Setting Up The Excuse

Watts Up With That is reporting a Mail on Sunday piece wherein a NOAA whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a leading scientist with NOAA at the time, has given MoA irrefutable evidence that the “Pausebuster” paper that NOAA rushed to print with lots of publicity just ahead of the 2009 Paris climate agreement was based on misleading, “unverified” data.  The purpose of the rush was to influence those present, including ex-President Barack Obama (D), and con them into believing that not only did the pause in global warming that’s still ongoing, not only never existed, the warming is continuing at a faster pace than thought.

It gets worse.

Not only had [NOAA] failed to follow any of the formal procedures required to approve and archive their data, they had used a “highly experimental early run” of a programme that tried to combine two previously separate sets of records.

About that program:

[T]he…software was afflicted by serious bugs. They caused it to become so “unstable” that every time the raw temperature readings were run through the computer, it gave different results.

And this:

…failure to archive and make available fully documented data not only violated NOAA rules, but also those set down by Science [which published the “Pausebuster” paper]. Before [Dr Bates] retired last year, he continued to raise the issue internally. Then came the final bombshell. Dr Bates said: “I learned that the computer used to process the software had suffered a complete failure.”

The reason for the failure is unknown, but it means the Pausebuster paper can never be replicated or verified by other scientists.

Now, here it comes.

Dr Bates said: “How ironic it is that there is now this idea that Trump is going to trash climate data, when key decisions were earlier taken by someone whose responsibility it was to maintain its integrity—and failed.”

And NOAA’s coverup, perhaps to cover its embarrassment over its incompetence and dishonesty, perhaps to prepare the ground for its coming slur against the new administration:

After the paper was published, the US House of Representatives Science Committee launched an inquiry into its Pausebuster claims. NOAA refused to comply with subpoenas demanding internal emails from the committee chairman, the Texas Republican Lamar Smith, and falsely claimed that no one had raised concerns about the paper internally.

It’s beginning to look like NOAA needs to be abolished.  Surely, we have better uses for its $6 billion budget (requested for 2016) than to fund falsified “science.”

Growing Irrelevance of the World Economic Forum

The rising income gap and growing rifts in Western societies that led to the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote are the main global risks, according to a report by the World Economic Forum ahead of its annual forum in Davos next week.

Climate change and technological disruption were also listed as important risks in a survey of 750 law makers, business leaders and academics carried out by the WEF….

No, the rising income gap isn’t why President-Elect Donald Trump was elected, nor was it why Great Britain voted to go out from the European Union.  Quite the contrary: it was because those on the bottom and in the middle were being held down by the policies of the Know Betters and by the latter’s desperation for votes—votes bought and paid for by handouts that trap folks in the Know Betters’ welfare cages.  That that contributed to a rising income gap is only a side effect.  The bottom and middle class folks simply wanted their opportunity to get rich, too.

Climate change isn’t a risk at all; it’s a certainty.  The Earth is illuminated and warmed by the sun, the sun has been heating up for its entire four billion year existence, and it’ll continue to heat up for the next several billion years.  Global warming—which is what climatistas mean when they changed the name to and talk about “climate change”—is a pseudo-science whose sole industrial function is to transfer government funds to the “industry.”

Technological disruption is a good; it’s how progress and prosperity happen in a free market—and without a free market there is neither progress and prosperity nor any technological change at all.  It’s a risk, too, but it’s one that’s well understood by everyone who’s had a high school economics class.

And there’s this nonsense from Cecilia Reyes, Chief Risk Officer at Zurich Insurance Group, speaking at the gathering:

The momentous political changes in 2016 raised worries about the health of liberal democracy that has underpinned global prosperity[.]

No, the health of liberal democracy took a dramatic turn for the better, exemplified by the repudiation of the policies of eight years of the Obama administration and the Progressive-Democratic Party’s control over the Congress as a whole and then of the Senate.  That repudiation was broader than just a rejection of those policies, though: the real turn for the better was the repudiation of the increasingly authoritarian behavior of the Progressive-Democratic Party and of the Left in general.

No, the WEF is just getting a bit too far out of touch with the world.

Climate Change and Science

Dr Tim Ball has an excellent piece on Watts Up With That about the politicization of climate change pseudo-science (my characterization, not his).  This excerpt is centered on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but it illustrates the general, broad, and sole politicization of climate change pseudo-science [emphasis added].

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cannot survive. It was designed to achieve a deceptive result by limiting the research to only human causes of climate change. They effectively made reform or change impossible because each set of Reports is cumulative. That is, each Report simply adds new information to a very limited number of variables. The reality is you can only determine the human impact by knowing and understanding all the variables and mechanisms of natural climate. Most of the public think the IPCC look at climate and climate change in total and IPCC participants and promoters did nothing to dissuade them of that error. This is part of the proof that IPCC creators had a singular political objective for which natural variability was a problem. Without the political objective there is no need for a government agency like the IPCC even to determine natural climate and climate change.

Ball’s article is long-ish, but it’s well worth the read.

Federal Green Expenditures

Watts Up With That has some ideas for budget cutting in the next administration.  Or, actually, these ideas come from Salon (!) via WUWT (never mind that cutting isn’t what Salon meant).

  • Energy Department

2017 climate-related budget: $8.5 billion

  • Interior Department

2017 climate-related budget: $1.1 billion

  • State Department

2017 climate-related budget: $984 million

  • NASA

2017 climate-related budget: $1.9 billion

  • Environmental Protection Agency

2017 climate-related budget: $1.1 billion

  • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

2017 climate-related research and development: $190 million

That works out to $13.8 billion of “useless waste.”  Yes, indeedy.

While we’re about it, let’s cut the “green” subsidies, too.  Every single one of them.  The fossil fuel (coal, oil, and gas) enterprises don’t need the $3-$5 billion (depending on who gets asked) in subsidies they get, either.  That’s yet more budget cutting.19+, although fossil fuels get much less than the “green” money being tossed down rat holes.

Some Climate Moves

Maybe.  Via Watts Up With That we see these items [emphasis in the originals]:

By Megan Darby in Marrakech

US Republicans are expected to axe billions of dollars in climate finance when they take the White House and Congress in January.

Funds to help poor countries adapt to the impacts of global warming and develop sustainably will be redirected to domestic priorities.

“We are going to cancel billions in payments to the UN climate change programmes and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure,” said President-elect Donald Trump in his 22 October Gettysburg address.

With a Republican majority in the Senate and House of Representatives, there appears to be little standing in his way.

And

What a Trump Win Means For the Global Climate Fight

Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency signals an end to American leadership on international climate policy. With the withdrawal of US support, efforts to implement the Paris agreement and avoid the most devastating consequences of global warming have suffered a huge blow.

by David Victor

With the unexpected triumph of Donald Trump, what’s in store for US climate and energy policies?

[…]

One thing is clear: the Trump administration will inflict more harm on global cooperation around climate than any prior president. After the successful Paris agreement last year, that cooperation was finally poised to make progress with decisive US leadership. I doubt that a Trump presidency will kill the Paris process—too many other countries are too invested in its success. But it will shift the intellectual and political leadership of the process from the United States to other countries, most notably China.

Oh please, oh please.