As reported yesterday, an enterprising fellow actually got college students to sign a petition to stop “White Christmas” from being played on the radio because — since it ignores Christmases of other colors — it is obviously racially insensitive.

Frank Zappa was way ahead of his time on this. Zappa recognized that snow comes in different colors, and wrote the quirky song “Dont Eat the Yellow Snow“, which I used to listen to in college. Having eaten my share of snow while snowmobiling (before bottled water was invented), I am familiar with such snow color discrimination, as I practiced it regularly.

But this also begs a more general question: arent there other weather elements that have not checked their white privilege at the door?

Clouds, for example. As seen from space they are always white. Wassup wit dat? From the ground, clouds are usually white. At least the happy, cheerful ones are. Only the angry and foreboding clouds are dark-colored.

So, it seems that weather — and probably climate as well — has racial overtones that should be avoided in our weather forecasts and global warming discussions.

(And this is why I stopped writing satire years ago…because truth really has become stranger than fiction.)

El Nino is really doing a number on December winter weather this year, and as a result most of the eastern 2/3 of the U.S. will not have a white Christmas. But for those in the western U.S., a series of Pacific storms fueled by El Nino and continuing intrusions of Canadian air will result in widespread snowcover, as seen in the latest forecast snow depth on noon of Christmas day (graphics courtesy of Weatherbell.com):

Forecast snow depth as of noon 25 December 2015, from the Dec. 21 morning run of the NWS GFS model (graphic courtesy of Weatherbell.com).

The corresponding forecast of temperature departures from normal at the same time reflect the expected warmth in the East, and cold in the West on Christmas day:

forecast temperature departures from normal for noon 25 December 2015, from the NWS GFS model.

In the latter plot, note that temperatures will be running as much as 30 deg. F below normal in the West, but as much as 30 deg F above normal in the East.

I my opinion, most of the climate research that gets published has little impact on the global warming debate. The field has become so specialized that seldom is there a finding that changes our understanding.

I think that the recent AGU poster by Anthony Watts et al. breaks this mold.

Anthony has spent years shedding light on the very real problem the thermometer network has for monitoring of temperature for climate change…most notably, local changes around the thermometer site associated with economic growth lead to spurious warming.

Back in 2010 I posted an analysis of global thermometer data which showed the very clear urban heat island (UHI) effect that exists. It averages at least 0.5 deg. C in going from completely rural to only 10 persons per km2 population density. Others have found the same thing over the years, and anyone who drives or cycles between rural and urban areas can easily notice it.

Without correcting for this, how can anyone believe long-term land-based warming trends? I’ll admit, it is not easy to correct for. UHI warming “looks like” global warming since it is more gradual than sudden, so break-point homogenization algorithms cannot correct for it.

Now, population density admittedly isn’t the best proxy for UHI…it was just an easily available one in my analysis. Even with no change in population, increasing prosperity inevitably leads to an increase in heat sources, both active and passive, around thermometer sites.

Anthony did a painstaking analysis of the USHCN thermometer network to find those thermometers which had good siting and which did not suffer from station moves and instrument changes. The result was that the NOAA analysis exaggerated the warming trend in recent decades by about 50%, compared to the trends computed from the best thermometer sites.

This is the kind of work NOAA should have done…but didn’t.

Instead, NOAA uses all of the thermometer data and employs statistical adjustments that many of us suspect forces the minority of good thermometer sites to match the majority of bad thermometer sites. In other words, it forces the rural data to match the urban data, rather than the other way around.

Watts et al. used only the best data….which I think is the best strategy. If one wants to use ALL of the thermometer data, then the bad data needs to be constrained so that it matches the good data.

As far as I know, this is not done by NOAA. And it’s a travesty that it hasn’t.

Al Gore is the gift that just keeps on giving.

According to his prediction, Arctic sea ice was supposed to be gone two years ago.

Since Gore isn’t a scientist, he might be forgiven for making such bad long-range predictions.

But his statement at the AGU meeting in San Francisco last week — which I have not been able to completely verify — takes the cake: “We need to go to DEFCON 5. The will to act is itself a renewable resource.”

Now, as Vice President, for 8 years Mr. Gore was required to travel with the nuclear “football” in case he had to initiate nuclear war in the event the President was incapacitated.

So, how is it that Mr. Gore doesn’t know that DEFCON 1 (not DEFCON 5) is the highest level of readiness?

(H/T small dead animals)

If global warming was a concern in the 1800s, Hollywood might have portrayed the COP21 Paris global warming pow wow like this…

Of course, Hollywood seldom uses such racial stereotypes anymore…unless they are of White Southerners.

Vice-Chief Kerry of the Developed Tribes: “All chiefs must dance to the rain gods, or no rain will fall on our lands. Or too many rains. After rain dance, we smoke peace pipe.”

Chief Boingo of the Undeveloped Tribes: “Our people will not dance. Unless much wampum is given to our people. For we have suffered greatly. The clouds do not give their tears. Or give too much…whatever. Only after much wampum will we then smoke peace pipe.”

Vice-Chief Kerry of the Developed Tribes: “How much wampum does Chief Boingo speak of?”

Chief Boingo of the Undeveloped Tribes: “As much wampum as stars in sky and as many moons have passed since our ancestors fell asleep”.

Vice-Chief Kerry of the Developed Tribes: “Hmmm. That’s much wampum. My people will not be happy. What say we smoke-um peace pipe and tell our peoples rain dance was good, anyway? We send a few wampum as we can. And we throw in some fire water?”

Chief Boingo of the Undeveloped Tribes: “Ugg. Just like other pow-wows, eh? OK.”

Chief Obama of the Developed Tribes addresses all tribes of Earth: “After many moons of rain dance and pow wow talk, the Developed Tribes chiefs have made peace with the Undeveloped Tribes, and with Earth. Now the clouds will cry tears of joy, and the great waters will be kept from our villages.”

NOTE: For the humorless few who don’t get it, the Paris COP21 meeting is little different from ancient people who thought they could control nature through meaningless gestures. The gestures made them feel good about themselves, that they have done something useful, and maybe even had some fire-water-fueled fun in the process. But the leaders are simply posturing, knowing full well that their successful pow wow and rain dance will have little effect, but will nevertheless calm the tribes. To call the above “racist” neglects the real racism: that Paris-supported energy policies pushed by mostly white-skinned rich westerners would kill millions of mostly dark-skinned poor people by making the energy they desperately need to be inaccessible.

COP21 participants in Paris celebrate after the Earth was saved yet again.

But Obama still wants to send US energy use and living standards backward

by Paul Driessen and Roger Bezdek

Paris climate talks this week descended into madcap all-night negotiations, as delegates desperately tried to salvage some kind of agreement beyond empty promises to do something sometime about what President Obama insists is the gravest threat to our planet, national security and future generations.

He gets far more energized about slashing energy use than about Islamist terrorism, even after the Paris and San Bernardino butchery. Determined for once to lead from upfront, he took a 500-person greenhouse gas-spewing entourage to the City of Light, to call for preventing increasing droughts, floods, storms, island-swallowing rising acidic ocean levels and other disasters conjured up by alarmist computer models.

Legally binding carbon dioxide emission targets were too contentious to pursue. So was modifying the concept of differentiated responsibilities. It holds that countries that historically caused the recent atmospheric carbon dioxide build-up must lead in cutting their emissions, while helping developing countries eventually do likewise, by pouring trillions of dollars in cash and free technology into the Green Climate Fund for supposed climate change adaptation, mitigation and compensation. Developing countries had insisted on that massive wealth redistribution as their price for signing any binding document.

Although China now emits far more CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHG) than the USA or EU, it refused to fast-track reducing those emissions. China and wealthy petro-states also opposed paying into the Climate Fund. Other major bones of contention were likewise never resolved.

Thus, in the end, what we apparently got out of Paris is voluntary emission caps, voluntary progress reviews, no international oversight of any voluntary progress, and voluntary contributions to the Fund.

Of course, the entire climate cataclysm mantra is based on the claim that carbon dioxide has replaced the solar and other powerful natural forces that have driven climate change throughout Earth and human history. Now, merely tweaking CO2 emissions will supposedly stabilize climate and weather systems.

President Obama fervently believes this delusion. He will likely use the voluntary Paris gobbledygook to say America somehow has a moral obligation to set an example, by de-carbonizing, de-industrializing and de-developing the United States. Thankfully, Congress and the states will have something to say about that, because they know these anti-fossil fuel programs will destroy jobs and living standards, especially for poor, working class and minority families.

The impacts would be far worse than many news stories and White House press releases suggest. Those sources often say the proposed climate treaty and other actions seek GHG reductions of 80% below predicted 2050 emission levels. The real original Paris treaty target is 80% below actual 1990 levels.

That means the world would have to eliminate 96% of the greenhouse gases that all humanity would likely release if we reach world population levels, economic growth and living standards predicted for 2050. The United States would likely have to slash it CO2 and GHG reductions to zero.

Moreover, current 2050 forecasts already assume and incorporate significant energy efficiency, de-carbonization and de-industrialization over the next 35 years. They are not business-as-usual numbers or extrapolations of past trends. Further CO2 reductions beyond those already incorporated into the forecasts would thus be increasingly difficult, expensive, and indeed impossible to achieve.

As we explain in a MasterResource.org analysis, there is a strong positive relationship between GDP and carbon-based energy consumption. Slashing fossil energy use that far would thus require decimating economic growth, job creation and preservation, and average per-person incomes. In fact, average world per capita GDP would plummet from a projected $30,600 in 2050 to a miserable $1,200 per year.

Average per capita GDP in 2050 would be less than what Americans had in 1830! Many futuristic technologies would still exist, but only wealthy families and ruling elites could afford them.

That would be catastrophic for jobs, health and welfare in developed countries and lethal to millions in poor nations, who would be denied the blessings of electricity and fossil fuels for decades to come. That is indefensible, inhumane and immoral. And for what?

Mr. Obama and the alarmists in Paris insisted that drastic GHG reductions will hold global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius (3.5 F) and prevent climate and weather disasters. Now some even claim that the upper safety limit is actually 1.5 degrees C (2.7 F), which would require even more draconian energy and emission cutbacks. Otherwise, Earth could become uninhabitable, they assert. Nonsense.

EPAs own analyses suggest that its fully implemented Clean Power Plan would bring an undetectable, irrelevant reduction of perhaps 0.02 degrees Celsius (0.05 F) in average global temperatures 85 years from now assuming carbon dioxide actually does drive climate change.

In the Real World, climate changes regularly, and recent climate and weather trends and events are in line with historic experience. In fact, average global temperatures havent risen in nearly two decades; no category 3-5 hurricane has struck the USA in a record ten years; Greenland and Antarctic ice are at record levels; and still firmly alkaline sea levels (8.1 pH) are rising at barely seven inches per century.

Many scientists believe the sun and other powerful natural forces may soon usher in a new era of colder temperatures, regardless of whether atmospheric CO2 rises above 0.04% (400 ppm). That would pose much greater threats to human health, agriculture and prosperity (and wildlife) than global warming.

We must never forget: Fossil fuels facilitated successive industrial revolutions and enabled billions to live better than royalty did a century ago, helped average incomes to increase eleven-fold, and helped average global life expectancy to soar from less than 30 in 1870 to 71 today.

Carbon-based energy still provides 81% of world energy, and supports $70 trillion per year in world GDP. It will supply 75-80% of global energy for decades to come, Energy Information Administration, International Energy Agency and other studies forecast. Carbon-based energy is essential if we are to bring electricity to the 1.3 billion people who still do not have it, and end the rampant poverty and lung, intestinal and other diseases that kill millions of people in poor countries every year.

Furthermore, thousands of coal-fired power plants are built, under construction or in planning around the world. China and India will not consider reducing GHG emissions until 2030, and even then it will be voluntary and dependent on how their economies are doing. That means atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will continue to climb, greening the planet and spurring faster crop, forest and grassland growth.

President Obama and the 40,000 climate alarmists gathered in Paris largely (ignored) these inconvenient realities, and whitewashed the adverse consequences of anti-hydrocarbon policies. Even binding targets would have had minimal or illusory health, climate and environmental benefits.

Instead, they would have horrendous adverse effects on human health and environmental quality, while doing nothing to prevent climate change or extreme weather events. What alarmists wanted in Paris would have let unelected, unaccountable activists and bureaucrats decide which industries, companies, workers, families, states and countries win the Climate Hustle game, and which ones lose.

And its not just President Obama, who wants to slash Americas carbon dioxide emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025 and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050! Every Democrat presidential candidate demands similar actions: Hillary Clinton wants one-third of all US electricity to come from wind and solar by 2027; Bernie Sanders wants 80% by 2050; Martin OMalley wants 100% by 2050.

Obligating the United States to slash its fossil fuel use, and send billions of taxpayer dollars annually to dictators, bureaucrats and crony industrialists in poor countries would be disastrous. Thank goodness it did not happen. But we are not out of the woods yet.

Dr. Roger Bezdek is an internationally recognized energy analyst and president of Management Information Services, Inc., in Washington, DC. Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.

Here is the article I was referring to in today’s post, Whose Supported Policies Kill More People: ISIS…or Greenpeace? It is by Dr. Patrick Moore.

Greenpeace has made itself the sworn enemy of all life on Earth

By Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace

Greenpeace, in furtherance of what is in effect its war against every species on the planet, has now turned to what, on the face of things, looks to me like outright breach of the RICO, wire-fraud, witness-tampering and obstruction-of-committee statutes. I have called in the FBI.

Greenpeace appears to have subjected Dr. Will Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University, to a maladroit attempt at entrapment that has badly backfired on it.

Greenpeace used this dismal rent-by-the-hour office block in the Beirut souk for its entrapment scam.

The organization I founded has become a monster. When I was a member of its central committee in the early days, we campaigned – usually with success – on genuine environmental issues such as atmospheric nuclear tests, whaling and seal-clubbing.

When Greenpeace turned anti-science by campaigning against chlorine (imagine the sheer stupidity of campaigning against one of the elements in the periodic table), I decided that it had lost its purpose and that, having achieved its original objectives, had turned to extremism to try to justify its continued existence.

Now Greenpeace has knowingly made itself the sworn enemy of all life on Earth. By opposing capitalism, it stands against the one system of economics that has been most successful in regulating and restoring the environment.

By opposing the use of DDT inside the homes of children exposed to the anopheles mosquito that carries malaria, Greenpeace contributed to the deaths of 40 million people and counting, most of them children. It now pretends it did not oppose DDT, but the record shows otherwise. On this as on so many issues, it got the science wrong. It has the deaths of those children on what passes for its conscience.

By opposing fossil-fueled power, it not only contributes to the deaths of many tens of millions every year because they are among the 1.2 billion to whom its campaigns deny affordable, reliable, clean, continuous, low-tech, base-load, fossil-fueled electrical power: it also denies to all trees and plants on Earth the food they need.

Paradoxically, an organization that calls itself “Green” is against the harmless, beneficial, natural trace gas that nourishes and sustains all green things. Greenpeace is against greenery. Bizarrely, it is opposed to returning to the atmosphere a tiny fraction of the CO2 that was once present there.

In November 2015, out of the blue, Professor Happer received an email from “Hamilton Ellis”, a soi-disant “business consultancy” operating out of rent-by-the-hour offices in a crumbling concrete block in the Beirut souk.

The bucket-shop “consultancy’s” email said that a “client”, an energy and power company “concerned about the impacts of the UN climate talks”, wanted to commission Professor Happer to prepare a “briefing” to be released early in 2016 “which highlights the crucial role that oil and gas have to play in the developing economies, such as our client’s Middle East and North Africa region”.

The email smarmed on: “Given your influential work in this area and your position at Princeton we believe a very short paper authored or endorsed by yourself could work strongly in our client’s favour. Does this sound like a project you would be interested in discussing further?”

Will Happer replied enclosing a white paper written, with major input from him, by the CO2 Coalition, a new group that he had helped to establish earlier in 2015. He also sent a copy of testimony on the “social cost of carbon” that he had given at a regulatory hearing in St Paul, Minnesota. Crucially, he added: “I would be glad to try to help if my views, outlined in the attachments, are in line with those of your client.”

In short, he was not prepared to be bought. He would help the “client” of the “business consultancy” if and only if he was not asked to attest to anything that he did not already believe.

The “consultancy” replied: “It certainly sounds like you and our client are on the same page.” It went on to ask whether Professor Happer’s two papers had been “part of the same initiative on CO2 reported on [by Matt Ridley] in the London Times recently, and added: “The focus we envisage for this project comes from a slightly different angle. Our client wants to commission a short briefing paper that examines the benefits of fossil fuels to developing economies, as opposed to a switch to so-called clean energy.”

The “consultancy” also wanted to know whether it “would be able to reference you as Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University if this project were to go ahead?”

It also tried to smoke out the identity of Professor Happer’s contacts in the U.S. media, and ended with a classical entrapment line: “It would be useful to know, in your experience, whether you would need to declare the source funding when publishing research of this kind”.

Professor Happer said: “The article … mentions Patrick Moore, like me a member of the CO2 Coalition, and my friend from Princeton, Freeman Dyson, who shares our views.”

He confirmed that his official title is Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus. He also reinforced his earlier message indicating he could not be bought by stating, very clearly:

“To be sure your client is not misled on my views, it is clear there are real pollutants associated with the combustion of fossil fuels, oxides of sulfur and nitrogen for most of them, fly ash and heavy metals for coal, volatile organics for gasoline, etc. I fully support regulations for cost-effective control of these real pollutants. But the Paris climate talks are based on the premise that CO2 itself is a pollutant. This is completely false. More CO2 will benefit the world. The only way to limit CO2 would be to stop using fossil fuels, which I think would be a profoundly immoral and irrational policy.”

Professor Happer added that he no longer had external funding following his retirement, and went on: “My activities to push back against climate extremism are a labor of love, to defend the cherished ideals of science that have been so corrupted by the climate-change cult. If your client was considering reimbursing me for writing something, I would ask that whatever fee would have come to me would go directly to the CO2 Coalition. This was the arrangement I had with the attorneys representing the Peabody Coal Company in the regulatory hearings in Minnesota. The fee I would have received was sent instead to the CO2 Coalition, a 501(c)(3) tax exempt educational organization. The CO2 Coalition covers occasional travel expenses for me, but pays me no other fees or salary.”

The “consultancy” replied that the “client” was “completely comfortable with your views on fossil-fuel pollution”. It asked whether Matt Ridley might “help to disseminate our research when it is ready”, and whether the briefing could be peer-reviewed. “On the matter of reimbursement, we would of course remunerate you for your work and would be more than happy to pay the fee to the CO2 Coalition.”

Then another classic entrapment line: “Our client does not want their name associated with the research as they believe it will give the work more credibility. What provisions does the CO2 Coalition provide? Would this be an issue?”

Professor Happer replied that he was sure Matt Ridley would be interested in the briefing and that Breitbart would be among blogs and syndicated columnists that could also be interested.

As for peer review, he explained that “this normally refers to original work submitted to a scientific journal for publication, and not to the sort of articles that Ridley writes for the media, or what I think you are seeking to have written. If you like, I could submit the article to a peer-reviewed journal, but that might greatly delay publication and might require such major changes in response to referees and to the journal editor that the article would no longer make the case that CO2 is a benefit, not a pollutant, as strongly as I would like, and presumably as strongly your client would also like.”

He said his fees were $250 per hour, and that his Minnesota testimony had required four eight-hour days, so that the total cost was $8000. He said that, if he wrote the paper alone, he did not think there would be any problem stating that “The author received no financial compensation for this essay”. He added that he was pretty sure that the “client’s” donation to the CO2 Coalition would not need to be public according to US regulations of 503(c)(3) educational organizations, but that he could get some legal advice to confirm this if asked.

The “consultancy” replied: “The hourly rate works for us and, as previously discussed, we are happy to make a direct donation to the CO2 Coalition, providing it is anonymous. We can look into the official disclosure regulations, but it would be useful to know whether the CO2 Coalition voluntarily discloses its funders? Presumably there are other donors in a similar position to us?”

They added: “With regards to peer review, I raised this issue because Matt Ridley’s article on Dr Indur Goklany’s recent CO2 report said that it had been thoroughly peer reviewed. Would it be possible to ask the same journal to peer review our paper given that it has a similar thrust to Goklany’s? It’s not a deal-breaker, but I felt that it helped strengthen that piece of work.”

Professor Happer replied that early drafts of Goklany’s paper had been reviewed by him and by many other scientists; that he had suggested changes to which the author had responded; and that, although some members of the academic advisory board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation might have been too busy to respond to a request to comment on the first draft, “The review of Golkany’s paper was even more rigorous than the peer review for most journals”. Professor Happer said he would be glad to ask for a similar review for the first drafts of anything he wrote for the “client”.

He said he would double-check on the regulations, but did not think the CO2 Coalition, a 501(3)c tax-exempt educational organization, was required to make public any donors, except in Internal Revenue Service returns.

He checked with the CO2 Coalition, which replied that the Coalition was not obliged to identify any donors, except to the IRS, who would redact the list of donors if it received a request for the Coalition’s form 990.

On December 7 he received an email from one Maeve McClenaghan of Greenpeace, telling him that they had conducted what she grandiosely described as an “undercover investigation” – actually a criminal entrapment scam contrary to the RICO and wire-fraud statutes, and a flagrant attempt both to tamper with a Congressional witness (he is due to testify today, 8 December) and to obstruct committee proceedings – and that they intended to publish a “news article … regarding the funding of climate sceptic science.
She said: “Our article explores how fossil fuel companies are able to pay academics to produce research which is of benefit to them” and added that the story would be published on a Greenpeace website and “promoted widely” in the media. She gave Professor Happer only hours to respond.

Many of the points she said she proposed to include in the article were crafted in such a way as to distort what the above correspondence makes plain were wholly innocent and honest statements, so as to make them sound sinister. The libels Ms McClenaghan proposed to circulate will not be circulated here.

I shall, however pass on a comment made to me by Professor Happer: “I was suspicious about the email exchange from the start, so I wrote every response assuming that it might be public someday. But what I wrote expressed exactly what I believed to be true.”

That is the comment of one of the most transparently honest scientific colleagues I am honoured to know. I am, therefore, profoundly dismayed that the organization I founded – an organization that once did good work addressing real environmental concerns – has descended to what I consider to be criminality and now also proposes to descend to libel.

Accordingly, I have decided to inform the Federal Bureau of Investigation of Greenpeace’s dishonest and disfiguring attempt at entrapment of Professor Happer, whom I know to be a first-rate scientist, colleague and friend, one of the world’s half-dozen most eminent and experienced physicists, and one who would never provide any scientific advice unless in his professional opinion that advice was correct.

The organization’s timing was clearly intended to spring the trap on Professor Happer hours before he was due to appear in front of Congress. This misconduct constitutes a serious – and on many counts criminal – interference with the democratic process that America cherishes.

I have reported Greenpeace to the FBI under 18 USC 96 (RICO statute); 18 USC 1343 (wire fraud); 18 USC 1512 (attempting to intimidate a witness due to appear at a Congressional hearing); and 18 USC 1505 (obstruction of proceedings before committees).

I shall also be asking the Bureau to investigate Greenpeace’s sources of funding. It is now an enemy of the State, an enemy of humanity and, indeed, an enemy of all species on Earth.

Approximately 200,000 people have died due to global terrorism in the last 10 years.

During the same time, many millions of people (mostly women and children) have died due to policies promoted by Greenpeace and other “green” organizations (e.g. anti-DDT, anti-golden rice, anti-fossil fuel).

I’ve said it before…I don’t really care where our energy comes from…as long as it is abundant and affordable. Until someone comes up with an alternative energy source with those two characteristics, humanity is stuck with fossil fuels as our primary energy source.

It’s not like the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior runs on solar energy.

Since poverty is the leading cause of premature death in the world, and fossil fuels have enabled the world to prosper and live longer, more comfortable lives, being against fossil fuels is, in my opinion, either misguided or evil.

It appears that Greenpeace is pulling out all the stops to minimize the impact that we skeptics have on the global warming debate. In addition to the COP21 meeting in Paris wrapping up this week, today’s Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness hearing chaired by Ted Cruz appears to also be an event Greenpeace is trying to thwart.

Here’s what’s been happening. Last month I was contacted by what now appears to be a front-group (or fictitious group?) for Greenpeace called “Hamilton Ellis”, supposedly headquartered in Beirut. Supposedly on behalf of Mideast oil interests, they contacted a number of skeptics with offers to pay for reports on climate change.

Here’s the email I received:

Dear Dr Spencer,

I am a partner in a business advisory firm based in Beirut, working across sectors but primarily focusing on energy and defence.

One of our clients is an E&P company that is concerned about the impacts of the UN climate talks later this month. I am writing to you now because we are looking to commission a briefing to be released early next year, following the talks, which highlights the crucial role that oil and gas have to play in developing economies, such as our client’s MENA region.

Given your influential work in this area and your position at the University of Alabama we believe a very short paper authored or endorsed by yourself could work strongly in our client’s favour. Does this sound like a project you would be interested in discussing further?

Kind regards,

Jonathan
—
Jonathan Ellis

Hamilton Ellis Associates
Tel: +961 1 956 412
Fax: +961 1 956 355

hamiltonellis.com

If you try their website, you get a blank page. A Google search turns up no previous consulting work.

It turns out what they were really trying to do was to find out what kind of fossil fuel funding skeptics have been receiving. I am told that more on this revelation (which was not my discovery) will be forthcoming at ClimateDepot.com. (UPDATE: I’ve published the information, in an article by Dr. Patrick Moore, here.)

Of course, the popular meme has been that we skeptics are paid large sums by Big Oil and Big Coal.

I wish.

Over the years, I’ve charged to give talks out-of-state, taking vacation time away from my research day job (which is 100% federal and state funded) to avoid any charges of “double-dipping”. A few of those talks have been for fossil fuel-related organizations, a few have been for environmental organizations, but most have not.

My affiliations with the Marshall Institute and Cornwall Alliance have been on a volunteer basis. I’ve also been paid a modest amount to write a couple of reports over the years, as well as to help in a recent legal case. The total compensation I’ve received is very small compared to my day job, and it’s even very small compared to the ad revenue I receive from our little weather website, Weatherstreet.com.

Many years ago I was paid to write articles for a website called TCSDaily.com, which turned out to be fossil-fuel funded. I didn’t know that at the time, but I don’t think it would have mattered. After all, like most of us in the modern world, I’ve given far more money to fossil fuel interests than I’ve ever received from them. 😉

I’m still waiting for that Big Check from Big Oil. After all, I’ve been carrying their water for years. In my case, my support of fossil fuels (and the prosperity and longevity they have enabled humanity to achieve) goes back decades. It’s a no-brainer. If there is another energy technology as cheap and reliable and large-scale, I’m all for it.

But there isn’t. So I’m not.

And I really don’t care if every CEO of every coal and petroleum company eventually sides against me. (Why should they take a public relations hit, when they know that – at the end of the day –people still need their energy?)

You see, as a scientist I won’t accept the premise…the premise that more CO2 in the atmosphere is “carbon pollution”, and that it is necessarily a bad thing.

After all, more CO2 is causing global greening, and increased crop productivity, with only mild warming (which isn’t necessarily mostly due to increasing CO2) and no demonstrable increase in severe weather.

But, since Greenpeace seems to think that doing any work for a fossil fuel interest is bad, let’s talk about what is “evil” for a moment.

Besides promoting global warming policies that will cause energy poverty (and if there’s one thing that kills people reliably, it’s poverty), Greenpeace has been promoting anti-human policies for decades. Their opposition to golden rice alone is enough to call them out as bigger enemies of humanity than ISIS…at least so far. We really don’t see the harm they do splashed over the TV screen because it’s the poor in third world countries that suffer the most from the policies they promote.

In 2014, terrorism killed over 32,000 people. But golden rice could save as many as 1,000,000 poor children’s lives each year, by supplying necessary vitamin A….yet, Greenpeace has been actively campaigning against poor countries growing golden rice.

Although they now deny it, they were also opposed to DDT, which is relatively safe and saves millions of lives.

It’s not just religious organizations calling them out. Atheists have been outraged, too: The Evil that Greenpeace Does.

Of course, Dr. Patrick Moore famously left the organization he helped found and lead when it became clear that they were valuing nature above human life. Patrick also has called them evil.

And this is besides their opposition to the primary fuels that power the global economy and allow people to live long lives free from the misery that poverty brings.

So, does Greenpeace have any moral authority on matters related to the wellbeing of humans? There seems to be a serious shortage of it in green circles these days.

For example, George Soros, after years of driving down the value of coal companies by promoting “green energy” policies, turned around and recently bought over 1 million shares of Peabody Coal at dirt-cheap prices. So, where is his moral authority on environmental matters?

And I’m also reminded of Al Gore selling Current TV to Al Jazeera (funded by Mideast oil interests) last year, netting him $100 million.

Apparently, hypocrisy runs deep in the Green Blob.

If Greenpeace believes that there are too many poor people in the world using up the natural resources they want for themselves to power their ships and commute 250 miles by jet to work, then they are on the right track with the policies they support.

They just shouldn’t expect to keep the moral high ground in the process.

Way back in June, John Christy and I called 2015 as being the warmest year on record…in the surface thermometer data. Given the strong El Nino in progress, on top of the official thermometer data warming trend, this seemed pretty obvious.

Of course, everyone has their opinions regarding how good the thermometer temperature trends are, with periodic adjustments that almost always make the present warmer or the past colder.

But I’m not going there today…

Instead, I’m going to talk about our only truly global dataset: the satellite data. With the November 2015 data now in, it’s pretty clear that in our UAH analysis 2015 will only be the 3rd warmest year since the satellite record began in 1979. Based upon my calculations, this will be true no matter what happens in December (barring Armageddon).

Here are the yearly rankings, for which I assumed the December 2015 anomaly will be +0.40 C (click for full-size):

The years are displayed with the warmest on the left, and the coldest on the right. The color coding and arrows have to do with El Nino years, discussed below.

Will 2016 be a Record?

What is interesting is to consider the possibility that 2016 will indeed be a record warm year, even in the UAH (and probably RSS) satellite data. This is because the second year of El Nino year couplets is almost always the warmest, and 2015 is only the first year.

In the plot above I have color-coded the four previous major El Nino year pairs: 1982-83, 1987-88; 1997-98; and 2009-10. In three of those (all except 1987-88), the second year was much warmer than the first year. This means there is a good chance that 2016 will be a record warm year.

But as 1987-88 shows, it’s not guaranteed….

If the current El Nino unexpectedly fizzles in the next few months – OR – if this El Nino transitions unusually rapidly into a strong La Nina (like the 1987-88 event), then 1998 might not be beaten for the warmest year. Mother Nature is full of surprises, and I still believe she is mostly in control.

If I simply average the previous four El Nino events together as an estimate of what will happen next year, then 2016 would be 0.25 C warmer than 2015. This would cause it to edge out 1998 as the record warmest year by 0.02-0.03 deg. C.

But I’m not making any bets.

NOTE: This is the eighth monthly update with our new Version 6.0 dataset. Differences versus the old Version 5.6 dataset are discussed here. Note we are now at “beta4” for Version 6, due to our accidental omission of lower stratospheric data from NOAA-9 post-Feb. 1987.

The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for November, 2015 is +0.33 deg. C, down from the October, 2015 value of +0.43 deg. C (click for full size version):

The global, hemispheric, and tropical LT anomalies from the 30-year (1981-2010) average for the last 11 months are:

YR MO GLOBE NH SH TROPICS
2015 01 +0.28 +0.40 +0.16 +0.13
2015 02 +0.17 +0.30 +0.05 -0.06
2015 03 +0.16 +0.26 +0.07 +0.05
2015 04 +0.08 +0.18 -0.01 +0.09
2015 05 +0.28 +0.36 +0.21 +0.27
2015 06 +0.33 +0.41 +0.25 +0.46
2015 07 +0.18 +0.33 +0.03 +0.47
2015 08 +0.27 +0.25 +0.30 +0.51
2015 09 +0.25 +0.34 +0.17 +0.55
2015 10 +0.43 +0.64 +0.21 +0.53
2015 11 +0.33 +0.43 +0.23 +0.53

The tropics continue warm due to El Nino conditions, but the temperature in recent months seems to have plateaued despite the climatological expectation of increasing temperature as we approach peak El Nino warmth in the next few months. This plateau, of course, could end at any time.

The global image for November, 2015 should be available in the next several days here.

The new Version 6 files (use the ones labeled “beta4”) should be updated soon, and are located here:

Lower Troposphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt
Mid-Troposphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tmt
Tropopause: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/ttp
Lower Stratosphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tls