Categories
Quick Analysis

Paris Climate Accord: Politics, Not Science

 The recently adopted Paris climate agreement is based on political considerations, not science.  Indeed, an objective view of scientific data concerning alterations in the global climate would indicate that concerns over man-made planetary warming don’t have a solid foundation in objective facts.

In a survey  of 1800 scientists, only 43% agreed with the UN’s ‘95%’ certainty’ about global warming.

Dr. Steve Koonin, who served as undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Barack Obama’s first term, noted the lack of scientific agreement in a Wall Street Journal article:

“The idea that ‘Climate science is settled’ runs through today’s popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future…The crucial scientific question for policy isn’t whether the climate is changing. That is a settled matter: The climate has always changed and always will. Geological and historical records show the occurrence of major climate shifts, sometimes over only a few decades…Even though human influences could have serious consequences for the climate, they are physically small in relation to the climate system as a whole. For example, human additions to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by the middle of the 21st century are expected to directly shift the atmosphere’s natural greenhouse effect by only 1% to 2%. Since the climate system is highly variable on its own, that smallness sets a very high bar for confidently projecting the consequences of human influences.”

A purely scientific debate would have featured significantly different facts. Astronomy Now discusses the potential of exactly the reverse of global warming:

“The arrival of intense cold similar to the one that raged during the “Little Ice Age”, which froze the world during the 17th century and in the beginning of the 18th century, is expected in the years 2030—2040. These conclusions were presented by Professor V. Zharkova (Northumbria University) during the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno in Wales by the international group of scientists, which also includes Dr Helen Popova of the Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics and of the Faculty of Physics of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Professor Simon Shepherd of Bradford University and Dr Sergei Zharkov of Hull University”.

The goals appear to be more in line with a traditional leftist objective of transferring wealth from developed, capitalist nations to other countries.

Among the scientific questions scrupulously avoided in Paris:

  • Earth was warmer both in the 10th century A.D. and during part of the Roman Empire period. How does this compare with the concept of man-made global warming?
  • During the period when Earth was warming during the past decades, other planets in the solar system were also warming. Doesn’t this indicate that it is solar activity, not human activity, that is the major factor? (Live Science  noted in 2007: “Earth is heating up lately, but so are MarsPlutoand other worlds in oursolar system, leading some scientists to speculate that a change in thesun’s activity is the common thread linking all these baking events.”
  • Antarctic ice cover reached its greatest level ever in 2014. Forbes reports: “Updated data fromNASA satellite instruments reveal the Earth’s polar ice caps have not receded at all since the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in 1979. Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average. The updated data contradict one of the most frequently asserted global warming claims – that global warming is causing the polar ice caps to recede.
  • There has been virtually no global warming for close to two decades. This should be reviewed more carefully before making drastic plans.

buy cialis online If you are considering taking Kamagra then you can place an online order to get this drug delivered at your door- steps. Get up and indulge yourself order cialis online into certain activities which make you feel good such as reading motivational books, cooking or baking, meeting your friends or exploring new places. When this happens, cialis low cost deeprootsmag.org a number of factors could be responsible. The emphasis should be on lifestyle change, order generic cialis education about proper diet, exercise, and behavior modification.
There appears to be considerable attempts to prevent a truly scientific discussion of global climate matters. William O’Keefe, writing at Marshall.org, reports that “In recent months, climate advocates have stepped up efforts to silence and intimidate organizations that question the climate orthodoxy that human activities involving the use of fossil fuels are leading to a climate catastrophe.  Their tactic is to urge that organizations expressing any skepticism be investigated under RICO—Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. They have been championed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse who claims that “fossil fuel companies and their allies are funding a massive and sophisticated campaign to mislead the American people about the environmental harm caused by carbon pollution.”

President Obama’s enthusiasm for the 31-page agreement follows a pattern set in other matters.  He has employed international accords (carefully crafted not to be treaties which require Senate approval) to get around a Congress reluctant to agree with his domestic agenda.  As noted in The Hill  “Obama has also used the climate deal to bolster major controversial climate regulations. He’s argued that rules like the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) carbon dioxide limits for power plants and its methane emissions rules for the oil and natural gas sectors are necessary to obtain the 26 to 28 percent greenhouse gas reduction he pledged to the UN…Since the accord does not commit the United States to anything with legal force that it has not already agreed to in previous treaties, the Obama administration will argue that it does not require Senate ratification as a treaty.”

President Obama has pledged (without the consent of Congress) $3 billion as just a start to fund the $100 billion goals of the Paris agreement. Transferring wealth to developing countries appears to be the primary but unspoken  goal of the Paris deal. The agreement’s Article 9, as reported by CNS,  notes: “Developed country Parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing country Parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation in continuation of their existing obligations under the Convention.”

Bloomberg  reports that Mr. Obama’s $3 billion pledge “would make the U.S. the largest donor to the newly established fund.”

Categories
Quick Analysis

Environmental extremism vs. science

As the Paris climate talks continue, scandals, hidden agendas, and an increasingly skeptical public are confronting those who seek to use faulty and biased data as an excuse to impose leftist social and economic policies on the United States.

Congress is being left out of President Obama’s drive to use international agreements as a way to avoid the legislative process regarding the implementation of his extreme environmentalist views. Examples of his bias include recently released information that the White House has refused to take out ISIS oil fields due to concerns about the environment, and his rejection of the Keystone Pipeline.

In a statement, House Science Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-Texas) notes: “There is a reason the president chose to bypass Congress in order to negotiate a climate deal on his own. The president’s plan often times gives control of U.S. energy policy to unelected United Nations officials. This plan ignores good science and only seeks to advance a partisan political agenda. The President should come back to Congress with any agreement that is made in Paris on carbon emissions. He won’t, because he knows the Senate will not ratify it.”

The Obama Administration is adhering to a practice of excluding both full disclosure to Congress and an open examination of all federal data on climate change.

The Washington Post has reported that the Obama administration has also resisted efforts by Rep.  Smith to subpoena Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to gain access to the internal deliberations of federal scientists who authored a groundbreaking global warming study the lawmaker is investigating.

As in so many other instances, it appears that the NOAA study, similar to reports by other agencies and institutions, has been doctored to reflect a biased point of view.

Much information contrary to views of environmental extremist has not been reported in the general media. An MRC report recently noted that evidence demonstrating the growth of Antarctic ice has been ignored by the major media. “In May 2015, Antarctic ice was at a record high level. Yet between Nov. 4, 2014 and Nov. 11, 2015, the broadcast network’s evening news shows never mentioned [the] study.”
It is even rumoured that guests are offered bowls of online sale viagra at his enchanting parties. It’ll not magniloquence to say that today, every person is best tadalafil prices directly or indirectly dependent upon computer, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and such similar gadgets. cheap levitra professional Instead, the children bore the emotional scars of a dysfunctional family and no amount of “sameness” in their lives could compensate for the endless fights they had to witness when they were within hearing distance of hostile telephone calls and visits. It breaks my heart when I see a father load the truck for a family vacation, cook all the meals, and be in charge of virtually everything while his teenagers fluff off, play video games, and complain cialis uk about the shoddy service they received from the online course and it remains fresh and clear in the mind.
The Christian Science Monitor describes a key finding of Antarctic  research: “In a paper published in the Journal of Glaciology… researchers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Maryland in College Park, and the engineering firm Sigma Space Corporation offer a new analysis of satellite data that show a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001 in the Antarctic ice sheet.”

The Heartland organization  reports that it is not just those skeptical of environmental activism who are increasingly disturbed by the lack of scientific and public scrutiny of extremist environmental data:

“Patrick Moore … [has made a trek] from being a leader of Greenpeace, one of the most radical environmental groups in existence, to now being one of the most forthright critics of the view human fossil fuel use is causing catastrophic global warming, he has always followed the evidence where it leads. In a powerful lecture in London on behalf of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Moore detailed his journey and the evidence increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are actually good for humans and the rest of the planet, perhaps even staving off global environmental collapse. The central premise of Moore’s lecture is carbon dioxide is the most important building block and central currency for all life on Earth. He says its central role in the creation and maintenance of life should be taught to our children, rather than having it demonized as a “pollutant” threatening human and ecosystem health…… when modern life-forms evolved more than 500 million years ago, there were nearly 15,000 billion tons of carbon in the atmosphere, 17 times today’s level.”

A growing concern among scientists presents exactly the reverse of President Obama’s emphasis on global warming.  Writing in The Nation, Sam Khoury reports:

The sun will go into “hibernation” mode around 2030, and it has already started to get sleepy. At the Royal Astronomical Society’s annual meeting in July, Professor Valentina Zharkova of Northumbria University in the UK confirmed it – the sun will begin its Maunder Minimum (Grand Solar Minimum) in 15 years. Other scientists had suggested years ago that this change was imminent, but Zharkova’s model is said to have near-perfect accuracy…When it’s at its minimum, it has almost none. When there are more sunspots, the sun is brighter. When there are fewer, the sun radiates less heat toward Earth. But that’s not the only cooling effect of a solar minimum. A dim sun doesn’t deflect cosmic rays away from Earth as efficiently as a bright sun. So, when these rays enter our atmosphere, they seed clouds, which in turn cool our planet even more and increase precipitation in the form of rain, snow and hail.”

As scientists refute the lack of disclosure and the influence of politics in climate studies, the public has grown increasingly skeptical.  A BBC study finds that “Public support for a strong global deal on climate change has declined, according to a poll carried out in 20 countries…Only four now have majorities in favour of their governments setting ambitious targets at a global conference in Paris.In a similar poll before the Copenhagen meeting in 2009, eight countries had majorities favouring tough action.The poll has been provided to the BBC by research group GlobeScan. Just under half of all those surveyed viewed climate change as a “very serious” problem this year, compared with 63% in 2009.”