Tag: climategate

Scientific integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters”

Today, npj Natural Hazards, a journal in the Nature family of journals, officially published my new paper, “Scientific integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters.”

The paper shows — irrefutably in my view — that the “billion dollar disaster” tabulation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), fails to meet the agency’s standards for information quality and scientific integrity.1

For reasons I describe in detail in the paper, the “billion dollar disaster” tabulation is not suitable as a “database” (scare quotes — it is not data by any standard) for the detection and attribution of trends in extreme weather. Similarly, the tabulation is not suitable for identifying the consequences of changes or variability in climate on the costs of disasters. The dataset has been widely misused inscience, by the media, and in policy.

It is, in a word, misinformation.2

Here is how the paper starts:

In the late 1990s, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began publishing a tally of weather and climate disasters that each resulted in more than $1 billion in damage, noting that the time series had become “one of our more popular web pages”1. Originally, the data was reported in current-year U.S. dollars. In 2011, following criticism that the dataset was misleading, NOAA modified its methods to adjusted historical losses to constant-year dollars by accounting for inflation.

By 2023, the billion dollar disaster time series had become a fixture in NOAA’s public outreach, was highlighted by the U.S. government’s U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) as a “climate change indicator,” was a cited as evidence in support of a “key message” of the Fifth U.S. National Climate Assessment showing that “extreme events are becoming more frequent and severe.” The time series is often cited in policy settings as evidence of the effects of human-caused climate change to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and associated economic damage, including in federal agencies, Congress and by the U.S. President. In addition to being widely cited in justifications of policy, as of March, 2024, NOAA’s billion dollar dataset has been cited in almost 1000 articles according to Google Scholar.

NOAA’s “billion dollar disaster” tabulation began as a simplistic but clever way to market NOAA and to attract the attention of reporters with a clickbaity listicle. At some point along the way, the “billion dollar disaster” list was somehow transformed into “data” used in peer-reviewed research, an official indicator of human-caused climate change featured by the U.S. National Climate Assessment, and used by the administration of President Joe Biden to justify a wide range of regulations and policy.

It is a remarkable story of how science can get off track and how misinformation can exist in plain sight, just like the emperor’s new clothes.

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Failed climate prediction: A senior UN official claimed that entire nations would be wiped off the face of the Earth by the year 2000

In 1989, a senior UN environmental official warned that entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend was not reversed by the year 2000. This prediction was made in an Associated Press article written by veteran reporter Peter James Spielmann and published on 29 June 1989.

According to the article, governments had a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it went beyond human control. The UN official also predicted that as the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations.

In 2019, Snopes “fact-checked” the claim that, “A senior UN environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000” because it “serves as the basis for clickbait posts from several climate denial media outlets.” 

However, because the article was available for all to read, all Snopes could do was demonstrate that Spielmann’s article was not supported by scientific papers or the UNEP report referred to. In other words, the senior UN official lied and Spielmann amplified his lies.

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Bill Gates Invests Millions in ‘Climate Vaccines’ to Reduce Methane Emissions From Cows

Bill Gates has long been a proponent of vaccines in general and more recently,  mRNA vaccine technology.

Now, he may have his sights set on developing a vaccine to combat climate change by targeting the methane emissions of livestock.

ArkeaBio, a Boston-based ag-biotech startup, recently raised $26.5 million in a Series A financing round to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions” via the development of a “methane vaccine,” the company announced in a May 8 press release.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures, founded by Gates and which first invested in ArkeaBio in 2022, led the financing round.

The company said:

“ArkeaBio’s vaccine will provide an innovative, cost-effective, and scalable solution to reduce the world’s livestock methane emissions, which currently generate the equivalent of 3 Billion Tonnes of CO2 annually and represent 6% of annual Greenhouse gas emissions.”

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“To Use Terms Like ‘Global Boiling’ Is Clearly Absolute Nonsense”

“Don’t believe what Wikipedia writes about me,” Professor Ian Plimer emails me when I arrange an interview with him. Of course, the first thing to do in this case is to check the Wikipedia article about him. “Ian Rutherford Plimer (born 12 February 1946) is an Australian geologist and professor emeritus at the University of Melbourne. He rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. He has been criticised by climate scientists for misinterpreting data and spreading misinformation,” are the first sentences of the Wikipedia article about him.

Plimer is indeed an Australian geologist and Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, where he once was Professor and Head of Earth Sciences. During his long academic career, he has also been a professor at the University of Newcastle, University of Adelaide, Ludwig Maximilians Universität in Munich, Germany, and has work relations with several other universities. He has published more than 130 scientific articles and was one of the editors of the comprehensive five-volume Encyclopedia of Geology. Of course, not all of this information needs to be included in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article about a renowned scientist, but the editor’s choice to include a clear accusation that Plimer is somehow linked to ‘spreading misinformation’ is not surprising, to say the least.

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The ‘E’ in ESG: How the Left Injects Climate Alarmism into America’s Boardrooms

The “E” in ESG – “Environmental” – is how anti-fossil fuel climate activism has captured corporate America to the detriment of our economy, our energy security, and our national security.

Daniel Cameron, CEO of the 1792 Exchange, explains how it works in an interview with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow.  The 1792 Exchange exposes coercion and ideological bias in corporations and works to get America’s businesses back to business.

Marlow notes that the “E” in ESG (which stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance) is “stifling America’s energy sector” and “ultimately harming the economy.”

“But these corporations are still compelled to go along with some of these new leftist measures. Why are they embracing this? What’s going on?” Marlow asks Cameron.

Cameron explains that the “E” in ESG is about inserting anti-fossil fuel “climate alarmism” into America’s corporate boardrooms. Cameron, who served as the Attorney General of Kentucky, says he saw firsthand the dangers of these policies for his coal-producing state.

“I hail from the Commonwealth of Kentucky,” Cameron says, “And when you hear either the Biden administration or Larry Fink at BlackRock or other of these asset fund managers talk about wanting to destroy the fossil fuel industry by 2030 or 2050… that was a big red flag for me because in Kentucky, we are the seventh largest generator of coal.”

Kentucky’s abundant coal resources give the state a “competitive advantage” in providing reliable and affordable energy, Cameron explains. “When you have somebody that wants to destroy that, what you’re saying to me as a state official is that you’re trying to destroy our livelihood,” he says.

Cameron notes that this destructive climate activism is “playing out all across the country” in states with economies dependent on coal, oil, or natural gas. And this activism not only hurts the states’ economies; it also hurts U.S. energy security by making America more dependent on unstable and potentially hostile foreign regimes for our energy.

He also adds that this corporate environmental “virtue signaling” hurts the profitability of American companies and also hurt the retirees whose pensions are managed by asset funds.

“What this is ultimately about is using the hard-earned dollars of shareholders of retirees—about using the money of teachers, firefighters, and police officers—to virtue signal so that corporate leadership and hedge fund managers can ingratiate themselves to the climate alarmists,” Cameron says. “This is bad for America. It’s bad for our energy independence because what it ultimately does is makes us rely on foreign adversaries.”

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Climate Change ‘Solutions’ Are Harming the Environment

Big government environmental “fixes” often result in unintended environmental or human health consequences that are worse than the original problem the government solution was meant to solve.

Nowhere is this clearer than with government efforts to fight climate change, an effort in vain if ever there was one.

In Climate Change Weekly, I have detailed the high environmental costs and dangers to people that come with electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar panels — from fires, to the human and environmental impact of the mining and refining of the minerals necessary to produce and operate them, to the waste problems they create.

As whale deaths mount on the East Coast, The Heartland Institute along with our allies at CFACT and the National Legal and Policy Center have filed a lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order on Dominion Energy’s plans to begin pile driving for construction of the base and tower portions of 176 giant offshore wind turbines it plans to erect at great economic and environmental costs off the coast of Virginia as part of President Biden’s “all of government” approach to fight climate change.

CFACT has established a great resource devoted to the myriad environmental problems — including the threat to the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale (NARW) from the push for offshore wind along the East Coast. These turbines are being erected right in the middle of NARW and other protected marine mammals’ habitat and migration routes. In the rush to erect these turbines quickly, the federal government and Dominion played fast and loose with the rules and permits, in particular failing to follow the law and proper procedures in accounting for potential comprehensive, cumulative whale impacts.

Research released after Dominion had already received permission from the federal government to proceed, shows that, contrary to what Dominion and the Biden administration have claimed in their reports, the ships contracted to do the pile driving produce an amount of noise during operations that exceeds what federal biologists have determined to be safe for whales.

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One Health: Climate Vaccines Are Coming For The Cattle, Then For Humans

Climate vaccine developer ArkeaBio has raised $26.5 million in Series A funding, the company announced last week. ArkeaBio aims to fight climate change by vaccinating livestock.

Suppressing methane emissions

A vaccine being developed by the company is designed to prevent animals from releasing methane emissions. Once vaccinated with the AkreaBio shot, an animal’s immune system is supposed to create antibodies that will target methane-producing microbes.

The Boston-based startup secured its first major investment in late 2022 from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, an investment fund founded by billionaire Bill Gates.

“Our vaccination-based approach allows for much-needed decarbonization of global meat and dairy products across multiple geographies, supporting greater sustainability in agriculture,” the company explains on its website.

Pharma industry eyes climate vaccines for humans

While ArkeaBio hopes to deploy the vaccines worldwide for livestock, it has not yet announced plans to develop climate vaccines for humans.

But human-targeted climate vaccines do appear to be in the works. Researchers at Gingko Bioworks, a biotech firm also backed by Gates, have floated mRNA injections as a measure to mitigate the impact of global warming. The World Economic Forum has also expressed support for climate vaccines.

The biggest push, however, is coming from the pharmaceutical industry, as vaccine makers claim vaccines are a “critical response to the climate crisis.” In December, pharmaceutical giant GSK wrote on its website that “[i]n the face of climate change, vaccines play a crucial but underestimated role.”

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Debunking the climate change hoax

I am convinced that “climate change” is a hoax from many years of campaigning against it and from the establishment’s globally-coordinated excesses of recent years which have confirmed it to be wantonly abusive, mendacious and conspiratorial in its dealings with the people.

This paper is my submission to The White Rose Writing Challenge 2024 on the theme of “The Green Cheat”. Sorry Rosie, I’ve somewhat exceeded your word count guidance! Comprehensive debunking of the multi-faceted economy-wrecking climate change hoax is actually very difficult in a relatively short essay but here goes, with heavy reliance on word count-saving hyperlinks.

This paper aims to show that anyone who still believes in dangerous man-made CO2 global warming (aka “climate change”) urgently needs to reassess their views before the dictatorial Net Zero oppressions and privations being inflicted on us under the pretence of “tackling climate change” become unacceptably onerous and destructive.

It exposes the blatant falsehoods of the establishment’s climate change narrative and you don’t have to be a science egghead to see through their “really very stupid” deceptions. You only need to open your mind to the sad reality that almost everything the duplicitous establishment and paid-for mainstream media have told us about “climate change” is a lie. The simple explanations and facts in this paper will then allow you to see through all of their outrageously false “climate change” propaganda and brainwashing.

I have given up trying to reason with closed-minded, electorate-betraying politicians. I am now reaching out to ordinary people, many perhaps lacking the capability to challenge what is going on but becoming more and more suspicious that they are being horribly deceived and abused for ulterior political motives on “climate change” and other globalist machinations.

We mustn’t allow the establishment’s junk science, anti-humanity climate policies to lead us ever deeper into energy infrastructure ruination.

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Climate Stupidity

The specific gravity of carbon dioxide is 1.52 relative to dry air, and is the same weight as propane. It is even heavier in relation to our humid atmosphere, ranging around 1.61. It falls through the atmosphere about like a cotton seed. Wind can blow it upward, but it falls right back down. It acts like rainwater, seeking low points. We do not need to build pipelines to inject it into the ground. It sinks into to the ground all by itself.

Photosynthesis (CO2 + Sunlight + H2O) cannot exist without carbon dioxide. Photosynthesis uses sunlight to transform carbon dioxide into glucose and other organic compounds that make plants and it transforms water into oxygen which is exuded.

We breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Plants absorb carbon dioxide and give us oxygen. As Patick Moore (co-founder of Greenpeace) has pointed out for over ten years, carbon dioxide is critical to the life cycle of the plant and animal kingdoms. He has referenced analysis that indicates nearly triple the carbon dioxide content in our atmosphere would be more ideal for plant life. He is correct.

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UNDP: Why Legal Identity Is Crucial To Tackling The Climate And Energy Crisis

In an era where legal identity is the gateway to essential services, 850 million people worldwide lack the means to establish theirs. This global identity gap, however, finds a potential bridge in the embrace of digitalization, with a major side benefit, a blog post by UNDP claims.

Digital legal identity stands as a cornerstone of digital public infrastructure, offering a pathway to inclusion and efficiency through interoperability among diverse systems.

Foundational registries like civil and national ID databases provide data for evidence-based policymaking. Yet, the integrity of this data relies on protection measures for privacy and security.

UNDP authors say sectors such as environment, energy, and social security are poised to benefit from this data. It supports risk management strategies in the face of disasters and the climate crisis, improving access to information for citizens regarding disaster and emergency response.

Amidst climate-induced disasters, targeted interventions informed by data offer multiple benefits, including predictive capabilities, preparedness efforts, and streamline response mechanisms to mitigate uncertainties. Additionally, leveraging data contributes to emission reduction initiatives, aiding in climate mitigation endeavors.

During disasters, digital identity plays a crucial role in tracking impacts, facilitating relief efforts, and optimizing energy responses. It aims to aid in allocating energy resources efficiently, maintaining essential services, and supporting emergency response teams. Additionally, it helps identify displaced populations, prioritizing assistance to vulnerable individuals and coordinating efforts across different contexts.

According to the blog, five benefits underscore the indispensability of data derived from Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) and national ID systems in confronting the climate and energy crisis.

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