A review and commentary on topical matters concerning the science, economics, and governance associated with climate change developments.

By Alan Moran

September 2017

Climate Science

To the annoyance of alarmists, ocean levels are rising only at the same rate as they did prior to the increases in greenhouse gas emissions. Here is San Francisco with reality at the bottom and dotted lines showing climate model forecasts.

In defiance of the alarmists’ playbook, oceanic cooling continues its recent trend.  

Though this has not stopped serious studies projecting that fish species are migrating north to avoid the heat and that the fish are getting thinner due to climate change.  

Indian crops are at record levels in spite of Paul R. Ehrlich, author of the now falsified super-alarmist, The Population Bomb, 1968, “I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971.” 

A new major data assembly by Abbot and Marohasy in Science Direct puts beyond doubt the mediaeval warming that the IPCC attempted to deny. A summary was published in the Spectator.  

As Jennifer Marohasy puts it “temperatures have cycled up and down over the last 2,000 years – spiking during the Medieval Warm Period and then again recently to about 1980 – the official IPCC reconstructions (which underpin the Paris Accord) deny such cycles. This denial (allows) the claim that there is something unusual about current temperatures: that we have catastrophic global warming from industrialization.” 

However, climate change agitator and green blogger Grahame Readfearn assembled the usual establishment suspects to depict as “junk science” work that demonstrates that temperatures have oscillated rather than trended along the infamous “hockey stick” lines.  However the Abbot and Marohasy work is corroborated by a Chinese study that measured temperatures over the past two millennia and found an undulating trend with at least two periods with temperatures comparable to those of the present. 

CNN tried to link Hurricane Harvey to global warming. Many others on the left , including Obama's former national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, have adopted the same line. Big Fail – here is the data on Atlantic Hurricanes. 

And as Paul Homewood demonstrates there are no places in North America where record rainfalls occurred after 1981, in spite of warming now being said to increase the atmosphere’s capacity to retain moisture.

Political and regulatory developments

The Trump administration formally outlined the United States’ intention to withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement in an official notice delivered to the United Nations on Friday. 

Loosening the regulatory noose, President Trump has revoked infrastructure standards that required proof that any proposed “public infrastructure projects from housing to highways” were not threatened by global warming.

A Pew survey has found only 28 per cent of Americans believe scientists have the answers to causes of climate change. The public has a cynical view of scientists’ motivation with only 32 per cent considering that "most of the time" scientists relied on the best available evidence to form their views and 36 per cent thought scientists' findings were influenced by a desire to advance their careers. .

Unsurprisingly, President Trump has scrapped the Obama appointed Climate Change Committee. It was chaired by Richard Moss, a public affairs specialist who is Managing Director for Climate Change at the World Wildlife Fund.  Describing the committee as integral in crafting how the U.S. responds to the greatest threat of our time, the Huffington Post was displeased.

A new aggressive approach to Greenpeace was signalled by Energy Transfer Partners which has brought suit against the economy-destroyer’s attack on a pipeline under US racketeering and corruption laws. The company alleged that Greenpeace ran a “relentless campaign of lies and outright mob thuggery.”

Peter Ridd a genuine scientist who forms his views on evidence not ideology has questioned data assembled by alarmist colleagues regarding the Great Barrier Reef’s health. Such questioning can seriously threaten funding, and influential grant recipients within the University are seeking his sacking.  

Under a Minister who was formerly a Greenpeace Director, Canberra is on track to 100 per cent renewables. The 2020 cost is estimated at $114 a year for the average household. But that estimate, which excludes trhe federal subsidy, is from the same consultants who failed to forecast Australia's recent doubling in electricity prices. 

I covered the on-going madness of Australian policy in driving up prices by promoting high cost renewables and killing low cost, reliable coal generators in the Herald Sun here and here . I also appeared on the Bolt Report see this excerpt link, and contributed articles to Catallaxy Files here, here and here, and The Spectator.

Whimsey

Polar bears are refusing to play their part in illustrating the damage and reality of human induced climate change: they are getting fatter and increasing in numbers in contrast to the emaciated pictures of them produced by agitators.  

And anticipating this, grizzly bears have switched their diet from salmon to elderberries!

Anyone really anxious about climate change and thinking of moving to avoid its dangers, just needs to avoid relocating to the countries (Central African Republic, Chad, Eritrea, Burundi, Sudan) that Eco Experts say are most vulnerable!

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