The paper, Cook et al. (2013) ‘Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature‘ searched the Web of Science for the phrases “global warming” and “global climate change” then categorizing these results to their alleged level of endorsement of AGW. These results were then used to allege a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming.

To get to the truth, I emailed a sample of scientists who’s papers were used in the study and asked them if the categorization by Cook et al. (2013) is an accurate representation of their paper. Their responses are eye opening and evidence that the Cook et al. (2013) team falsely classified scientists’ papers as “endorsing AGW”, apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors.

Craig D. Idso, Ph.D. Geography; Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

Dr. Idso, your paper ‘Ultra-enhanced spring branch growth in CO2-enriched trees: can it alter the phase of the atmosphere’s seasonal CO2 cycle?‘ is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; “Implicitly endorsing AGW without minimizing it“.

Is this an accurate representation of your paper?

Idso: “That is not an accurate representation of my paper. The papers examined how the rise in atmospheric CO2 could be inducing a phase advance in the spring portion of the atmosphere’s seasonal CO2 cycle. Other literature had previously claimed a measured advance was due to rising temperatures, but we showed that it was quite likely the rise in atmospheric CO2 itself was responsible for the lion’s share of the change. It would be incorrect to claim that our paper was an endorsement of CO2-induced global warming.”

Nicola Scafetta, Ph.D. Physics; Research Scientist, ACRIM Science Team

Dr. Scafetta, your paper ‘Phenomenological solar contribution to the 1900–2000 global surface warming‘ is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; “Explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as 50+%“

Is this an accurate representation of your paper?

Scafetta: “Cook et al. (2013) is based on a strawman argument because it does not correctly define the IPCC AGW theory, which is NOT that human emissions have contributed 50%+ of the global warming since 1900 but that almost 90-100% of the observed global warming was induced by human emission.

What my papers say is that the IPCC view is erroneous because about 40-70% of the global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun. This implies that the true climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling is likely around 1.5 C or less, and that the 21st century projections must be reduced by at least a factor of 2 or more. Of that the sun contributed (more or less) as much as the anthropogenic forcings.

The “less” claim is based on alternative solar models (e.g. ACRIM instead of PMOD) and also on the observation that part of the observed global warming might be due to urban heat island effect, and not to CO2.

By using the 50% borderline a lot of so-called “skeptical works” including some of mine are included in their 97%.”

Any further comment on the Cook et al. (2013) paper?

Scafetta: “Please note that it is very important to clarify that the AGW advocated by the IPCC has always claimed that 90-100% of the warming observed since 1900 is due to anthropogenic emissions. While critics like me have always claimed that the data would approximately indicate a 50-50 natural-anthropogenic contribution at most.

What it is observed right now is utter dishonesty by the IPCC advocates. Instead of apologizing and honestly acknowledging that the AGW theory as advocated by the IPCC is wrong because based on climate models that poorly reconstruct the solar signature and do not reproduce the natural oscillations of the climate (AMO, PDO, NAO etc.) and honestly acknowledging that the truth, as it is emerging, is closer to what claimed by IPCC critics like me since 2005, these people are trying to get the credit.

They are gradually engaging into a metamorphosis process to save face.

Now they are misleadingly claiming that what they have always claimed was that AGW is quantified as 50+% of the total warming, so that once it will be clearer that AGW can only at most be quantified as 50% (without the “+”) of the total warming, they will still claim that they were sufficiently correct.

And in this way they will get the credit that they do not merit, and continue in defaming critics like me that actually demonstrated such a fact since 2005/2006.”

Nir J. Shaviv, Ph.D. Astrophysics; Associate Professor, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Dr. Shaviv, your paper ‘On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget‘ is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; “Explicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimise“

Is this an accurate representation of your paper?

Shaviv: “Nope… it is not an accurate representation. The paper shows that if cosmic rays are included in empirical climate sensitivity analyses, then one finds that different time scales consistently give a low climate sensitiviity. i.e., it supports the idea that cosmic rays affect the climate and that climate sensitivity is low. This means that part of the 20th century should be attributed to the increased solar activity and that 21st century warming under a business as usual scenario should be low (about 1°C).

I couldn’t write these things more explicitly in the paper because of the refereeing, however, you don’t have to be a genius to reach these conclusions from the paper.”

Any further comment on the Cook et al. (2013) paper?

Shaviv: “Science is not a democracy, even if the majority of scientists think one thing (and it translates to more papers saying so), they aren’t necessarily correct. Moreover, as you can see from the above example, the analysis itself is faulty, namely, it doesn’t even quantify correctly the number of scientists or the number of papers which endorse or diminish the importance of AGW.”

The Cook et al. (2013) study is obviously littered with falsely classified papers making its conclusions baseless and its promotion by those in the media misleading.

CVs of Scientists:

Craig D. Idso, B.S. Geography, Arizona State University (1994); M.S. Agronomy, University of Nebraska – Lincoln (1996); Ph.D. Geography (Thesis: “Amplitude and phase changes in the seasonal atmospheric CO? cycle in the Northern Hemisphere“), Arizona State University (1998); President, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (1998-2001); Climatology Researcher, Office of Climatology, Arizona State University (1999-2001); Director of Environmental Science, Peabody Energy (2001-2002); Lectured in Meteorology, Arizona State University; Lectured in Physical Geography, Mesa and Chandler-Gilbert Community Colleges; Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); Member, American Geophysical Union (AGU); Member, American Meteorological Society (AMS); Member, Arizona-Nevada Academy of Sciences (ANAS); Member, Association of American Geographers (AAG); Member, Ecological Society of America (ECA); Member, The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi; Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (2002-Present); Lead Author, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (2009-Present)

Nicola Scafetta, Laurea in Physics, Università di Pisa, Italy (1997); Ph.D. Physics (Thesis: “An entropic approach to the analysis of time series“), University of North Texas (2001); Research Associate, Physics Department, Duke University (2002-2004); Research Scientist, Physics Department, Duke University (2005-2009); Visiting Lecturer, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (2008, 2010); Visiting Lecturer, University of North Carolina Greensboro (2008-2009); Adjunct Professor, Elon University (2010); Assistant Adjunct Professor, Duke University (2010-2012); Member, Editorial Board, Dataset Papers in Geosciences Journal; Member, American Physical Society (APS); Member, American Geophysical Union (AGU); Research Scientist, ACRIM Science Team (2010-Present)

Nir J. Shaviv, B.A Physics Summa Cum Laude, Israel Institute of Technology (1990); M.S Physics, Israel Institute of Technology (1994); Ph.D. Astrophysics (Thesis: “The Origin of Gamma Ray Bursts“), Israel Institute of Technology (1996); The Wolf Award for excellence in PhD studies (1996); Lee DuBridge Prize Fellow, Theoretical Astrophysics Group, California Institute of Technology (1996-1999); Post Doctoral Fellow, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto (1999-2001); The Beatrice Tremaine Award, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (2000); Senior Lecturer, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2001-2006); The Siegfried Samuel Wolf Lectureship in nuclear physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2004); Associate Professor, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2006-Present)

A Climate Depot Special Report debunking a global warming/tornado connection

Morano Statement: “U.S.  Senators Boxer and Whitehouse and other global warming activists have descended into  buffoonery  trying to exploit a natural disaster in Oklahoma. Have you no sense of decency, Senators? At long last, have you left no sense of decency or understanding of science?”

By: Climate Depot   

BOXER RINGS THE BELL ON CLIMATE CHANGE: Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif. – Chair of Senate Environment & Public Works Committee) took to the Senate floor and invoked the Oklahoma tornadoes in her speech on global warming. “This is climate change,” she said.

“This is climate change. We were warned about extreme weather. Not just hot weather. But extreme weather. When I had my hearings, when I had the gavel years ago. -It’s been a while – the scientists all agreed that what we’d start to see was extreme weather. And people looked at one another and said ‘what do you mean? It’s gonna get hot?’ Yeah, it’s gonna get hot. But you’re also going to see snow in the summer in some places. You’re gonna have terrible storms. You’re going to have tornados and all the rest. We need to protect our people. That’s our number one obligation and we have to deal with this threat that is upon us and that is gonna get worse and worse though the years.”

[Boxer] also plugged her own bill, cosponsored with Sen. Bernie Sanders that would put a tax on carbon. “Carbon could cost us the planet,” she said. “The least we could do is put a little charge on it so people move to clean energy.”

[End Politico excerpt]

UK Guardian Cites Climate Depot’s Extreme Weather Report: ‘But the climate sceptics hit back’ Morano: Warmists ‘have essentially declared AGW will cause many bad weather events to happen’ – Morano: ‘And since bad weather events always happen, there is no shortage of ‘proof’ of their predictions. They can always claim every bad weather event as evidence of their correctness. There is no way anyone can falsify the global warming claims now because any weather event that happens ‘proves’ their case, despite the fact that the current weather is neither historically unprecedented, nor unusual’

New Report: ‘Extreme Weather Report 2012?: ‘Latest peer-reviewed studies, data & analyses undermine claims that current weather is ‘unprecedented’ or a ‘new normal’

Democratic Senator Whitehouse uses Oklahoma tornado for rant over global warming 

Flashback 1975: Tornado Outbreaks Blamed On Global COOLING 

Aussie’s Andrew Bolt: Oklahoma tornado strikes, climate vultures gather: ‘If there was really someone to blame for this hideous tragedy, the anger would be justified. But what we are seeing is the deliberate exploitation of grief and fear to perpetrate a lie’

NYT’s Andrew Revkin: ‘Any influence of climate change on dangerous tornadoes (so far the data point to a moderating influence) is, at best, marginally relevant and, at worst, a distraction’ 

Warmist John R. Talbott at Huffington Post suggests that the Oklahoma tornado is a wake-up call from God — Declares it a ‘Man-Made Disaster’ 

Sen Whitehouse enters realm of buffoonery: Analysis: US Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse From Rhode Island Provides Erroneous Information To American Public in Global Warming Rant’ – Big tornadoes way down: US Strong to Violent Tornadoes (EF3-EF5) – 1950 to 2012 (Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)) – ’US Tornadoes Daily Count and Running Annual Total; are currently well below average.’ – ’Unfortunately, there is shameful precedence for this sort of opportunistic political rhetoric, WUWT readers may recall when the Center for American progress blamed southern conservatives voting record for tornadoes’: See: Never let a good crisis go to waste: tornado deaths blamed on lawmakers opposed to climate legislation 

DEATH WISH: Flashback 2009: Nobel-Winning Warmist Economist Thomas Schelling ‘Wished’ for ‘tornadoes’ and ‘a lot of horrid things’ to convince Americans of climate threat! – Schelling; ‘You have to find ways to exaggerate the threat’ 

Deadly Oklahoma Tornadoes – When CO2 Was Below 320 PPM 

1925/1890 Tornadoes Were The Worst In US History 

Roundup: Alarmists are trying to associate global warming and tornadoes, but there isn’t one shred of evidence to support that idea

Bill Nye ‘the Science Fool’ on CNN: Claims: Higher average global temperature provides heat for tornadoes – Junk Science: ‘Though no one knows where and when mean global temperature occurs or what it might mean (if anything), Bill Nye the Science Guy says it fueled the Oklahoma tornado’ 

Real Science: Oklahoma Having Their Coldest Spring On Record:  ’Last year was the warmest spring on record in Oklahoma and the US, and had the lowest tornado count on record. This spring is the coldest on record in Oklahoma and much of the US, and tornadoes are much worse. Alarmists are trying to associate global warming and tornadoes, but there isn’t one shred of evidence to support that idea’ 

Real Science: Oklahoma Has The Highest Tornado Frequency: ‘Tulsa, Oklahoma is the most dangerous city in the US for strong to violent tornadoes’ 

USA Today: Tornado activity hits 60-year low — ‘The USA in the past 12 months has seen the fewest number of tornadoes since at least 1954, and the death tolls from the dangerous storms have dropped dramatically since 2011? 

Warmists Fret: Don’t Mention Low Tornado Numbers–It’s Not Fair!!! – ‘Skeptics are not claiming: 1) Global warming will necessarily result in less tornadoes. 2) Lower tornado numbers are evidence of global cooling. What we are pointing out is that there is absolutely no evidence at all to support alarmist claims that tornadoes will get worse. NOAA themselves say that there has been little trend in the last 55 years and the figures suggest a decline since the 1970’s in tornado numbers. So, how on earth can this be interpreted as ‘abuse of the tornado issue’? Since when is putting the record straight, and correcting false statements, abuse?’ 

Prof. Pielke Jr. Rips new warmist claim: ‘At AP Seth Borenstein silliness: global warming/tornado season? Ignores recent peer reviewed paper’ 

Prof. Roger Pielke Jr.: ‘Have global weather disasters become worse? As a proportion of global GDP since 1990, the answer is No.’ – ‘Using extreme weather damage to buttress arguments about climate change should be verboten, claims don’t stand up’ – ’There is no evidence so far that climate change has increased the normalized economic loss from natural disasters’ 

UK Guardian Cites Climate Depot’s Extreme Weather Report: ‘But the climate sceptics hit back’ Morano: Warmists ‘have essentially declared AGW will cause many bad weather events to happen’ – Morano: ‘And since bad weather events always happen, there is no shortage of ‘proof’ of their predictions. They can always claim every bad weather event as evidence of their correctness. There is no way anyone can falsify the global warming claims now because any weather event that happens ‘proves’ their case, despite the fact that the current weather is neither historically unprecedented, nor unusual’

Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer in 2011 in an essay titled: ‘MORE Tornadoes from Global Warming? That’s a Joke, Right?’: ‘If there is one weather phenomenon global warming theory does NOT predict more of, it would be severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. Tornadic thunderstorms do not require tropical-type warmth. In fact, tornadoes are almost unheard of in the tropics, despite frequent thunderstorm activity. Instead, tornadoes require strong wind shear (wind speed and direction changing rapidly with height in the lower atmosphere), the kind which develops when cold and warm air masses “collide”. Of course, other elements must be present, such as an unstable airmass and sufficient low-level humidity, but wind shear is the key. Strong warm advection (warm air riding up and over the cooler air mass, which is also what causes the strong wind shear) in advance of a low pressure area riding along the boundary between the two air masses is where these storms form.’

Obama’s smear misfires at GOP ‘deniers’: ‘The inconvenient truth is Obama & the Democrats have made many utterly ignorant & often times comical climate science claims’ — A Climate Depot Rebuttal – Climate Depot Responds to Obama campaign’s climate smear of skeptics – Morano: ‘Bluntly stated, a man — President Obama — who declared his presidency would result in ‘the rise of the oceans beginning to slow’, has no business whatsoever claiming he understands, let  alone  champions science in any way’ — ‘A president who claims Americans can ‘do something’ at the ballot box about floods, hurricanes, droughts, & tornadoes is not pro-science’

Obama fails climate science in his 2013 State of the Union address — Climate Depot’s point-by-point rebuttal to the President’s global warming claims — ‘Mr. President, acts of Congress, the UN or the EPA cannot alter storms or weather patterns’  

Congressional Weather-Makers: ‘Climate Astrologer’ Boxer warns of ‘droughts, floods, fires, loss of species’ — if Senate fails to pass climate bill – July 11, 2009  

Dem Sen. Boxer: 2010 failure of cap-and-trade caused ‘hotter days’ and ‘more and more severe storms’  

Sen Boxer: Global warming threatens ‘the very lives of our grandchildren’

Climate Touchy-Feely: Dem Sen. Debbie Stabenow in 2009: ‘Global warming creates volatility. I feel it when I’m flying. The storms are more volatile’ — ‘We are paying the price in more hurricanes and tornadoes’ 

#

New Report: ‘Extreme Weather Report 2012?: ‘Latest peer-reviewed studies, data & analyses undermine claims that current weather is ‘unprecedented’ or a ‘new normal’

Tornado  excerpts from Climate Depot 2012 report:  ’Big tornadoes at dramatic decline since 1950s’: 

Climatologist: ‘There has been a downward trend in strong (F3) to violent (F5) tornadoes in U.S. since 1950s’ — ‘Warming causes fewer strong tornadoes, not more’ 

New Paper: Normalized Tornado Damage in the United States: 1950-2011: ‘There is no indication of increasing incidence of tornadoes’ – Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. co-author of new paper accepted for publication in journal Environmental Hazards: ‘On climate time scales there is no indication of increasing incidence of tornadoes, and the increases documented over the short (sub-climate) period 2000-2011 are strongly influenced by the large number of events documented in 2011.’ 

NOAA Scientist Rejects Global Warming Link to Tornadoes: ‘No scientific consensus or connection between global warming and tornadic activity’ – ‘NOAA statistics show that the last 60 years have seen a dramatic increase in the reporting of weak tornadoes, but no change in the number of severe to violent ones’ 

‘No link between tornadoes and climate change’: ‘Reasons for spiking death tolls are more likely due to rise in number of mobile homes and chance paths that have happened to target populated areas’ – Scientists: ‘We see no correlation between global or US national temperature and tornado occurrence’ 

NOAA CSI on the Record Tornado Outbreak: There is ‘no indication that the environmental factors conducive to tornado development…’‘…have changed over the last 30 years, meaning that no change has been detected. Absent detection, there is no attribution’ 

1975: Climatologists Blamed Record Tornadoes On Global Cooling 

Restoring The Climate Of 1974: ‘CO2 was at very safe levels in 1974. The worst tornado outbreak in US history. A hurricane which killed 8,000 people’ – ‘Hurricane Fifi was a catastrophic tropical cyclone that killed between 3,000 & 10,000 people in Honduras…Thirty four inches of rain in January at Brisbane…Not to mention record drought, floods, famine, cold and a global cooling scare’ 

 U.S. tornado activity near low point in modern record: ‘Tornado numbers in 2012 have come crashing down to historic lows’ – ‘In 2011, there were 1692 twisters – second most on record. This year, only 882 tornadoes have touched down. (Tornado records date back to 1950*). “[W]e are approaching a theoretical minimum in the annual tornado count for the modern era’

Meteorologist: ‘Hogwash! Climate change NOT causing increase in tornadoes’: ‘There is no evidence that tornadoes and severe storms are increasing in frequency or becoming stronger’: ‘It may look like tornadoes are bigger and meaner and more frequent. But, experts admit that’s because of technology. Better radars now detect even the smallest twisters, which would likely have gone unreported decades ago’

by Paul Driessen

Anti-pesticide activists falsely blame new pesticides for bee colony problems

Chemophobic anti-pesticide groups are at it again. This time they’re attacking a widely used and safe new insecticide, but their assertions and real agendas are nothing new.

Radical environmentalism rose to ascendancy on opposition to pesticides, specifically DDT. “If the environmentalists win on DDT,” Environmental Defense Fund scientist Charles Wurster told the Seattle Times in 1969, “they will achieve a level of authority they have never had before.” Using Rachel Carson’s often inaccurate book Silent Spring to drive a nasty campaign, they succeeded in getting the Environmental Protection Agency to ban US production and use of DDT in 1972, leading to a de facto global ban even to combat malaria.

Trumpeting illusory or manufactured dangers of DDT and callously indifferent to the deaths of millions from this horrible disease, radical greens still battle its use, even to spray only the inside walls of primitive homes to keep most mosquitoes out, and keep those that do enter from infecting people.

Attacking a new class of insecticides for equally spurious reasons is thus no big deal, even if the chemicals are safe and vital for modern agriculture. Their real goal is to raise more money and acquire more power. As Saul Alinsky taught, they have picked their new target, personalized and polarized it, and attacked it relentlessly.

The target now is a widely used new class of safe pesticides – neonicotinoids – that Beyond Pesticides, Pesticide Action Network, Sierra Club and other “socially responsible” groups are blaming for bee population declines in various countries. But the real danger is a phenomenon called “colony collapse disorder,” which poses a serious threat to bees, crop pollination, flowers and food crops in many areas.

CCD and other bee die-offs are not new. What we now call colony collapse was first reported in 1869, and many outbreaks since then have turned scientists into Sherlock Holmes detectives, seeking explanations and solutions to this mysterious and scary-sounding problem. Fungi, parasitic mites and other possible suspects have been implicated, but none has yet been arrested or convicted.

That’s created a perfect Petri dish for anti-pesticide groups. They’re pressuring the United States and other countries to ban neonic pesticides, by blaming them for bee population declines. Their fear-mongering assertions are pure conjecture, but that hasn’t stopped activists – or news outlets – from promoting frightening stories implicating the chemicals.

“Neonics” are derived from naturally-occurring nicotine plant compounds and have been hailed as a low-toxicity pest treatment. They are often applied to seeds or on soils during planting, become part of the plants’ physiology, and work by giving treated plants internal defenses against invasive pests. That means neonics are toxic only to insects that feed on crops, which dramatically reduces the need to spray entire fields with other, less safe pesticides. It also curtails risks to farm workers and beneficial insects.

Claims that these insecticides could kill bees appear plausible at first blush, and laboratory studies have shown that high doses can affect bees in minor ways. However, doses that bees receive in lab studies “are far above what a realistic field dose exposure would be,” says Dr. Cynthia Scott-Dupree, environmental biology professor at the University of Guelph. The difference is akin to an 81 mg aspirin tablet versus a full bottle of 200 mg tablets, or light rainfall on a bee versus throwing it into a bucket of water.

Scott-Dupree helped coordinate a Canadian field study that compared hives exposed to neonics to those that weren’t exposed – and found no difference in colony health between the two groups. Another study by Britain’s Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs reached the same conclusion.

The DEFRA evaluation of studies purporting to link neonics to bee harm found that the lab work was conducted under extreme scenarios which would not occur under real-world conditions. “Risk to bee populations from neonicotinoids, as they are currently used, is low,” the scientists concluded.

That’s hardly surprising. Plant tissues contain only tiny amounts of neonics, bees are not feeding on the plants, and pollen contains barely detectable neonic levels.

Nevertheless, several beekeepers and activist groups have sued the Environmental Protection Agency, demanding that EPA immediately ban all neonicotinoids.

The lawsuit is not merely ill advised. By blaming pesticides, activists are ignoring – and deflecting attention from – a very real and serious threat to bees. The aptly named parasitic mite “Varroa destructor” threatens honeybees directly, while spreading and activating previously dormant or harmless bee viruses, which then become dangerous.  The mites are not easy to eradicate.

“You can imagine how hard it is to kill a bug on a bug,” says John Miller, President of the California State Beekeepers Association, and sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Treating Varroa requires insecticides that can be toxic to bees at levels high enough to be effective. Well-intentioned apiarists trying to combat Varroa can accidentally overdose hives with miticides.

Various neonicotinoids are widely used in Canada to protect its vast canola fields, and Canadian bee populations are thriving, notes science writer Jon Entine. Varroa-free Australia is likewise one of the world’s prime users of these pesticides, and its bee colonies are among the planet’s healthiest. By contrast, bee populations have been severely impacted by Varroa mites in areas of Switzerland where neonics are not used.

Multiple studies point to still other factors that explain why bees are struggling. They include bees developing resistance to antibiotics, funguses like Nosema, multiple bee viruses and parasites, bacterial infections like foulbrood, exposure to commonly used organophosphates, bee habitat loss, and even long-term bee inbreeding and resultant lack of genetic diversity.

Activists aren’t asking for investigation into these problems – which calls their science, sincerity and integrity into question. Their track record on DDT and malaria underscores this modus operandi. The activists get money, publicity, power and phony solutions – and end up hurting the very things (bees and people) they profess to care so much about.

Right now, no one knows why bees aren’t thriving. Studies have shown that neonicotinoids are innocent, and reflexive bans will harm farmers, whose crop yields will fall; consumers, whose food bills will rise and food safety will decline; and environmental values, as older, more toxic insecticides will have to be reintroduced to protect crops. The detective work needs to continue, until real answers are found.

The prudent, precautionary approach would be to avoid eliminating vital, low-toxicity neonicotinoids, while continuing to study their potential effects on bees, and other potential causes of die-offs and colony collapses. Right now we don’t have an equally low substitute for neonics. Sound, replicable science – not pressure group politics – must underpin all pesticide policies, or the unintended consequences will be serious, far-reaching, and potentially devastating to agriculture and food supplies.

We need to let science do its job, not jump to conclusions or short-circuit the process, as the media did in accusing Richard Jewell of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing.

This time – as always – we need answers, not scapegoats.

______________

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.

By Congressman Lamar Smith,

Lamar Smith, a Republican, represents Texas’s 21st District in the U.S. House and is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Climate change is an issue that needs to be discussed thoughtfully and objectively. Unfortunately, claims that distort the facts hinder the legitimate evaluation of policy options. The rhetoric has driven some policymakers toward costly regulations and policies that will harm hardworking American families and do little to decrease global carbon emissions. The Obama administration’s decision to delay, and possibly deny, the Keystone XL pipeline is a prime example.

The State Department has found that the pipeline will have minimal impact on the surrounding environment and no significant effect on the climate. Recent expert testimony before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology confirms this finding. In fact, even if the pipeline is approved and is used at maximum capacity, the resulting increase in carbon dioxide emissions would be a mere 12 one-thousandths of 1 percent (0.0012 percent). There is scant scientific or environmental justification for refusing to approve the pipeline, a project that the State Department has also found would generate more than 40,000 U.S. jobs.

Contrary to the claims of those who want to strictly regulate carbon dioxide emissions and increase the cost of energy for all Americans, there is a great amount of uncertainty associated with climate science. These uncertainties undermine our ability to accurately determine how carbon dioxide has affected the climate in the past. They also limit our understanding of how anthropogenic emissions will affect future warming trends. Further confusing the policy debate, the models that scientists have come to rely on to make climate predictions have greatly overestimated warming. Contrary to model predictions, data released in October from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit show that global temperatures have held steady over the past 15 years, despite rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Among the facts that are clear, however, are that U.S. emissions contribute very little to global concentrations of greenhouse gas, and that even substantial cuts in these emissions are likely to have no effect on temperature. Data from the Energy Information Administration show, for example, that the United States cut carbon dioxide emissions by 12 percent between 2005 and 2012 while global emissions increased by 15 percent over the same period.

Using data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a Science and Public Policy Institute paper published last month found that if the United States eliminated all carbon dioxide emissions, the overall impact on global temperature rise would be only 0.08 degrees Celsius by 2050.

Further confounding the debate are unscientific and often hyperbolic claims about the potential effects of a warmer world. In his most recent State of the Union address, President Obama said that extreme weather events have become “more frequent and intense,” and he linked Superstorm Sandy to climate change.But experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have told the New York Times that climate change had nothing to do with Superstorm Sandy. This is underscored by last year’s IPCC report stating that there is “high agreement” among leading experts that trends in weather disasters, floods, tornados and storms cannot be attributed to climate change. While these claims may make for good political theater, their effect on recent public policy choices hurts the economy.Last spring the Environmental Protection Agency proposed emissions standards that virtually prohibit new coal-fired power plants. As we await implementation of these strict new rules, additional regulations that will affect existing power plants, refineries and other manufactures are sure to follow. Analyses of these measures by the American Council for Capital Formation, which studies economic and environmental policy, show that they will raise both electricity rates and gas prices — costing jobs and hurting the economy — even as the EPA admits that these choices will have an insignificant impact on global climate change (a point former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson confessed during a Senate hearing in 2009).

Instead of pursuing heavy-handed regulations that imperil U.S. jobs and send jobs (and their emissions) overseas, we should take a step back from the unfounded claims of impending catastrophe and think critically about the challenge before us. Designing an appropriate public policy response to this challenge will require that we fully assess the facts and the uncertainties surrounding this issue, and that we set aside the hyped rhetoric.

by James M. Taylor, J.D.

The “4,000-year hockey stick” scare is over, after a shelf life that did not last a full month. The warmist-fawning media used the 4,000-year hockey stick to create one of the most intense global warming scares in recent memory, but it quickly died with a thud – just like so many asserted global warming scares before it.

A little-known scientist who had only recently completed his Ph.D. published a paper claiming proxy temperature reconstructions showed a 4,000-year decline in global temperatures until the twentieth century. The paper claimed the 4,000-year decline abruptly ended in the twentieth century as recent warmth obliterated the 4,000 years of cooling and placed the Earth at its warmest in the 4,000-year record. Moreover, the asserted rapid temperature spike during the past century appeared to be the sharpest in 11,000 years.

Immediately after the paper’s publication, the media and alarmist Web sites trumpeted the paper as a monumentally important, and frightening, development. “‘Rapid’ heat spike unlike anything in 11,000 years,” the Associated Press claimed. “We’re screwed,” the Atlantic crassly proclaimed.

While the alarmists and their media allies predictably jumped off the cliff like lemmings before taking a closer look at the paper, its data, and its methodology, scientists quickly discovered major flaws in the paper. Most of the proxy data came from ocean beds rather than the terrestrial surface and were less reliable than other available proxy data. Much of the terrestrial proxy data came from previously discredited proxies manipulated by global warming activist Michael Mann. Much more reliable proxy data strongly contradicted the new paper’s assertions.

Climate expert Ross McKitrick this week in the Financial Post published perhaps the best summary of the spectacular death of the 4,000-year hockey stick paper. The final death blow of the paper, as McKitrick reports, is the author’s admission, “[The] 20th-century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions.”

Wow! According to the author of the paper himself, the very portion of the paper alarmists and the media have been proclaiming as the climatic equivalent of the Zombie Apocalypse “cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes.” So all we are left with is a temperature reconstruction that shows temperatures by 1900 A.D. had sunk to their coldest levels since the last ice age epoch ended 11,000 years ago. Perhaps maybe a little twentieth century global warming may have been just what the planet needed after all.

by Tom Harris

Canadians are frustrated by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s non-answer to critical questions about the world-wide climate change agreement his government supports. Those attending his presentation to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on Thursday should ask the Prime Minister why he promotes what is in effect another Kyoto Protocol, even though he condemns the first protocol as worse than useless.

Most developed nations, Canada and the U.S. included, support the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as the body to coordinate an international, legally-binding greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction agreement. The current foundation for UNFCCC climate negotiations are the Cancun Agreements; virtually all nations have agreed to these documents, although they are not yet legally-binding. Since their creation in December 2010, the Agreements have been strongly boosted by both the Canadian and American governments as the solution to our supposed climate woes.

Unknown to most people is the fact that developing nations were effectively given an opt-out clause in the Cancun Agreements. This would allow them to agree to legally-binding emission cuts but then never actually have to carry them out. Developed nations do not have this option. In other words, any agreement based on Cancun would become another Kyoto Protocol in which the developed world would be held to rigid GHG reduction targets while developing nations would not be.

Here are two of the applicable clauses from Cancun:

• At the beginning of the documents it is stated: “…Parties should cooperate in achieving the peaking of global and national greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that the time frame for peaking will be longer in developing countries, and bearing in mind that social and economic development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of developing countries…”
• In the section entitled “Nationally appropriate mitigation actions by developing country Parties”, the first clause starts: “Reaffirming that social and economic development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of developing country Parties, and that the share of global emissions originating in developing countries will grow to meet their social and development needs…”

In other words, if a Cancun-based treaty ever became international law, GHG reduction would proceed in developing nations only to the extent that it does not interfere with their “first and overriding priorities” of “social and economic development and poverty eradication.” Developed countries would be held to their emission reduction obligations regardless of the impact on their societies.

Since actions to significantly reduce GHG emissions will usually interfere with development priorities, developing countries will soon realize that an agreement based on Cancun will not limit their emissions. Such a treaty would then work in the same asymmetric fashion that Kyoto functioned. That Canada, the U.S. and other countries have said they will not participate in a second phase of Kyoto may prove immaterial if any legally-binding treaty based on the Cancun Agreements ever comes into force.

This is not the only problem Harper should be asked about in New York. Under the Cancun Agreements, U.N. monitoring is to be much more intrusive in developed countries than in developing countries. For example, the world is expected to simply believe China when they assert that certain domestic GHG reductions have been accomplished—the U.N. cannot inspect. Reporting fraud will likely be rampant and we will have little idea of what emission cuts actually happen in China.

International inspection and monitoring of developed countries’ emissions will be very strict, however. Australia has already experienced what we should expect when, in 2011, they were rebuked by the U.N. “for poor reporting of progress to cut greenhouse gases” and “ordered” to do better. It is hard to imagine the U.N. rebuking or ordering China to do anything.

The only significant difference between a Cancun-based GHG reduction treaty and Kyoto may be that developing countries are expected to submit their intended emission cuts to the U.N. But their obligations to actually carry out those cuts would appear to be meaningless.

All of this is designed to persuade the U.S. to participate in an agreement for binding international GHG emission limits. Then, the U.S. and everyone else would be effectively included in an extension to the Kyoto Protocol after all.

Prime Minister Harper needs to be asked at Thursday’s presentation why he supports such a useless and dangerous plan.

by Marc Morano

The level of carbon dioxide, a trace essential gas in the atmosphere that humans exhale from our mouths, has come very close to reaching the “symbolic” 400 parts per million (ppm) threshold in the atmosphere. Former Vice President Al Gore declared the 400 ppm level “A sad milestone. A call to action.”  New York times reporter Justin Gillis compared trace amounts of CO2 to “a tiny bit of arsenic or cobra venom.” The New Yorker Magazine declared “Everything we use that emits carbon dioxide needs to be replaced with something that doesn’t.”  And a UK Guardian editorial declared “Swift political action can avert a carbon dioxide crisis.”

But despite the man-made global warming fear movement’s clarion call of alarm, many scientists are dismissing the 400ppm level of carbon dioxide as a non-event. Scientists point out that there are literally hundreds of factors that govern Earth’s climate and temperature – not just CO2. Renowned climatologists have declared that a doubling or even tripling of CO2 would not have major impacts on the Earth’s climate or temperature.

Scientists also note that geologically speaking, the Earth is currently in a “CO2 famine” and that the geologic record reveals that ice ages have occurred when CO2 was at 2000ppm to as high as 8000ppm. In addition, peer-reviewed studies have documented that there have been temperatures similar to the present day on Earth when carbon dioxide was up to twenty times higher than today’s levels. And, a peer-reviewed study this year found that the present day carbon dioxide level of 400ppm was exceeded — without any human influence — 12,750 years ago when CO2 may have reached up to 425 ppm.

Princeton U. Physicist Dr. William Happer and NASA Moonwalker & Geologist Dr. Harrison H. Schmitt wrote on May 8, 2013 in the Wall Street Journal:  “Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That’s simply not the case.”

“The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA’s and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn’t the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather,” Happer and Schmidt wrote.

Princeton’s Dr. Happer, who has authored 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers, explained in Senate testimony in 2009 that the Earth is currently in a ‘CO2 ‘famine.’ Happer explained to Congress:  ”Warming and increased CO2 will be good for mankind…’CO2 is not a pollutant and it is not a poison and we should not corrupt the English language by depriving ‘pollutant’ and ‘poison’ of their original meaning,” Happer added. 

“Many people don’t realize that over geological time, we’re really in a CO2 famine now. Almost never has CO2 levels been as low as it has been in the Holocene (geologic epoch) – 280 (parts per million – ppm) – that’s unheard of. Most of the time [CO2 levels] have been at least 1000 (ppm) and it’s been quite higher than that,” Happer told the Senate Committee. “Earth was just fine in those times,” Happer added. “The oceans were fine, plants grew, animals grew fine. So it’s baffling to me that we’re so frightened of getting nowhere close to where we started,” Happer explained.

The claim by global warming activists and scientists that CO2 is the global temperature “control knob” has been challenged in the peer-reviewed literature and the Earth’s geologic history.

‘You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide’

Renowned atmospheric scientist Dr. Reid Bryson, (who died in 2008), explained in 2007: “You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.” Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ, agreed with Bryson. “Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapor and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will,” Duffy wrote.

Climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, not just CO2.

UK Professor Emeritus of Biogeography Philip Stott of the University of London explains the crux of the entire global warming debate and rebuts the notion that CO2 is the main climate driver.

“As I have said, over and over again, the fundamental point has always been this: climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, and the very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins one politically-selected factor (CO2), is as misguided as it gets,” Stott wrote in 2008. It is not simply, the sun or CO2 when looking at global temperatures, it is the Sun, volcanoes, tilt of the Earth’s axis, water vapor, methane, clouds, ocean cycles, plate tectonics, albedo, atmospheric dust, Atmospheric Circulation, cosmic rays, particulates like Carbon Soot, forests and land use, etc. Climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, not just CO2.

Even the climate activists at RealClimate.org let this point slip out in a September 20, 2008 article. “The actual temperature rise is an emergent property resulting from interactions among hundreds of factors,”RealClimate.org conceded.

Former Harvard University Physicist Dr. Lubos Motl dismissed any significance to 400ppm of CO2 in an essay on May 12, 2013 titled “Why we should work hard to raise the CO2 concentration”: “CO2 is primarily plant food while its other implications for Nature are negligible in comparison. Humanitarian orgs should work hard to help mankind to increase the CO2 concentration,” Motl wrote. “’CO2 is the key compound that plants need to grow – and, indirectly, that every organism needs to get the food at the end,” he added.

Other analyses have shown CO2 loses any ‘warming’ impact as the levels increase. See: The effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas becomes ever more marginal with greater concentration – ’The effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas diminishes logarithmically with increasing concentration and from the current level of ~390 ppmv, (parts per million by volume). Accordingly only ~5% of the effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas remains beyond the current level’

In February 2013, global warming activists were stunned by the retreat of one of their former UN scientists. Top Swedish Climate Scientist Dr. Lennart Bengtsson, formerly of the UN IPCC, declared CO2”s “heating effect is logarithmic: the higher the concentration is, the smaller the effect of a further increase.”  Bengtsson noted that global warming would not even be noticeable without modern instruments. “The warming we have had last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all’ — Award-Winning Dr. Lennart Bengtsson, formerly of UN IPCC: ‘We Are Creating Great Anxiety Without It Being Justified…there are no indications that the warming is so severe that we need to panic…The warming we have had the last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have had meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

In addition, New Zealand Climate Scientist Chris de Freitas revealed on May 1, 2009 that “warming and CO2 are not well correlated.” de Freitas added, “the effect of CO2 on global temperature is already close to its maximum. Adding more has an ever decreasing effect.”

Australian Geologist Dr. Ian Plimer wrote on August 8, 2009: “At present, the Earth’s atmosphere is starved of CO2.” Plimer, who authored the skeptical book Heaven and Earth, added, “On all time scales, there is no correlation between temps and CO2. If there is no correlation, then there can be no causation.”

Professor Dr. Doug L. Hoffman, mathematician, computer programmer and engineer, wrote on August 24, 2009: “There have been ice ages when the levels of Co2 in Earth’s atmosphere have been many times higher than today’s.” Hoffman, who worked on environmental models and conducted research in molecular dynamics, co-authored the 2009 book, The Resilient Earth.

Other studies have shown carbon dioxide does not control the Earth’s temperature, but it is actually the reverse. See: New Paper: Danish Physicist Dr. Henrik Svensmark’s Cosmic Jackpot: ‘Svensmark stands the currently popular CO2 story on its head…Climate and life control CO2, not the other way around’ – ‘Some geoscientists want to blame the drastic alternations of hot and icy conditions during the past 500 million years on increases and decreases in carbon dioxide, which they explain in intricate ways. For Svensmark, the changes driven by the stars govern the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Climate and life control CO2, not the other way around…’The UK Royal Astronomical Society in London publishes Svensmark’s latest paper’

Many skeptical scientists point out that temperature leads CO2 in the ice core data. See:  ‘The ice core data clearly reveal temperature increases generally precede increasing CO2 by several hundred to a few thousand years’

 ‘Temperature drives CO2’

Ivy League geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack, former chair of Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania,  spoke out in 2007 against fears of rising CO2 impacts promoted by Gore and others. Giegengack noted “for most of Earth’s history, the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has rarely been cooler.” (LINK) “[Gore] claims that temperature increases solely because more CO2 in the atmosphere traps the sun’s heat. That’s just wrong … It’s a natural interplay. As temperature rises, CO2 rises, and vice versa,” Giegengack explained. “It’s hard for us to say that CO2 drives temperature. It’s easier to say temperature drives CO2,” he added. (LINK) ”The driving mechanism is exactly the opposite of what Al Gore claims, both in his film and in that book. It’s the temperature that, through those 650,000 years, controlled the CO2; not the CO2 that controlled the temperature,” he added. (LINK)

Meteorologist Tom Wysmuller: ‘The Recent Temperature and CO2 Disconnect’ – Even going back ten centuries, there have been total disconnects between temperature and the CO2 impact, or lack thereof.  From 1000AD to 1800, over a period of relatively stable CO2 values that bounced around the 280ppm level, temperatures plummeted in the Little Ice Age (LIA) and then rebounded over a century later.  CO2 values neither led nor followed the temperature declines and recoveries…CO2 seems to have had little impact in EITHER direction on the observed temperatures over that 10k year period…If CO2 is to be considered a major driver of temperatures, it is doing a counterintuitive dance around the numbers.’

Other scientists agree:

“The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse. It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round…A large number of critical documents submitted at the 1995 U.N. conference in Madrid vanished without a trace. As a result, the discussion was one-sided and heavily biased, and the U.N. declared global warming to be a scientific fact,” Andrei Kapitsa, a Russian geographer and Antarctic ice core researcher.

“CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another….Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so…Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.” - Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan.

“Based on the laws of physics, the effect on temperature of man’s contribution to atmospheric CO2 levels is minuscule and indiscernible from the natural variability caused in large part by changes in solar energy output.” - Atmospheric Scientist Robert L. Scotto, who has more than 30 years air quality consulting experience, served as a manager for an EPA Superfund contract and is co-founder of Minnich and Scotto, Inc., a full-service air quality consulting firm. He also is a past member of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). Scotto, a meteorologist who has authored or co-authored numerous technical publications and reports.

“The energy mankind generates is so small compared to that overall energy budget that it simply cannot affect the climate…The planet’s climate is doing its own thing, but we cannot pinpoint significant trends in changes to it because it dates back millions of years while the study of it began only recently. We are children of the Sun; we simply lack data to draw the proper conclusions.” — Russian Scientist Dr. Anatoly Levitin, the head of geomagnetic variations laboratory at the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radiowave Propagation of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

By HARRISON H. SCHMITT AND WILLIAM HAPPER

WSJ.COM 5/8/13: Of all of the world’s chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That’s simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA’s and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn’t the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather.

The current levels of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere, approaching 400 parts per million, are low by the standards of geological and plant evolutionary history. Levels were 3,000 ppm, or more, until the Paleogene period (beginning about 65 million years ago). For most plants, and for the animals and humans that use them, more carbon dioxide, far from being a “pollutant” in need of reduction, would be a benefit. This is already widely recognized by operators of commercial greenhouses, who artificially increase the carbon dioxide levels to 1,000 ppm or more to improve the growth and quality of their plants.

Using energy from sunlight—together with the catalytic action of an ancient enzyme called rubisco, the most abundant protein on earth—plants convert carbon dioxide from the air into carbohydrates and other useful molecules. Rubisco catalyzes the attachment of a carbon-dioxide molecule to another five-carbon molecule to make two three-carbon molecules, which are subsequently converted into carbohydrates. (Since the useful product from the carbon dioxide capture consists of three-carbon molecules, plants that use this simple process are called C3 plants.) C3 plants, such as wheat, rice, soybeans, cotton and many forage crops, evolved when there was much more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than today. So these agricultural staples are actually undernourished in carbon dioxide relative to their original design.

At the current low levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, rubisco in C3 plants can be fooled into substituting oxygen molecules for carbon-dioxide molecules. But this substitution reduces the efficiency of photosynthesis, especially at high temperatures. To get around the problem, a small number of plants have evolved a way to enrich the carbon-dioxide concentration around the rubisco enzyme, and to suppress the oxygen concentration. Called C4 plants because they utilize a molecule with four carbons, plants that use this evolutionary trick include sugar cane, corn and other tropical plants.

Although C4 plants evolved to cope with low levels of carbon dioxide, the workaround comes at a price, since it takes additional chemical energy. With high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, C4 plants are not as productive as C3 plants, which do not have the overhead costs of the carbon-dioxide enrichment system.

That’s hardly all that goes into making the case for the benefits of carbon dioxide. Right now, at our current low levels of carbon dioxide, plants are paying a heavy price in water usage. Whether plants are C3 or C4, the way they get carbon dioxide from the air is the same: The plant leaves have little holes, or stomata, through which carbon dioxide molecules can diffuse into the moist interior for use in the plant’s photosynthetic cycles.

The density of water molecules within the leaf is typically 60 times greater than the density of carbon dioxide in the air, and the diffusion rate of the water molecule is greater than that of the carbon-dioxide molecule.

So depending on the relative humidity and temperature, 100 or more water molecules diffuse out of the leaf for every molecule of carbon dioxide that diffuses in. And not every carbon-dioxide molecule that diffuses into a leaf gets incorporated into a carbohydrate. As a result, plants require many hundreds of grams of water to produce one gram of plant biomass, largely carbohydrate.

Driven by the need to conserve water, plants produce fewer stomata openings in their leaves when there is more carbon dioxide in the air. This decreases the amount of water that the plant is forced to transpire and allows the plant to withstand dry conditions better.

Crop yields in recent dry years were less affected by drought than crops of the dust-bowl droughts of the 1930s, when there was less carbon dioxide. Nowadays, in an age of rising population and scarcities of food and water in some regions, it’s a wonder that humanitarians aren’t clamoring for more atmospheric carbon dioxide. Instead, some are denouncing it.

We know that carbon dioxide has been a much larger fraction of the earth’s atmosphere than it is today, and the geological record shows that life flourished on land and in the oceans during those times. The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science.

Mr. Schmitt, an adjunct professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was an Apollo 17 astronaut and a former U.S. senator from New Mexico. Mr. Happer is a professor of physics at Princeton University and a former director of the office of energy research at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Also see:  http://sppiblog.org/news/book-burning

This year’s Banned Books List included a few surprises.

The American Library Association’s annual report highlights those books saddled with censorious complaints from parents, educators and assorted bureaucrats. Mom and Dad understandably would be horrified to find Fifty Shades of Grey in the elementary school stacks, but some administrators objected to Dav Pilkey’s popular Captain Underpants kid-lit series.

It appears some paper-shufflers found the silly superhero too disrespectful of their efforts. “I don’t see these books as encouraging disrespect for authority. Perhaps they demonstrate the value of questioning authority,” Pilkey said. “Some of the authority figures in the Captain Underpants books are villains. They are bullies and they do vicious things.”

We learned over the weekend that school office bullies aren’t restricted to the K-12 world. Two California university professors seem to be creating their own list of books to ban, including any titles that dare question their disintegrating theory of apocalyptic climate change.

San Jose State University posted a photo of their Climate Science profs about to burn Steve Goreham’s book, The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism. Department chair Alison Bridger, Ph.D., is shown holding a match while associate professor Craig Clements , Ph.D., dangles the book above the flame.

Once the photo started going viral, university officials removed it from their website and insisted it was just a joke. Hilarious, no? Joke or not, while academia constantly warns of metaphorical right-wing book burners, academic arson is literally happening on the left.

Needless to say, the book-burning professors are paid by California taxpayers. I suppose hard-working Golden Staters should be thankful it was a printed title and not an ebook. (Despite the name, Amazon Kindles are tricky to burn.)

San Jose State received the anti-alarmist book from the Heartland Institute, one of 100,000 copies distributed by the conservative organization. After receiving initial hate-filled responses from academia, Heartland’s Jim Lakely jokingly wondered if professors would “burn the book to keep warm in this record cold spring, which might be a sign of the coming global cooling.”

Lakely quickly discovered that it’s tough to lampoon people who exceed even the craziest exaggerations:

The enviro-left in academia has “progressed” from ignoring all this non-alarmist evidence, to trying to dismiss it, to failing at that, to refusing to debate, to fudging data and blackballing contrarian evidence, to committing crimes against The Heartland Institute, to now showing the world that putting a match to evidence from the “other side” is a reasonable reaction. Pathetic. We are witnessing the death throes of a cult in real time, and it ain’t pretty.

The American Library Association doesn’t list The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism on this year’s Banned Books List, but maybe San Jose State will catch their attention. If I may paraphrase the creator of Captain Underpants, I don’t see Goreham’s book as encouraging disrespect for authority. Perhaps it demonstrates the value of questioning authority. Some of the authority figures in The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism are villains. They are bullies and they do vicious things