Remaining Presidential Contenders Differ Radically on Climate, Fossil Fuels

In its April 20 response to Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker’s subpoena demanding 10 years’ worth of documents related to the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) research on global “climate change,” CEI made it clear it will not comply with the subpoena. CEI’s attorney, Andrew Grossman, a co-founder of the Free Speech in Science Project, told Walker his targeting of CEI is “a blatant attempt to intimidate and harass an organization for advancing views that you oppose,” with the only reason to force CEI to turn over its internal research and documents concerning climate change being “to punish [CEI] for its public policy views, chill its associations, and silence its advocacy.”

Walker’s own statements at the press conference held by AGs United for Clean Power on March 29 show he launched this investigation to achieve political ends, not to “carry out any law enforcement duty.” Walker stated his investigation was intended to “make it clear to our residents as well as the American people that we have to do something transformational” about climate change, and stop “rely[ing] on fossil fuels.” While Walker is entitled to his opinions on public policy, Grossman says he has no right to wield his “power as a prosecutor to advance a policy agenda by persecuting those who disagree with [him].”

CEI says the subpoena “violates the First Amendment because it constitutes an attempt to silence and intimidate, as well as retaliate against, speech espousing a particular viewpoint with which the Attorney General disagrees.” CEI gave Walker a warning: “You can either withdraw [the subpoena] or expect to fight … the law does not allow government officials to violate Americans’ civil rights with impunity.”

A study by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) finds little evidence purported human-caused climate change is increasing the number or intensity of droughts or heatwaves in the United Kingdom or worldwide.

Citing research in Nature Scientific Data from scientists at the University of California, the GWPF study notes, if anything, there has been a slowly declining trend in drought since 1982. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found it almost impossible to attribute changes in drought since the mid-twentieth century to anthropogenic warming.

Concerning heatwaves and climate-related deaths, IPCC concluded the number of heat-related deaths has likely increased due to climate change; the GWPF study finds that conclusion to be a “case of the IPCC inventing conclusions rather than taking them from the peer reviewed literature” that finds most people can adapt to modest changes in temperature with no ill effects. One study shows the number of cold-related deaths was 18 times higher than deaths related to heat, meaning a modest warming could result in fewer temperature-related deaths overall.

Finally, the GWPF study finds the notion that manmade climate change will cause an increase in global conflicts is based on extremely flimsy evidence. The Stockholm Peace Research Institute noted, “‘conflict researchers’ find it hard to understand how such bold claims [linking climate change to global conflicts] can be made on the basis of such thin evidence, perhaps not realizing that this is normal in climate-related fields,” with one conflict researcher calling the link between manmade warming and increasing conflicts a “myth,” noting, “History shows that ‘warm’ periods are more peaceful than ‘cold’ ones. In the modern era, the evolution of the climate is not an essential factor to explain collective violence. Nothing indicates that ‘waterwars’ or floods of ‘climate refugees’ are on the horizon.”

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds climate change will not harm plankton, an important finding since plankton are the foundation for the ocean food chain.

Using a computer model of global ocean circulation to simulate how plankton follow the world’s ocean currents and the temperatures they are subjected to, the study found since plankton travel around the world on ocean currents, they have evolved to survive a wide range of conditions, enduring far more rapid and significantly larger temperature changes than those predicted by even the most dramatic models of global warming.

The study’s lead author, Martina Doblin, Ph.D. a professor at the University of Technology Sydney, said in a press statement, “[D]rifting plankton, that are invisible to the naked eye, are responsible for half the Earth’s oxygen and for global fisheries yields, and are therefore important in providing other essential ecosystem services. Previous exposure to fluctuating temperature can influence how planktonic populations fare under future temperature changes. Our results suggest that the effects of climate change on ocean plankton will need to be re-evaluated to take this into account.”

A new study from researchers at Charles University in Prague finds professional journals publishing research concerning the sensitivity of global temperatures to a doubling of carbon dioxide levels (“climate sensitivity”) exhibit publication bias, publishing research that significantly overestimates carbon dioxide’s effect on temperatures to the exclusion of research producing lower estimates more in line with observed climate sensitivity.

The Charles University researchers examined 48 estimates from 16 studies, which produced a range of climate sensitivity from 0.7°C to 10.4°C, with an average of 3.27°C. After correcting for bias, they found the estimated range of climate sensitivity is approximately half the mean of the sampled estimates, from 1.4°C to 2.3°C.

The researchers argue this bias has serious implications for public policy, since predictions of climate change purportedly caused by human greenhouse gas emissions influence national and international policy decisions. “Social cost of carbon” estimates, used in many countries to determine the stringency of the policies they should adopt to prevent a certain amount of global warming, are simply estimates of the amount of money spent on agriculture, human health, and other harms attributed to climate change caused by increasing carbon dioxide. Since the social cost of carbon is calculated on the basis of climate sensitivity, if researchers were reporting lower climate sensitivities, the amount of resources governments could justify devoting to reducing carbon dioxide emissions when compared to other social problems countries face would be lower as well.