Wednesday, May 13, 2015

May, 2015, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: The Science Is NOT Settled, Germany Increases Its Carbon Footprint And Chicken Little's Doomed Forecasts

Every month we revisit the theme, “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” The theme started when I got tired of people like Al Gore and others yelling and slandering anyone who dared to disagree with their view of global warming, since then rebranded as “climate change.” Yelling and demeaning people is no way to win them over to your view, which is what the Al Gores of the world are still doing.

Thus, we set off to explore ALL science, research, and realities relative to global warming, not just the handpicked science that global warming advocates cherry pick. What we have found through the years is that it is very realistic and in tune with the real world to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science.

Much science and research has been shown to debunk Al Gore’s way of thinking and slandering. And we have brought counter evidence to his view of the world every month for years. To access those previous posts, just enter the search term "I am a global warming doubter” in the search box above. 

Our intention is to start an adult, mature, science based conversation based on all available information. That has certainly not been the intention of Al Gore types. They have wanted to browbeat their views into disbelievers heads. And even if they are right about global warming, which we have proven they are quite possibly wrong about, they come up with no plans that would reunite the world around a solution. 

They only want the United States to curtail their carbon footprint, a reduction that would be dwarfed by the increasing carbon footprint of the rest of the world, especially China and India. All they would end up doing is briefly forestalling their end result while crippling the economic growth and vitality of the United States.

With that background, let’s look at what the global warming/climate change hysteria has brought us in the past month or so.

1) I always get a kick when Barack Obama, Al Gore, or other global warming advocate claim that “the science is settled.” This implies that anyone who is not in lockstep with them cannot possibly have any kind of science literacy or knowledge. We have shown many times that it is not the case by quoting, referencing, and citing numerous and solid scientific research efforts and scientists that do not agree with the Al Gores of the world.

The latest example of such a scientist is Dr. Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Until recently, Dr. Lewis was apparently a member of the American Physical Society, which I gather is a professional organization of physicists. 

He recently resigned from that organization when he sent a wicked letter to Curtis G. Callan Jr. of Princeton University, claiming that man made global warming and climate change theories were politics parading as science and that the American Physical Society was a facilitator of that fraud. His entire letter can be read at:


The following are some of the excerpts from that letter: 

…the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist….

…The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake…

I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I'm not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

A quick review of what an emeritus professor and scientist thinks about man made global warming and climate change: scam, corruption, pseudoscience, appalling, pompous, asinine, embarrassed, fraud.

Seems like the science is not settled at least for this scientist and professor. Look, I do not know if this professor and his colorful adjectives are right or wrong. But I do know that I am tired of being lied to that all scientists agree that Al Gore is spot on right with his views. Simply not the case.

2) New York Times writer Thomas Friedman recently wrote an editorial entitled, “Germany, the Green Superpower.” Friedman applauds that country’s effort to move from coal to renewable energy sources like wind and solar, known as Energiewende, calling it a smashing success: “…what the Germans have done in converting almost 30 percent of their electric grid to solar and wind energy from near zero in about 15 years has been a great contribution to the stability of our planet and its climate. The centerpiece of the German Energiewende, or energy transformation, was an extremely generous “feed-in tariff” that made it a no-brainer for Germans to install solar power (or wind) at home and receive a predictable high price for the energy generated off their own rooftops.”

What is this so-called feed-in tariff? Well, it was established in 1991 as part of the Electricity Feed-in Act and it requires that renewable energy sources “have priority on the grid and that investors in renewable must receive sufficient compensation to provide a return on their investment irrespective of electricity prices on the power exchange.” In other words, if you are providing electricity from alternative, renewable sources, you get subsidized from the German taxpayer. 

Apparently, it is true that Germany has increased their use of renewable energy sources substantially which now generate over 25 percent of German electricity from renewable sources with wind and solar making up nearly 15 percent of total electricity production. All of this is a good thing, particularly if you are an Al Gore advocate.

But at what cost has this level of renewables been attained? Some figures and positions from the the Institute for Energy Research (IER) shows that the cost has been extremely high:
  • Residential German electricity prices are nearly three times higher than electricity prices in the U.S.
  • Higher electricity energy prices as a result of forced usage of renewables has also helped retard business growth as domestic manufacturers look elsewhere for cheaper energy to stay profitable. 
  • The Federation of German Industries has warned that German manufacturers could “lose a competitive edge against rivals in the United States, where the boom in the unconventional shale gas production has led to a sharp drop in industrial energy costs.”
  • As a result of these high prices, as many as 800,000 Germans have had their power cut off because of an inability to pay for rising energy costs.
  • The cost to expand Germany’s transmission networks to integrate renewables already officially stands at $33.6 billion.
  • German electric grid operators say that the $33.6 billion accounts “for only a fraction of the cost of the energy transition,” meaning that billions of dollars have been heaped upon the German electricity users beyond the ongoing tripled electricity rates.
  • This has resulted in highly beneficial business models for the producers, not the users, of renewable energy sources. For example, in 2009 the feed-in tariff price for photovoltaic solar power was a whopping eight times more than the wholesale price of electricity.
  • The other big benefactor of the German renewable strategy has been the Chinese solar panel industry, i.e. German consumers are subsidizing manufacturing in China while their electric rates skyrocket.
  • Even supporters of renewables have a problem with this financial situation. Ralf Fücks, the president of the German Green Party’s political foundation, as saying, “In my view, the greatest success of the German energy transition was giving a boost to the Chinese solar panel industry.”
  • Despite the increase of renewables for power, Germany has increased its use of coal after the nuclear reactor meltdown in Japan in 2011, which has increased Germany’s carbon footprint:



So a country that has been trying for over twenty years to reduce its carbon footprint, as Al Gore would have them do, has resulted in increased energy costs, decreased economic growth from manufacturing, and has increased the country’s carbon footprint. Not a model that this country should try to emulate but one that Obama would have us do even though it has failed miserably in Germany.

3) Of course, people like Al Gore will continue to yell and rant and rave that we must do something IMMEDIATELY for global warming and climate change or all is lost. Despite the German experience, despite the fact that some/many scientists are calling the bluff of people like Gore, despite the fact that climate and temperatures have changed many times in the Earth's history, despite the fact that all climate models have been proven fatally flawed, the urgency is high for those that still believe.

The Daily Caller website recently went back through time and found other Al Gore types and “experts” calling for the same urgency years and decades ago. But despite their pleas and promises, nothing catastrophic has happened. Consider their dire predictions from long ago, all of which have been proven wrong:
  • Eight years ago, the United Nations predicted we only had “as little as eight years left to avoid a dangerous global average rise of 2C or more.” Although this is a massively failed prediction, it has not stopped the U.N. from issuing more dire predictions since.
  • When Laurent Fabius met with Secretary of State John Kerry on May 13, 2014 to talk about world issues he said “we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.” This means that climate chaos is less than 12 weeks away.
  • When Fabius made his 500 day prediction, the U.N. had already scheduled a climate summit to meet in Paris in December 2015, about 565 days after his remarks, making the U.N. meeting 65 days too late to save the world.
  • In 2009, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center head James Hansen warned that Obama only “has four years to save Earth.” Here we are six and half years later and ….nothing has happened, Earth is still here.
  • Also in 2009, Elizabeth May, leader of the Greens Party in Canada wrote: “Earth has a long time. Humanity does not. We need to act urgently. We no longer have decades; we have hours." Needless to say that hourly prediction fell by the wayside pretty quickly.
  • Still in 2009 (obviously a very bad year for climate predictions), United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown said there was only 50 days left to save Earth. Brown is now gone, politically speaking, but the Earth is still here.
  • Another renowned British climate expert, Prince Charles, warned us in 2009 that we had only 96 months to save the planet. If he is right, we are down to our last 26 months before it is all over. And a Prince wouldn’t lie, would he?
  • In 2007, Rajendra Pachauri, the former head of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that if “there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late.” Three years after his drop dead date, nothing has changed since 2007. Well, one thing changed. Pachauri was forced to resign earlier this year amid accusations he sexually harassed multiple female coworkers.
  • In 2002, environmentalist George Monbiot wrote in the UK Guardian that within “as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world’s animals or it continues to feed the world’s people. It cannot do both.” But, according to the Daily Caller reporting, in 2002, around 930 million people were undernourished, according to U.N. data. But by 2014, that number shrank to 805 million. Missed that prediction, did we?
  • The San Jose Mercury News reported on June 30, 1989 that a “senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.” Fifteen years later and another prediction bites the dust.
Okay, what did we learn today:
  • The science is not settled, many, many scientists are in disagreement with Al Gore and his advocates, including a Physics Professor Emeritus that spoke out above.
  • Despite Germany’s best and determined effort, its attempt to reduce its carbon footprint with subsidies and forced actions has increased its carbon footprint, resulted in skyrocketing electricity costs, dampened manufacturing economic growth and made some Chinese solar panel manufacturers very rich.
  • The urgency to do something, anything now before it is too late is really the same refrain that has been shouted at us for decades and it is a refrain that has never come true.
Thus, again this month, we prove that it is perfectly viable and accurate to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science. Those of us like this are still waiting for the Al Gores of the world to settle down, stop yelling at us, and have an adult conversation about what might very be a non-matter.



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