Civil Defense Perspectives July 2014 Vol. 30 No. 5
In Haitian folklore, a zombie is a dead person physically revived through necromancya bokorsorcerer. Zombies, having have no will of their own, are slaves of the bokor. Living persons in Haiti who were thought to be zombies may either have been drugged or mentally ill.
The theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is scientifically dead, as definitively shown at the 9th International Conference on Climate Change by the Heartland Institute in Las Vegas, July 7-9. Yet, under the cloak of “climate change” (which undeniably has always occurred and will continue), it has been revived by the magic of $165 billion in funding in FY 1993-2013. Of this, more than $35 billion went for “climate science” projects seeking the signature of human influence, specifically emissions of greenhouse gases; $2 billion to provide a National Climate Assessment to Congress; and the remaining 89% to government agencies and industries that claim to prevent AGW (TWTW 7/12/14, www.sepp.org).
More than 600 attendees enjoyed a crowded, star-studded scientific program, with more than 60 speakers. Almost all can be viewed at http://climateconference.heartland.org/.
A large number of media representatives were present, but reported very little of the actual scientific content. Instead, they demeaned the speakers as “deniers,” “fossil fuel industry shills,” “conservatives,” “not scientists,” or “not climate scientists.”
“Leading news outlets no longer feel compelled to ‘balance’ every climate change story with quotes from cranks who don’t believe in it,” writes Will Oremus. “Last month, the president of the United States mocked climate deniers as a ‘radical fringe’ that might as well believe the moon is ‘made of cheese’” (Slate 7/9/14, http://tinyurl.com/mndxpg7).
Oremus claims that the skeptics are losing the debate, but, as usual, there was no debate. Heartland invited many AGW supporters to speak, but they all refused.
The presentation that attracted the most ink per minute was by 26-year-old Austrian rapper Kilez More, who does not seem to be a conservative. “This Climate Change-Denying Rapper Is About As Dope As You’d Expect” headlined the Huffington Post, which thoughtfully posted the video and quoted some of the English subtitles (http://tinyurl.com/nr7d7bz). The Heartland gig is at http://tinyurl.com/o97spdw (01:53:20), and the YouTube video at http://tinyurl.com/lka6fjf. Warning: you probably can’t watch it just once.
Key Notes
S. Fred Singer, an expert reviewer for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), found that each of its five reports cited different evidence for AGW and rejected the evidence in previous reports. In 1990, IPCC used a statistical method that made no sense even to IPCC, a “lagged auto-correlation.” In 1996, it referred to a hot spot created by models that could not be found in nature. In 2001, it touted the Mann hockey stick, which was removed from later reports. In 2007 and 2013, it resorted to what amounts to a circular argument.
Hand in hand with the failure of observations to conform to their models’ predictions, IPCC increased the “certainty” of the models from 50% in 1996, to > 66”% in 2001, to > 90% in 2007, to 95% in 2013. The climate sensitivity—the rise in temperature resulting from a doubling of atmospheric CO2—has decreased in their estimation from 4.5 to 2.5. Singer states sensitivity should be about 0.1, 45 times less than IPCC’s first estimate.
IPCC got us to “Daliesque” science (distorted like a painting by Salvador Dali), explained Robert Carter, because its mission is limited to studying climate only through the lens of human-caused increase in atmospheric CO2. Although they may be advised by good scientists, IPCC members are appointed by governments, and as chairman Rajendra Pachauri told The Guardian on Sept 20, 2013, “we do what the governments of the world want us to do.” IPCC is “at their beck and call.”
Predictions of infectious disease outbreaks in the U.S. might well be fulfilled—but owing to unchecked illegal immigration. There are no major infectious diseases that show any climate preference, stated Craig Loehle. To reduce the disease burden, the world needs economic development and sanitation.
The climate change catastrophe predicted by the UN and the World Health Organization is nonsense, stated John Dale Dunn. They predicted 10 million climate refugees by 2010. Just last week, Obama and EPA claimed that we would have 5,000 premature deaths per year and 150,000 additional children would have asthma attacks if we did not control “carbon pollution.” The EPA claims have nothing to do with climate; it is simply conflating climate and health concerns. EPA invented the concept of “premature death,” which simply means death on a day with a higher-than-average death rate. Former EPA head Lisa Jackson told Congress that we have 500,000 “premature deaths” because of small particles (PM2.5s)—not ozone, CO, CO2, or criterion air pollutants, and shutting down coal-fired plants could therefore prevent as many deaths as we have from cancer.
The claimed 97.1% “consensus” on AGW is really a 0.3% consensus, stated Lord Christopher Monckton.
Monckton reported on international conferences that show the ultimate objective: world government. A video of a talk revealing the provisions of the draft Copenhagen agreement drew 2.7 million hits within 2 weeks—then was subjected to a bizarre attack. A dozen bogus websites containing gibberish outranked the real video when “Monckton video” was entered into search engines. The attack was estimated to have cost at least $250,000. That talk can now be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/ygs5sp5.
At Cancun, the structure of the regime was set up, involving nearly 1,000 new bureaucracies. At Durban in 2011, where Monkcton arrived by parachute, “rights of legal personality” were proposed for Mother Earth. An International “Climate Court” was proposed—for Western nations only. The goal was to drop CO2 levels to 210 ppmv, at which plants would die. Discussion drafts are no longer being released at these conferences. Paris in 2015 will try to enact a new world order.
“Klimawandel, Klimalüge, Klimaschwindel”
Kilez summarized the take-home lesion well: climate change, climate lies, climate swindle. A word from another of his YouTube raps, geistesgestört, suggests a diagnosis: deranged, unhinged.
Computer Models for Hire
When environmental engineer Robert Caprara demonstrated that an EPA-funded program for upgrading sewage treatment plants had reached a point of diminishing returns, he was told by his boss that he needed to come up with $2 billion in calculated benefits to keep the money flowing—so he tweaked the model.
“There is no denying that anyone who makes a living building computer models likely does so for the cause of advocacy, not the search for truth,” Caprara writes (WSJ 7/8/14).
IPCC Must Be Political
The influential Summary for Policymakers (SPM) in the IPCC’s fifth assessment reports (AR5) has been called a Summary by Policymakers. Brad Wible criticizes the redaction of material on historic emissions trends analyzed by country income group. Such material is important for the “new international regime,” with legal consequences such as responsibility for “burden sharing” (wealth redistribution) (Science 7/4/14).
BBC Tries to Squelch Debate
The BBC apologized to a Green Party activist who complained about an exchange between Lord Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Sir Brian Hoskis on the possible relationship between “climate change” and recent flooding. Fraser Steel, head of the BBC Complaints Unit, said listeners had not been properly informed that Lawson held a minority view. “Sceptical views should not be treated on an equal footing with the scientific consensus” (CCNet 7/11/14). What editors will now invite Lawson again, knowing they will probably be criticized and have time-consuming complaints upheld against them?
Hoskis is chairman of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, a lavishly funded alarmist pressure group, and a member of the government-funded Climate Change Committee. The latter exists primarily to promote abandonment of hydrocarbon fuels by the UK, said Lawson (Daily Mail 7/9/14). Hoskis was also the go-to man when the Royal Society was laundering the University of East Anglia emails (Climate Audit 7/13/14).
“Policymakers” vs. IPCC Scientists
Ruling regimes objected to parts of the 2,600-page AR5 or the 47-page SPM. The Obama Administration complained that the estimate of “global consumption losses” due to “mitigation,” which increased from 4% to 6% in 2050 and 12% in 2100, needed to be offset by the co-benefits of action, such as public health improvements (CCNet 4/7/14, www.thegwpf.org).
Some of the key findings were given an alarmist spin, causing Prof. Richard Tol to demand that his name be removed from the report. For example, the “sexed-up” summary says that climate change is projected to increase displacement of people because of extreme weather. The original report stated: “Current alarmist predictions of massive flows of so-called ‘environmental migrants’ are not supported by past experience…, and predictions for future migration flows are tentative at best.”
The “sexed-up” summary claims that climate change will “increase risk of violent conflict.” The original said research did not show a “strong positive relationship between warming and armed conflict” and added that “wars may well be triggered not by global warming but by measures that try to limit it because they will cause shortages.”
The IPCC disputed these claims and referred to the “carefully balanced wording of the document.”
Attacks against skeptics are becoming increasingly shrill. Labour MP Andrew Miller, chairman of the Commons Science and Technology Committee, called them the “Monster Raving Loony Party.” Calling them “deniers” on par with Holocaust deniers is justified, said one columnist, because the evidence for global warming is as strong as that for Auschwitz. (Never mind the 17-year “pause.”) Academics who deviate from the correct line face vilification—for example, an organized campaign demands the sacking of Roger Pielke, Jr., for publishing evidence that so far hurricanes have not become more frequent (ibid.).
Brown Roots of German Greens
Recent legislative action by the German Green Party to label Israeli products from the West Bank sparked interest in the Nazi role in creating the Party. A pro-Israel website Lizas Welt tweeted: “Not sure what the Greens actually have against the Nazis. They sometimes even copy from them.” Former SA stormtroopers co-founded the Greens (Jerusalem Post 7/7/14).
Green Is the New Red
Germany plans to halt shale gas drilling for 7 years.
“You could spend 10 million bucks on a ‘buy Gazprom’ PR campaign, or you could buy the former chancellor of Germany,” writes Ezra Levant. “Gerhard Schroeder now sits on the Gazprom board. So he is undermining any politics in Germany to be energy independent” (Daily Caller 6/30/14, CCNet 7/4/14).
Vladimir Putin would like an EU-wide ban on fracking, purportedly to protect the environment, writes Robert Zubrin, though he has massive fracking projects underway in Siberia (National Review Online 5/5/14, http://tinyurl.com/mwy73zn).
As a result of Green policies, Germans pay two to four times the world average price for energy. And the UK is readying WWII-style rationing plans in an effort to keep the lights on, after closing energy plants to comply with EU regulations and building unreliable “renewables” in their place (CCNet 6/12/14).
97% = 79
The “97% of the world’s scientists” who allegedly think that “climate change” demands urgent action, according to Secretary of State John Kerry, may have come from a May 16 tweet from Obama. One source of the 97% is the Zimmerman/Doran survey, where it represents the views of only a selected 79 persons. Summarizing various sources, Joseph Bast and Roy Spencer conclude that “there is no basis for the claim that 97% of scientists believe man-made climate change is a dangerous problem” (WSJ 2/26/14, http://tinyurl.com/m68rwa9).
Global Warming Brings Cold
Yes, the Midwest suffered record-breaking cold in the winter of 2013-2014. But warming is not uniform (Science 5/23/14), and it went where we’re not looking (Science 4/25/14)—but not to Siberia (http://tinyurl.com/nbgx699).