Climate and Weather

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Actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is excoriating President Trump for stripping California of its ability to determine its own vehicle regulations for greenhouse gas emissions, preempting the state's Clean Air Act.

The waiver was introduced by conservative icon Ronald Reagan, Schwarzenegger reminded Trump in his statement about the "fake-conservative policy announcement." He suggested states rights conservatives are hypocrites for approving the plan.
 
Trump Is Right to End Obama's Fuel Economy Scheme

Phil Kerpen
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Posted: Aug 06, 2018 2:12 PM

Obama's astonishing takeover of the automobile industry was accomplished through a process even more corrupt than his takeover of the health care sector. While both involved backroom deals, the auto takeover was sealed in a backroom from which both the American people and our elected officials were completely shut out.

Worse, it transferred power over a huge swath of our economy - and the basic choice of what cars and trucks Americans can buy - not to Washington, D.C. but to Sacramento, California. Sacramento was empowered, contrary to federal law, to set fuel economy standards and to implement a credit scheme that raises the prices of vehicles all over the country to lavish subsidies on rich buyers of electric hobby cars in California.

Obama climate czar Carol Browner oversaw the secret negotiations in 2010. Mary Nichols, the chair of the California Air Resources Board, was the other key player in a game of bad cop and really bad cop. Basically, the industry was told that if they didn't acquiesce to the new rules, California - waiver in hand - would even more severely kneecap them.

Nichols told the New York Times that Browner "quietly orchestrated" the secret negotiations between the White House, regulators, and auto industry officials. "We put nothing in writing, ever," Nichols bragged.

In 2012 - with Sacramento firmly in control - they reprised the same tactics to ratchet up the mandate to 54.5 miles per gallon, which of course guarantees cars will be smaller, lighter, less crash-worthy, less powerful, and less comfortable than you can even imagine. A nice-sized family-vehicle? Good luck.

The political calculation by Obama was that putting Sacramento in the driver's seat would lock in place the scheme because the regulatory, legal, public relations, and political effort required to unwind it would be too daunting for a future Republican administration.

They did not count on President Donald Trump or his intrepid lead on this issue, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

Secretary Chao, jointly with EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, have issued a brilliantly crafted proposal that revises the core of the Obama fuel economy rules to reach a sweet spot that balances environmental, safety, and cost considerations - backed by thousands of pages of detailed legal, scientific, and economic analysis.

Their proposal would keep the model year 2020 standards in place through model year 2026, rather than allow a sharp increase in fuel economy requirements that would occur under the Obama/California plan. The Trump plan would save more than $500 billion in societal costs and reduce highway fatalities by 12,700 lives - because more expensive new cars price people out on the margin, forcing them to drive older, less safe cars longer.

Against the half-trillion in benefits you can weigh the global warming impact - or non-impact. Model runs based on mainstream, consensus climate models show the Trump proposal would impact the global climate by 3/1000th of one degree Celsius by 2100. You can round that to zero.

Most importantly, the proposed rule treats California like the other 49 states, withdrawing its special waiver and setting up litigation that will almost certainly result in a Supreme Court victory finding that Congress meant what it said when it passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975: "a State or a political subdivision of a State may not adopt or enforce a law or regulation related to fuel economy standards or for automobiles covered by an average fuel economy standard under this chapter."

Like so much of his legacy, Obama's fuel economy scheme was built on regulatory and legal quicksand because he was unable or unwilling to convince the American people and our elected representatives to implement his policies through the legislative process.

President Trump is absolutely right to stand up to the shrieks of protest from the environmental groups and the media and to let Americans buy the cars and trucks we want
 
Delingpole: What the Alarmists Aren’t Telling You About Europe’s Scorching Heatwave…
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Mike Hewitt/Getty
7 Aug 2018215
Europe’s scorching heatwave has been manna from heaven for all the alarmists pushing the man-made climate doom narrative.
For the New York Times it’s like we’re approaching End Times:


In Northern Europe, this summer feels like a modern-day version of the biblical plagues. Cows are dying of thirst in Switzerland, fires are gobbling up timber in Sweden, the majestic Dachstein glacier is melting in Austria.

In London, stores are running out of fans and air-conditioners. In Greenland, an iceberg may break off a piece so large that it could trigger a tsunami that destroys settlements on shore. Last week, Sweden’s highest peak, Kebnekaise mountain, no longer was in first place after its glacier tip melted.

Southern Europe is even hotter. Temperatures in Spain and Portugal are expected to reach 105-110 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend. On Saturday, several places in Portugal experienced record highs, and over the past week, two people have died in Spain from the high temperatures, and a third in Portugal.

It goes on to quote a French expert who claims:“In the past, we had this kind of heat wave once every 10 years, and now we have them every two years or something like that.”

For the Economist (of which, more in a separate post), it’s another sign that the “world is losing the war against climate change”.

For the BBC it’s a phenomenon that “human-driven climate change” has made “twice as likely.”

Also for the BBC, the inevitable Roger Harrabin has dived in with his usual “We didn’t listen” eco-drool:






The current heatwave could become the new normal for UK summers by 2040 because of climate change, MPs say.

The Environmental Audit Committee warns of 7,000 heat-related deaths every year in the UK by 2050 if the government doesn’t act quickly.

For green hedgefunder Jeremy Grantham’s house climate-doom attack dog Bob Ward, it’s yet another sign that the climate deniers are evil and wrong:



But here’s what none of these professional alarmists want you to know: this heatwave is what global cooling looks like.

More specifically, it’s the result of an extreme temperature drop since 2012 in the North West Atlantic and also, of a huge temperature drop in the Tropics.

As you can see very clearly in these charts courtesy of Joe Bastardi, the large band of cold water in the Atlantic – a vast surface area representing one-sixth of the world’s ocean – has left a skinny band of warm water to the north which is causing Europe’s heatwave.

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Now look at where the 500 mb ridge has developed in relation to the skinny band of warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures.

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Wow. Isn’t that amazing?

So, let me get this straight. We are getting attribution to humans when the cooling of the Atlantic — which has been real and spectacular — leaves a skinny band of warm water, the response to which puts the ridge over Europe and makes it hot. The widespread cooling of one-sixth of the world’s ocean (the north Atlantic), which should be raising eyebrows as far as implications on patterns opposite the warming missive, is turned around and blamed on CO2 and “climate change” because the result is a heat wave in Europe.

As for that Bob Ward stuff about summers getting hotter – that’s rubbish too, of course.

Homewood schools him here:





There have been just seven summers over 20c since 1910:

1911

1933

1947

1976

1995

2003

2006



While we don’t know how this summer will work out (and neither does Bob Ward), since 2006 we have had eleven distinctly average summers.

The hot summers above are still rare events, and are all essentially weather events. There is no evidence that these extreme weather events are becoming more frequent.

So, carry on, as you were – enjoying this summer.

We may not get one like it for some considerable time to come.
 
Failed Prognostications of Climate Alarm
Anthony Watts / 12 hours ago August 7, 2018

Failed Prognostications of Climate Alarm...
By Rob Bradley writing at IER

“If the current pace of the buildup of these gases continues, the effect is likely to be a warming of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit [between now and] the year 2025 to 2050…. The rise in global temperature is predicted to … caus[e] sea levels to rise by one to four feet by the middle of the next century.”

— Philip Shabecoff, “Global Warming Has Begun.” New York Times, June 24, 1988.

It has been 30 years since the alarm bell was sounded for manmade global warming caused by modern industrial society. And predictions made on that day—and ever since—continue to be falsified in the real world.

The predictions made by climate scientist James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer back in 1988—and reported as model projected by journalist Philip Shabecoff—constitute yet another exaggerated Malthusian scare, joining those of the population bomb (Paul Ehrlich), resource exhaustion (Club of Rome), Peak Oil (M. King Hubbert), and global cooling (John Holdren).

Erroneous Predictive Scares

Consider the opening global warming salvo (quoted above). Dire predictions of global warming and sea-level rise are well on their way to being falsified—and by a lot, not a little. Meanwhile, a CO2-led global greening has occurred, and climate-related deaths have plummeted as industrialization and prosperity have overcome statism in many areas of the world.

Take the mid-point of the above’s predicted warming, six degrees. At the thirty-year mark, how is it looking? The increase is about one degree—and largely holding (the much-discussed “pause” or “warming hiatus”). And remember, the world has naturally warmed since the end of the Little Ice Age to the present, a good thing if climate economists are to be believed.

Turning to sea-level rise, the exaggeration appears greater. Both before and after the 1980s, decadal sea-level rise has been a few inches. And it has not been appreciably accelerating. “The rate of sea level rise during the period ~1925–1960 is as large as the rate of sea level rise the past few decades, noted climate scientist Judith Curry. “Human emissions of CO2 mostly grew after 1950; so, humans don’t seem to be to blame for the early 20th century sea level rise, nor for the sea level rise in the 19th and late 18th centuries.”

The sky-is-falling pitch went from bad to worse when scientist James Hansen was joined by politician Al Gore. Sea levels could rise twenty feet, claimed Gore in his 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, a prediction that has brought rebuke even from those sympathetic to the climate cause.

Now-or-Never Exaggerations

In the same book/movie, Al Gore prophesied that unless the world dramatically reduced greenhouse gasses, we would hit a “point of no return.” In his book review of Gore’s effort, James Hansen unequivocally stated: “We have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions.”

Time is up on Gore’s “point of no return” and Hansen’s “critical tipping point.” But neither has owned up to their exaggeration or made new predictions—as if they will suddenly be proven right.

Another scare-and-hide prediction came from Rajendra Pachauri. While head of a United Nations climate panel, he pleaded that without drastic action before 2012, it would be too late to save the planet. In the same year, Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge, predicted “global disaster” from the demise of Arctic sea ice in four years. He too, has gone quiet.

Nothing new, back in the late 1980s, the UN claimed that if global warming were not checked by 2000, rising sea levels would wash entire countries away

There is some levity in the charade. In 2009, then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown predicted that the world had only 50 days to save the planet from global warming. But fifty days, six months, and eight years later, the earth seems fine.

Climate Hysteria hits Trump

The Democratic Party Platform heading into the 2016 election compared the fight against global warming to World War II. “World War III is well and truly underway,” declared Bill McKibben in the New Republic. “And we are losing.” Those opposed to a new “war effort” were compared to everything from Nazis to Holocaust deniers.

Heading into the 2016 election, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson warned that “a vote for Trump is a vote for climate catastrophe.” In Mother Jones, professor Michael Klare similarly argued that “electing green-minded leaders, stopping climate deniers (or ignorers) from capturing high office, and opposing fossil fueled ultranationalism is the only realistic path to a habitable planet.”

Trump won the election, and the shrill got shriller. “Donald Trump’s climate policies would create dozens of failed states south of the U.S. border and around the world,” opined Joe Romm at Think Progress. “It would be a world where everyone eventually becomes a veteran, a refugee, or a casualty of war.”

At Vox, Brad Plumer joined in:

Donald Trump is going to be president of the United States…. We’re at risk of departing from the stable climatic conditions that sustained civilization for thousands of years and lurching into the unknown. The world’s poorest countries, in particular, are ill-equipped to handle this disruption.

Renewable energy researcher John Abraham contended that Trump’s election means we’ve “missed our last off-ramp on the road to catastrophic climate change.” Not to be outdone, academic Noam Chomsky argued that Trump is aiding “the destruction of organized human life.”

Falsified Alarms, Compromised Science
 
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