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Scandal Coverage Spreads in the Media Canadian CBC TV commentator Rex Murphy, unleashed on the top UN scientists involved in the growing Climategate scandal during a December 3, 2009 television broadcast. CBC’s Murphy declared that Climategate “pulls back the curtain on a scene of pettiness, turf protection, manipulation, defiance of freedom of information, loss or destroyed data and attempts to blacklist critics or skeptics of the global warming cause.” “You wouldn’t accept that at a grade 9 science fair,” Murphy stated. Murphy’s commentary appeared on “The National” program, CBC’s flagship nightly news program. Watch Full Rex Murphy Video here. Murphy was a former a executive assistant to the leader of the Liberal Party of Newfoundland. (Also see viewers growing frustration at lack of coverage of Climategate on broadcast TV. See: Video: Canadian news heckled on live TV: ‘Climategate: It Wont Go Away. Report it, CBC!’) “Climate science and global warming advocacy have become so entwined, so enmeshed into a mutant creature,” he added. “Climategate is evidence that the science has gone to bed with advocacy and both have had a very good time,” Murphy continued. Murphy’s criticism aims directly for the top UN scientists involved in this scandal. “Too many of the current leadership on global warming are more players than observers. Gatekeepers not investigators. Angry partisans of some global reengineering, rather than some humble servants of the facts of the case,” Murphy explained. “Read the emails, you will never think of climate science, quite the same way again,” Murphy implored. “Let’s here no more talk of the ‘science is settled’ when it turns out some of the principle scientists behave as if they own the very question of global warming,” he added. ‘Climate science has been shown to be in part to be a sub branch of climate politics,” Murphy explained. “Climate science needs its own reset button,” he added. Related Links:
Paul Cudenec: In short, it is absolutely clear that the‚”climate justice‚” movement is a manufactured one, created by the billionaire class as a PR tool that will enable them to raid the public purse, under the pretext of a climate ‚”emergency”, and channel trillions of dollars into their own pockets. In reality, the public and private are not separate entities, but one and the same thing. Thanks to countless decades of systematic corruption, private interests have entirely taken control of all the major public institutions, national and international. Because this corruption cannot be admitted to the public, the notion of a ‚”partnership” is used to explain away the fact that these two facets of the same entity are pursuing exactly the same agenda.
The world is currently in the hands of what is nothing less than a psychopathic death cult, whereas our resistance is a force for life.
E&E News: Biden connected the flooding in Kentucky to his tours of wildfires disasters and burned-out forests. “As you all know,” he said, “we’ve suffered a consequence of climate change: a significant number of other catastrophes around the nation.” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre: “The floods in Kentucky and extreme weather all around the country are yet another reminder of the intensifying and accelerating impacts of climate change and the urgent need to invest in making our communities more resilient to it,” she said. Biden: ‘The weather may be beyond our control — for now’ – Biden joins Bill Gates & China in seeking to control the weather Analysis: Biden’s 50% emissions reduction target for 2030 (if achieved) would have a ‘nearly unmeasurable’ impact on overall global CO2 emissions – “Dr. Roger Pielke ran the numbers and found that, even if it achieved Biden’s 50% emissions-reduction target for 2030, which it almost certainly won’t, the impact on overall global emissions would be nearly unmeasurable.” # Climate Depot Reality Check: Study in the Journal of Hydrology finds no increase in floods – ‘Compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global’ scale is lacking’ Extreme Weather expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. comments on new study: ‘New empirical study: Are floods increasing in North America and Europe? No (and consistent with IPCC.)’ # Study published in the Journal of Hydrology, Volume 552, September 2017, Pages 704-717. The study found: ‘The number of significant trends was about the number expected due to chance alone.’ ‘Changes in the frequency of major floods are dominated by multidecadal variability.’ ‘The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded (Hartmann et al., 2013) that globally there is no clear and widespread evidence of changes in flood magnitude or frequency in observed flood records.’ ‘The results of this study, for North America and Europe, provide a firmer foundation and support the conclusion of the IPCC (Hartmann et al., 2013) that compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global scale is lacking.’ # Journal of Hydrology Volume 552, September 2017, Pages 704-717 # Debunked: Kentucky’s Floods Were NOT Caused By ‘Climate Change’ – Media/Biden ‘Claims are rubbish & fraudulent’ – Paul Homewood: As ever, the claims are rubbish and fraudulent. The record 24-hour rainfall in Kentucky stands at more than 10 inches, and was set in 1997. Trends in extreme rainfall are not on the rise in Kentucky. … As is usually the case, the media interviews the locals, who understandably say “this is the worst we have ever seen”. Of course it is, because these are small-scale, localised events, and people’s experience only dates back a couple of decades or so. The harsh reality, however, is that floods like these happen, and have always happened, somewhere or other every year. They have nothing to do with climate change. Also see: Biden falsely links Kentucky floods to ‘climate change’ Related Links: 2018 US climate assessment: Bjorn Lomborg: The report found: On flooding, the assessment accepts the IPCC’s finding, which “did not attribute changes in flooding to anthropogenic [human] influence nor report detectable changes in flooding magnitude, duration or frequency.” 2019: Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.: Why Climate Activists Need To Stop Hyping ‘Extreme Weather’ – ‘Floods, drought, tornadoes & tropical cyclones – have not increased in frequency or intensity over the long-term’ 2017 Study on floods finds ‘approximately the number expected due to chance alone’ – No ‘global warming’ signal – A study published in the Journal of Hydrology found “the number of significant trends in major-flood occurrence across North America and Europe was approximately the number expected due to chance alone.” Via Chapter excerpt of Green Fraud: Not-So-Extreme Weather Events In 2017 Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado testified to Congress there was simply “‘no evidence’ that hurricanes, floods, droughts, tornadoes are increasing.” A 2020 study by Pielke published in the journal Environmental Hazards found that the “evidence signal of human-caused climate change in the form of increased global economic losses from more frequent or more intense weather extremes has not yet been detected.” On nearly every metric, extreme weather is on either no trend or a declining trend on climate timescales. Even the UN IPCC admitted in a 2018 special report that extreme weather events have not increased. The IPCC’s special report found that “there is only low confidence regarding changes in global tropical cyclone numbers under global warming over the last four decades.” The IPCC report also concluded “low confidence in the sign of drought trends since 1950 at global scale.” Pielke testified to Congress on the current state of weather extremes, “It is misleading, and just plain incorrect, to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally.” Floods A 2017 study on floods found “approximately the number expected due to chance alone.” Another 2017 study in the Journal of Hydrology found no increase in global floods: “Compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global scale is lacking.”59 A 2019 study found that the world is the safest from climate-related disasters that it has ever been: “A decreasing trend in both human and economic vulnerability is evident. Global average mortality and loss rates have dropped by 6.5 and nearly 5 times, respectively, from 1980 to 1989 to 2007–2016. Results also show a clear negative relation between vulnerability and wealth.” Climatologist John Christy has explained why the extreme weather claims are unscientific: “The non-falsifiable hypotheses can be stated this way, ‘whatever happens is consistent with my hypothesis.’ In other words, there is no event that would ‘falsify’ the hypothesis. As such, these assertions cannot be considered science or in any way informative since the hypothesis’ fundamental prediction is ‘anything may happen.’ In the example above if winters become milder or they become snowier, the non-falsifiable hypothesis stands. This is not science.” ‘Floods are not increasing’: Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. slams ‘global warming’ link to floods & extreme weather – How does media ‘get away with this?’ – Pielke Jr. on how extreme weather is NOT getting worse: ‘Flood disasters are sharply down. U.S. floods not increasing either.’ “Floods suck when they occur. The good news is U.S. flood damage is sharply down over 70 years,” Pielke explained. Study Finds No Evidence Of Global Warming Increasing Extreme Rainfall 1000 year rainfall study suggests droughts and floods used to be longer, worse Study: No Difference Between 20th-century Rainfall Patterns and Those in the Pre-Industrial Era Analysis: Record Rainfalls A Thing Of The Past:Note from Paul Homewood: “The rainfall from Harvey was the greatest from a single storm. However, this was just in one spot, as Harvey was stuck over Houston for a week. Other storms have dumped more rain, but spread over a wider area.” ‘We keep being told by climate alarmists that global warming is responsible for more intensive rainfall, the theory being that a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. Funny then that when we look at rainfall records across the US for all sorts of different timescales, we find none at all since 1981.’ Warmist Blames India Monsoon On ‘Climate Change’ But Annual rainfall trends debunk –India’s monsoon rainfall has been running just above average this year, but within the normal range (regarded as 10% +/-) Reality Check: Global Cooling Led To More Extremes Of Rainfall – ‘Rainfall actually increased sharply during the period of global cooling in the 1960s and 70s’ Scientist: ‘There Is No Such Thing As A 1000-Year Flood’ – Climate Statistician Dr. Matt Briggs: Phrases like “100 year rainfalls” or floods or whatever for whatever period of time are awful. They convey an improper idea of uncertainty. The phrase “X year event” is based on inverting the probability of the event; call that probability p. Thus “X year event” is equal to “1/p year event”, where p is the probability the event happens per year. That means a “100 year event” has a probability of 1%, and so on. A “1000 year event” sounds stupendous, and, to most ears, rarer than a 0.1% chance. Anyway, these are all wrong…It’s perfectly correct to make the statements like this: “The last time a flood this size occurred was in 1945.” That statement is not, however, equivalent to (in 2015) “That was a 70 year flood.” Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer: South Carolina Flooding is NOT a 1 in 1,000 Year Event – But a once on 1,000 year event? Sorry, but there is no way to determine that…there are simply not enough rainfall statistics over a long enough period of time to establish such a claim…Unfortunately, there seems to be an trend toward classifying events as “1 in 1,000 years”, when there is no way of knowing such things…For some areas the current flood is no doubt a 1 in 100 year event, or even worse. But remember, it is perfectly normal to have a 1 in 100 year event every year…as long as they occur in different locations. That’s how weather records work. Meteorologist on 500/1000 year flood claims: ‘We are talking about billions of years of climate & usually just a hundred years of actual, observational data’ Meteorologist Topper Shutt – WUSA 9 TV: ‘A 500 year flood does not mean that an area will see a flood of that magnitude once in 500 years. It means that in any given year there is a .2% chance of a 500 year flood and likewise a 1% chance every year for a 100 year flood. Think of it like this. If I flip a coin and it lands heads 5 times in a row the 6th time I flip the coin the odds are still 50/50. The odds are always 50/50. There have been ‘100 year’ floods in Houston in 1929, 1935, Allison in 2001 and Ike in 2008. Folks are probably scratching their heads wondering what in the world is going on. There are several explanations. Firstly, the maps drawn to depict these floods were educated guesses. Remember, we are talking about billions of years of climate and usually just a hundred years of actual, observational data. Secondly, urban development reduces the surface of the ground that allows the rain to permeate into the ground. Adding parking lots, more roads and driveways create more runoff. Thirdly, at least in the case of Houston 1000s of homes have been built close to streams, creeks and bayous that should have never been built in the first place. Houston is the fourth largest city in the U.S.’ Climate Depot Note: The media and climate activists love to hype so-called 1 in 100/1000 year extreme weather events. What they do not not explain is that your chance of the winning the lottery is very low, but the chance of someone, somewhere winning the lottery are very high. So the activists essentially hype “lottery winners” of extreme weather events and try to imply these events are increasing and happening everywhere. Lottery and casino ads do the same by showing all the winners and implying you are just one ticket or spin away from joining the lucky winners. Climate activists are trying to scare the public into believing that they are one bad weather event away from doom and only EPA and the UN Paris climate pact can save them! Feds declare no climate link to floods in 2015 – South Carolina’s ‘1000 year flood’ only a 10 year flood! U.S. Geological Survey: ‘No linkage between flooding & increase in GHGs’ – Dr. Robert Holmes, USGS National Flood Hazard Coordinator: ‘The data shows no systematic increases in flooding through time’ – ‘USGS research has shown no linkage between flooding (either increases or decreases) and the increase in greenhouse gases. Essentially, from USGS long-term streamgage data for sites across the country with no regulation or other changes to the watershed that could influence the streamflow, the data shows no systematic increases in flooding through time.’ 1000 year flood? ‘The majority of USGS streamgages had flood peaks that were less than 10-year floods.’ – ‘Analysis show NO indication that a 1000-year flood discharge occurred at any USGS streamgages’ NOAA bastardizes science in Louisiana rain modeling study – Climatologists, data, & history refute NOAA’s claims Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. slams NOAA study as ‘manipulation of science for political reasons.’ ‘NOAA should be embarrassed.’ Pielke Sr.: ‘From under reviewed paper to NOAA PR to USA Today. A dismaying example of manipulation of science for political reasons.’ Climate Depot’s Marc Morano on new NOAA study: “No matter how hard federally funded climate activist scientists at NOAA try to bend and twist models and data to make it appear the invisible hand of ‘global warming’ has a role in almost every weather event, the facts refute their claims.” Reality Check: The ‘1000 year Colorado flood’ is actually a 25-50 year flood Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. Answers AP’s Seth Borenstein’s questions on Typhoon Hiayan: ‘The scientific evidence does not presently support claims of attribution of the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on tropical cyclone behavior with respect to century-long trends ‘much less the behavior of individual storms’ Pielke Jr. On ‘unsupportable quotes’ from Mann, Francis & Masters: ‘Of course, there are scientists willing to go beyond what can be supported empirically to make claims at odds with the overwhelming scientific consensus on this subject — e.g., [Michael] Mann, [Jennifer] Francis, [Jeff] Masters are always good for inscrutable and unsupportable quotes.’ STUDY: Covid lockdown’s rapid emissions drop linked to record rainfall in China – ‘Scientists say’ drop in emissions & aerosols ’caused atmospheric changes’ – Study in journal, Nature Communications: “The chain of events that connects the pandemic shutdown to the floods is quite complex. There was heating over land due to aerosol reductions but also cooling over the ocean due to a decrease in greenhouse gases, which intensified the land/sea temperature difference in the summer,” explained lead author Prof Yang Yang from Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, in China. “This in turn, increased sea level pressure over the South China/Philippines sea and intensified the winds bringing moist air to eastern China which then saw intense precipitation.” “Because emissions were reduced dramatically in early 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic emerged, it caused an immediate and abrupt change in various components of the climate system.” “Such sudden change of the climate system would be very different from changes in response to continuous but gradual policy-driven emissions reductions.” Hourly Extreme Rainfall Claims Not Supported By Data Warmist Blames India Monsoon On ‘Climate Change’ But Annual rainfall trends debunk – India’s monsoon rainfall has been running just above average this year, but within the normal range (regarded as 10% +/-) Reality Check: Global Cooling Led To More Extremes Of Rainfall – ‘Rainfall actually increased sharply during the period of global cooling in the 1960s and 70s’ Claim: Climate change made Harvey rainfall 15 percent more intense Billboard effort asks ‘climate polluters’ to pay ‘their fair share’ for Harvey – Claim 30% of rainfall due to AGW 28 New Papers: Solar, Ocean Cycles Modulate Rainfall Trends – Human Influence OnPrecipitation ‘Has Yet To Be Detected’ Analysis: Record Rainfalls A Thing Of The Past – Note from Paul Homewood: “The rainfall from Harvey was the greatest from a single storm. However, this was just in one spot, as Harvey was stuck over Houston for a week. Other storms have dumped more rain, but spread over a wider area.” ‘We keep being told by climate alarmists that global warming is responsible for more intensive rainfall, the theory being that a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. Funny then that when we look at rainfall records across the US for all sorts of different timescales, we find none at all since 1981.’ “Take particular note of the four records in Texas: Galveston 1871 – 3.95” in 15 minutes Woodward Ranch 1935 – 15.0” in 2 hours Thrall 1921 – 36.4” in 18 hours Alvin 1979 – 43” in 24 hours Storm Harvey never got anywhere near these sort of totals. And we find a very similar picture when we review global records, with the most recent record being as long ago as 1980.” Warmist Kevin Trenberth claim: ‘The human contribution can be up to 30 percent or so up to the total rainfall coming out of the storm.’ The Atlantic Mag: Warmist Kevin Trenberth claim: ‘The human contribution can be up to 30 percent or so up to the total rainfall coming out of the storm.’ Media claim: ‘Harvey is unprecedented—just the kind of weird weather that scientists expect to see more of as the planet warms’ New Study Finds No Evidence Of Global Warming Increasing Extreme Rainfall The Thousand Year Rainfall Fallacy: ‘Conflating odds of one individual station getting a 20 inch rain, with odds of any station getting a 20 inch rain.’ – ‘Your odds of winning the lottery are very small, but the odds of someone winning the lottery are quite high. What these geniuses are doing is conflating the odds of one individual station getting a 20 inch rain, with the odds of any station getting a 20 inch rain.’ South Carolina Floods – ‘A Thousand Year Rainfall’? Actually the worst since 1999! ‘There is nothing unprecedented about the single day rainfall this week in Charleston’ New paper suggests cosmic rays ‘may contribute to global temperature (& rainfall) in a significant way’ – Published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics Salon Mag. blames rainfall on AGW: ‘The deluge you’re getting may be due to climate change’ – Debunked: ‘Extreme Rainfall Records In The States’ Most are pre-1950, none since 1996 Reality Check on Salon Mag.: “Extreme Rainfall Records In The States” Most are pre-1950, none since 1996: No new records have been set since 1996 and most are pre-1950. Not much sign of global warming having any effect there. New paper finds lunar-tidal cycles influence climate: Study published in the International Journal of Climatology finds the 18.6 year lunar-tide cycle influences rainfall and climate over adjacent land areas’ Industrial pollution has allegedly ‘held back’ rainfall increases Whoops! An inconvenient truth for ‘global warming makes more rain’ advocates: reduced pollution increases rainfall Settled science: New paper challenges climate science consensus on winds & rainfall — Published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics – Study ‘finds that condensation and evaporation merit attention as major, if previously overlooked, factors in driving atmospheric dynamics, including winds and rainfall. ‘This paper is really trying to bring the physics to formal attention of the climate scientists,” according to co-author Douglas Sheil. “We are asking them to disprove this theory and so far no one has been able to do that’ NOAA Establishes That CO2 & Hot Climates Do Not Cause Extreme Rainfall Events New paper finds solar activity and natural climate cycles explain rainfall variations over past 160 years ‘A paper published today in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics finds that sunspot numbers and the assumption of natural climate cycles ‘accurately reproduces’ the patterns of rainfall in Fortaleza, Brasil ‘over the entire 160 years of observations.’ New paper shows no correlation between CO2 and rainfall: ‘Another tenet of AGW theory bites the dust in the face of real-world data’ ‘AGW theory proposes that increased CO2 levels lead to increased water vapor in atmosphere (despite empirical data which shows the opposite). A paper published in Nature Climate Change February 2012 studied rainfall over Indian subcontinent 1813-2006 & finds rainfall has decreased since 1930s as CO2 emissions markedly increased. The data instead shows a natural, cyclical variability in mean annual rainfall that peaked in 1870s and 1930s with absolutely no correlation to levels of CO2’ Why climate change is causing upset stomachs in Europe: ‘Scientists are now suggesting that greater quantities of rainfall and bigger storms could be responsible for more unsettled stomachs in parts of Europe’ – ‘Sweden, Spain, Hungary, Greece and Brazil. These countries are particularly vulnerable to climate change, being susceptible to heavy rainfall. Tests included analysing exposure levels to estimate the risk of disease associated with climate changes such as heavy rainfall’
By Vijay Jayaraj Mainstream media is infamous for its exaggeration of everyday events. When it comes to the issue of climate change, it rarely misses an opportunity to promote fear. True to form, during the ongoing COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, media promoted incorrect information spewed by politicians and famous personalities. Special attention was drawn to the assertion that rising sea levels are threatening island nations by none other than Barack Obama, who incongruously has purchased a multi-million-dollar ocean front property on the New England coast. Catching the attention of millions was the image of a Tuvalu minister standing in knee-high sea water. But there is a problem with this: Most islands in the South Pacific nation of Tuvalu have gained surface area and are in no danger of being inundated. (Screenshot, list23.com) Despite sea-level rise that has been underway since the end of the last ice age, Tuvalu’s land area has increased recently by 2.9 percent. A peer-reviewed research paper which studied four decades of shoreline change in all 101 islands in the Tuvalu atolls categorically proves this. The paper notes that “…change is analyzed over the past four decades, a period when local sea level has risen at twice the global average (~3.90 ± 0.4 mm.yr−1). Results highlight a net increase in land area in Tuvalu of 73.5 hectares (2.9%) despite sea-level rise and land area increase in eight of nine atolls.” The case of Tuvalu is not unique. Various island nations have gained landmass in recent decades, including Maldives which increased by 37 square kilometers since 2000. The climate doomsday machine has been using this image-based propaganda for a while now. National Geographic circulated an image of a starving polar bear and claimed that the bear’s condition was a direct result of man-made climate change. However, polar bear populations are relatively healthy and have increased in recent decades. When exposed, the famous media channel issued a statement saying that the reason for the dismal condition of the bear is unknown and that it had exaggerated the climate impact. At COP26, Bill Gates joined climate elites who resorted to a representation of reality designed to promote climate fear. “Farmers in low-income countries are at high risk from the impacts of climate change,” said Gates. But a closer look at weather data and the state of global agriculture reveals a different picture. The United Nations makes clear that there is no strong evidence that climate change is having a significant influence on the frequency of extreme weather events. IPCC AR5 WGI Chapter 2 states, “In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale.” When it comes to droughts, the report states that “… there is not enough evidence at present to suggest more than low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century.” Consider India, a country with the world’s largest number of low-income farmers. More than 500 million people depend either on agriculture or allied products. Of that total, 150 million depend only on agriculture — the equivalent of 40 percent of the U.S. population. These farmers — with an average monthly income of less of $120 — depend on monsoon rainfall and there has been no climate signature on the monsoon rainfall trend. Nor has there been any increase in cyclones. In other words, there has not been any increased risk from climate change for India’s farmers. Another indicator of the absence of heightened risk is crop production. For four consecutive years, India has produced record food crops, higher than ever before in its history. You would think that Gates would know something about agriculture and climate given that he owns 242,000 acres of U.S. farmland and is said to be the largest private owner of such acreage. However, it appears that the billionaire is at best ill-informed. Though fancying themselves to be noble defenders of nature, these purveyors of doomsday scenarios are more akin to a cult’s priesthood offering commoners salvation in exchange for prosperity and freedom. Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a Master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/03/19/the-social-cost-of-carbon-and-climate-sensitivity-is-model-manipulation-at-its-finest/ By Patrick J. Michaels / Kevin Dayaratna The “social cost of carbon” is a calculation that the Biden administration is looking to use to justify stringent regulation of carbon dioxide emissions. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt—joined by Arkansas, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah—have now filed a lawsuit, arguing that the use of this metric in policy would constitute an overreach of government power. Carbon dioxide is an odorless gas that is the basis for almost all plant life on earth. Of course, carbon dioxide emissions have slightly warmed the surface temperature of the planet, but on the other hand, access to plentiful energy has been accompanied by a doubling of life expectancy in the developed world and an elevenfold growth in personal wealth, as noted in the 2016 book “Lukewarming.” A recent commentary that one of us (Kevin Dayaratna) published, titled “Why the Social Cost of Carbon Is the Most Useless Number You’ve Never Heard Of,” presented years of research on the topic conducted at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis. He noted how easy it is to artificially raise the social cost of carbon by manipulating various assumptions in the calculation, including the discount rate, which is essentially an estimate of how much money invested today in say, the stock market, will grow in the future. The Office of Management and Budget has recommended calculating things like the social cost of carbon with discount rates of 3%, 5%, and 7%. Obviously, at the higher rates, the social cost of carbon becomes pretty low. Using a 3% discount rate, the Biden administration hiked the social cost of carbon up to $51 per ton, a significant increase from the Trump administration’s $7 per ton. Even that might not do for the Biden administration, which could rely upon the recent arguments made by University of Chicago economist Michael Greenstone, who said that the discount rate should be 2% or lower. Additionally, in order to determine the social cost of carbon, we need to have a good idea of how much the planet’s surface will warm under various policy scenarios. To calculate this level, scientists have for decades used computer models to find the “sensitivity” of climate to an arbitrary amount of carbon dioxide emissions. This sensitivity is usually the calculated warming, in terms of temperature, for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Here is a dirty little secret that few are aware of: All those horrifying future temperature changes that grace the front pages of papers of record aren’t really the predicted warming above today’s level. Instead, they are the difference between two models of climate change. The “base climate” isn’t the observed global temperature at a given point in time. Instead, it is what a computer model simulates temperatures to be prior to any significant changes in carbon dioxide. Reality need not apply to these calculations. And there are sometimes very big differences between the base models and reality, especially in the high latitudes of both hemispheres, and over the world’s vast tropics. The usual procedure is then to instantaneously quadruple carbon dioxide and let the model spin up to an equilibrium climate. Then—hold onto your hat—that number is divided by two, taking advantage of the fact that warming varies linearly with increasing carbon dioxide, something that has been known for a long time. The final figure is called the equilibrium climate sensitivity to doubled carbon dioxide. With regard to the equilibrium climate sensitivity, climate science is very odd: The more money we spend studying it, the more uncertain our forecasts become. This fact is becoming increasingly obvious as a new suite of models is emerging that will be incorporated in the next climate science report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to be released next year. For decades, there was no real narrowing of the range of the equilibrium climate sensitivity, since a 1979 National Academy of Sciences report, “Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment,” chaired by Jule Charney of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The “Charney Sensitivity,” as it came to be called, was 1.5-4.5 C for the lower atmospheric warming that would be caused by a doubling of carbon dioxide. Subsequent assessments, such as some of the serial “scientific assessments” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, gave the same range, or something very close. Periodically, the U.S. Department of Energy runs what it calls “coupled model intercomparison projects.” The penultimate one, used in the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment, contained 32 families of models with a sensitivity range of 2.1-4.7 C, and a mean value of 3.4 C—i.e., warmer lower and mean values than Charney. Nevertheless, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change rounded this range back to the good old 1.5-4.5 C, because there was some skepticism about the warmer models. Despite these differences between various base climate models and the doubled carbon dioxide calculation, reality-based calculations of the equilibrium climate sensitivity by other researchers yield much lower sensitivities, between 1.4 and 1.7 C. The new coupled model intercomparison projects model suite, on the other hand, displays an even larger range of sensitivity beyond what has been observed. The range of models currently available (which is most of them), is 1.8-5.6 C, and an estimate of the mean is 4 C, and is likely what the Biden administration may very well use to determine the social cost of carbon. So, sadly, the new coupled model intercomparison project models are worse than the older ones. A 2017 study shows that, with one exception, the older coupled model intercomparison project models made large systematic errors over the entire globe’s tropics. The exception was a Russian model, which also had the lowest sensitivity of all, at 2.05 C. Last year, researchers examined the new coupled model intercomparison projects model suite, and what they found was not good: Rather than being resolved, the problem has become worse, since now every member of the CMIP6 generation of climate models exhibits an upward bias in the entire global troposphere as well as in the tropics. A very recent paper just published in Geophysical Research Letters indicates that it may be that new estimates of the enhancements of clouds by human aerosol emissions are the problem. Interestingly, the model that has the least cloud interaction is the revised Russian model, and its sensitivity is down to 1.8 C, but it nonetheless still overpredicts observed global warming. When it became apparent that the new models were predicting even more warming than their predecessors, Paul Voosen, the climate correspondent at Science magazine, interviewed a number of climate scientists and found that the new, “improved” renditions of the cloud-aerosol interaction is causing real problems, either completely eliminating any warming in the 20th century or producing far too much. One of the scientists involved, Andrew Gettelman, told Voosen that “it took us a year to work that out,” proving yet again that climate scientists modify their models to give what French modeler Frederic Hourdin called an “anticipated acceptable result.” Acceptable to whom? Hourdin’s landmark paper clearly indicates that it is scientists, not objective science, who subjectively decide how much warming looks right. The implications of the systematic problems with coupled model intercomparison project models and other manipulated models on the social cost of carbon may be big: The Biden administration will rely on these models to beef up the social cost of carbon as well. In fact, the Obama administration had done so by using an outdated equilibrium climate sensitivity distribution that was not grounded in reality that inflated its social cost of carbon estimates. In fact, peer-reviewed research conducted by Kevin Dayaratna, Pat Michaels, Ross McKitrick, and David Kreutzer in two separate journals has illustrated that that under reasonable and realistic assumptions for climate sensitivity, alongside other assumptions, the social cost of carbon may effectively be zero or even negative. It is now apparent that the reason for using the social cost of carbon to begin with is very simple: to be able to control the energy, agricultural, and industrial sectors of the economy, which will result in big costs for ordinary Americans with little to no climate benefit in return. So altogether, we have one manipulated class of models—models determining climate sensitivity—likely being used as a basis for manipulating the social cost of carbon. The consequences on the social cost of carbon’s uncertainty are profound. As a result, the public should be very cautious about accepting new calculations of the social cost of carbon. Although the social cost of carbon is based on an interesting class of statistical models, its use in policy should also serve a case study of model manipulation at its finest. # Related Links: Biden’s Bogus Climate Report on the ‘social cost of carbon’ Statistician: Why ‘Social Cost of Carbon’ Is Most Useless Number You’ve Never Heard Of Statistician Kevin Dayaratna: “Dubbed by some as ‘the most important number you’ve never heard of,’ the social cost of carbon is defined as the economic damages associated with a ton of carbon dioxide emissions across a particular time horizon. That metric, relied upon heavily by the Obama administration, has been used as the basis for regulatory policy in the energy sector of the economy. … Assumptions made by modelers can drastically change the purported estimates and thus beef up the damages as much as they want.” Flashback: Biden Reverses Trump’s Way of Valuing Climate – Reality Check: The ‘social cost of carbon’ a ‘transparent & obvious fraud’ Biden Reverses Trump’s Way of Valuing Climate – Reality Check: The ‘social cost of carbon’ a ‘transparent & obvious fraud’ Analysis: Social Cost of Carbon is a “Transparent and Obvious Fraud” – —Francis Menton in 2016: “The ‘Social Cost of Carbon’ can fairly be described as the mother of all government cost-benefit analyses…”In reality, it is a completely dishonest scam that wildly exaggerates costs and ignores benefits in order to justify vast seizures of power unto the government….“ # Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore: “Clearly, the social cost of carbon is negative on so many fronts. Perhaps we should be paid for emitting it. It is responsible for up to 70% of increased food crop production (I guess they didn’t factor that in). It is greening the land and presumably the oceans. It is perhaps involved in slightly increasing global temperature above the frigid Pleistocene Epoch the Earth has been locked in for 2.6 million years, although there is no proof of this. It makes all plants more efficient in their use of water. It makes greenhouse production of food 30-60% higher than at ambient levels.” Trump’s Weapon To Reverse Obama’s Climate Policy – Social Cost of Carbon – Unravel Climate regs Experts Debunk Obama’s ‘Social Cost Of Carbon’ Estimate — It Might Be Negative!
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