It is reported that President Trump has privately said he supports a public debate to challenge mainstream climate science, according to administration officials. But there’s infighting about how it should occur — if at all.
The President has reportedly told U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt during several conversations that he supports Pruitt’s plan for a “red-team, blue-team” debate aimed at challenging the prevailing scientific consensus about humans’ impact on climate change, a senior administration official reportedly told E&E News.
Pruitt has been pushing the idea of a climate science critique for months. Pressed by a House Republican at a Congressional hearing last week to offer a timeline for the red team, Pruitt said work on the initiative is “ongoing” but that details could be unveiled as early as next month. “We may be able to get there as early as January next year,” he testified.
But the administration isn’t unified behind the idea. “Pruitt has not been given authorization to go ahead with red team, blue team; there are still many issues to be ironed out,” another administration official reportedly told E&E News.
Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute does not think EPA is the correct agency to lead the charge, suggesting instead that it be situated within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where the president’s top science adviser typically works. But Trump has not nominated a leader for the Office of Science and Technology Policy yet.
The most important requirement to this competition or study is the use of raw data. Temperature data must come from as natural as possible areas with no influence from big city heat sinks. In other words no adjusting data to fit the AGW needs. Straight unsullied data is a must.
“Predictions are hard, especially about the future.”, Yogi Berra, American philosopher
A serious public debate is way overdue. Unfortunately, it’s not only the general public which cannot understand scientific method (logic, basically), even many “scientists” have become irrational. Our military industrial complex appears to have been pushed aside by a climate industrial complex.
For example, the alarmists consistently DENY (is this not ironic?) that the Medieval Warming Period (1,000 years ago) was global and as warm, likely warmer than now, claiming that the MWP was experienced only in the European region. Why are alarmists so insistent about this? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that their computer models cannot explain that global warming. Why not? Perhaps because their computer models MUST have increasing co2 level in order to project warming temperatures. If the MWP was global and as warm, or warmer than now, then it was a NATURAL warming. Why cannot our current warming (such as it is) also be NATURAL rather than caused by co2 increase ?
What follows is a simple meta-analysis, which appears to rebut the alarmist position This argument deals with existing peer-reviewed studies and actual data rather than arguments based on obscure statistical techniques and/or computer modeling. (Computer models are evidence of nothing apart from the modeler’s understanding.)
There are 6,000 boreholes scattered around the globe which conclusively show the MWP trend to have been global. A great discussion of the borehole data can be found at Joanne Nova’s site.
The receding Mendenhall glacier (Alaska) recently exposed a 1,000 year-old shattered forest, still in its original position. No trees have grown at that latitude anywhere near that site since then. It was obviously warmer in Alaska during the MWP than now in that area. Alaska is distant from Europe as is some of the other “eyeball” evidence. Antique vineyards dating back to the MWP have been found, but grapes cannot be grown there today, presumably because it’s not warm enough now. Apparently burial sites at some distant from Europe have been found which were below the perma-frost line. The peer-reviewed Greenland Temperature study (gisp2) can be easily googled. It concludes, among other things, that Greenland was warmer during the MWP than it is now. Greenland is distant from both Alaska and Europe.
Surely any credible alarmist “scientist” should have been convinced, by Alaska and Greenland, that another close examination of their position was needed. Even Phil Jones, a well known climatologist, and an early alarmist, publicly declared that if the MWP was global and as warm as it is now, then that’s a different ballgame. Yet neither Jones nor his compatriots bothered to do any further investigation.
But it gets worse. There are also hundreds of peer-reviewed MWP studies. Let’s focus on just the subset of these studies which directly address temperature. These MWP studies are all cataloged at co2science.org. Chose (say) a half dozen regions which are also remote from Europe, Greenland, and Alaska. If there are any temperature studies available in the selected region, choose at least one. You will note that the studied site in each selected region declares it to have been as warm as it is now. This is further confirmation of the MWP global trend and also indicates that the MWP was at least as warm as it is now.
But, there’s more. The greenhouse gas (GHG) theory, when applied to the open atmosphere, brings with it a NECESSARY (but not sufficient) condition. There MUST be a warmer region about 10k above the tropics. Despite decades of radiosondes that so-called “hot spot” has never been found.
Alarmists generally remain very quiet about this problem until one of their own makes a claim that they have found it. Their claims fly in the face of the radiosonde data by introducing such things as wind, rather than temperature. Neither statistical machinations nor modeling with the data improve their position. After each such attempt the quiet period (no discussion of the hot spot) resumes until another other poor soul makes a further attempt.
The alarmist problem is that, if the GHG theory is not valid, then the assumption they have made in their computer models to project temperature is also invalid. In particular, the models ASSUME that water vapor feedback is the actual culprit, causing 2 to 3 times the temperature increase as that supposedly brought on by the earlier co2 increase.
Neither is it surprising that problems arise when employing the GHG theory to atmospherics. In the open atmosphere satellites detect heat escaping to space. However, there is no convection from within an actual greenhouse. Physics also tells us that co2 supposed capability to influence warming diminishes rapidly as co2 level increases. co2 level has already doubled 8 times, so co2 may have, for all practical purposes, already shot its wad.
It is doubtful that any computer model can accurately project our climate, which must be represented by a nonlinear multi-dimensional system which includes chaotic events. Nonetheless the alarmists’ computer models do (accidentally?) happen to reflect the likely lack of water vapor feedback since the difference in computer projected versus actual temperatures continues to widen.
Before the Red Team takes the field, Tiger Teams need to carefully analyze the climate research at NASA GISS and NOAA/NCEI, with special emphasis on temperature “adjustments” and “reanalyses”.
If Administrator Jackson could decide she was endangered by an essential life giving trace gas based on no due diligence, then Mr. Pruitt Has the authority to repeal her ridiculous finding, especially after hearing evidence via a debate among experts. Pruitt sounds eager and resolute to do his job, praise the Lord!
It’s just a matter of timing, amid competing priorities. The Administratiin is focused on completing the tax cut during December. Then there will be a lot of noise about the 2018 budget. And then sound and fury about the DACA illegals. Draining a massive swamp is no little undertaking!!
Happily, the global warming debate can be convened at a propitious time of the President’s choosing. He is firmly in charge. The Finding’s days are numbered and dwindling, rest assured, Doc.
Thanks very much for keeping us all informed via your blog. 2018 will indeed be a Happy New Year!!
Merry Christmas to Myron and yourself, and all skeptics everywhere. There is so much to be thankful for. Thank you President Trump! Thank you Scott Pruitt!! Thank you for starting to Make America Great Again! Four more years, four more years!