.
p. 15, 1st parag.: "The United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) has observed that the impacts and costliness of weather disasters will increase in significance as what are considered “rare” events become more common and intense due to climate change.24" Footnote "24 Thomas R. Karl, Jerry M. Melillo, and Thomas C. Peterson, eds. Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States (Cambridge University Press: 2009). USGCRP coordinates and integrates the activities of 13 federal agencies."...
A Feb. 2013 NOAA peer reviewed report disputes any connection between carbon dioxide and billion dollar+ weather damage since 1980 and specifically cites a lack of evidence tying crop losses to CO2 induced weather events.
"Crop insurance" or agricultural loss is an item GAO mistakenly says needs cash. (p. 16).
GAO claims floods and droughts will increase due to CO2 (p. 15) but both these conclusions are disputed as follows: a 2011 UN study on extreme weather states it has "low confidence in predicting future floods"(p. 6) and "low to medium" confidence predicting droughts (p. 6). Also regarding drought, a Nov. 2012 Nature study reported no increase in drought for the past 60 years.
Alaska has cooled 2.4 degrees since 2000 ("1.3 C for the decade, a large value for a decade" (p. 1) (Centigrade to Fahrenheit converter), and noted in this Dec. 2012 Alaska Dispatch article. The cooling trend was known several years before 2009 (p. 111) and especially since 2005 but the 2009 USGCRP doesn't mention it, nor does the 2013 GAO report. From 2009 USGCRP report:
- "Over the past 50 years, Alaska has warmed at more than twice the rate of the rest of the United States’ average. Its annual average temperature has increased 3.4°F, while winters have warmed even more, by 6.3°F. 2"
I went to the source they linked to in footnote 2 and read many pages but found no reference to Alaska. It was mainly about the Arctic.
Footnote 3 in 2009 USGCRP's Alaska chapter was a report from 2004. You have try hard not to use better data than this.
Not mentioned by GAO or Issa is US CO2 has "stunningly" plunged and is heading lower, could go to zero and wouldn't help the planet since US is only about 1.5% of it. China's large coal consumption is headed much higher and hundreds of new coal plants to open. None of these facts were mentioned by GAO, USGCRP, or Issa. "Tens of billions of dollars every year, probably more every year" are needed says Rep. Jim Moran (2nd parag. from end). This is the slow killing of a country and its people by politicians and the media just because they can.
2/14/13, "GAO: Climate change poses big financial risk to US government," NBC News, by Gil Aegerter and Rich Gardella, NBC News
"The federal government is facing significant financial risks related to extreme weather events, and states and cities can no longer depend on it for extra help after such events occur, the Republican chairman of House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said Friday.
The warning from Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., came at a press conference about the release of a new report by the Government Accountability Office, which identified “climate change” on its 2013 list of items presenting high risk to the federal government....
Issa called it a “nonpartisan” issue....
We have a responsibility to be proactive: Proactive in asking the
states and the cities to be prepared to meet more of these requirements. Proactive in making sure that
we withhold the funds,
either through insurance funds or
through actual appropriations,
that are appropriate for the real anticipated events.”"...
================================
The author of this article attended 3 days of meetings with federal climate personnel:
5/1/11, "Adventures in the Climate Trade," American Thinker, Norman Rogers
"Global warming, now called climate change, is a big industry with academic and commercial branches. One way or another the government provides the money to keep it in business. The academic side supports thousands of scientific workers churning out some good science larded with lots of junk science. The commercial side is busy turning out tank cars filled with corn ethanol and covering the landscape with windmills. Nobody would be doing any of this without government subsidies and mandates. A recent example of how the geniuses in Washington direct policy is the loaning of hundreds of millions to electric car companies like Tesla. Tesla is the stock that everyone is going to be trying to short when they aren't trying to short First Solar.
Some of this government support is direct, such as the 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour subsidy for windmill electricity. But much is mandated by regulations that result in increased consumer prices -- a hidden tax. For example utilities may be required to generate a certain percentage of their electricity from green sources such as windmills. Since the electricity from these sources is expensive, prices to the consumer must be raised.
Why the government even bothers trying to reduce CO2 emissions is a mystery.
The numbers and trends are very obvious on this point. China currently generates 1/4 as much electricity per capita as the U.S. and China has 4 times the population. This suggests that China could eventually increase its electricity generation by a factor of 4* to match the per capita electricity usage enjoyed in the U.S. In the single year 2010 electricity production grew 15% in China, a pace that would double production in 5 years.
Electricity in China comes mainly from coal, the indigenous fuel available in large quantities and the most CO2 emitting fuel. China is also consuming ever increasing quantities of oil to support its growing automobile population. Even at its current early stage of economic development China passed the U.S. in the generation of CO2 5 years ago [2006]. Some apologists for Chinese CO2 policy claim that China is leading in windmills and solar panels while neglecting to point out that these are export industries, selling hardware or emissions credits to Europeans who are even bigger believers in the climate change religion than we are. Those Chinese industries are currently suffering because the Europeans are running out of mad money.
How big is the climate change industry and how large could it become? Probably the research side is in the single digit billions.
The mitigation, or CO2 reduction, side is where the big bucks are. To get an idea consider that the cost of electricity amounts to about $3 a day for each person in the U.S. or around $300 billion per year. Double the cost of electricity, something that is seen as good start by the preachers of climate change, and you have another $300 billion per year. That's half of the cost of Medicare in 2008. Some people in California are already paying 5 times[i] as much as people in areas less affected by the green virus. The beauty of green electricity mandates is that it results in a gradual creep upwards in the cost of electricity and it's not easy to know who to blame. Of course the climate change industry reaps the benefits as surely as if the government wrote them a check. Perhaps writing a check should be considered, because it would be a big savings if the government just bribed these people to stop building windmills.
The U.S. climate change industry, if allowed to grow, could surpass the trillion dollar mark. The uneconomic schemes will become a drag on every sector of the economy. We already have corn ethanol increasing the price of food and gasoline. More biofuel schemes are in the wings. Electric cars will give us a new and more annoying way to run out of gas. The power grid must be rebuilt to support the intermittent electricity from windmills. We' re supposed to bury CO2 emissions underground. The list is endless. Perhaps our young people can emigrate to China and get jobs in factories building windmills for export.
One
financially minor, but intellectually important, part of the industry
is the writing of alarming reports detailing the global warming
catastrophe that awaits us if we don't support the industry. This is
the marketing or propaganda side of the climate change industry. A
constant drumbeat of propaganda is needed to generate support for the
high cost borne by the rest of society to finance the industry. There
are many of these alarming studies.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) generates the most prominent alarmist tract.
The World Bank
has a report.
The National Academies of Sciences has a report.
The
British government did the well-publicized Stern Report.
Even the state
of California gets into the act, albeit with more amateurish[ii] reports.
USGCRP stands for the U.S. Global Change Research Program. In spite of the name the USGCRP does not directly do any research. It writes reports. The research is done by numerous programs spread about federal government entities. The USGCRP is hard at work on its periodic national climate assessment. In the jargon of bureaucratic action, numerous conferences, workshops and inputs from stakeholders are driving this supposedly accountable and transparent project.
But a committee of 40 unpaid academics is unlikely to accomplish anything beyond a lot of talk. The staff will write the report and the purpose of the committee is to bless it and lend credibility. It's a status exchange. The unpaid academics get to add membership in the federal advisory committee to their resumes and the schemers in the bureaucracy get scientific credibility for their ideological promotions. The wizard behind the scenes is John Holdren, the president's science advisor, radical environmentalist and one of the most talented science politicians of our time.
I had the experience of attending a 3-day meeting of this federal advisory committee at a hotel in Washington, DC. Meetings of federal advisory committees are open to members of the public such as myself. The welcoming speech was given by presidential adviser Holdren. Most of the public attendees were professional climate change people, either working for the government or non-profits.
The outside experts on the federal advisory committee were overwhelmingly academics professionally engaged in promoting or interpreting the alleged imminent global warming catastrophe. There did not appear to be any member of the committee even mildly skeptical of the global warming catastrophe story. This was surely not an accident. I was told that every member of the committee had to be approved by the White House, presumably by John Holdren.
The organizers were very welcoming to the members of the public. For a fee we were able to participate in the lunches and coffee breaks. A majority of the key staffers were women and that might account for the welcoming and friendly atmosphere. But even nice people have been known to waste taxpayers' money.
Those who work for the global warming juggernaut realize that public opinion and elite opinion are turning against them.
For this reason there is a new emphasis on propaganda, called
communication inside the climate change bubble. The climate change
workers seem to think that people outside of the bubble can be won over
if the message is dumbed down enough. For example,
instead of the traditional term "greenhouse gases"
In order to make the global warming predictions of doom more meaningful the USGCRP will issue personalized predictions of doom for various regions of the country. These regional predictions will be based on downscaling studies. Downscaling is a complicated scheme for
The global climate models disagree with each other concerning global climate trends and often their predictions are contradicted by reality. Extracting regional forecasts from the dubious global forecasts requires extensive adjustments to the data in order to get anything remotely plausible. Downscaling lacks a convincing scientific basis. But, downscaling studies are very popular because they can be sold for cash to credulous local governments.
:
The reports lend a scientific gloss to what otherwise would be science fiction type speculation. There are plenty of distinguished scientists
who have looked at the global warming thesis and pronounced it
nonsense. Notably absent are those scientists whose work is financed by
the global warming juggernaut. Since the juggernaut controls the
research money and has plenty of propaganda money, the global warming
activists have controlled the public conversation until recently.
Numerous scientific mistakes and scandalous revelations from bloggers
and journalists have changed the public conversation and now the
juggernaut is in retreat.
USGCRP stands for the U.S. Global Change Research Program. In spite of the name the USGCRP does not directly do any research. It writes reports. The research is done by numerous programs spread about federal government entities. The USGCRP is hard at work on its periodic national climate assessment. In the jargon of bureaucratic action, numerous conferences, workshops and inputs from stakeholders are driving this supposedly accountable and transparent project.
The
report writers are well informed concerning the requirements of
political correctness. They consider tribal (and Alaska native)
interests as well as considerations of environmental justice. A federal advisory committee
has been formed with more than 40 outside experts and representatives
from various federal agencies. Supposedly this advisory committee will
write the report and ensure its scientific validity.
But a committee of 40 unpaid academics is unlikely to accomplish anything beyond a lot of talk. The staff will write the report and the purpose of the committee is to bless it and lend credibility. It's a status exchange. The unpaid academics get to add membership in the federal advisory committee to their resumes and the schemers in the bureaucracy get scientific credibility for their ideological promotions. The wizard behind the scenes is John Holdren, the president's science advisor, radical environmentalist and one of the most talented science politicians of our time.
I had the experience of attending a 3-day meeting of this federal advisory committee at a hotel in Washington, DC. Meetings of federal advisory committees are open to members of the public such as myself. The welcoming speech was given by presidential adviser Holdren. Most of the public attendees were professional climate change people, either working for the government or non-profits.
The outside experts on the federal advisory committee were overwhelmingly academics professionally engaged in promoting or interpreting the alleged imminent global warming catastrophe. There did not appear to be any member of the committee even mildly skeptical of the global warming catastrophe story. This was surely not an accident. I was told that every member of the committee had to be approved by the White House, presumably by John Holdren.
The organizers were very welcoming to the members of the public. For a fee we were able to participate in the lunches and coffee breaks. A majority of the key staffers were women and that might account for the welcoming and friendly atmosphere. But even nice people have been known to waste taxpayers' money.
instead of the traditional term "greenhouse gases"
we now have "heat-trapping gases."
In order to make the global warming predictions of doom more meaningful the USGCRP will issue personalized predictions of doom for various regions of the country. These regional predictions will be based on downscaling studies. Downscaling is a complicated scheme for
supposedly
extracting regional long term climate forecasts from global climate
models.
The global climate models disagree with each other concerning global climate trends and often their predictions are contradicted by reality. Extracting regional forecasts from the dubious global forecasts requires extensive adjustments to the data in order to get anything remotely plausible. Downscaling lacks a convincing scientific basis. But, downscaling studies are very popular because they can be sold for cash to credulous local governments.
The Global Change Research program is mandated by the U.S. Global Change Research Act of
1990 to produce a scientific assessment at least every 4 years. The
scientific assessment, among other things: "analyzes current trends in
global change, both human-induced and natural, and projects major trends
for the subsequent 25 to 100 years." Never mind that a scientific basis
for predicting global change trends for the next 100 years is
nonexistent. If the Congress wants it, the Global Change Research
program will provide it. A better name than scientific assessment would
be the crystal ball report.
The 2009 previous scientific assessment is not an impressive document. The process that produced the document involved a previous federal advisory committee, various reviewers including so-called blue ribbon reviewers. The resulting document is a rehash of global warming alarmism doctrine. Annoyingly
The 2009 previous scientific assessment is not an impressive document. The process that produced the document involved a previous federal advisory committee, various reviewers including so-called blue ribbon reviewers. The resulting document is a rehash of global warming alarmism doctrine. Annoyingly
citations are
not given for most of the claims.
"The global warming observed over the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases."
This statement could be called the fundamental theorem of global warming alarmism. If it is not true the whole house of cards collapses.
The
evidence for the fundamental theorem is runs of various clashing
computer climate models. The scientists who have fertile imaginations
when imagining all the bad things that global warming will do are unable
to think of anything that could have caused the warming of the last 50
years except CO2 and the other greenhouse gases. But, early in the
20th century from 1910 to 1940 there was a very similar warming not
caused by greenhouse gases. Back then greenhouse gas generation was in
its infancy. Neither the scientists nor their computers know what
caused the early century warming.
If the scientists can't explain the early century warming why are they so quick to pin the late century warming on greenhouse gases? There are plenty of alternative explanations available such as cosmic rays or oceanic climate cycles. But, if global warming is not our fault and we are the helpless victims of nature, we wouldn't need the climate change industry. Restraining their imaginations is a precondition for continued employment.
The 2009 crystal ball assessment report recites the dubious claims of global warming disaster so loved by the popularizers of environmental doom. The cute polar bears will die. We'll all get tropical diseases if we don't die in heat waves. Agricultural productivity will suffer from weeds, droughts and floods. The sea will rise up and flood the coasts. This stuff has been refuted by angry experts many times, but no matter, some stories are too good to check. No doubt we are in for more of the same with the new report to be published in 2013."
If the scientists can't explain the early century warming why are they so quick to pin the late century warming on greenhouse gases? There are plenty of alternative explanations available such as cosmic rays or oceanic climate cycles. But, if global warming is not our fault and we are the helpless victims of nature, we wouldn't need the climate change industry. Restraining their imaginations is a precondition for continued employment.
The 2009 crystal ball assessment report recites the dubious claims of global warming disaster so loved by the popularizers of environmental doom. The cute polar bears will die. We'll all get tropical diseases if we don't die in heat waves. Agricultural productivity will suffer from weeds, droughts and floods. The sea will rise up and flood the coasts. This stuff has been refuted by angry experts many times, but no matter, some stories are too good to check. No doubt we are in for more of the same with the new report to be published in 2013."
"Norman Rogers is a Senior Policy Advisor at the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. His personal website is www.climateviews.com "
*corrected figure 5/26/11
=======================================
China's CO2 surpassed US CO2 in 2006:
[i] Pacific Gas and Electric residential tier 5 is $0.403 per kilowatt hour for usage 300% over baseline allowance.( http://www.pge.com/tariffs/tm2/pdf/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-1.pdf
).Compare this to the U.S. residential average of $0.1104 per KWH and
many states with average costs between 8 and 9 cents per KWH. ( http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html )
[ii]
The California Air Resources Board wrote an allegedly scientific
analysis of the wonderful results that would follow for the California
economy from draconian greenhouse gas limitations. The Board was
mandated by law to obtain a peer review of their report. The 4 peer
reviewers, all hired hand professors, demonstrated that there are limits
to corrupting academics with money. They all said, not very politely
considering the source, that the Board's economic analysis was garbage.
The Board ignored them.
on "Adventures in the Climate Trade"
=======================================
China's CO2 surpassed US CO2 in 2006:
"China has overtaken the US as the biggest producer of carbon dioxide, a development that will increase anxiety about its role in driving man-made global warming and will add to pressure on the world's politicians to reach an agreement on climate change that includes the Chinese economy.
China's emissions had not been expected to overtake those from the US, formerly the biggest polluter, for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen next year.
But according to figures released yesterday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, which advises the Dutch government, soaring demand for coal to generate electricity and a surge in cement production have helped to push China's recorded emissions for 2006 beyond those of the US.
The agency said China produced 6,200m tonnes of CO2 last year, compared with 5,800m tonnes from the US. Britain produced about 600m tonnes. But per head of population, China's pollution remains relatively low, about a quarter of that in the US and half that of the UK.
China's surge to 8% more than the US was helped by a 1.4% fall in the latter's CO2 emissions during 2006, which, analysts say, is down to a slowing US economy."...
===========================
12/23/12, “Forget global warming, Alaska is headed for an ice age,” Alaska Dispatch, Alex DeMarban
“The 49th state has long been labeled one of the fastest-warming spots on the planet. But that’s so 20th Century. In the first decade since 2000, the 49th state cooled 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit….The third warmest decade was the 1920s, by the way.…
The nation's icebox is getting even icier. That may not be news to Alaskans coping with another round of 50-below during the coldest winter in two decades, or to the mariners locked out of the Bering Sea this spring by record ice growth."...
========================
2/14/2013, “Report: federal government not prepared for climate change, risks billions,” Daily Caller, Parker Bunch
=========================
2012, The First Decade of the New Century: A Cooling Trend for Most of Alaska,” benthamscience.com, G. Wendler, L. Chen and B. Moore
"1926 was the warmest year ever recorded not only in Fairbanks, but also in Sitka (southeastern Alaska) and Barrow (northern Alaska), for which stations the data are available."
=========================
1/31/13, "The Growing Irrelevance of U.S. Climate Policy," Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org
=======================
2/21/13, "IPCC Head Pachauri Acknowledges Global Warming Standstill," The Australian, Graham Lloyd
"The UN’s climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office, but said it would need to last “30 to 40 years at least” to break the long-term global warming trend."...
"The UN’s climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office, but said it would need to last “30 to 40 years at least” to break the long-term global warming trend."...
========================
11/19/12, “More than 1,000 New Coal Plants Planned Worldwide,” Damian Carrington, UK Guardian
.
“India is planning 455 new plants compared to 363 in China, which is seeing a slowdown in its coal investments after a vast building program in the past decade.”…
.
“India is planning 455 new plants compared to 363 in China, which is seeing a slowdown in its coal investments after a vast building program in the past decade.”…
———————————————–
11/28/12, “Toxic effect of China environmental nondisclosure,” MarketWatch, via Caixlin online
———————————————–
12/13/10, “Perverse’ CO2 Payments Send Flood of Money to China,” by Mark Schapiro, Yale Environment 360
11/28/12, “Toxic effect of China environmental nondisclosure,” MarketWatch, via Caixlin online
———————————————–
12/13/10, “Perverse’ CO2 Payments Send Flood of Money to China,” by Mark Schapiro, Yale Environment 360
—————————————————
1/16/13, “China’s Green Leap Backward,” The Nation, Lucia Green-Weiskel
The UN’s
climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year
pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain’s Met
Office, but said it would need to last “30 to 40 years at least” to
break the long-term global warming trend. - See more at:
http://www.thegwpf.org/ipcc-head-pachauri-acknowledges-global-warming-standstill/#sthash.SrDucInI.dpuf
==============================
2/27/12, "Beyond Cap and Trade, A New Path to Clean Energy," Yale 360, by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
"Proponents of U.S. emissions limits maintain that legally binding carbon caps will provide certainty that emissions will go down in the future, whereas technology development and deployment — along with efforts to regulate conventional air pollutants — do not.... But the cap-and-trade proposal that
failed in the last Congress, like the one that has been in place in Europe, would have provided no such certainty. It was so riddled with loopholes, offset provisions, and various other cost-containment mechanisms that emissions would have been able to rise at business-as-usual levels for decades."...
============================
2/26/13, "Tough Truths from China on CO2 and Climate," Andrew Revkin, NY Times, Dot Earth
============================
Citation for US CO2 plunge:
6/4/12, “Climate change stunner: USA leads world in CO2 cuts since 2006,” Vancouver Observer, Saxifrage
“Not only that, but as my top chart shows, US CO2 emissions are falling even faster than what President Obama pledged in the global Copenhagen Accord.… Here is the biggest shocker of all: the average American’s CO2 emissions are down to levels not seen since 1964 --over half a century ago. …Coal is the number two source of CO2 for Americans. Today the average American burns an amount similar to what they did in 1955, and even less than they did in the 1940s. …It is exactly America’s historical role of biggest and dirtiest that
makes their sharp decline in CO2 pollution so noteworthy
and potentially game changing at the global level.”...
===========================================
News of US CO2 plunge has been described as:
GAO High Risk Report, Feb. 2013, reported by the media and elected officials on Feb. 14, 2013
2/27/12, "Beyond Cap and Trade, A New Path to Clean Energy," Yale 360, by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
"Proponents of U.S. emissions limits maintain that legally binding carbon caps will provide certainty that emissions will go down in the future, whereas technology development and deployment — along with efforts to regulate conventional air pollutants — do not.... But the cap-and-trade proposal that
failed in the last Congress, like the one that has been in place in Europe, would have provided no such certainty. It was so riddled with loopholes, offset provisions, and various other cost-containment mechanisms that emissions would have been able to rise at business-as-usual levels for decades."...
============================
2/26/13, "Tough Truths from China on CO2 and Climate," Andrew Revkin, NY Times, Dot Earth
============================
Citation for US CO2 plunge:
6/4/12, “Climate change stunner: USA leads world in CO2 cuts since 2006,” Vancouver Observer, Saxifrage
“Not only that, but as my top chart shows, US CO2 emissions are falling even faster than what President Obama pledged in the global Copenhagen Accord.… Here is the biggest shocker of all: the average American’s CO2 emissions are down to levels not seen since 1964 --over half a century ago. …Coal is the number two source of CO2 for Americans. Today the average American burns an amount similar to what they did in 1955, and even less than they did in the 1940s. …It is exactly America’s historical role of biggest and dirtiest that
makes their sharp decline in CO2 pollution so noteworthy
and potentially game changing at the global level.”...
===========================================
News of US CO2 plunge has been described as:
- “Surprising,“
- “little noticed,“
- “dramatic,“
- “stunner,“
- “most people are surprised to learn,“
- “quiet but tremendous progress,”
- “major long term implications,”
- “game changing,”
- “shocker,”
- “huge contrast to the forecast.”
GAO High Risk Report, Feb. 2013, reported by the media and elected officials on Feb. 14, 2013
=========================
2/3/2013, "NOAA Slays the Billion-Dollar Disaster Meme," Roger Pielke, Jr.
"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps a tally of "billion dollar disasters" which have occurred in the United States. The number of disasters which exceed the billion dollar threshold has increased since 1980. This increase has been often cited as evidence that the climate has become more extreme and is attributable to emissions of carbon dioxide.
A new peer-reviewed paper from NOAA pours cold water on both claims."...
=========================
2011 UN Report, "Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation, Summary for Policy Makers" (SREX) (citation on floods and droughts, p. 6)
==========================
USGCRP, "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, 2009 Report," "Alaska"
.
.
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