‘It’s Not Actually Happening’: Former DC Official Calls Out Cities Pledging To Honor The Paris Climate Accord

via Climate Change Dispatch
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Hundreds of U.S. mayors have committed to the goals of the Paris climate accord in the wake of President Donald Trump’s announcement he would withdraw from the agreement.

It’s a nice thought, according to a former city official, but it’s not even close to being reality.

“The idea that cities are leading on climate change is applauded over and over and over,” wrote Sam Brooks, who directed the District of Columbia’s energy division from 2012 to 2014.

“There’s just one problem,” Brooks wrote on the news site Greentech Media. “It’s not actually happening,” he wrote in his article on the myth that “cities are leading on climate.”

The pledge by roughly 320 mayors was covered breathlessly by the media. Reporters, for example, covered New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s executive order for his city to comply with the Paris accord.

U.S. mayors promised to push more climate policies to “meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius target, and work together to create a 21st-century clean energy economy,” according to their manifesto. Brooks wrote, “it’s time to stop with the empty platitudes and face reality.”

Brooks argued that while cities have a role to play in cutting greenhouse gas emissions, they’re policies have largely been ineffectual. He said mayors touting their environmental credentials were taking credit for broader emissions trends.

“Retrofit programs for buildings and homes aren’t delivering results,” Brooks wrote. “Power distribution remains rooted in century-old thinking and technology. And those cities that claim to be on track to go ‘100 percent renewable’? Not even close,”

“It turns out that when cities claim reductions in greenhouse gases, they’re usually taking credit for things they didn’t do,” he wrote.

Brooks pointed out that major U.S. cities aren’t reducing electricity use enough to make a meaningful reduction in emissions, and the policies many localities employ to fight global warming don’t accomplish much.

Brooks noted “it’s difficult to identify much progress” in terms of energy efficiency improvements and that “only a few cities have more solar per capita than the national average.” Indeed, even self-styled “green” cities, like San Francisco, get less than 2 percent of their electricity from solar panels.

Cities that pledge to use 100 percent renewable energy are also full of it, Brooks wrote. And he has firsthand experience with this policy.

“When I led the energy division for government facilities in Washington, D.C., we became entirely ‘green-powered’ by purchasing one wind [renewable energy credit (REC)] to account for each megawatt-hour of electricity we bought from the grid,” Brooks wrote.

In other words, one can become “green” without actually having to change their underlying behavior.

Las Vegas, Nevada recently made headlines for allegedly being powered by 100 percent green energy. They, of course, used RECs. Google and Apple also have goals of using 100 percent green energy — also relying on RECs.

Read more at Daily Caller

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June 23, 2017 at 08:37AM

The AMS Scolds Rick Perry for Believing the Oceans are Stronger than Your SUV

via Climate Change Dispatch
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This week, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) sent a letter to DOE Secretary Rick Perry, scolding him for the following opinion he uttered in a CNBC interview on June 19.

Quoting from a Washington Post article:

Asked in an interview on CNBCs “Squawk Box” whether he believed that carbon dioxide was “the primary control knob for the temperature of the Earth and for climate”, Perry said that “No, most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in.” Perry added that “the fact is this shouldn’t be a debate about, ‘Is the climate changing, is man having an effect on it?’ Yeah, we are. The question should be just how much, and what are the policy changes that we need to make to effect that?”

(Most of the headlines I’ve seen in the CNBC interview, including the WaPo piece, refer to Perry with the usual “denier” terms.)

Basically, Perry is saying he believes that nature has a larger role than humans in recent warming. I, too, believe that the oceans might well be a primary driver of climate change, but whether the human/nature ratio is 50/50, or less, or more than that is up for debate. We simply don’t know.

So, while Sec. Perry goes against the supposed consensus of scientists, it was not outlandish, it wasn’t a denial of a known fact.

It was a valid opinion on an uncertain area of science.

AMS, me thinks thou doth protest too much

In response to Sec. Perry’s comments, the Executive Director of the AMS, Keith Seitter, said this in his letter to Perry (emphasis added):

While you acknowledged that the climate is changing and that humans are having an impact on it, it is critically important that you understand that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the primary cause. This is a conclusion based on the comprehensive assessment of scientific evidence. It is based on multiple independent lines of evidence that have been affirmed by thousands of independent scientists and numerous scientific institutions around the world. We are not familiar with any scientific institution with relevant subject matter expertise that has reached a different conclusion. These indisputable findings have shaped our current AMS Statement on Climate Change, which states: “It is clear from extensive scientific evidence that the dominant cause of the rapid change in climate of the past half century is human-induced increases in the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), chlorofluorocarbons, methane, and nitrous oxide.”

Indisputable findings? Really? In my opinion, the AMS view (which draws upon the U.N. IPCC view) is much more definitively stated than the evidence warrants.

Sure, all of the scientific institutions are going to jump on the bandwagon, with politically savvy committees agreeing with each other; they are in effect being paid by the government to agree with the consensus through billions of dollars in grants and contracts.

If there is no global warming crisis, there would be little congressional funding to study it, and thousands of climate-dependent careers (including mine) simply wouldn’t exist.

That money also trickles down to the AMS, which is paid to hold scientific conferences, workshops, and publish the resulting research studies in scientific journals. They have a vested interest in the gravy train continuing.

So, maybe I can ask the AMS: Just what percentage of recent warming was natural in origin? None? 10%? 40%? How do you know? Why was the pre-1940 warming rate — caused by Mother Nature — almost as strong as recent warming?

The truth is, no one knows just how much of recent warming was human-caused, including those thousands of “independent” scientists. They pin the blame on CO2 partly because that’s all they can think of, and we still don’t understand natural sources of climate change.

Besides, in the climate business, there are no thousands of independent scientists, anyway. They live and work in an echo chamber, and very few of them have the breadth and depth of knowledge to make an informed judgment on the issue. The vast majority are specialists in some narrow field of research. They go along to get along… and to continue to get funding.

Young climate researchers today cannot voice any doubts about anthropogenic global warming, or they might not have a career. They can’t go to Big Energy for research funding because, as far as I know, such funding does not exist. Big Energy knows they don’t have to pay people to prop up petroleum, natural gas, and coal because the world runs on the stuff, and for the foreseeable future, there are no large-scale, cost-effective, reliable, and readily dispatchable alternatives.

What we DO know with considerable confidence is that increasing CO2 should cause some warming. I’ll admit that my opinion here is mostly based upon a theoretical extrapolation from laboratory measurements of how CO2 absorbs and emits infrared energy. But we really don’t know how much warming. We certainly do not have enough confidence to claim it is indisputable that our greenhouse gas emissions are the dominant cause, as the AMS letter claims.

Read more at Dr. Roy Spencer’s Blog

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June 23, 2017 at 08:37AM

Tornado Stats For 2016–Another Quiet Year

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By Paul Homewood

 

NOAA have been very slow in releasing the final tornado data for 2016, but it is finally out now.

As the provisional indicated at the time, last year was another very quiet year for tornadoes, and continued the pattern of a lower level compared to the 1970s.

 

   http://ift.tt/1lhlncv

Perhaps even more marked is the decline in the number of really strong tornadoes.

 

http://ift.tt/1lhlncv

 

There were no EF-5 events (the strongest category) at all last year, the third year in succession for that. There were also only two EF-4s, which normally average eight a year.

You would guess none of this from NOAA’s State of the Climate Report, which fraudulently includes the weakest EF-0 tornadoes.

 

http://ift.tt/2pYKPJb

Even though their own website clearly states:

Improved tornado observation practices have led to an increase in the number of reported weaker tornadoes, and in recent years EF-0 tornadoes have become more prevelant in the total number of reported tornadoes. In addition, even today many smaller tornadoes still may go undocumented in places with low populations or inconsistent communication facilities.

With increased National Doppler radar coverage, increasing population, and greater attention to tornado reporting, there has been an increase in the number of tornado reports over the past several decades. This can create a misleading appearance of an increasing trend in tornado frequency. To better understand the variability and trend in tornado frequency in the United States, the total number of EF-1 and stronger, as well as strong to violent tornadoes (EF-3 to EF-5 category on the Enhanced Fujita scale) can be analyzed. These tornadoes would have likely been reported even during the decades before Doppler radar use became widespread and practices resulted in increasing tornado reports.

http://ift.tt/1LjFZvg

 

 

So far this year, provisional tornado numbers have been higher than recent averages, but not significantly so. Again there have been no EF-5 events yet.

http://ift.tt/1lhlncv

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June 23, 2017 at 08:33AM

The AMS Scolds Rick Perry for Believing the Oceans are Stronger than Your SUV

via Principia Scientific International
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This week, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) sent a letter to DOE Secretary Rick Perry, scolding him [for saying oceans have a greater impact on the climate than CO2] when he spoke with CNBC on June 19. Quoting from a Washington Post article: Asked in an interview on CNBCs “Squawk Box” whether he believed that […]

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June 23, 2017 at 08:32AM