Climate Change Weekly #157 [Subscribe]
A memo released as part of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act request examining the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rule-making has arguably revealed EPA uses misleading claims to stoke fears of global warming.
The March 2009 memo shows EPA feared it was losing support for its climate efforts because opinion polls consistently showed the public ranked fighting global warming very low on its list of priorities. The polls revealed the public felt harms from global warming were exaggerated and had little bearing on people’s lives.
In response, the memo describes EPA’s decision to shift the debate from concerns about melting ice caps and declining caribou and polar bear populations, to promoting the idea global warming poses a direct threat to public health, especially children’s health, and air and water quality.
Most Americans will never see a polar ice cap, nor will [they] ever have a chance to see a polar bear in its natural habitat. Therefore, it is easy to detach from the seriousness of the issue. Unfortunately, climate change in the abstract is an increasingly – and consistently – unpersuasive argument to make. However, if we shift from making this issue about polar caps [to being] about our neighbor with respiratory illness we can potentially bring this issue home to many Americans
The problem for EPA is, there has been no serious research linking global warming or greenhouse gas emissions to human health problems or air or water pollution.
According to the memo, an additional step EPA took was to raise concerns about climate change among minority groups and women, using headline-catching “hooks” concerning social justice and children’s health.
The memo details ways to create a positive association in the public’s mind between concerns about the safety of the water they drink and the air they breathe, and the need to act on global warming. Per the memo, “We must begin to create a causal link between the worries of Americans and the proactive mission we’re pushing.”
Chris Horner, an attorney and senior fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, obtained the memo through a FOIA request. Horner said, “This memo shows EPA’s recognition the global warming case is ‘consistently – an unpersuasive argument to make,’ and thus required a facelift, from a pro-scarcity movement of wealthy white elites to a racial and ‘social justice’ issue.
“This memo candidly affirms EPA’s conscious approach of yelling ‘clean air’ and ‘children’ at every turn in the push for an agenda that not long ago was about the end of the world in a climatic calamity, openly and rightly confident in getting a media assist,” said Horner.
John Dale Dunn, a physician and lawyer who has written on government and scientific corruption for more than 25 years, recognized the shift in EPA’s climate focus in 2009. “The children/baby risks panic strategy fit the EPA goals, according to secret strategy documents, when the cute Coca Cola polar bear cubs and mothers imagery failed to motivate public outrage,” Dunn said.
“The internal documents obtained under FOIA revealed the EPA and enviros were looking for a hook and decided the hook they were looking for was the health of children,” continued Dunn. “Why not? Nothing better to get politicians moving than marching and chanting women in matching t-shirts on a tear, worried about and advocating for their babies.”
— H. Sterling Burnett
SOURCES: The Daily Caller and EPA memo
IN THIS ISSUE …
Climate’s changing, so what? … India, Greece embrace coal … 7,000 years of Siberian tundra warming … Senate vote: China climate deal bad for U.S. … U.N. climate vice-chair under fire … U.K. climate, weather offices confirm continued pause
CLIMATE’S CHANGING, SO WHAT?
A government-funded poll shows 88 percent of people in the United Kingdom believe the climate is changing, compared to 72 percent who believed that in 2013. However, concern about the changing climate has fallen to below 20 percent. According to the poll, 84 percent of respondents felt humans were at least somewhat responsible for the changing climate but just 18 percent were “very concerned” about climate change, down considerably from 44 percent in 2005. Despite the continual apocalyptic climate hype spun by governments and radical climate mongers, most British citizens apparently are worried about more important matters.
SOURCE: The Telegraph
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INDIA, GREECE EMBRACE COAL
Because India plans to more than double its output and use of coal, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi rejected President Barack Obama’s effort to strike a climate deal along the lines of a United States-China agreement on emission cuts. Obama wanted India to commit to a peak year for greenhouse gas emissions. India refused. India, which has one-third the per-capita emissions of China, does not want to be treated like China, the world’s biggest carbon emitter. In another blow to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Greece’s new socialist government is committed to burning the nation’s lignite coal. With the country facing an economy contracting at a speed and to a degree not seen since the near-global depression of the 1930s, Greece’s government wants economic growth. A spokesman for the Syriza party (Greece’s new ruling party) stated, “If we face fiscal difficulties from abroad in the medium term, then to burn more lignite instead of importing energy will seem a wise thing to do. If we don’t have money to import petrol then we will burn lignite which is free – not of a carbon footprint – but relatively cheaper. One way or another Greek lignite will be exploited.”
SOURCES: Hindustan Times and Powerline
7,000 YEARS OF SIBERIAN TUNDRA WARMING
Research published in Nature Geoscience examining underground ice wedges deep in the Siberian tundra permafrost shows the region has been warming for the past 7,000 years. “Ice wedges … are formed when the permanently frozen soil contracts in response to intensively cold winter temperatures, causing it to crack. When the snow melts in spring, the melt water fills these cracks. Since the ground temperature is roughly minus ten degrees Celsius, the water refreezes immediately. If this process repeats itself winter after winter, over the decades and centuries an ice body shaped like a giant wedge is formed,” according to Hanno Meyer, Ph.D., lead author of the study. Some ice wedges are more than 100,000 years old. An analysis of such wedges in the Siberian permafrost regions shows a clear trend: “Over the past 7,000 years, the winters in the Lena River Delta have steadily warmed.” No human intervention required.
SOURCE: Watts Up With That
SENATE VOTE: CHINA CLIMATE DEAL BAD FOR U.S.
A majority of Senators joined Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) in rejecting the recent United States/China climate deal inked by President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in November. In a “sense of the Senate” vote, 51 Senators agreed Obama’s greenhouse gas deal with China has no force and effect in the United States and the nation should not agree to any international agreement on greenhouse gases imposing disproportionate, economically harmful commitments on the United States. Blunt argued the deal would put the United States at a disadvantage because it allows China to continue to increase its greenhouse gas emissions in coming years, while the United States must reduce emissions by 27 percent. Though a majority of Senators voted in favor of Blunt’s amendment to reject the deal, it ultimately failed as Senate rules required it to reach 60 votes for passage.
SOURCES: Roy Blunt Senate Office and Asheville Citizen-Times
U.N. CLIMATE VICE-CHAIR UNDER FIRE
Academics from a variety of disciplines at universities across Europe have petitioned the Belgian government to withdraw its support for professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele for chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The letters’ authors argue van Ypersele’s actions are those of a “radical ecological militant and his ascension to the presidency [sic] of the IPCC would lead to a further politicization of the scientific debate on climate change that is in need of calm and civil discussion.” The authors note van Ypersele intervened to block a scientific conference at the Universitaire Stichting (Brussels) that would have included internationally recognized climate experts such as S. Fred Singer, Ph.D. (University of Virginia, USA, former project leader of NASA for atmospheric satellite temperature measurement) and professor Claes-Goran Johnson (Royal Polytechnic School, University of Stockholm, specialist in atmospheric turbulence and thermodynamics) simply to avoid open debate concerning climate science. In addition, through his membership in the George Lemaitre Centre for Earth and Climate Research (TECLIM – Universite Catholique de Louvain), “an organization that designates critics of the IPCC as guilty of ‘crimes against humanity’ – a term typically reserved for war criminals,” van Ypersele has bullied and harassed IPCC critics. He signed an online petition (since removed) attempting to impose disciplinary action on a university colleague for engaging in free academic inquiry by criticizing IPCC’s climate stance.
SOURCE: Occam’s Razor
U.K. CLIMATE OFFICE CONFIRMS CONTINUED PAUSE
The United Kingdom’s Meteorological (Met) office and European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) agree: 2014 may or may not have been the warmest year on record. They just can’t tell. The Met office stated temperature measurements showed 2014 was the warmest year on record, by a minuscule amount. But because the uncertainty range was several times greater than the measured temperature increase (beyond the previous record), ” … it’s not possible to definitively say which of several recent years was the warmest.” ECMWF found, “taking into account the uncertainties, … 2014 [was] within the top 10% of the warmest years [since 1979].” While 2014 may have been a warm year, it apparently was statistically indistinguishable from many other years over the past decade. The pause in warming temperatures continues.
SOURCE: Global Warming Policy Foundation and European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
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H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
