index is junk science. "

President Obama just gave $500 million of Your Money to the UN Green Fund

WUWT
Tyrants and dictators, shady international arms dealers, brutal leaders of broken, basket case nations like President for Life Robert Mugabe, will be celebrating today; President Obama just transferred $500 million of US Taxpayer’s money into the new UN Climate Fund. ...
$500 million is only a drop in the ocean, compared to the FY 2016 $22 trillion total US public debt. However, given the severe and rapidly worsening state of US government finances, a more productive use of the President’s remaining time in office, might be to find ways to cut expenditure, instead of thinking up new ways to give federal money away to people who hate America.
UPDATE by Anthony: Uh, oh.
State Dept defiant on $500M to UN climate fund: ‘Did Congress authorize the Green Climate Fund? No.’
Asked by Senator Cory Gardner if Congress approved the US State Department to divert $500 million to the United Nation’s Green Climate Fund, Deputy Secretary Heather Higgenbottom says: “Did Congress authorize the Green Climate Fund? No. […] We’ve reviewed the authority and the process under which we can do it, and our lawyers and we have determined that we have the ability to do it, and I pledge to you and to other members we’d be happy to provide that legal analysis and the additional details.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee March 8, 2016 "

Oscar Snow Job

Quadrant Online (Australia)
August is high summer in the northern hemisphere. So the real reason for going ‘to the southern tip of the planet just to find snow’ seems to have been because production was behind schedule. If so, it had absolutely nothing to do with DiCaprio’s – and the UN’s — ‘climate change’ bogeyman."

Climate Models are NOT Simulating Earth’s Climate – Part 4

WUWT
CLOSING
Bottom line: According to some of the climate models used by the IPCC for their 5^th Assessment Report, global surface warming for the period of 1955 to 2015 is NOT dependent on the simulated top-of-the-atmosphere energy imbalance.  In other words, those climate models undermine the hypothesis of human-induced global warming.
If climate model drift is the reason for those odd relationships, the modelers need to fix the models, not adjust the outputs.
OTHER POSTS IN THIS SERIES
Climate Models are NOT Simulating Earth’s Climate – Part 1 illustrated and discussed how climate models fail to simulate the spatial patterns of warming and cooling of the surfaces of the global oceans over the past 3+ decades and why they should simulate them.
Climate Models are NOT Simulating Earth’s Climate – Part 2 presented time series graphs of sea surface temperatures (not anomalies) globally and on hemispheric and individual ocean-basin bases, from 1982 to 2015, showing that climate models fail to properly simulate the warming rates (far too much warming in most cases) and the actual temperatures of the surfaces of Earth’s oceans.
Climate Models are NOT Simulating Earth’s Climate – Part 3 illustrated and discussed how climate models, excluding the outliers presented in this post, show way too much ocean heat accumulation since 1955.  This strongly suggests that most climate models are far too sensitive to manmade greenhouse gases."

The non-disaster of 150,000 missing penguins? They just went somewhere else.

JoNova(Australia)
Credit to Becky Oskin at Live Science for unpacking the hype, getting two points of view and finding a researcher who knew something:

But there’s no proof yet that the birds are dead. No one has actually found 150,000 frozen penguins. In fact, experts think there’s a less horrific explanation for the missing birds: When the fishing gets tough, penguins simply pick up and move. It wouldn’t be the first time Adélie penguins marched to new digs. When an iceberg grounded in the southern Ross Sea in 2001, penguins on Ross Island relocated to nearby colonies until the ice broke up.

“Just because there are a lot fewer birds observed doesn’t automatically mean the ones that were there before have perished,” said Michelle LaRue, a penguin population researcher at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, who was not involved in the study. “They easily could have moved elsewhere, which would make sense if nearby colonies are thriving,” LaRue told Live Science in an email interview.

As for the dead birds, La Rue explained that there are always carcasses lying around Antarctica because it’s so cold and dry (they don’t decompose in the freezer so to speak). You might think an expert like Chris Turney might know that? It appears Eric Worrall, non-penguin-researcher, and not published at all in the peer review literature on Antarctica thought the non-migration of Penguins facing disaster was “ridiculous”. (WUWT)"

As Winter Reaches Its Zenith Record Cold, Heavy Snow Bring Chaos, Death Over Northern Hemisphere

NoTricksZone
Records in the Northeast: Not only is record-cold weather gripping the Northeast USA, with wind chills as low as 50°F below zero and New York City hitting a new low, but also cold is spreading across Great Britain. The cold is also expected to sweep across Europe by early this week."

The death of the AGW belief system.

Pointman
If you’re tracking the collapse of belief in AGW around the world as closely as I am, it’s important to recognize that what you’re actually looking at is the collapse of a belief system. The progress and pathology of this phenomenon has been documented and reliably understood for some time. I say reliably understood because it did not originate from Freud, Jung, the Id, the Ego (super or otherwise) or any other school of psyco-babble psychology fashionable at the time. Don’t get me wrong, Psychology is a very useful tool but too many psychologists don’t seem to know which end to hold it by. ..."

Record cold: Single digit to subzero Valentine’s Day expected for much of NE USA

WUWT
There’s a cold wind blowing for Valentine’s Day, and it blows from the Arctic.

Extreme UHI Fraud At NOAA

Real Science
NOAA has 16 USHCN stations in Maryland, but they have stopped collecting data from all but four of them. One of the disappearing stations is at Laurel, which has been collecting since 1895 – but no data reported since August 2015.
Laurel raw data shows no warming over the past 60 years, but Beltsville (at I-95 and The Beltway) is five miles closer to Washington DC and shows two degrees warming during that period as the city has expanded. Beltsville is one of the four stations still reporting. The fact that 75% of the stations in Maryland are missing doesn’t stop NOAA from fabricating temperatures for the 12 missing ones. Laurel is located midway between Washington DC and Baltimore, where another one of the four active stations is located. NOAA generates the fake Laurel temperature data by interpolating from the neighboring stations, which in this case would be UHI infected Beltsville and Baltimore. The graph below shows how Laurel temperatures are adjusted by USHCN. They cool pre-1975 temperatures and warm post-1975 temperatures. The exact opposite of what would be expected. But here is where the NOAA fraud really gets ugly. Beltsville raw temperatures have warmed two degrees over the last 60 years due to Urban Heat Island effects. But instead of adjusting recent temperatures downwards to compensate, they do the exact opposite and massively cool the past. The final temperature graph for Beltsville shows almost five degrees warming over the past 60 years, when in fact there has been none. This level of fraud defies explanation, but is standard operating procedure at NOAA and NASA."

The Climate Monkeys Howl

Quadrant Online  (Australia)
Really, they have only themselves to blame for the CSIRO's mass axing of global warming careerists. If only the high priests of the movement had been more persuasive in casting random weather events as specific symptoms of our planet's death agonies, the gravy train might not have been derailed".

Did the NOAA Cook the Books to Show Warming During Hiatus?

JunkScience
“The only question is who at NOAA was behind the attempt to whitewash the temperature hiatus and whose orders they were acting under.”

Measuring global temperatures: Satellites or thermometers?

Dr Roy Spencer, CFACT

The official global temperature numbers are in, and NOAA and NASA have decided that 2015 was the warmest year on record. Based mostly upon surface thermometers, the official pronouncement ignores the other two primary ways of measuring global air temperatures, satellites and radiosondes (weather balloons).

The fact that those ignored temperature datasets suggest little or no warming for about 18 years now, it is worth outlining the primary differences between these three measurement systems."

Baffin Island study disappoints: The illusive ‘coup de grace’ on the Medieval Warm Period

WUWT
Summary
A detailed analysis of the regional literature in Arctic Northeast Canada and west coast Greenland West yields clear evidence for a warm MWP in the region. The claimed widespread cooling during the MWP by Young et al. 2015 is unsupported and unsustainable. It appears that the authors have generalized a local glacier anomaly from a restricted area on Baffin Island and erroneously interpreted it as a regional phenomenon. Notably, there may be alternative interpretations for local MWP glacier advances such as increased snowfall. Furthermore the review demonstrates that surface waters in fjords may have locally cooled during MWP times due to increased influx of cold melt water, displacing warmer Atlantic water. In contrast, fjord bottom waters often show MWP warming. ......"

Somerset Floods – Rainfall Was Not Unprecedented, So Why Did The Levels Flood?

NALOPKT
The Somerset Levels have always been prone to flooding, and certainly would not have escaped in 1990. However, it is evident that the flooding problems of 2013/14 were much more severe than would have justified by the rainfall amounts on their own.
Of course, in 1990 the rivers were still being dredged and the pumping stations kept operational.
Either way, it is clear that “climate change” had nothing to do with the floods at all.
One further question – why did we hear none of this at the time from the Met Office? "

The Satellite Deniers

Real Science
The claim from the climate clowns is that satellite temperatures have to be adjusted for error, unlike surface temperatures which they say “hardly need to be adjusted.“ They do have just one minor problem however. The 1995 IPCC report, authored by none other than NOAA’s own Tom Karl, showed that satellite temperatures matched NOAA balloon data, and that neither showed any warming since 1979."

2015 Was Not Even Close To Hottest Year On Record

Forbes
Scientists measuring oxygen isotopes from ice cores drilled in Greenland and Antarctica (among other methods) report that temperatures were significantly warmer than today for most of the past 10,000 years. With the exception of the Little Ice Age, which lasted from approximately 1300-1850 and which almost ushered in a full-blown new ice age epoch, current temperatures remain cooler than almost all other time periods in human history.
So how do global warming activists get away with raising constant alarm and making such outrageous claims as 2015 being the hottest ever? The answer is misleading head-fakes, doctored temperature records, and a compliant media that is more than willing to push the agenda of global warming activists.
No, Virginia, 2015 was not the hottest year on record. In fact, it wasn’t even close."

How falling oil prices exposed the great green lie: Saudi Arabia's battle with the US to drive down prices show we're far from reaching 'peak oil'

Daily Mail

While the price of heating oil has more than halved since 2013, the price of electricity has risen by 13 per cent, according to the Office of National Statistics. 

One of the reasons behind this rise is that electricity companies are being forced to buy a certain proportion of their energy from expensive renewable sources. .....

The concept of ‘peak oil’ was just wishful thinking on the part of the green lobby, which wanted us to be forced to stop burning fossil fuels. While I didn’t quite fall for the myth, the Government did. As a result, we’ve been left with a national energy policy that assumes fossil fuel prices can only rise. Huge subsidies — running at £3.4 billion a year — have been paid to subsidise solar, wind and other renewable energy. All along, we have been told that showering renewable energy firms with public money — paid for through taxes and levies on consumers’ bills — was a wise investment that would save us money in the long run because it would make us less dependent on ever more expensive fossil fuels."

 

A New Era? Current Solar Cycle “Abruptly Ended” Most Active Solar Activity Phase Since Observations Began In 1755

NoTricksZone
The central star of our solar system was quite inactive last month. The measured solar sunspot number (SSN) was 57.7.  That is only 79% of what is the average for this time point into a solar cycle compared to the mean of the 23 previous complete cycles.

Hansen Confirmed The MWP In 1981

Real Science
Climate fraudsters frequently claim that the 1990 IPCC temperature graph below showing the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was only a representation of Central England Temperatures (CET) and was not global.  This is nonsense. The graph was derived from James Hansen’s 1981 study, which was taken from temperatures in England, California and Greenland. The overlay below shows that the 1990 IPCC graph is essentially the same graph as Hansen 1981. The MWP was real, and no matter how many different ways climate criminals find to lie about it, they can’t make it disappear. "

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New Comprehensive Map By Scientists Confirms Medieval Warm Period Was Real And Global, Climate Models Faulty    (NoTricksZone)

Lewandowsky’s Psychological Science publishing hoax reaches the media

WUWT
In the blogosphere, the hoax paper by Lewandowsky, Oberauer and Gignac,  NASA faked the moon landing—therefore, (climate) science is a hoax was exposed soon after it came out  –  see blog posts by Jo Nova, Steve McIntyre, Brandon Shollenberger, José Duarte and many others. Duarte’s comments are significant as he is a published researcher in the field, referring to the paper as a fraud and calling for its retraction.
The most concise explanation of the error/fraud is given at Kevin Marshall’s ManicBeancounter blog. The paper claims that belief in conspiracy theories predicts climate scepticism, yet of over 1000 in the sample, only 10 believed the moon landing was faked (rendering any statistical results completely meaningless) and of these 10 only 3 were sceptical about climate change. Despite the fact that the main claim of the paper and its title can be demolished in one sentence after simply looking at a table of the data, the journal concerned, Psychological Science, has taken no action.
Yesterday this story appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald. As far as I am aware this is the first time it has appeared in the mainstream media. Kudos to their reporter Paul Sheehan, and also to the Quillette magazine for writing about it in December, and Lee Jussim for giving a talk about it at an academic meeting on social psychology.  Here is an excerpt:   ...."