US EPA Petitioned to Reverse 2009 Endangerment finding for Greenhouse Gases

In 2009, the EPA determined there was “compelling support for finding that greenhouse gas air pollution endangers the public welfare of both current and future generations.” Such finding, according to EPA, was based upon “both current observations and projected risks and impacts into the future,” which risks and adverse impacts, they claimed, “are expected to increase over time.”

According to the petition, in the ten years since the EPA made this judgment, considerable amount of scientific research has been conducted on the potential impacts of rising greenhouses gases on humanity and the natural world. The additional knowledge obtained from such research and observations reveal quite clearly that rising greenhouse gases do not represent what EPA identified in 2009 to be a current or future threat to public welfare.

Multiple observations confirm that projected risks and adverse impacts of rising greenhouse gases accepted by EPA in the Endangerment Finding are failing to occur and are not increasing with time. Moreover, numerous scientific studies reveal that CO2 emissions and fossil fuel use have actually enhanced life and improved humanity’s standard of living, and will continue to do so as more fossil fuels are used.

The studies cited in the petition thoroughly debunk the CO2 is bad for humanity and the world falsehood. It clearly establishes that increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is a benefit to life on earth.

And besides, there are no links to rising levels of CO2 and climate change. In fact, most or all the climate models “run hot,” and consistently overshoot actual observed temperatures. So much so that climate modelling totally lacks credibility.

I won’t even get into the other climate alarmist hokum the petition debunks (e.g. increased severity of extreme weather events, which is discussed at length).

This is a really important document that should resolve the CO2 canard. But it likely won’t, at least for the time being. I can’t imagine, however, that the EPA will be able to ignore it.

Read the petition here.

CSIRO Official Position is that No Studies Link Australia Bushfires to Climate Change, but CSIRO Lies About it Anyhow

In an effort to promote the false claim that the Australia bush fires were cause by climate change, CSIRO, the Australian federal government agency responsible for scientific research, tabled a document in parliament making this claim despite its own official position being that there are no studies to prove this.

Per Senator Canavan: “This was a document about climate change and the science about bushfires and they failed to include that the CSIRO has concluded in their last report on climate change in Australia that there are no studies linking climate change to fire weather at this stage. “

When confronted as to why this was not included in the report, the hapless Dr Peter Mayfield bumbled on: “… it is really a question of what you choose to put in and not put in. There’s a lot of other things we could have written.”  

Yeah, right. Clearly, officials at CSIRO are promoting the climate alarmist narrative, despite the truth they otherwise know. This is not incompetence.

Well this is embarrassing … 46 Statements by IPCC Experts Against the IPCC

Link to the GrumpDenier blog (2013)

Here’s a few samples:

Dr Eigil Friis-Christensen: “The IPCC refused to consider the sun’s effect on the Earth’s climate as a topic worthy of investigation. The IPCC conceived its task only as investigating potential human causes of climate change.”

Dr Willem de Lange: “In 1996 the IPCC listed me as one of approximately 3000 “scientists” who agreed that there was a discernible human influence on climate. I didn’t. There is no evidence to support the hypothesis that runaway catastrophic climate change is due to human activities.”

Dr Lee Gerhard: “I never fully accepted or denied the anthropogenic global warming concept until the furor started after NASA’s James Hansen’s wild claims in the late 1980s. I went to the literature to study the basis of the claim, starting with first principles. My studies then led me to believe that the claims were false.”

Dr Indur Goklany: “Climate change is unlikely to be the world’s most important environmental problem of the 21st century. There is no signal in the mortality data to indicate increases in the overall frequencies or severities of extreme weather events, despite large increases in the population at risk.”

Dr Vincent Gray: “The [IPCC] climate change statement is an orchestrated litany of lies.”

Dr Mike Hulme: “Claims such as ‘2500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous … The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was only a few dozen.”

Dr Kiminori Itoh: “There are many factors which cause climate change. Considering only greenhouse gases is nonsense and harmful.”

Dr Yuri Izrael: “There is no proven link between human activity and global warming. I think the panic over global warming is totally unjustified. There is no serious threat to the climate.”

Dr Steven Japar: “Temperature measurements show that the climate model-predicted mid-troposphere hot zone is non-existent. This is more than sufficient to invalidate global climate models and projections made with them.”

Dr Georg Kaser: “This number [of receding glaciers reported by the IPCC] is not just a little bit wrong, it is far out by any order of magnitude … It is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing.”

Dr Aynsley Kellow: “I’m not holding my breath for criticism to be taken on board, which underscores a fault in the whole peer review process for the IPCC: there is no chance of a chapter [of the IPCC report] ever being rejected for publication, no matter how flawed it might be.”

Dr Madhav Khandekar: “I have carefully analysed adverse impacts of climate change as projected by the IPCC and have discounted these claims as exaggerated and lacking any supporting evidence.”

Wow. Tough crowd. So much for “the science is settled” canard.

Sea Levels have been Rising Slowly and Consistently Since the Little Ice Age

Much ado has been written about the accelerating melting of glaciers and sea ice, and how rising sea levels will submerge coastal cities. A study by the University of York found evidence for a period of enhanced pre-industrial sea-level rise of about 2-3 millimetres per year in three locations — Nova Scotia, Maine and Connecticut, which were largely natural, without any human constructions or man-made factors. In other words, sea levels have been slowly rising at a fairly continuous since the Little Ice Age without human influence.

Just a bit of a side note: The Little Ice Age lasted from 1300-1850. There were two phases of the Little Ice Age, the first beginning around 1290 and continuing until the late 1400s. There was a slightly warmer period in the 1500s, after which the climate deteriorated substantially, with the coldest period between 1645 and 1715. During the coldest phase of the Little Ice Age, average winter temperatures in Europe and North America were as much as 2°C lower than at present. So, warming since 1715.

At issue were studies that suggested rising sea levels were accelerating, implicating human caused climate warming. This was based on evidence collected in the noted northern east coast areas — Nova Scotia, Maine and Connecticut. Previous studies showed that, since the 1950s, rates of sea level rise along the Atlantic coast of North America were faster than the global average, leading to this region coming to be known as a sea level rise “hotspot.”

The new study speculates that observed variations (i.e. observed greater than average change) are consistent with sea‐level “fingerprints” of Arctic ice melt, and that sea‐level fluctuations are related to changes in Arctic land‐ice mass.

Lead author Prof Roland Gehrels, from the University of York’s Department of Environment and Geography, said this earlier rapid episode of sea level rise in the 18th Century (coinciding with the warming post-1715) wasn’t known before. To find out what the warming is doing to sea levels today, the team examined the base level from historical times:

“In the 20th Century, we see rates of up to three or four millimetres per year, faster than in any century in at least the last 3000 years.  In the 18th Century they were slightly slower, but still much quicker than you would expect for the Little Ice Age, partly because the Arctic was relatively warm during the 18th Century. ”

“It was a pre-industrial phenomenon, so there were no anthropogenic forces – or human influences … In the 20th Century they might have played a key role but well before industrialization, those rapid episodes of sea level rise on the north east coast of North America in the 18th Century might have been due to natural causes.”

The only clarification I would add is in the last sentence of the two paragraph quote, where Prof Gehrels says “might have been due to natural causes.” Clearly, the timing of the variations were pre-industrial, and had to have been due to natural causes.

So, yes, the climate is changing. No, the evidence does not support that the change is human-caused.

original sources: American Thinker, International Business Times

Svalbard Norway now has more polar bear habitat than it did two decades ago

Its true. There are only about 30,000 polar bears left. In 1960, there were 10,000.

From the Polar Bear Science blog: Sea ice measurements around Svalbard, Norway at the end of February 2020 is way above average, with more polar bear habitat now than there has been in two decades.

Contrary to suggestions that more Svalbard ice is better for polar bears, there is no evidence that low extent of sea ice habitat in winter or summer over the last two decades harmed polar bear health, reproductive performance, or abundance. In fact, polar bear numbers in 2015 were 42% higher than they were in 2004, and most bears were found to be in excellent condition. Read more here …

Read the climate alarmists chirp in here, including the CBC attempting to discredit the Polar Bear Science blog. Haters gonna hate.

That Deafening Silence

Regardless of one’s view on climate or any other topic, it is worth listening to and discussing different points of view. A point which falls on deaf ears amongst progressives. If you disagree with the narrative they support, then you must be silenced, censored, deplatformed, defunded, yelled at, physically attacked yada yada yada.

Advocates of this censorship, strangely enough, defend it by claiming it is Social Justice. Peter Boghossian sums it up nicely in his piece “The Illiberalism of Social Justice”:

One of the easiest ways to understand how illiberal Social Justice can be is available to anyone who attempts to criticize it. Those who criticize Social Justice are not thanked for helping to improve its tenets. Rather, they’re called bigots, homophobes, Nazis, grifters, misogynists, or, the trump card meant to silence all conversation: racists.

This is where we are at with the climate debate. Man-caused climate change skeptics in academia and research are becoming untouchables. Research funding is unavailable, and it appears that secret blacklists are being kept to make sure they are shut out of academic positions.

These are the tactics of fascists. I find it strange that there appear to be so many people sympathetic to such actions. What has happened over the last couple of generations? People need safe spaces to protect them from speech and ideas they don’t like? College campuses seem to be the worst places to get a balanced view of contentious issues. Fair enough to lock yourself in your echo chamber, but it is dangerous to society to actively enforce right-think. Truly dystopian. But, this seems to be where we are headed. Very sad.

Greenland’s Ice Sheets Gain Massively

Early in January, I wrote about the extreme cold temperatures being recorded in Greenland. Now this. Despite decades of doom-and-gloom prophecies, Greenland’s Ice Sheet is currently GAINING monster amounts of “mass”— 7 gigatons yesterday alone (Feb. 06, 2020) .

Crucial to the survival of a glacier is its Surface Mass Balance (SMB)–the difference between accumulation and ablation (sublimation and melting). Changes in mass balance control a glacier’s long-term behavior, and are its most sensitive climate indicators. Since September, 2019 –the official start of the season– SMB spikes above the 2/2.5 gigaton daily average have been a regular occurrence. In mid-Nov, the sheet gained 10 Gt in a single day. And during just the first two days of December, a 14Gt gain was registered.

This suggests there is climate change going on. But not the warming the climate alarmists crow on about. In addition to the glacier forming activity occurring in Greenland, The total snow mass for the northern hemisphere continues to track well-above average.

If you have been paying attention, solar activity, far and away the greatest influencer of climate on earth, has been on the wane. Sunspot activity, which is currently ebbing, tracks closely to climate on earth. NASA has recently revealed the upcoming solar cycle will be “the weakest of the past 200 years,” and they’ve correlated previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling.

Sunspots have long been used as a predictor of climate on earth. That activity rises and falls in 11-year cycles. The next one begins this year, and the current forecast calls for the weakest solar activity in the last 200 years. Somewhat counter-intuitively, fewer sunspots means less radiation towards earth and lower temperatures. From the mid-1600s to the early 1700s, the sun experienced a period of low solar activity known as the Maunder Minimum. It corresponded to a time on Earth known as the “Little Ice Age.” i.e. icy cold temperatures across much of Europe and North America.

In all likelihood, earth has already entered into a prolonged period of cooling. So, don’t toss those mukluks just yet. You may need them for a few more decades.

And yet another climate science study scandal exposed: Ocean acidification does not impair the behavior of coral reef fish

Eight academic/scientific studies over the last few years concluded that acidification of the oceans, via absorbing excess CO2 in the atmosphere, was addling reef fishes brains and senses such that they were unable to hunt and hide, and were dieing as a result. Specifically, the studies found that high CO2 concentrations cause small reef fish to:

  • lose their ability to smell predators, and can even become attracted towards the scent of predators
  • become hyperactive
  • loose their tendency to automatically swim either left or right
  • have impaired vision

7 scientists repeated experiments documented in eight previous studies on the effect of climate change on coral reef fish to see if they were correct. They found 100% replication failure. None of the findings of the original eight studies were found to be correct.

Now, researchers of the original eight studies, all done at James Cook University’s Coral Reef Centre, are being investigated for fraud and misconduct. Why does climate science fraud always go in one direction?

The Face Behind the Mask: 4chan users exploited a Facebook bug that allows users to see who runs Greta Thunberg account

Spoiler alert: its not Greta. Not a surprise that Greta is a public face and little more. Now we know for certain.

As you can see from this Twitter thread, Greta’s Facebook account is administered by a guy named Adarsh Prathap. According to his Twitter profile, Adarsh is, predictably, a “climate crisis activist.”

Here is the 4chan thread that exposes the fraud.

The Facebook bug allows you to see which profile edits (i.e. who owns the page) Facebook posts in a Facebook page. The only condition is you need to find a post which was edited. Since 4Chan outed Greta and the bug, Facebook has closed it.

update Jan 12: The plot thickened quickly. Turns out Greta’s dad, Svante Thunberg, is also editing Greta’s Facebook page. This is so funny. Turns out, surprise surprise, that the Thunbergs are just a bunch of grifters that have figured out how to cash in on the gullibility of climate alarmists. The only one that doesn’t seem to be editing it is Greta. What a laugh. What a fraud.

update Jan 18: The Swedish public has voted that climate change spending has been the biggest waste of taxpayer money in 2019, according to a poll by the Swedish Taxpayers’ Association. I guess they haven’t been reading Greta’s dad’s Fakebook ramblings.

The CO2 Greenhouse Warming Effect is an Assumption that Lacks Empirical Verification

Well, this is not a surprise. Turns out there is no empirical evidence that increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere causes radiant warming. A critical assumption of IPCC consensus on CO2 concentrations is that it causes radiant heat to be retained in the upper atmosphere. This conjecture “lacks empirical confirmation.” Experiments continue to fail to show that CO2 is a factor in warming the atmosphere.

It turns out that any heat effect is due to the different density in gases. One experiment used pure (1,000,000 ppm) CO2 in one container and air (N2, O2) in another to demonstrate the CO2 container warms more than the air container. It ended up illustrating that CO2 molecules are heavier than nitrogen and oxygen molecules. Heavier CO2 molecules “reduce heat transfer by suppressing convective mixing with the ambient air.” In other words, the CO2 molecules aren’t warming the container via their radiative properties, but due to the density differential for CO2 relative to N2 and O2.

Another experiment, again using pure CO2 in a container, compared the radiative absorption properties of CO2 to that of argon, helium, and air (nitrogen and oxygen). The capacity to absorb radiation (sunlight) was found to be quite similar for CO2 and for argon, nitrogen, and oxygen. The latter 3 are non-greenhouse gases. Nitrogen and oxygen together constitute 99% of the atmosphere. Argon’s atmospheric representation is 0.93% (9,300 ppm) and CO2 is 0.041% (410 ppm).

In the experiment, the limiting absorption temperature for pure CO2 molecules wasn’t significantly different than the far more atmospherically abundant non-radiative gases. Dr Allmedinger summarizes, this means that “a significant effect of carbon-dioxide on the direct sunlight absorption can already be excluded.”

update 110320: Here is a useful primer on CO2, temperature, climate, solar activity, global greening etc. We have Nothing to Fear from CO2, by Donn Dears

update 110320: And here is a study published in Jan 2020 that concludes agricultural productivity is increasing as the CO2 level rises. So, far from CO2 is a boogie monster that will destroy the earth and humanity, it is actually hugely beneficial. How did we get here? Well, read my post below on carbon credits. Always follow the money.

update 160320: There are now more than 115 scientific studies published that conclude CO2 has little or no effect on the climate.