Obama's Green Jobs Snake Oil

Obama's Green Snake Oil
Obama ignores the cost of his global warming plan.
01/28/09 - Reason Online by Jacob Sullum

[edited]Obama says that his plan to reduce global warming is actually a way of stimulating the economy. The plan immediately spends for weatherizing buildings, alternative energy production, and more power transmission. He ignores the enormous cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. He falsely portrays this economic burden as a boon.

Consider this to see the fallacy: If Obama could snap his fingers and make global warming disappear, should he do it? By his logic, no, because then we'd lose all those wonderful green jobs that will help pull us out of the recession.

Obama: "Climate change could result in violent conflict, terrible storms, shrinking coastlines, and irreversible catastrophe." Does Obama's cap-and-trade proposal make sense? We need to know how likely are those outcomes, how costly they would be, and whether his plan would prevent them.

Critic Bjorn Lomborg wrote "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming." He argues that adapting to climate change is much less costly than trying to prevent it. Prevention is unlikely to have any measurable impact. I'd like to hear why Obama thinks this criticism is wrong.

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Dispelling the Global Warming Myth

There is a close correlation between global temperature and solar output. See the graph.

Overselling Science

Overselling Science
07/10/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Shannon Love

Why polls of scientists don't mean much, even if they are real scientists making their living from research. Read it all.

[edited] The problem with polling “scientists” is that there is a wide range in the predictive power of the studies that we lump together as “science”.

Physics has tremendous predictive power, but sociology has almost none. Worse, scientists in highly predictive fields tend to have too much trust in less predictive fields, and scientists in low- or non-predictive fields try to gain public trust by referring to the success of highly predictive fields.

Non-predictive sciences invite social and political fads. There was wide agreement a hundred years ago on the validity of eugenics, Improving a human population by discouraging people with undesirable traits from having children, or of mating people who have desireable traits. more agreement than we have today on global warming. Darwin strongly opposed implementing eugenics, but nevertheless believed in its validity.

Likewise, most scientists of that era thought it was obvious that races differed in behavior because they had different biology. Much bad policy, even in politically liberal countries, was based on this flawed and oversold “scientific” idea.

The theory of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) has the same social and political dynamics as did eugenics. Climatology has not predicted climate either in the short or long term. The computer models [and their predictions for tens or hundreds of years into the future] cannot be tested by any observation in the here and now. Yet, the public gives climatology the same respect as meteorology, physics, and chemistry.

To global warming, we could add each past “scientific” consensus on the population bomb, resource depletion, energy crisis, and inevitable nuclear war. In all of these cases, scientists and the public thought untested models with no predictive power were similar to the highly predictive models [of the experimental, physical sciences].

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Global warming caused by humans is a scam
The proponents of Global Warming don't mind lying for the good of us all. Saving the world justifies much cutting of corners.

Be Skeptical About Scientists and Polls

Scientists Versus The Great Unwashed
07/10/09 - Just One Minute by Tom Maguire

Survey Shows Gap Between Scientists and the Public
07/09/09 - New York Times by Cornelia Dean

Public Praises Science; Scientists Fault Public and Media
07/09/09 - Pew Research Center for the People & the Press

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I don't trust Pew research polls, after seeing this poll and information about it. I am skeptical of all polls, and the word "scientist".

Mr. Maguire reviews an article in the NY Times which reports a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, working with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Opinions differed between scientists and the general public.

Pew said "scientists". I credit Ms. Dean for the following, which is not emphasized in the Pew report:

NYT Ms. Dean: [edited] The survey involved about 2,000 of the public and 2,500 scientists drawn from the rolls of the AAAS, which includes teachers, administrators and others involved in science, as well as researchers.

The Pew report section About the survey is at the end of the report, the last segment of 10, and says:

Pew Report [edited] Results for the scientist survey are based on 2,533 online interviews. A sample of 9,998 members was drawn from the AAAS membership list excluding those who were not based in the United States or whose membership type identified them as primary or secondary-level educators.

The term "scientist" is used everywhere, but the survey contacted the AAAS membership, which includes people with a career related to science, and can include anyone. The survey excluded grade-school and high-school teachers, but included administrators. It seems that this classification is whatever each member listed when joining.

Rhetoric and Bias

It bothers me that Ms. Dean reports on a survey and inserts her own beliefs. For evolution and global warming, the supposed scientists agree with her, and the public is dumb. For nuclear power, she does not report on the supposed scientists who come to a conclusion different from liberal opinion.

This is a common misuse of surveys and group opinions. We often hear that we should believe something because "almost all scientists agree".

• How can we know that thay all agree?
• What does "all" mean?
• Who are the "scientists"?
• If "scientists" are all trustworthy, how can they disagree? If they are not all trustworthy, why are we polling them?
• Who employs them and how will they benefit from acceptance of their results?
• What are their areas of expertise?
• Have they opened their research, data, methods, and computer models to public examination?
• Has their research survived critical attention? Did they respond to criticism with thoughtful detail, or dismiss their critics as evil idiots?

Macguire selected these parts of the NY Times article.

[edited] There is a large gap between the views of scientists and ordinary Americans about climate change, evolution, and the state of the nation’s research enterprise.

Almost all of the scientists accept that human beings evolved by natural processes and that human activity, chiefly the burning of fossil fuels, is causing global warming. The general public is far less sure.

Almost a third of ordinary Americans say human beings have always existed in their current form. Only 2% of the scientists agree. Only half of the public agrees that people cause climate change, and 11% does not believe there is any warming at all.

About a third of Americans think there is lively scientific debate on both topics. In fact, there is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution and there is little doubt that humans are altering the atmosphere in ways that threaten global climate.

Dean associates evolution and global warming as two settled theories. Evolution has been studied for 150 years with confirmation from many directions and sources that has survived public evaluation and criticism. Global Warming investigations are recent, biased by government support and political pressure, and results are unsettled and exaggerated The proponents of Global Warming don't mind lying for the good of us all.

Dean says "almost all of the scientists accept", implying that the issue is settled, except for the dumb public that has not yet accepted the uncomfortable implications.

Macguire points out something Dean does not report. The supposed scientists want more power plants, an action that is not supported by liberals.

[edited] Interesting, the Times forgot to report this factoid from a Pew chart. 70% of scientists (but only 51% of the public) favor "building more nuclear power plants". On global warming, 49% of the public and 84% of scientists believe that "the earth is getting warmer because of human activity".

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Global warming caused by humans is a scam
The proponents of Global Warming don't mind lying for the good of us all. Saving the world justifies much cutting of corners.

Predicting No Climate Change

MIT's unscientific, catastrophic climate forecast
06/17/09 - Financial Post by Kesten C. Green and J. Scott Armstrong   (via John Stossel)

Forcasting is the heart of science. It is easy to convince yourself that you understand something until you must predict what will happen. It is hard to predict things even when you can repeat the experiment. You must be very careful when you are predicting events that cannot be repeated.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sponsors a Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. It released a report last month: "Probabilistic Forecast for 21st Century Climate based on uncertainties in emissions (without policy) and climate parameters."

Green and Armstrong examined this report. They found serious problems in trusting the MIT results, related to proper forcasting methods and skepticism. A forcast of "climate change" may seem to fit the data, until you find out that "no change" fits the data better.

[edited] The MIT authors predicted that global warming could be twice as severe as previously forecast, and more severe than the official projections of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Their prediction is based in part on 400 runs of a computer model of climate and economic activity. So, they recommend massive government action.

The MIT group espouses lofty objectives based on "independent policy analysis and public education in global environmental change". But, we found they violated 49 important forcasting principles. For such an important problem, they should not have violated even one.

So what's really wrong with their report? Their phrase "global environmental change" provides a clue. The group implicitly rejects the possibility of no or unimportant change, or the possibility of unpredictable change.

A forecast of "no-change" can be hard to beat in many circumstances. No-change can be appropriate even when a great deal of change is possible, but the direction, extent, or duration is uncertain.

Earth's temperature has gone up and down irregularly over periods from one year to thousands of years. Moreover, science has not been able to tell us why. There is much uncertainty about past climate changes and about the strength and even direction of causal relationships.

Do warming temperatures result in more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, or is it the other way around, or a bit of both? Does warming of the atmosphere result in negative or positive feedback from clouds? There are many more such questions without answers. All this strongly suggests that a no-change forecast is the appropriate long-term forecast.

We compared the IPCC projection of 0.03 C temperature increase per year with what actually happened from 1850 to 2007. The errors from the IPCC prediction were 12 times larger than the errors of the no-change prediction.

The forecasts from the MIT modellers and from the IPCC are merely the opinions of some scientists and computer modellers. These are not truly scientific forecasts.

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Dr. Kesten C. Green is a senior research fellow of the Business and Economic Forecasting Unit at Monash University, Australia.

Dr. J. Scott Armstrong is Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

They are co-directors of the public service Web site Forecasting Principles sponsored by the International Institute of Forecasters.

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Dispelling the Global Warming Myth
There is a very close match between global temperature and solar output. See the graph. That even seems reasonable in its own way. (smile)

AGW Scientists Can't Predict
Academic degrees mean nothing if you can't say what is going to happen. Watch out for global warming scientists who can't predict the details. And watch out for "economists" who fiddle some equation as a reason to take your money to improve your life.

Better Bank Robbery

Future News:

An upsurge in bank robberies and muggings is sweeping the nation. The government is calling this phenomenon "Suggested Resource Reallocation".

There is an eerily consistent pattern. The robber approaches the bank or victim and says "Please give me your money. It is for the environment and Global Warming". People then hand over their money without protest, and actually report a warm and happy feeling. No robber has yet been caught. In some cases, people refuse to identify the person who robbed them, or have destroyed surveillance tapes.

One victim reported: "It was for the environment. How could I refuse?"

Psychologists blame a pervasave desire to "be good", rooted in early pre-school instruction. Even when informed of the scam, many respond that "the poor robber probably needed the money".

Police departments are at a loss for what message will protect the public. A government spokesman presented the dilemma. "Of course we want them to give their money for the environment, but it should be to the right people."

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Global Warming Caused by Humans is a Scam
The famous Hockey Stick graph showing global warming is based on bad data, political motivation, and an overt attempt to exclude a detailed review and alternate explanations.

EPA Supresses Climate Study

Obama's EPA Quashes Climate Change Science
06/28/09 - Powerline Blog by John Hinderaker

Science is about open debate and analysis of published data. A scientist wants his results to stand as a guide to future generations, as a truth on which to build. Emotionally, he may not enjoy criticism, but no one can devote energy and insight into criticising his own work. So, real science welcomes review and criticism. It is an ethical standard.

A politician wants his program to be approved along with lots of pretty money. The truth is secondary to getting the bill passed.

It seems that the EPA made a political mistake. It hired real scientists to evaluate the data, and they wouldn't suppress the results.

When tobacco companies hid the results of their own studies, they were tagged as monsters. How dare they suppress the best data about smoking? How dare the EPA suppress the best data about the environment, when the lives and prosperity of hundreds of millions of people are at stake?

[edited] The EPA (US Environmental Protecion Agency) has suppressed its own study which concludes that carbon dioxide is not a significant cause of climate change.

The report by Carlin and Davidson reveals that the EPA has not done its own evaluation of global warming. Rather, it has relied on analyses by others, mostly the U.N.'s IPCC report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

The IPCC report was a political, not a scientific document. The U.N. ordered that no recent research be considered, knowing that recent research disproves the anthropogenic (man-made) global warming theory, This is a scandal. As science, the U.N. report is a bad joke.

Carlin and Davidson recite and summarize the scientific work that shows rather clearly that human activity is at most a minor factor in climate change.

EPA Emails obtained by CEI are revealing. Carlin's and Davidson's superior declines to make their report public because "the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment". A second email orders them not to communicate to the public their conclusion that the global warming theory is bunk. (See the emails at Powerline)

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Dispelling the Global Warming Myth
There is a very close correlation between global temperature and solar output. See the graph. That even seems reasonable in its own way. (smile)

The Climate Change That Isn't

Climate Change Reconsidered
06/05/09 - PowerLineBlog by John Hinderaker

The 880 page book Climate Change Reconsidered has been published by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). At the highest level, these are the conclusions:

[edited] This is an authoritative and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress are relying on bad conclusions from the IPCC.

The scholarship in this book demonstrates overwhelming scientific evidence that

• The warming of the twentieth century was moderate and not unprecedented.
• Its impact on human health and wildlife was positive.
• Carbon dioxide probably is not the driving factor behind climate change.

The authors cite thousands of peer-reviewed research papers and books that were ignored by the IPCC, plus additional scientific research that became available after the IPCC's self-imposed deadline of May 2006.

* The IPCC uses warming data from surface recording stations, yielding a 1905-2005 temperature increase of 0.74ºC. But, this temperature record is not corrected for the urban heat island (UHI) effect. [UHI is warming from streets, buildings, and roofs which are the sites for the temperature stations.] The UHI of even small towns dwarfs any greenhouse effect that might be present [making that data useless].

* Highly accurate satellite data, adjusted for orbit drift and other factors, show a much more modest warming trend in 1980-2000 and a dramatic decline in the warming trend in 2000-2009.

* The observed pattern of warming differs from the pattern predicted by global climate models based on CO2 greenhouse effects.

Data from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) is unequivocal. All greenhouse models show an increasing warming trend with altitude in the tropics, peaking around 10 km at roughly twice the surface value. But, the actual temperature data from balloons give the opposite result: no increasing warming, but rather a slight cooling with altitude.

* Temperature records in Greenland and other Arctic areas reveal that temperatures reached a maximum around 1930 and have decreased in recent decades. Longer-term studies show oscillatory cooling since the Climatic Optimum of the mid-Holocene (~9000-5000 years ago), when it was perhaps 2.5º C warmer than it is now.

* The average temperature history of Antarctica provides no evidence of twentieth century warming. The Antarctic peninsula shows recent warming, but several research teams have documented a cooling trend for the interior of the continent since the 1970s.

We Can't Stop Carbon Emissions

From Peter Huber's book "Bound to Burn"
04/21/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Jonathan

[edited] We rich people can’t make a lasting dent in emissions. We don’t control the global supply of carbon.

We can't stop 5 billion poor people from burning the couple of trillion tons of cheap carbon that they have within easy reach. The 80% of humanity in the developing world desperately need cheap energy, and that will drive global carbon emissions. If we are foolish enough, we can impose carbon controls on ourselves that will send jobs and industries to their shores, making them grow even faster, and their carbon emissions faster still.

Ten countries ruled by nasty people control 80% of the planet’s oil reserves, about 1 trillion barrels worth about $40 trillion. They can lift most of their oil for a cost under $10 a barrel. They will drill, pump, and find buyers. Oil is all they have.

The bad news is that we will have to adapt, if human production of CO₂ is a problem. We won't be able to stop it. The good news is that CO₂ is not a problem in the first place.

Dispelling the Global Warming Myth
The atmosphere warms and cools because of solar output, not carbon dioxide.

The Global Warming Hockey Stick Hoax
The data and computer models in support of global warming are poorly constructed and don't predict anything.

Publicly Challenge Politicians

Congressman McClintock Urges Opposition to Climate Change Legislation
03/09/09 - Business & Media Institute by Jeff Poor

[edited] Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) advised how to fight the good fight against Draconian climate change legislation.

Don’t write officials a letter. Write that same letter to the local newspaper, or put it on a blog. Mention them by name and ask how they’re voting, and other inconvenient questions.

Don’t visit them in their office. Visit them at a public meeting where you can hold them accountable in front of their constituents. Call them on a local talk show, not at their office.

AGW Scientists Can't Predict

The Caine Mutiny Teaches Us about Global Warming Scientists
02/17/09 - PajamasMedia by Frank J. Tipler

Academic degrees mean nothing if you can't say what is going to happen. Watch out for global warming scientists who can't predict the details. And watch out for "economists" who fiddle some equation as a reason to take your money to improve your life.

[edited] Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is justified via argument from authority: a consensus of “experts” holds that humans are responsible for the increase in the Earth’s average temperature.

I was once a leader in forming a scientific consensus based on expert opinion. In the late 1970s, most cosmologists believed the universe could not accelerate, based on very weak experimental evidence. In the late 1990's, we discovered that dark energy is accelerating the universe. I now regard “scientific consensus” as a synonym for “wrong.”

I am struck by the lack of accomplishments by the leaders of the AGW consensus. In fact, it is the leading opponents of AGW who have genuine scientific achievements in climatology. Reid Bryson was the “father of climatology,” a leading AGW skeptic, and had the achievements of a genuine scientist.

A true scientist demonstrates his knowledge by making predictions which can be confirmed or refuted. What counter-intuitive predictions have the Global Warmers ever made? I invite you to look.

I could not find a single counter-intuitive prediction made by any major Global Warmer. But, I have found cases of them trying to cover up failed predictions.

Hansen's Claims About Global Warming Embarrassed NASA

Hansen Embarrassed NASA
02/01/09 - PowerLineBlog by John Hinderaker

James Hansen of NASA is a leader in espousing the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). He has public credibility because of his NASA affiliation. His boss at NASA was John Theon, who has recently retired, and has announced his view that AGW is not supported by evidence.

Theon writes:

[edited] As Chief of several NASA Hq. Programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research.

James Hansen was never muzzled, even though he violated NASA's official position, that NASA did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind's effect on it. He embarrassed NASA by his claims of global warming in his 1988 testimony before Congress.

I believe that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system, because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit.

Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. They don't explain what they have modified in the observations or how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done.

Thus, there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy.

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Global Warming Caused by Humans is a Scam

The Fraud of Anthropogenic Global Warming

The Greatest Fraud in History?
01/30/09 - PajamasMedia by James Lewis

[edited] The credibility of science may never recover from the Global Warming scare. Credibility has to be earned, and once it’s squandered may never be recovered. Far too many scientists have knowingly colluded in an historic fraud, one that would put Bernie Madoff to shame. We are seeing political larceny here on a planetary scale. Why should scientists who have gambled their own reputations on this fakery ever be trusted again?

I’m not a climatologist. Like most scientists I rarely judge what others do in their fields. And yet it’s been flamingly obvious for years now, that the hypothesis of human-caused global warming violates all the basic rules and safeguards that protect the integrity of normal, healthy science. That’s why AGW (anthropogenic global warming) looks like a massive fraud, the biggest fraud ever in the history of science.

Mr. Lewis discusses a number of things that real scientists NEVER do. These are all things that promotors of global warming are doing loudly and repeatedly. It is politics or religion, but not science. Here is one point (it is worth reading the rest):

Bad data has been very widespread in global warming theories. Judging by past performance, it may still be endemic. Thermometers are placed in hot areas in the cities, and the data is shamelessly generalized to the whole world. The infamous “hockey stick” temperature diagram has been exposed. James Hansen has brought NASA to its lowest point ever by repeatedly endorsing false data.

In any healthy field of science, that disastrous empirical record would have discredited the hypothesis. But while the data seems to crash periodically, the models don’t change in their catastrophism.

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Global Warming Caused by Humans is a Scam

Global Warming in 1000 Years

Global Warming in 1000 Years
01/28/09 - WSJ Best of the Web by James Taranto
From The Los Angeles Times:

[edited] Susan Solomon is a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and lead author of an analysis published Monday.

Even if, by some miracle, carbon dioxide dropped to pre-industrial levels, it would take more than 1,000 years to reverse the climate changes already triggered. The gas already emitted and the heat absorbed by the ocean will show effects for centuries.

Long term, the warming will melt the polar ice caps more than previously estimated, raising ocean levels substantially. Changes in rainfall patterns will bring droughts similar to the 1930s Dust Bowl, to the American Southwest, southern Europe, northern Africa, and western Australia.

People thought that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide, the climate would go back to normal in 100 - 200 years, but that is not true. Absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans acts to cool the Earth. Release of heat from the oceans warms the Earth. These processes will work against each other to keep temperatures almost constant for more than 1,000 years.

Taranto asks:

So, is it crucial that we lower greenhouse gases this instant, or would it not make any difference? If no difference, what sense does it make to be alarmed? That last statement by Solomon is a head-scratcher. Are we supposed to worry that temperatures will be "almost constant for more than 1,000 years"? Is that what they mean by global warming?

I am reminded of a joke.

A scientist was talking about the evolution of stars and the universe. He presented that the Sun would burn its nuclear fuel and explode as a nova in about 5 billion years. A student in the back began urgently waving his hand to ask a question.
"Professor, did you say 5 million years?"
"No, I said 5 billion," replied the professor."
"I'm so relieved."

Carbon Dioxide Does Not Drive Climate

Carbon Dioxide Does Not Drive Climate
01/04/09 - WSJ.com Notable and Quotable
TalkingAboutTheWeather.com by Harold Ambler, via HuffingtonPost

[edited] The theory that carbon dioxide "drives" climate in any meaningful way is simply wrong. Carbon dioxide cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation. Why not? Because it only absorbs heat along limited bandwidths, and is already absorbing just about everything it can. (read more)