The Great Climate Change Fraud-update

[planosteve]

The Obama administration is doubling-down on the promotion of climate hysteria. They just released a report claiming that the buildup of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is “disrupting” the Earth’s climate.

This is more of the same nonsense we have been subjected to for years. First, they called it “global warming.” But there has been no rise in the mean global temperature for nearly eighteen years. So alarmists began talking about “climate change.” Evidently that wasn’t scary enough, so now we have “climate disruption.” The ludicrous claim is that every inimical weather event, whether its heat, cold, drought, flood, snow, hurricanes, or tornadoes, is caused by the combustion of fossil fuels.
We might be inclined to take this issue more seriously if the environmental movement did not have a long history of false and fanatical doom-mongering. In his 1968 book, The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s. They didn’t. Per capita food production for the world has been steadily increasing for more than fifty years and we currently have an epidemic of obesity. In 1971, the Washington Post warned that the world was “as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age.” Is anyone regretful now that we did nothing then to ward off this fictitious threat? The back cover of a 1977 book, The Weather Conspiracy, warned that a new Ice Age was imminent because “from all over the world,” there had been “frightening reports of unusual climate occurrences.” Then, as now, these imaginary climatic disruptions amounted to nothing more than routine weather.

There is no evidence that our planet’s climate is changing. Through 2013, global cyclone and hurricane activity is near a forty-year low. Since the 1950s, there has been no increase in F3 or stronger tornadoes in the US. A 2012 review in the preeminent scientific journal Nature found “there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years.” The frequency of wildfires in the US is not increasing. We have been repeatedly told that the polar ice caps are melting. But as I write, the areal extent of global sea ice is above the thirty-five year mean.

What is Obama’s ingenious solution to the non-existent problem of climate disruption? He wants the US to stop using fossil fuels and switch to solar and wind power. But there are no substitutes for fossil fuels. Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind are intermittent and have low power densities. These limitations are inherent in the laws of physics, not politics. In contrast, coal, oil and gas are concentrated and abundant sources of reliable energy. Both the US Energy Information Administration and the International Energy Agency estimate that fossil fuels are going to continue to supply 70 to 80 percent of the world’s energy for the next several decades.

While the rest of the world continues to burn coal unabated, Obama’s EPA is implementing draconian regulations that will put most coal-burning power plants in the US out of business. The estimated cost to the US economy will be more than $50 billion a year. The cumulative expense through the year 2030 is estimated to be $859 billion.

What do we get for $859 billion? US emissions of carbon dioxide will be reduced by slightly less than 1 billion metric tons. That sounds significant unless you know the basic arithmetic of the terrestrial carbon cycle. The Earth’s atmosphere holds 720 billion tons of carbon and the oceans contain 38,400 billion tons of carbon. Every year, soils release 100 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere, and the oceans absorb and release about 90 billion tons.

The greenhouse effect cannot be regulated away. The net effect of the EPA regulations will be to reduce the mean global temperature in the year 2100 by less than 0.02 degrees Celsius. Yes, you read that correctly: it’s all cost, no benefits. Why the US impales itself on the altar of ignorance, other countries will continue to burn fossil fuels unabated. Developing nations want the prosperity and quality of life that comes from the utilization of fossil fuels. Increases in life expectancy, literacy, education, and prosperity are all correlated with energy use. By the year 2050, the combined population of China and India will be seven times larger than the US.

While carbon dioxide emissions from China are rapidly growing, no one seems to have noticed that they’re on the decline in the US. Ironically, this is solely attributable to the petroleum industry. The technology of hydraulic fracturing has brought vast new reserves of natural gas into play and the substitution of gas for coal yields lower carbon dioxide emissions. While Obama tries to reverse the Industrial Revolution, scientists and engineers in the petroleum industry continue to sustain the US economy by providing abundant and inexpensive energy.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/06/davi ... -hysteria/

[Bob Of Burleson]

Is the writer hinting that he doesn't believe in global warming? The piece is so subtle that it's hard to tell what his point is.

[planosteve]

Where is treehugger when he is needed?

[LibraryLady]

WFAA reported last night that our Texas temps are 2.8 degrees higher than they were 30 years ago and the NE states (don't remember which) are 2 degrees higher than 30 years ago.

I believe they were comparing temps during summer months, but I am not sure.

[Bob Of Burleson]

A drought for the centuries:
It hasn’t been this dry
in Texas since 1789

There was only one other year in almost five centuries when Texas’ summer drought was as severe as it was in 2011, federal climate experts have concluded.

Instrumental weather records used to measure drought severity don’t go back much before the 20th century. (In Texas, they date to 1895.)

To establish a longer-range record, scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have analyzed tree-ring data and calculated how drought conditions dating back hundreds of years (to 1550 in Texas) ranked on the standard Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI).

Positive numbers on the PDSI represent wet conditions and negative numbers indicate dry conditions. The more severe a drought is, the lower its PDSI number.

Texas’ average PDSI this past summer (June through August) was -5.37 – the lowest, indicating the most severe drought conditions, since the start of the instrumental record in 1895.

And according to the federal government’s National Climatic Data Center, there was apparently only one other year during the last 461 years when Texas had a drought so severe.

Going back to 1550, the tree-ring reconstructions reveal that only in 1789 was Texas’ PDSI number so low, the center reported recently. (For our readers who don’t readily recall key historical dates, 1789 was the year when George Washington was inaugurated as the United States’ first president and also when the French Revolution started.) Here’s part of the National Climatic Data Center’s report:

http://texasclimatenews.org/wp/?p=3355

[dublusk]

While climate change is apparently happening, the cause is still up for debate. IMHO The "best science available" says it is man made. But remember the best science available also said the Earth was flat and the sun revolved around us! The science is not conclusive but only suggestive in this matter. I think some modest steps can and should be made to decrease the CO2 emissions, but not to the point of disrupting our economy in a big way until the science is conclusive! I know I am doing what I can to reduce the emissions I am responsible for. But I will not quit my job so I can drive less to reduce my CO2 footprint! Will anyone on the left do that. They are telling workers in the coal and generation industries that their job must go to protect the climate! Funny none of the left are will to volunteer their jobs to save anything !!!

[FlashM]

I have noticed a concerted effort among the news and entertainment media lately to portray those who don't believe in Climate Change to be knuckle-dragging mouth breathers.


Have y'all noticed this, too?

[Mark]

I have noticed a concerted effort among the news and entertainment media lately to portray those who don't believe in Climate Change to be knuckle-dragging mouth breathers.


Have y'all noticed this, too?

Anybody that doesn't subscribe to every one of the whacked out Lefty positions is a Neanderthal.

[BigTex]

First spammer?

Only took a week.

[Red Oak]

A drought for the centuries:
It hasn’t been this dry
in Texas since 1789

There was only one other year in almost five centuries when Texas’ summer drought was as severe as it was in 2011, federal climate experts have concluded.

Instrumental weather records used to measure drought severity don’t go back much before the 20th century. (In Texas, they date to 1895.)

To establish a longer-range record, scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have analyzed tree-ring data and calculated how drought conditions dating back hundreds of years (to 1550 in Texas) ranked on the standard Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI).

Positive numbers on the PDSI represent wet conditions and negative numbers indicate dry conditions. The more severe a drought is, the lower its PDSI number.

Texas’ average PDSI this past summer (June through August) was -5.37 – the lowest, indicating the most severe drought conditions, since the start of the instrumental record in 1895.

And according to the federal government’s National Climatic Data Center, there was apparently only one other year during the last 461 years when Texas had a drought so severe.

Going back to 1550, the tree-ring reconstructions reveal that only in 1789 was Texas’ PDSI number so low, the center reported recently. (For our readers who don’t readily recall key historical dates, 1789 was the year when George Washington was inaugurated as the United States’ first president and also when the French Revolution started.) Here’s part of the National Climatic Data Center’s report:

http://texasclimatenews.org/wp/?p=3355

Was it caused by Buffalo farts in the 18th Century B-o-B ?

[planosteve]

Steve!

[Bob Of Burleson]

Third warmest may in satellite record
might portend record-setting El Nino

Phys.org

May 2014 was the third warmest May in the 35-year satellite-measured global temperature record, and the warmest May that wasn't during an El Niño Pacific Ocean warming event, according to Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

The global average temperature for May was 0.33 C (about 0.59 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than seasonal norms for the month. The warmest May was in 1998, during the "El Niño of the century." Temperatures in May 1998 were 0.56 C (about 1.0 degrees F) warmer than normal. May 2010—also an El Niño month—was second warmest at 0.45 C (0.81 degrees F).

While May 2014 was not officially an El Niño month, indications are that an El Niño is forming in the eastern central Pacific off the equatorial coast of South America. Even if that El Niño is nothing spectacular, it might become a record setter simply because it is getting a warmer start, Christy said.

"The long-term baseline temperature is about three tens of a degree (C) warmer than it was when the big El Niño of 1997-1998 began, and that event set the one-month record with an average global temperature that was 0.66 C (almost 1.2 degrees F) warmer than normal in April 1998."

January through August of 1998 are all in the 14 warmest months in the satellite record, and that El Niño started when global temperatures were somewhat chilled; the global average temperature in May 1997 was 0.14 C (about 0.25 degrees F) cooler than the long-term seasonal norm for May.

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